Disney's hypocritical approach to Jessica Rabbit

Entertainment Weekly reports veteran filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, famous for several notable movies like Back to the Future, told a podcast interview about Disney's refusal to ever film a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the combination of live action and animation, all because of Jessica Rabbit's strapless dress design, a subject he'd first spoken about several years earlier:

Fans of Who Framed Roger Rabbit know that Jessica Rabbit isn't bad — she's "just drawn that way." But according to director Robert Zemeckis, the hit movie will never get a sequel because its animated femme fatale is simply too risqué.

On a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Zemeckis lamented, "There's a good script [for a sequel] at Disney, but here's the thing: The current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today. They can't make a movie with Jessica in it." He added that the sequel script, which was penned by original Roger Rabbit writers Peter S. Seamen and Jeffrey Price, "isn't ever going see the light of day, as good as it is."

If it sounds implausible that Disney would hold up a no-brainer follow-up to a box office smash, Zemeckis offered this: "I mean, look what they did to Jessica at the theme park. They trussed her up in a trench coat, you know."

[...] According to Zemeckis, it necessarily isn't the murder, kidnapping, voyeurism, drug use, or crooked cops and politicians that today's House of Mouse would object to, but Jessica's scandalous sartorial sensibility.

Yes, and coupled with the company's far-left obsession with pandering to LGBT ideology in cartoons and other products aimed at children, that's stunningly hypocritical.

Zemeckis also elaborated on the miraculous timing that allowed Who Framed Roger Rabbit to go forward in the first place. "We were able to make it right at the time when Disney was ready to rebuild itself," he said. "We were there when that new regime came in, and they were full of energy, and they wanted to do it. I kept saying, and I sincerely say this, I do believe this, 'I'm making Roger Rabbit the way I believe Walt Disney would have made it.' The reason I say that is because Walt Disney never made any of his movies for children. He always made them for adults. And that's what I decided to do with Roger Rabbit."

Rather than trying to temper the film's racier elements, Zemeckis embraced them. And he knew before the film was even released that this gamble would pay off. "One time we did a test preview with just moms and kids," he recalled. "I was terrified because these kids were like 5, 6 years old. They absolutely were riveted to the movie. And I realized that the thing is, kids get everything. They understand. They get it. You don't have to — the thing that Walt Disney never did was he never talked down to the children in his movies. He treated the kids like they were adults."

Yes, and it's worth noting that, however some women in his cartoons were dressed, it's not like anybody engaged in explicit sexual relations there, and the dress worn by Jessica is something that could be worn in events where children could be present, like theaters, banquet halls, and parties. Based upon where Disney went in just a few years, it must have more to do with the LGBT agenda they're now upholding. If anything, it's astonishingly hypocritical and demeaning to women to censor Jessica Rabbit's strapless dress and act as though children couldn't get used to it. At worst, it even delegitimizes what they could see at the beach, which even mothers can wear, along with bare midriff outfits.

And let's also consider what Zemeckis says about the violent content and allusions to drugs in Roger Rabbit clearly not concerning the top brass at Disney. That's where they otherwise are insulting intellects, of children and adults alike. If they think something so un-romantic makes for art, they really don't belong in their jobs. Even more dumbfounding to consider is that Roger Rabbit wasn't made under the Disney brand per se, but rather, under the Touchstone Studios brand, which was founded in the mid-80s to produce movies that could be aimed more at adults. If Disney won't produce fare featuring Jessica Rabbit even under a studio logo serving more grownup fare, that's telling.

So maybe it's time for Zemeckis to consider moving away from Disney like Tim Burton already has. Better still, maybe he should even consider trying to buy out the rights to all characters in Roger Rabbit who aren't property of Disney and Warner Brothers, and see if he can make a sequel at another studio. For now, it wouldn't do much good to pay tickets to see a Disney-produced film anyway, if it only ends up helping their woke agendas.