Notes on the Case of Bettie Page

Image via Bettie Page on Facebook

According to Hugh Hefner, who featured her in Playboy as the January Playmate of the Month in 1955, Bettie Page was an iconic figure who significantly influenced American society. I don't know to what extent that's true, but she has certainly secured her place within both the popular cultural and pornographic imaginations (helping, in fact, to blur the distinction between the two).     

It seems that almost everyone knows - and almost everyone loves - Bettie, with her shoulder-length jet-black hair and amazonian figure (amazonian in the camp Russ Meyer manner rather than in the classical Greek sense). Indeed, over sixty years since her modelling heyday and eight years after her death, her estate still continues to rake in the millions and she continues to exert her charm. 

So I suppose the question is ... why? 

According to one commentator, the answer is because Page appeals to a large female fan base as a sexually liberated body positive role model. She may have been abused as a child and suffered serious mental health problems after she stopped modelling, but she's not regarded as a tragic figure or as a victim. On the contrary, for many women she embodies vibrancy, self-confidence, humour, and intelligence.

Again, I don't know to what extent these claims are true, but I'm inclined to accept that many women - particularly those who identify as sex-positive feminists or in some sense queer - feel a strong emotional bond to Bettie Page in much the same way - and for many of the same reasons - they do to Betty Boop in her pre-Hays Code prime [click here].*

The argument is that Page puts the rrr into pinup girl and that there's something a bit punk rock about her look and her attitude - something that I'm also happy to concede. Her imperfections and unconventional looks offer an alternative to the cultural ideal of beauty and she encourages us to challenge stereotypes and affirm our own individual quirks. 

Page also subscribed to a punk ethos in that she styled her own hair and makeup for photo shoots and handmade most of the clothes she wore when modelling. Not that she wore many clothes, of course, and usually they were worn only so that might teasingly be removed.

For Bettie was a gal who liked to be naked and challenged the idea that there was anything indecent or shameful about the body - a view which, interestingly, didn't seem to conflict with her devout Christian faith. As she told one interviewer who challenged her on this: 'I don't believe God disapproves of nudity. After all, he placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden naked as jaybirds.' 

In sum, Page is a fascinating case study who combines contradictory elements and playfully subverts not just ideas of beauty and morality, but also the awful seriousness of the sex industry; she was what Nietzsche would have called a comedian of the ascetic ideal - a knowing parody of the pinup rather than the queen of such. Thus, those who speak of her authenticity have misunderstood her appeal, which is that of the fraud who is always mocking everything and everyone with her performance.

Notes 

* I'm not trying to denigrate Miss Page by comparing her to an animated character. I'm perfectly aware that Betty Boop is a 2-dimensional fictional figure whilst Bettie P. is a fully-rounded actual woman. Nevertheless, there's something wonderfully cartoonish about the latter and it's surely not coincidental that illustrator Dave Stevens based a character on her in his successful 1980s comic book The Rocketeer.  

See: Tori Rodriguez, 'Male Fans Made Bettie Page a Star, but Female Fans Made Her an Icon', The Atlantic (6 Jan 2014): click here. 

Watch: Bettie Page Reveals All, a documentary film dir. Mark Mori (Single Spark Pictures, 2012): click here for the official trailer.

And for five minutes of joy, click here.

Betty Boop Versus the Censor-Morons

Betty Boop: before and after introducion of the Hays Code

I.

The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of moral guidelines applied to US films released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. Often known as the Hays Code, after William Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (1922-1945), it clearly set out what was and was not acceptable content for movies produced for the American public.

Whilst it obviously restricted filmmaking, it coincidently overlapped with the Golden Age of Hollywood, demonstrating that explicit sex and graphic violence are not essential elements of great movies.

Just to be clear: I'm not advocating censorship. As a Lawrentian, I'm instinctively hostile to the censor-morons who heavy-handedly enforce the letter of the law and I believe that ultimately censorship helps nobody and harms many; arresting and circumscribing the development of vital human consciousness.*

All I'm doing, rather, is reminding readers that whilst numerous aspects of the Code now seem ridiculous and reprehensible, many great directors made many great films whilst working within its framework. (Of course, it could be argued that these films were made in spite of the Code and that there are at least an equal number of films weakened by cuts insisted upon by the censors.)  

One star whose career was certainly impacted negatively by the Code, was animated favourite Betty Boop ...

II.

Created by Max Fleischer, Betty Boop made her first appearance in the six-minute adventure Dizzy Dishes (1930). At this stage, she appeared as a neotenous-looking half-woman, half-poodle, though still with her distinctive features including a large round baby face, big eyes, and a carefully styled coiffure - and still dressed like a Jazz Age flapper, with a short skirt and stockings.

Within a year, Betty became fully human and her floppy ears were replaced with signature hoop earrings. She soon dumped her original canine boyfriend - the tubby black-and-white dog known as Bimbo - and began to flirt with human love interests, including Popeye the sailor.**

In 1932, thanks to her popularity amongst adult audiences as a two-dimensional sex symbol, she was given her own series and crowned queen of the animated screen. However, after 1934, when the Hays Code began to be more rigorously enforced and the Catholic Legion of Decency also jumped on her case, Betty's overt sexuality became problematic. 

Joseph Breen - the head film censor appointed by Hays - ordered the removal of the saucy openings to Betty's short films, deeming her winks and wiggles suggestive of immorality. Her animators were also obliged to provide her with a more demure appearance.

Personally, I prefer this new look. But most critics seem to agree that Betty's best days were already behind her by 1935. No longer the carefree adolescent boop-oop-a-dooping her way through one risqué adventure after another, Betty was reinvented as a housewife or a career girl. No more garter on display; no more gold bracelets or hoop earrings; even the curls in her hair gradually softened and decreased as the years passed.

Betty was now a little more mature and a little more responsible: in a word, boring. And her films, now aimed at a much younger audience, were disappointingly tame compared to her earlier adventures; their self-conscious wholesomeness contributing to the waning of her star. 

Further, by 1938 the Jazz Age was well and truly over, having been superseded by the era of swing and the big band sound. Desperate attempts to have Betty move with the times were doomed to failure. However, eighty years on, and Miss Boop has retained her iconic status within popular culture and the pornographic imagination (second only to Jessica Rabbit as the sexiest cartoon character of all time).

Notes

* See Lawrence's letter to Morris Ernest of 10 November 1928, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI (1927-28), ed. James and Margaret Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 613. 

** Amusingly, there is even supposed to exist a pornographic short featuring Betty and Popeye. According to Jim Hill, in 1938 Max Fleischer wished to thank animators who had moved from New York to a new studio in Florida by throwing a party at which he screened a one-reel film in which Popeye requires his spinach in order to satisfy a sexually insatiable Betty. It's unknown what became of the film (if in fact it ever existed). See Jim Hill, Why For? (10 April 2003): click here.   

See also an interesting article by Heather Hendershot, 'Secretary, Homemaker, and 'White' Woman: Industrial Censorship and Betty Boop's Shifting Design', in the Journal of Design History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 117-130. Click here for a link via which the essay can be purchased and downloaded.