Commentary: ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ Got Cartoons Right
by Frank Martin
Many movies have tried to utilize a hybrid of animation and live action, but few have done it more successfully than Who Framed Roger Rabbit? More than just a great movie, it’s also a great meta movie that seeks to depict cartoon characters as regular actors working for a studio. No longer are cartoons merely lifeless pictures on a page. They became living beings with lives, personalities, emotions, and, most importantly, careers. This is an eerie reflection of reality as, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, this was very similar to how these characters were treated.
Two original fictional creations from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? are Roger himself (Charles Fleischer) and Baby Herman (Lou Hirsch). The film even comes with extras, actual short cartoons that feature Roger and Herman as the fictional characters they depict on screen rather than their true selves. This is especially true of Baby Herman, who acts like a baby on screen when he’s filming, but when the cartoon’s director says cut, he becomes a foul-mouthed actor who loves to smoke cigars. Behind the scenes, Baby Herman is a real actor, but on the screen, he’s merely playing a role.
It’s a very clever and creative approach when looking back at cartoon shorts that were produced during this time period. For instance, the Disney+ Brave Little Tailor featured Mickey Mouse in the role of a medieval tailor tasked with killing a giant. Mickey was a popular character and Disney wanted to use him in generic shorts that were nothing more than fun cartoons. He’s not necessarily Mickey Mouse in these shorts. Instead, he embodies the role that he’s playing, which in this case is a tailor during the Middle Ages. Nowadays, Mickey is such a character in his own right that he has his own canon and it’s much harder for him to be just any ordinary character. But Who Framed Roger Rabbit? definitely encapsulated the cartoon mindset of the time.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is now streaming on Disney+.
