Reviews WesternAnimation / Zootopia

First of all, I understand where you\'re coming from and I asure you you\'re not the only one who thinks this way (not me personally though). I think that in a way, yes, many people are taking this movie too seriously or expecting more from it than it ever meant to be. We can\'t forget that it\'s still a Disney animated family movie. We should give props to the film for what it it and I feel many are focusing too much of it not going further. It could had, don\'t get me wrong, but specially given it\'s intended audience, I think it should also be accepted for how far it decided to.

If anything, the prejudice depicted in Zootopia is even more complicated than in the real world. Which still works, as that imparts the message to kids that \"the grown-up world is much more complex and difficult to maneuver than you think it is\".

I don\'t know why everyone insists on thinking of this movie as an allegory to the real world. You can teach kids about the wrongs of prejudice without having to make a carbon copy of actual human society. If that was the goal, they wouldn\'t have bothered to make it an animal movie at all.

I agree that Zootopia is very fixated on talking about how individual prejudice and stereotyping works, much at the expense of portraying systemic and societal forces that are also a part of real-world racism and other -isms.

However, as a family movie first, I believe that Zootopia aimed to teach kids to be aware of your own prejudice and the prejudices held by others in small-scale environments. The kids are given a great positive foundation of understanding and critical thinking, in a safe, fun and easier to comprehend environment. Ultimately, this will hopefully let them better face the systemic forces of prejudice they will gradually become aware of on their own with age. Emphasis on \'gradually\'. Why?

If Zootopia attempted to dissect societal and systemic forces that create prejudice, it will muddle Zootopia\'s true message of making the world a better place one person at a time; an idealistic, even naive notion, but one that will stick with children and give a shot of hope to adults. Even then, Zootopia is able to sensibly modify that sentiment by the film\'s end, leaving a hopeful but more realistic version in the original\'s place. Juxtaposing that sentiment with the surging tide of faceless societal forces, indifferent to the actions of enlightened individuals, will probably just depress the children and some adults, neutering the positive message the movie was going for.

Thus, I am glad that Zootopia was selective in what aspect of prejudice it wanted to address. They could not have done a better job of showing the causes, effects and nuances of individual prejudice to children, and gives parents everywhere an opening to better teach their kids about both individual and societal prejudice. As for direct instruction on systemic prejudice, I say let them learn it from another source when they are older and better able to comprehend a more complex worldview.

^ Exactly. It\'s not a movie about wide-spread systemic racism, it\'s about individual prejudice and stereotyping. And really, that\'s all it should\'ve been. There\'s too many examples of this kind of plot that ends with all racial issues being magically fixed in just a few hours, and everyone living in peace in harmony happily ever after. Yeah, it doesn\'t work like that. Even though this movie has a happy ending, it\'s not treated as the end of this society\'s problems, just a step in the right direction. A sign that change isn\'t easy, but possible. I personally find that a far more realistic message to be sending to children.

Though the funny thing is, both rabbits and foxes are know as tricksters. One thing that the movie could have shown is what animals who were rejected by both sides after Judy\'s unintentional heightening of tensions.

As far as fantastic racism, fantastic sexism and allegories go, it's actually interesting to see once again that, while a civilized society gives everyone equal rights, and that they're not driven by "animalistic instincts", and yet some of them are, well, naturally oriented towards something. Carnivores are more dangerous, some anymals are bigger than the others, and bunny cops wouldn't be able to stop a leopard criminal, neither alone nor in groups.

^ Says who? One bunny took down a rhino in the opening. A group of them, especially cops armed with tranq guns or tasers, could certainly manage it. I feel it\'s really important that they stressed how badly outnumbered predators are, because that means they can only ever be dangerous on an individual level. In any all-out conflict, prey would win easily, which is in fact the crux of the villain\'s plot. And of course, there are real life races considered \"more dangerous\" than others, and that\'s all I\'m going to say about that. It\'s just more blatant in this case.

^^ Didn\'t it? Gazelle\'s peace rally showed that for me, made up of both prey and predator, while also being protested by both prey and predator.

there are real life races considered \"more dangerous\" than others

Difference being that here one group (herbivores) think that another (predators) are more dangerous but said group \"also\" thinks and agrees they\'re more dangerous.

