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![]() Tasha: Another possible contributing reason for the specific year and setting: That studio system Keith mentions, where big conglomerates signed stars to exclusive contracts, then considered them property to be controlled and traded, is historically considered to have ended in 1948, when Howard Hughes signed a government agreement to break up RKO Pictures. In the cartoon noir world of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, everyone suffers and everyone schemes, even characters literally created to make people laugh. ![]() ![]() Betty Boop’s melancholy as she tries to assure Eddie-and by extension, the world-that she’s still got it, is played for sad laughs. Part of what lends Who Framed Roger Rabbit its emotional wallop is the sense of despair and decay-not just in folks like Eddie Valiant, who’s just barely eking out a scuzzy existence on the fringes, but also in cartoon characters who seem cognizant of their fragile place in the show-business ecosystem. Nathan: I like the notion of 1947 being both the high-water mark and the beginning of the end for classic animation. Toontown survived The Dip, but the flood came anyway. UPA’s more-with-less aesthetic worked wonders with expressionistic, stripped-down animation, but also opened the door for cheap-looking (and just cheap) imitators. (Just ask poor Betty Boop.) Animated theatrical shorts may live on forever, thanks to TV, but the format barely survived the 1950s, and by the end of the decade, they were coping with constricted budgets and changing tastes. It lasted a while longer, but not forever. Other outlets, like MGM and Terrytoons, are in their heyday. We’re at the high-water mark for Hollywood animation. I think there’s another reason for the 1947 setting, too, and kind of a melancholy one. of The Big Sleep, but it’s just a parallel universe away. Seaman fill the film with noir trappings. From the boozy, hard-bitten hero to the shadowy doings behind venetian blinds to the femme-fatale heroine (who isn’t bad, just drawn that way), director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. It also had a studio system not unlike the one depicted here, where execs traded stars, though they didn’t always work for peanuts, like Dumbo. The Los Angeles of Who Framed Roger Rabbit also existed onscreen, in the noirs that rose to prominence during and after World War II. The city really did have a trolley system that gave way to roads, even if it wasn’t the result of a conspiracy. Keith: Who Framed Roger Rabbit takes place in an imagined version of 1947 Los Angeles, where humans and “toons” live side by side, a fantasy grounded in reality.
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