Character Spotlight: Jessica Rabbit

Since I’ve become rather busy with school, I’ve decided to let other writers handle some Character Spotlights.  This will also give us some insights into characters that I haven’t necessarily spent much time considering.  This first one is by my sister, Jill Meredith Collins Sinnott, a talented feminist writer who’s been published in Off Our Backs. –Dustin L.

Character Spotlight: Jessica Rabbit
by Jill Meredith Collins Sinnott

Visitors to this blog are doubtlessly familiar with female sexuality as expressed through animation, which for years took the form of Betty Boop. However, in 1988, Betty made an appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, wherein she briefly shared screen time with another, more colorful, far bustier female: Jessica Rabbit, the title character’s wife.

Betty Boop seems to realize and accept that she’s being upstaged. She works as a cigarette girl at the Ink and Paint Club during Jessica’s performance, and calmly picks up Eddie Valiant’s jaw when he drops it after seeing Jessica for the first time.

I don’t think Betty needs to worry too much. Betty Boop may be past her prime, but her curves will always be appreciated for being both hot and realistic. Every woman I know appreciates the fact that broad hips and meaty thighs were once considered glamourous, even without a tiny waist between them.

Jessica Rabbit, on the other hand, sports an almost comically tiny waist and a bust so large that her strapless, backless dress seems to be defying gravity. Her legs are shapely (and fully exposed by an immodestly high slit in her dress), and it seems impossible that her slender ankles and dainty feet could support everything else. In short, Jessica’s sex appeal is so over-the-top and in-your-face that it’s difficult to take it seriously. As John Grant notes in the Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters, “She is more a caricature of a desirable woman than any pretence of an accurate depiction of one.” I suppose that’s why it’s so easy for me, like Betty Boop, to laugh off the male viewer’s reaction to Jessica Rabbit: not only could I not look like that if I tried, I wouldn’t really want to.

Neither, it stands to reason, does Jessica Rabbit. She tells Eddie Valiant, “You don’t know how hard it is being a woman looking the way I do.” She may use her overwhelming sensuality to her advantage (both in her occupation as a lounge singer and to get help with her husband’s legal troubles), but she’s a cartoon woman in 1947, and her resources are limited.

She may not even be flirtatious by choice–the movie makes it clear that toons answer to different laws of physics than humans do. Roger states that he can only do what is funny, so perhaps Jessica can only do what is sexy. But the restraints of their nature didn’t stop them from falling in love and remaining faithful to one another, which is really the heart of why Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my favorite movies, and also why I feel the need to defend Jessica Rabbit.

My husband has said many times that the song “Rescue” by Eve 6 reminds him of the beginning of our relationship. This song contains the line “Like Jessica Rabbit, she collects bad habits, gets her drinks for free,” which compels me to ask what Jessica Rabbit and I could possibly have in common, other than a taste for somewhat goofy men. My husband just rolls his eyes and tells me I’m taking the song too literally, which is, of course, true. It’s that same tendency towards the literal that makes me ask, “What do they mean, Jessica Rabbit collects bad habits?”

Think about it. Jessica is established in pop culture as a woman whose reputation precedes her, but what has she ever done to warrant that reputation? In the course of the movie, the only morally questionable thing she does is pose for patty cake pictures, and we soon learn that she was blackmailed into that. She truly loves her husband, and remains fiercely loyal to him (she does hit him on the head with a frying pan at one point, but it’s for his protection).

Jessica’s signature line is “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” It’s my opinion that the line is less of a joke than an honest statement. Her sad tone of voice makes it clear that she’s resigned herself to the hard truth that female sexuality is seen as mainstream society as “bad.” What she’s referring to, specifically, is Eddie Valiant’s assumption that she must be a slut. From the moment Eddie lays eyes on her, he assumes that she’s guilty of adultery, that a woman like her couldn’t possibly be satisfied by Roger Rabbit. He figures the marriage must be a joke to her, like it is to everyone else. But Eddie is wrong. As soon as they meet face to face, Jessica makes it clear that she loves her husband. It was out of concern for his career that she allowed herself to be blackmailed, and now that Roger’s being accused of murder, she’ll do anything to clear his name.

Ultimately, Jessica Rabbit is just one more woman being pigeonholed and stereotyped due to her appearance. Her problem is exacerbated by the fact that she is the product of someone’s drawing, giving her even less control over her appearance than the average woman. Given the fact that she wears the rather impractical evening gown throughout the entire film, I have to wonder if she’s even able to change clothes. If nothing else, it can’t be easy to find toon clothing to fit her measurements.

The husband and wife pair share little screen time, bringing dramatic effect to the final scenes, where Jessica showers her husband with kisses and compliments. They walk into the sunset together, and Jessica promises to bake Roger a carrot cake when they get home, fully rounding out her role as the perfect wife. Hope is restored among all the men in the audience, that one day the perfect woman will love them because they make her laugh.

Oddly, Kathleen Turner was uncredited for her role as the voice of Jessica Rabbit. The credits name the voice of each character who made a cameo appearance, each of the weasel henchmen, and each human bit part, but no credit appears for Jessica. Somehow, this oddity adds to her overall effect: perhaps Jessica Rabbit was never a cartoon character in a movie at all, but a force of nature, finding her own way onto the screen by sheer willpower. A woman will, after all, go to great lengths for the man she loves.