Everyone be normal about Quinta Brunson’s Betty Boop

Today in I’m Sure Everyone Will Be Totally Normal About This news, Quinta Brunson will develop and star in a feature film about the iconic animated flapper, Betty Boop. Brunson will produce and star in the film as Betty, and the film will focus on the relationship between Betty and her creator, animator and studio chief Max Fleischer (should be noted that Betty Boop was co-created by Grim Natwick, who actually drew Betty).

If you care a normal amount about things, this probably sounds pretty great. Quinta Brunson is funny and talented, she’s cute and tiny, it is not difficult at ALL to picture her as Betty Boop. And the concept is interesting, too, not just making a Betty Boop movie, but making a movie exploring the relationship between art and artist through an iconic cartoon creation. Is this movie going to be animated? Live action? A hybrid? Are we in for a Cool World scenario in which Betty Boop escapes into the real world and switches between animation and live action? I would actually like to know more about this!

But as we know, there are a lot of people who do not care a normal amount about things, they care an unreasonable amount about stupid things, and so there are people who will get hung up on a Black woman portraying a cartoon character drawn in black and white. Betty Boop originated in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes”, and she looked different from how you know her today. Originally, Betty had doggie ears and a doggie nose and was described as a poodle.

Betty Boop, then unnamed, became very popular and evolved into a human character with her trademark garter flashes and flapper trappings shortly thereafter. The Hays Code, however, forced Fleischer Studios to reimagine Betty again in 1935, this time in a code-friendly way (and pretty well killed the character as originally conceived, removing a lot of her naughtiness). The Smithsonian has an article about the evolution of Betty Boop here.

Betty Boop’s history is one of change as she continually evolves with the times. Most recently, she was the basis of a Broadway musical, Boop! The Musical, in which Betty was played by a Black actress, Jasmine Amy Rogers, who was nominated for a Tony for the role. Frankly, if you weren’t mad about a Black actress playing Betty Boop on Broadway, you don’t get to be mad about a Black actress playing Betty Boop in a movie. You especially don’t get to be mad if you didn’t even KNOW a Black actress played Betty on Broadway.

The cartoon nerd in me is just happy to see the Fleischer revival that is happening right now. A couple years ago at the Chicago Critics Film Festival we programmed a block of restored Fleischer shorts, including several Betty Boop cartoons, and they played like gangbusters (probably in part due to the direct influence Fleischer’s style has on modern animation, so kids are already primed to understand and enjoy Fleischer’s humor). Betty Boop, with her goofy sexiness, has a timeless appeal. I am happy to have Quinta Brunson, architect of Abbott Elementary, bring Betty to the big screen for a 21^st century audience.

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