Betty Boop Poem by gershon hepner

When I cannot fall asleep,
Though very drowsily I I droop,
I don’t resort to counting sheep,
but fantasize that Betty Boop
is lying with me in my bed,
and I’m the man who rescued her
from Ringmaster, whom she would dread
because he acted as masseur
of legs and other private parts,
including her boop-Oop-A-Doop.

To me she’d show her bedroom smarts
in gratitude, and we would group
upon the sheets athletically,
and satisfy each other’s need
until I drooped pathetically,
or Betty was so full of seed
that there was nothing more for me
to do but fall asleep, which I
would do, and maybe dream that she
would wake my corpus delicti.
Betty Boop is a cartoon figure who made her first appearance on August 9,1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. She is important to animation history for being the first cartoon character to fully represent a sexual woman. Other female cartoon characters of the same period, such as Minnie Mouse, displayed their underwear or bloomers regularly, suggesting children or comical characters, not fully defined in a woman's form. Many other cartoon 'girls' were merely clones of their male co-stars, with alterations in costume with the addition of eyelashes and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels, and a garter belt. Her breasts were suggested with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage. (In Any Rags she looks out the window and her dress momentarily falls down revealing her cleavage.) In her cartoons, male characters tried to sneak peeks at her while she's changing, or simply walking along minding her own business….The studio's 1931 Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer. Also in 1931, the Talkartoons The Bum Bandit and Dizzy Red Riding Hood were given distinctly 'impure' endings. Officially, Betty was only 16 years old according to a 1932 interview with Fleischer (although in The Bum Bandit [2] she's portrayed as a married woman with many children and also has an adult woman's voice, not the standard 'boop-boop-a-doop' voice) .Attempts to compromise her virginity were reflected in Chess-Nuts (1932) and most importantly, Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932) . In this cartoon, Betty is a highwire performer in a circus. The villainous Ringmaster lusts for Betty as he watches her from below, singing 'Do Something, ' a song previously performed by Helen Kane. As Betty returns to her tent, the Ringmaster follows her inside and sensually massages her legs, surrounds her and threatens her job if she doesn't submit. This is perhaps one of the earliest portrayals of sexual harassment on the screen, and was very daring at a time when such subject matter was considered taboo. Betty begs the Ringmaster to cease his advances, as she sings 'Don't take my Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away.' Koko the Clown is outside of the tent, practicing his juggling and hears the struggle from inside the tent. He leaps in to save Betty's virtue, struggling with the Ringmaster who loads him into a cannon, firing it, thinking that he has sent the hero away, laughing with self-satisfaction. But Koko is hiding inside the cannon, and strikes the Ringmaster out cold with a mallet, returning with 'the last laugh.' When Koko expresses concern about Betty's welfare, she answers in song, 'No, he couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away! '
I first became aware of Betty Boop when Rebecca Mead (see my poem “Woman with a Dreaming Heart”) mentioned her in her description of Natalie Dessay in The New Yorker, March 2,2009 (“The Actress: a soprano’s ambivalent relationship with her voice”) :

She has been married for fifteen years to (Laurent) Naouri, for whom she converted to Judaism….[T]hey rarely work together. When they do, it is sometimes to great effect, as in a 1997 production, in Lyons, of “Orpheus in the Underworld, ” in which Dessay played Euridyce and Naouri played Jupiter. In the “Fly Duet, ” Jupiter, in the guise of a fly, seduces Eurydice. Naouri told me, “It got very sexy, because at her own suggestion, she would climax on a top E when I was going down on her. It’s on YouTube. Anyone can see it.” Twenty-nine thousand people have, enjoying the spectacle of Naouri, in a bulbous insect costume, chasing Dessay, who––with her black bob, negligee, and fishnet stockings, bears a striking resemblance to Betty Boop, but with an even higher pitch.

3/2/09