Edusites Film offers a comprehensive collection of outstanding online Film Studies teaching resources to help teachers and students. From Avant Garde Godard to block buster super heroes there is no doubt that we humans love a film. The academic study of film offers students the vision to create their own stories in innovative and novel ways.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

In the summer of 1988, a major moment in the renaissance of American feature film animation occurred: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (the Walt Disney studio did not include the question mark) was released. The film was an adaptation of Gary K. Wolf’s novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

A story of power and control over the Los Angeles transport system, the film can be watched as a film noir and as a buddy movie and as a postmodern movie in terms of its integration of, and reference to, various American animated film characters. Does that sound familiar in light of the Ernest Cline novel, and subsequent Steven Spielberg film adaptation, Ready Player One?

Race and racism are powerful cultural challenges that America grapples with daily and even in a movie as diverting and fanciful as Roger Rabbit, its generic work as a film noir allows the film to explore something about cultural integration and how possible it is.

Roger Rabbit is a Hollywood movie through and through and it certainly has a ‘happy’ ending’ but, as film scholar Richard Dyer has noted in his essay Entertainment and Utopia, what movies offer us as entertainment is a hugely appealing version of all of


Access this article now

Register now for our subject updates and FREE instant access to this article.

We’d love to send you exclusive offers and the latest information from Edusites by email. We’ll always treat your personal details with the utmost care and will never sell them to other companies for marketing purposes. Please check the box if you are happy to receive occasional emails from Edusites.

Email
Forgotten your password?


Login

Already registered? Login below to continue reading this article.

Associated Resources