To clarify, the first video (the rotoscoped Cab Calloway) is âSt. James Infirmary Bluesâ from the Betty Boop film Snow-White (1933). Vices mentioned: gambling with dice (âgive me six crap-shootinâ pall-bearersâ), alcohol (âhand me over another shot of that boozeâ â this was shortly before the repeal of Prohibition, btw), jazz (yes, that was a vice, at least in some circles; incidentally, the fastest way to hate and completely swear off critical theory is to read what Adorno has to say about jazz; I strongly recommend you never ever do that to yourself).
While the gifs are from Minnie the Moocher (1932). Vices mentioned: sexiness / sex work (âshe was a red hot hoochie-coocherâ, generally meaning dancer, um, with benefits), cocaine (âshe loved him though he was cokeyâ), opium (âHe took her down to Chinatown and showed her how to kick the gong aroundâ), and, in the last two verses, a string of classics like greed (âa home built of goldâ, âa diamond carâ, âa million dollarsâ), gluttony (âeach meal was a dozen coursesâ) and more gambling (âracing horsesâ), all assumed to be the result of hooking up with a sugar daddy (âhe gave her things that she was needinââ).Â
HOWEVER, these two verses donât tell us what Minnie has, they tell us what she dreams. In the film, Betty Boop forays into the exciting perils of the underworld and then flees back to her repressive but safe home. In the song, Min is of the underworld, dreaming luxuries she canât have. Not unlike the Little Match Girl lighting a match, or Pirate Jenny, whoâs not really a pirate, looking out a shitty brothelâs window and waiting for a ship thatâs not there. Thatâs why the song is so funny and at the same time so dark, not because it lists âvicesâ.
See, Minnie the Moocher was a real person. Her name was Minnie Gayton, and she was a homeless beggar in Indianapolis, around 60 years old at the time: âshe acquired the quaint nickname of âThe Moocherâ by regularly begging food from grocers and carting it off in a baby buggy. She slept on doorways, on porches and in garages.â And she died about 20 years later, during a terrible blizzard, from exposure. They did get her to a hospital, but by then it was too late.
Do you think she ever lit a match, and imagined in its light extravagant meals and sacks of money and cars and booze and coke, and some sweet love to fight off the cold? Do you think she liked the song? Do you think it cheered her up? God I hope so.
Hi de hi de hi de ho
Poor Min, poor Min, poor Min