Remember when we were young and Cartoon Network showed almost black-and-white cartoons in rather odd times of the day? Those were pretty sophisticated, strange yet educational times for me cause when I was at that age, cartoons seemed light but there was a certain darkness to it that you sense as a child but never really understand. Now that I'm older and I've been exposed to lots of history and culture and music and other things that great education grants you, this cartoon with Betty Boop as Snow White is a haunting one.
I've never heard of Cab Calloway and it's a shame cause my whole claim to fame is supposedly the blues and jazz music and I don't even know the guy. Shame on me for being a pretender. Anyway, I had fallen trap to his soulful singing and when it's rendered in cartoon form of the 30s, done up in, what seems like, a nightmare-ish cover of all the things a child (and an adult) would be afraid of---check out the background images and to me, it's allusion to Dante's Inferno, St. James Infirmary, Betty Boop in her glass coffin, the seven dwarfs, the obviously wicked step mother and the sleek dancing and fluid moving of Koko the Clown makes for a rather disturbing show for kids of any age, and an interesting, almost hypnotizing haunting of music and talent and history and culture for adults who know that some things aren't so innocent...
This'll keep me hooked for days and days and days.
Check out the full, apparently, groundbreaking episode of Betty Boop as Snow White here
-Gerard
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