In real life three of the \'Big 5\' (the toughest and most dangerous animals for humans to hunt in Africa) are in fact herbivores, with apparently the single biggest killer of the bunch not the leopards or lions but in fact being... buffalo (like Chief Boku of course.) Just because an animal isn\'t designed to kill to eat doesn\'t mean it can\'t be very dangerous if it wants to be, I think a scene where a herbivore also goes crazy due to the psycho serum would have made that clear albeit perhaps muddying the movie\'s admirable message a little too much.

^^ Except that they only actually become dangerous if they choose to be, and in a civilized society that has numerous defenses against them, most would rather choose to just live a normal life. What causes such civil unrest is the fact that the predators seem to be turning into ticking time bombs that can snap and attack someone in an instant, making people much more fearful of them.

" As such, I think it fails as a true allegory"

It was never __TRYING__ to be an allegory. That's the beauty of it. By not making any group a hard-and-fast equivalent to a corresponding real world group, it was able to do an extremely thoughtful and complex exploration of the subject of prejudice (more prejudice in general, than just racism, which is key to understanding it) without getting bogged down in real-world politics. (See Applicability).

Furthermore, you seem to be thinking solely in terms of racism and not also in terms of other forms of prejudice, which misses the point a bit. One of the most interesting things about the movie's portrayal of prejudice is how multidimensional it is, with multiple forms of discrimination entirely separate from each other, which is really not unlike real life. Foxes face much more discrimination than other predators, and for most of the first act the most salient form of discrimation for Judy was the fact that the large animals don't respect the smaller ones regardless of predator/prey status, and bunnies in particular are seen as something that can never amount to more than just a hick farmer. You mention how "prey animals struggle to be accepted in certain jobs", that misses the point. Herbivores could become police officers, as long as they are big and strong (E.G. Bogo the Buffalo, Francine the elephant, the unnamed rhinoceros). If you're only seeing the predators vs. prey issue, and not noticing the fine-grained speciesism that further divides the society, you're kinda missing the point.

Also, if you draw parallels to more than just racism, the in-universe justification for the "savage predator" scare (which, for what it's worth, ends up being proved bogus in-universe) makes sense in terms of drawing a loose parallel to any groups that distrust each other since they used to be at war, and that previously-submerged distrust is brought to the surface by a sudden incident. Although, again, they really weren't trying to draw a hard-and-fast direct parallel to that (if they wanted to, they would have had like a small group of extremists wanting to go back to the old mammal-eat-mammal ways rather than a conspiracy to falsely make it look like predators were spontaneously going feral) , an example of something sort of like this in real life is 9/11. The Muslim world fought the West a long time ago in the Crusades, long and mostly pointless wars over which side got to control Jerusalem, and tensions left over from that got very suddenly brought to the surface when a group of crazies acting in the name of Islam bombed the world trade center. Before that incident Muslims were not a terribly discriminated group in the US, after it there were innocent bystanders who got beat up for being Muslim (or even wearing a turban despite not being Muslim). Not unlike what happened to predators after the incidents of predators "going savage" came to light.

And you talk about how unrealistic it is that predators are sort of a discriminated minority, yet there are also some in positions of power. In the US today, black people are still sort of a discriminated minority, and yet we also have a black president, so... how is that unrealistic again?

One more issue is you mentioned is the fact that it plays Animal Stereotypes so inconsistently. I don't really see this as an issue. While it's not fair to judge someone based on a stereotype, some stereotypes have a basis in reality (being unfair generalizations; if you see a lot of Y people doing X, then it can be tempting to assume all Y people unavoidably do X without exception because they are Y and not for some other intertwined reason), and others can become self-fulfilling prophecies (Which was a plot point with Nick). Some people are actually pretty stereotypical, even if stereotypes are never universally accurate to the stereotyped group. The fact that some people fit their stereotypes and others didn't, is not so different from reality. Which ultimately drives home that you shouldn't just assume that you can judge someone based on a stereotype, even if it's tempting to do so, because even if it seems like it's right a lot of the time, it can still be wrong. If everyone, rather than just some of them, inverted their stereotypes, that would be unrealistic.

Altogether, I actually think that despite (if not BECAUSE) it doesn't make hard, consistent parallels to specific real-life instances of prejudice, this is actually one of the most thoughtful, detailed, and dare I say accurate treatments of the issue prejudice in the history of motion picture.

^ Could not have said it better myself. Well done. :)

^^ Wow. You certainly have a way with words!

^^ I\'m glad someone appreciates it, I spent way too much time writing that ;)