Zootopia, although inherently a movie marketed towards children, has deeper meanings that only adults can fully comprehend. The predator/prey and different animal species issues in the movie are representative of the racial issues that are happening in our country. The sheep was trying to make the predators seem like the bad guys in order to make her own species superior. There is also the issue of all the predators in the police precinct being discriminatory towards Judy purely because she is not a predator. She had to work twice as hard in order to prove that she was worthy of being a police officer even though she had passed all the same tests and even became valedictorian. This is representative of the issues that minorities face in the US.
Rose Scholars Fall 2018
Endless possibilities
Wow, I never looked at Zootopia that way before. But upon a closer look it does look into inequalities between species, seen even still in America.
Even though it’s probably hard for children to identify and comprehend the root of the issues presented in the movie, I believe think it’s important for movies to display them.
I think part of the reason why adults can identify the issues of prejudice and discrimination in Zootopia is because they’re already used to seeing or hearing about analogous things in daily life, conversations, and news. In this sense, the outside world imbues a meaning to the movie.
For children, maybe the opposite could occur. By introducing and discussing discrimination issues in a family movie, it could help them to understand the world better: the movie would be providing a framework of equality and respect under which to look at the outside world.
Although it’s very hard for me to understand how much of this will “stick” to children as time passes, I still think it’s a very commendable effort from the movie.
There is only one thing I disagree with you: “There is also the issue of all the predators in the police precinct being discriminatory towards Judy purely because she is not a predator”. I disagree with this point because I don’t think she was discriminated for being a ‘prey’: although the ZPD seems to have a bigger ‘predator’ population than average, there are several other ‘prey’ animals in the ZPD, such as elephants, and even Officer Bogo himself (who is a cape buffalo, so a herbivore). The way I saw it, Judy was discriminated because of being small and lacking raw strength (compared to other animals in the ZPD).
Notice how, in the academy, all animals had to do the same tasks, and most of them were very much facilitated by size and raw strength (such as climbing the ice wall and boxing). Individual skills and diversity were not considered, suggesting a deeply-rooted culture of valuing size/strength. Judy eventually conquered the same tasks as others, but not by abiding by this system; rather, she used her own set of skills to do the tasks in an unique way (jumping between heads of other animals and using their raw strength against them, for example).
The problem of her discrimination after graduating the academy seems to stem mostly from this strength-size culture (For example, notice how all seats, in the classroom, are much, much bigger than Judy, suggesting she’s the ‘odd-one-out’ because of size). She’s literally the only member of the ZPD which is small enough to chase Duke Weaselton or infiltrate the place where the missing animals were, and that is because her skills and size counter the strength-size norm of the ZPD. Still, notice how that is never* explicitly acknowledged by other ZPD members due to this culture.
In this sense, although there’s no denying Judy suffered discrimination in the ZPD, I disagree with the reason why it occurred.
*(I don’t recall any moment in which this occurred. However, I might be wrong, so please let me know if I’m forgetting some scene)
Yeah I totally agree with you. Zootopia is such a great movie that sheds light on the issues of racism. It does so using animals so we can understand it from a fresh and unbiased perspective. I think it’s so great!