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Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Decent Essays

Although the opening scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is meant to be lighthearted and appealing to children, upon further examination the discriminatory treatment of Roger reveals the racist undertones. The scene begins in the cartoon universe with Roger Rabbit and a cartoon baby, named Baby Herman, that Roger is left as the caretaker. Throughout the scene the baby undermines his authority in almost every way as he tries to reach a cookie jar on top of the refrigerator. The refrigerator, however falls on Roger, and he then produces birds instead of stars. The director then calls cut and the camera shifts to the live-action characters who are shooting the scene and are very angry with Roger. First, an important visual is the framing of Baby Herman versus Roger. Throughout …show more content…

This framing can be viewed from a racial standpoint. Baby Herman is meant to represent the human character in cartoon form, since in fact he is a cartoon-human baby. However, Roger is a straight cartoon, and by framing Baby Herman always above him and by having Roger always deal with the mayhem that Baby Herman, it creates clearly displays a racial divide. The minority Roger is being characterized as lower than Herman to depict his inferiority to the human representation Herman who undermines Roger so easily, despite being a baby. Finally, examined were the camera angles and actions of the characters throughout the scene. While Roger is pleading for the director to give him another chance, the camera is positioned at the human height level while they move throughout the scene. The camera is stationed at human eye level, displaying the dominance that the humans have over Toons. Yet so simple, it creates an effective power divide in the scene that the human characters have over the Toons. Reinforcing this point is the fact that the facial expressions of the humans are more visible than the

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