A Simple Message

Posted on by

So many people I know have told me how great Zootopia is so when I saw that it was being shown as one of the Friday films, I knew I had to go. I am so glad I did because Zootopia is probably the best animated film I have ever seen.Each character’s story in the film is crafted in such a thoughtful way, from Assistant Mayor Bellwether’s kind demeanor and secret drive for power to Nick Wilde’s past as a victim of bullying and his newfound goal to create positive change as a detective. The message is so simple yet so relevant for our society. What really stood out to me is the film’s emphasis that you can have the best intentions yet still act in an ignorant way so we need to be more mindful of our behavior. The film made me draw parallels between the animals’ world and the politics of our world long after I finished watching it. Lastly, I also thought it was quite clever and humorous how the creators of the film balanced jokes for both kids and adults – such as by incorporating the sloths / DMV into the film.

2 thoughts on “A Simple Message”

  1. I definitely agree with you that the film succeeds in tackling societal issues in a simple but elegant way. I think that this is a big part of why this movie was so successful—it’s accessible to people of all ages, yet it still manages to be engaging on a lot of different levels.

  2. I’ve been thinking a lot about machine learning and AI lately, and so your well-put statement stuck out me: “you can have the best intentions yet still act in an ignorant way so we need to be more mindful of our behavior.” A lot of attempts at using machine learning suffer from strong algorithmic bias, because the data collected is inherently biased (for example, creating a law-enforcement algorithm based on data collected on a city with a racist population or police force). These machine learning models have the best intentions, but are ignorant. If our models could somehow take your advice and be more mindful of their behavior — for example, systematically second-guessing itself whenever it sees results that seem sexist — we might be able to stop the implicit bias seen in Zootopia from also infecting our technology.