Who Displaced Roger Rabbit and Didn't Give Him Relocation Assistance?

by Tony Chavira

You've got a few days this Thanksgiving away from work and I know you're probably just going to be sitting around staring at Black Friday deals all day instead of getting any real work done. So let me suggest taking an hour or two and renting Who Framed Roger Rabbit. You might be thinking to yourself, "Tony, that's just a dumb children's story!" and if you read the original book Who Censored Roger Rabbit? you might be thinking to yourself, "Are you kidding? The book is where all the sex, scandal and mayhem is!" LO, non-believers! Disney may have chopped the movie script into something completely different from the book, but in turn they made the story a case study (for our purposes, of course).

In the movie, Roger and his cartoon cohorts zip around Los Angeles and Toontown trying to figure out who framed him for the murder of Marvin Acme, the guy who basically owns all of Toontown. Marvin's last will and testament leaves directions for what to do with his Toontown properties, but until they find it, the sinister Judge Doom plans to unleash the Cartoon-killing acid known as The Dip on the residents of Toontown. How he has the jurisdiction to kill Toons whenever he wants is never explained, but it might have to do with his ties to organized crime and his deputizing of known weasel felons. Judge Doom is above the law. He's a judge.

Anyway, Judge Doom's ultimate plan (HUGE SPOILER ALERT) is to dissolve Toontown off the map and replace it with (get this) a freeway. Not to get overly-democratic, but Judge Doom doesn't exactly plan on giving the Toons relocation assistance (i.e. money to find another place to live while he develops his freeway plans). Instead, any Toon in his way gets the dip. So in many ways, Judge Doom's not that different from some developers in Southern California. But I digress.

Many characters in Roger Rabbit are in the wrong, civically-speaking. Judge Doom doesn't want to put up a development that would provide jobs or community assistance to the Toons living there. The Cartoons (including Roger) are blown away by the evilness of Doom's plan to build a much-needed Toontown freeway connection. When they find Marvin Acme's will, it leaves the city to the Toons (yay!), but wouldn't a freeway be useful to connect Toontown to the rest of Los Angeles? Granted, we see (at the end of the film) that they have a heavy rail system, and that's probably useful to connect to areas like Ventura, Orange County and San Diego.

First, a responsible Judge Doom would at least provide Roger Rabbit, Foghorn Leghorn, Pound Puppies, Morocco Mole, The Herculoids, the Legion of Superpets and their other Toon friends with relocation assistance. Somehow he doesn't even have to worry about the Zoning Jurisdiction for that property through Toontown before planning for a freeway. (Which might mean that Doom knows the right people in the city; I mean, he already has a license to kill Toons.) Although if you pay attention to the movie, Doom was already buying up the light rail lines throughout L.A. to replace with roads, so they probably already had the correct zoning ordinance. Thank God it's not film noir times anymore.

Second, if Roger Rabbit knows that Marvin's will is missing and there's no named next-of-kin, he probably would have better luck with a grassroots organization to negotiate changes in their community. Freeways, new developments, new zoning ordinances ... Roger and his grassroots organization could charge the city for responsible civic growth. The cartoon politicians could force Judge Doom to give back to the community if he wants to use the city's money to develop Toontown, unless it's technically the city of L.A., in which case Roger should just go to the L.A. city council. The Community Redevelopment Agency might help, especially since there are some pretty slummy areas in Toontown. I'm sure that the CRA could negotiate with Judge Doom and ultimately arrive at something mutually beneficial, especially since Toontown has to have a local district representative. Richard Nixon head from Futurama, for example.

Toons may be considered a minority group, in which case there are plenty of assistance available for developers, both in the city and though state and national programs. In this case, the incentive to leave Toontown and move to rent-controlled hubs in the greater Los Angeles area would create more intermixing of classes and creatures in Los Angeles. Equally beneficial, the surge in Toontown development would allow for cartoon architects and contractors (a union of Mister X and Bob the Builder, for example) to use their Minority Business Entrepreneur status and be first in line to provide consulting services for civic structures in Toontown, as well as parks and community centers.

But no. Judge Doom ends up being a Toon and is dissolved into the dip, effectively killing plans for development in Toontown. Granted, he isn't exactly the most accountable developer, but the impetus for development could bring up real interest by investors besides Marvin Acme, like Richie Rich, Scrooge McDuck, or C. Montgomery Burns. Funny thing about the ending though; Marvin vaguely leaves the town to "those loveable characters, the Toons!" Let the property ownership battle begin!