[INSPIRATION] Max Fleischer's Betty Boop

Max Fleischer is a pioneer in animation, particularly rubber-hose animation. Now I have mentioned Max Fleischer alot throughout this blog, however I have never really specifically talked about any cartoons in particular. Fleischer created a handful of wacky and crazy characters full of life, and in my opinion, one of the least wacky and crazy character he made, Betty Boop, is him most famous character. Betty Boop has a lot of history around her than any other Fleischer character, aside from Popeye the Sailor Man, the thing with Betty Boop is it caused controversy in many different ways; she had a lawsuit against her, she was the first cartoon sex symbol in a show whose demographic were children and she was affected greatly by the Production Code of 1934 which restricted sexualised  content and innuendos. 

Now, as you may have noticed, I don't feel that Betty is the wackiest and craziest characters Fleischer has ever created, nor do I feel that she has an appealing design, however, she does have a very specific animation design which is works well with no other character than her, however, the thing I want to talk about specifically isn't even Betty Boop herself, it's actually the characters in her universe.

Because of the stories that the Betty Boop cartoons follow, she almost always has a different character with her in every episode, she is never seen as a one woman act. More often than not, the characters that are featured in these episodes are usually incredibly active, and energetic and just downright funny, to contrast the milk toast humor of Betty herself. Wiffle Piffle is one of the characters and appears in two Betty Boop episodes, he is a short, well-dressed but odd-looking character whose animation is very interesting to look at, his entire body just sort of flails, a perfect example of a rubber-hose character. Another example would be Irving, a practical joker who just wants to prank people, however with his lanky body shape, he is a very rubbery character who usually just waves his arms around and around, he is another great example of a very bouncy and free character.

Overall, the Betty Boop cartoons are fun to watch, but not for Betty herself. She is the reason these characters all work though, it's like two binary opposites, usually Betty does not want these characters around and has to deal with them. I think it's interesting what max Fleischer did with the Betty Boop cartoons, intentional or not, I feel that the fact that these episodes consist of a character who isn't that bouncy and a character who is the definition of a rubber-hose character works nicely.