This one will take you back. Our first cartoon for today is The Old Man of the Mountain, starring everybody's sweetheart, Betty Boop. This one's an early one – always a plus – from 1933, with Cab Calloway. Surrealism and scat singing. Enjoy, then come back for more.

The 1920s and early 1930s were the era of the flapper. A flapper was a liberated woman, fearless, in control of her own body and her own destiny, sexy, self-assured, and forward-looking. She was sort of a pre-feminist post-feminist, if you get my meaning. Betty certainly fit the bill.

As you can read from her website, Betty started life as a dog, which explains why her bf, Bimbo, is a canine. Strange, but that's the Max Fleischer universe for you. A place Marcel Duchamp would love to inhabit, one suspects. Jean-Paul Sartre and Gertrude Stein were on record as Boopophiles.

Betty's a femme fatale feminist. She doesn't need rescuing. She rescues herself, repeatedly. It's the flapper way.

Max Fleischer's cartoons had an urban, jazz-fueled sensibility. They were innovative.

I have no idea whether this film was banned by the Hayes Office for promoting drug use. (Don't believe everything you read on Youtube.) 'Laughing gas' was a common dentistry tool in the old days. But it is a mind-blowing cartoon.

For sheer surrealism, Bimbo's Initiation can't be beat. Don't try to explain it, just enjoy.

I'm sure it has a deep esoteric meaning. Also, that Edgar Allen Poe would have loved it.