Betty Boop's Hula

Hawaiian Hula

Although hula performance was actually a spiritual and religious ceremony, it became an entertaining dance form that expresses Hawaiian soul and history. Its origin is not exact, but Hawaiians think that it came from a Hawaiian god. Hawaii was a land that went through several hardships because of foreign containments and suppressions. However, despite all the difficulties living under colonizers, Hawaiians learned to cope with them by dancing hula and thus, promoted Hawaiian culture. When the Christian missionaries came to Hawaii, they condemned hula’s strong sexual and spiritual content because they believed that their God was the only one to worship. Therefore, hula was banned from Hawaii for a long time until tourists began to be interested in Hawaiian performances.

When the United States overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and annexed Hawaii in 1900, the tourist industries began to populate and many tourists from all around the world began to come in. Because of Hawaii’s friendly and comforting nature, Americans who came to visit were mesmerized by the utopian environment that was so different from United States’ busy, materialistic, and stressful atmosphere. Working to promote Hawaii’s charms on U.S. continent, Hawaiian performers gained popularity and fortune. The women hula dancers competed each other for the “hula queen” title for several months and the chosen ones received a chance of stardom and fortune in the U.S. For them, hula was a promise of fame and glamour that is not guaranteed in Hawaii.

Hula became so popular and sexualized that the infamous cartoon character, Betty Boop, dances hula in the cartoon, Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle. Before Betty Boop comes out to dance, there is a short live action performance of the Royal Samoans playing Hawaiian music and a Hawaiian woman who dances hula. After the live footage, the scene changes to a cartoon form where Bimbo, Betty Boop’s boyfriend, plays ukulele, a Hawaiian instrument, and crashes into a tropical island assumed as Hawaii. Bimbo meets the sexual icon Betty Boop, who is dark-skinned and wears the traditional Hawaiian dress. Her skin is darker than her usual color in this cartoon because she is portrayed as a Hawaiian woman. After having some trouble with the natives, Bimbo sees Betty’s beautiful and sexual hula dance. Here, Betty’s hula performance was very similar to that of the hula woman dancer in the beginning because the studio used the rotoscope technique for realistic animation. Hula clearly has influenced America significantly just by looking at these cartoons that transformed their cartoon characters into Hawaiian dancers.

Walmart and many other American stores continue to celebrate Hawaiian-related things by selling hula action figures. They made Hawaii and hula into commodities in some way. Hawaiian-style clothing that has a lot of flower patterns and bright colors are very popular in American culture until the present day.

All of these encounters between Hawaiians and American tourists cause an intimate relationship that makes both inseparable and dependent on each other. By consuming Hawaiian performances, Americans are able to relax themselves from the harsh urban life and industrial capitalism; in return, Hawaiians earn fame, money, glamour, middle-class life, and U.S. acceptance.

Hula was not simply a dance form because it represented so many things that cannot be expressed with one meaning. It was a bridge that connected Hawaii and the U.S. continent.

Insun Cheon.