× Who Framed Roger Rabbit ×

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit Is About Segregation.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, better known to kids as "that movie with Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny" and to teens and adults as "that movie with Jessica Rabbit's gazongas," is set in a world where humans interact with cartoon characters.

The film follows human PI Eddie Valiant as he investigates a murder involving Roger Rabbit, which leads us to discover that Judge Doom (a corrupt official played by Christopher Lloyd) wants to kill all the cartoons by submerging them in his "Dip" concoction.

The plot we just described is a metaphor for the gentrification and segregation of blacks in Los Angeles, or so claims renowned film scholar "reddit account deleted."

Short of the filmmakers including a talking crow called Jim to spell it out, the clues couldn't be more obvious.

The movie takes place in 1947, at the height of the Jim Crow era, where mandated state and local laws prohibited whites and blacks from having the same shit or being in the same places.

Doesn't Toontown, the city where the toons live near Hollywood, feel a little more sinister in that context?

The villain, Judge Doom, wants to tear down the trolley system to force the toons out of their home so they can build a freeway for the wealthy humans -- that's called gentrification, an issue that remains controversial in LA to this day.

Also, most of the cartoons are performers, which of course was one of the "acceptable" occupations for black people at the time.

You don't see any cartoon doctors or lawyers ... unless they're pretending to be human, like Judge Doom himself.

That makes Doom an Uncle Tom character: a minority who sells out his own race for his personal benefit, like Samuel L. Jackson in Django, only less cartoonish.

Then there's Jessica Rabbit, to whom Eddie is clearly attracted, despite his claims that he hates cartoons.

His confusion is representative of the confusion of many white males who lusted after black women despite seeing blacks as inferior.

And finally, in the movie the word "toon" is treated like a racial slur that humans use to offend cartoon characters.

Now say the word out loud but replace the first letter with a " C ".

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