New media beyond neo-imperialism: Betty Boop and Sita Sings the Blues

Abstract

This essay argues that theories which frame media globalization as either Disney-style neo-imperial domination or as radical technopolitics fail to account for the complex network of exchange that takes place in animated media. Instead of framing media use in terms of “top-down” versus “bottom-up” activity, this essay demonstrates how animators and audiences in different national and cultural contexts may inhabit multiple positions, entering into fraught, yet often productive, relations of complicity and collaboration through different media technologies. To that end, it highlights two particular historical moments at which emerging media became linked to cross-cultural networks of exchange. The first moment is that of Betty Boop’s birth in 1930, which coincided with Hollywood’s rise to prominence in the global distribution of sound film as far afield as Japan. Betty Boop’s reception in Japan is considered through an examination of 1930s Japanese advertising documents and the parodic short films of animator Ōfuji Noburō. The second moment is the digital shift of the early 21st century, illustrated in Nina Paley’s 2008 online Ramayana-based musical Sita Sings The Blues, and its reception among diasporic and national South Asian audiences. Though produced decades apart, these films are linked by concerns around nationality, ethnicity, gender, and cross-cultural exchange, demonstrated in their repeated use of a single core image: the exoticized and eroticized female singer protagonist. This problematic (yet potentially powerful) figure is analysed in both cases as a focal point for neo-imperial complicity and collaborative reinterpretation among creators and viewers of global media.