For Corky, the danger is manifest in the potential betrayal and also in the eventual show down between the women and their male captors. Jessica is portrayed as a more passive figure, as a more classic pre-feminist femme fatale; whereas Violet is a more active figure, a true "postfeminist good-bad girl hybrid." Things happen to Jessica, even the things that seem to happen because of Jessica. The things that happen because of Jessica were not instigated by her. Furthermore, Violet betrays a man for whom the audience has no sympathy; whereas Jessica betrays no one. In Violet's case, though, things happen because of her machinations entirely. She chooses to involve Corky in the scheme; and she chooses to orchestrate the heist. In the end, both Violet and Corky outsmart the bad guys and without being "rescued" by men. These are powerful feminist messages in Bound, which are absent in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Both Bound and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fit firmly within the neo-noir domain, not least because of their exploration of new modes of expressing a femme fatale. Zemeckis and the producers of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? opted to express a neo-noir femme fatale as a cartoon rabbit, married to one of her own kind, in a world in which Toons are socially marginalized creatures. There are therefore political dimensions to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, just not those related to the subjugation of patriarchal gender norms....

Andy and Lana Wachowski, on the other hand, chose to express a neo-noir femme fatale as a modern bisexual woman. Violet and Jessica are on some level subject to forces beyond their control; they simply address and mitigate those forces a bit differently. Both Violet and Jessica highlight what Bronfen states about femme fatale figures in both classic and neo-noir: she is "not merely a stereotype, symptom or catchphrase for dangerous femininity but rather the subject of her narrative, an authentic modern heroine," (103).
Works Cited

Bronfen, Elisabeth. "Femme Fatale -- Negotiations of Tragic Desire." New Literary History. Vol. 35, No. 1, Winter 2004.

Gundareva, Alesia. "Caricatures of Film Noir in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'"

Harris, Oliver. "Film Noir Fascination: Outside History, but Historically so." Cinema Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 3-24

Holden, Stephen. "Neo-Noir's a Fashion That Fits Only a Few." 1998.

Klinger. "Neo-Noir and Erotic Thrillers."

Wachowski, Andy and Wachowski, L. Bound. [Feature Film]. 1996.

Zemeckis, Robert. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?…