::: John M. Golden
Or, Schindler's List in Slapstick ::: Click here to read the full text.
Who framed Roger Rabbit?
Jozeph did
It is also of note that Judge Doom ended up being a toon himself... he hated that which he was. Many have commented on the fact that Hitler was Jewish and he too hated that which he was.
I quite liked your article.
Two points. ^^
xxxLips
John,
I read your article with great interest. Several years ago, I wrote a piece for Bright Lights Film Journal: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/34/rogerrabbit.html
which might interest you. What you hit squarely on the head, I touched on briefly. It seemed to me that associating the Toontown residents with the Holocaust wasn't that farfetched. I was dealing, primarily, with the Zemeckis-Spielberg way of handling historical material.
Best Regards,
Bob Castle (a past Metaphilm contributor)
Judge Doom was the name of the chief bad guy in the film. Pull your head out then reread the article and my post. This has nothing to do with the video game.
Doom? Yes, there should be more room for murder-lust and demon-spawn in our 'melting pot'. You obviously know nothing about Doom: it's a game. And Roger Rabbit is a cartoon. Yosemite Sam? Who sympathizes with that hate-filled slay-monger? He'd be just as happy to kill Roger Rabbit as anyone! Oh wait...it's a *cartoon*, where one can dispense all the violence one likes without consequence. Same with Doom... it's a *video game*. Infinite lives, infinite banality. I find the analogies in the article to be compelling, but comparing "Doom" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is like comparing "Super Mario Brothers" and "The Sopranos": more than a bit of a stretch, and an insulting one at that.
Good article. You could say that Doom's attempt to eradicate diversity for homogenity is another characteristic of Hitler's fascism.
I'm proud to say that I was the first person to read this after it was published, as there were zero hits when I clicked on the article :)
Jim R.
This is an interesting analogy, but it's lacking in that it ignores the more immediate and obvious metaphorical conceit of the film.
The culture that was obliterated and in order to irrigate and then further suburbanize Los Angeles, and the virulent prejudice that manifests itself in the city's design--as a conglomeration of ethnically and socioeconomically homogeneous enclaves--is against non-whites, particularly against Blacks and Latinos, to a far greater extent than it is against Jews, who also faced no small degree of discrimination in L.A.
I recommend reading City of Quartz by Mike Davis for a deeper understanding of why it's not necessary to travel so far to understand the analogy that's being drawn in the film.