Book 1, Page 147

Hi patrons!

Please give a hand to Barry for the lettering and singsong word balloons!

It feels great to have this page done. A significant portion of the time spent on this page involved reading lyrics about hot nuts, lemons, sugar bowls, bananas, pies, stoves, flapjacks, a crosscut saw, and finally, a bell.

The script included a note from Barry: This is here because I think it’ll be fun, but also because a lot of stuff I’ve read has alluded to how risqué and blue the performances at these clubs often were, and it would be good to get some of that in.

Barry spent some time looking up popular songs from 1940-41, and searching the lyrics for naughtiness. He found a fun bouncy one that would've been a fairly recent hit when this scene takes place. Unfortunately, when I looked for a recording on YouTube to see what it sounded like, the first few results were variations of "[song title]: most racist cartoon EVER?!?" Indeed, the cartoon is 6+ minutes of YIKES. Even "for the time," the depictions in the cartoon were so offensive that when the cartoon was re-released in 1948, the NAACP protested until Universal withdrew the film. The director insisted he didn't mean to offend anyone. A Universal rep grumbled that stereotypes of Blacks, Jews, Germans, and Irish had been standard in entertainment for years, and why are people offended today. It's striking that almost 80 years ago, people were having the same arguments.

In any case, the cartoon would have been out for a few months by the time Lillian walks into Moira's, the home of Turtle City's Greatest Male Impersonators. Lillian would be aware of the cartoon, and have thoughts and feelings that we weren't planning to go into, because we wanted to set the scene for a fun atmosphere. We also figured that curious readers might look up the lyrics to see if the song is real. Barry and I try to walk the historical fiction line between acknowledging that racism was everywhere, and not hitting unsuspecting readers in the eyeballs with racism for no reason. So we found a replacement song.

Thanks, as always, for supporting SuperButch on Patreon! Your support means a lot.

-Becky