More Thoughts on Prejudice in Zootopia

Last time I talked about Zootopia, I looked at the nuts and bolts of how prejudice works within the film, the overall setup of prey vs. predators and the size-based social strata at work.  The big picture’s been taken care of, so now, let’s get down to some of the specifics (contains spoilers.)

It’s easy for Zootopia to think it’s doing well.  Look at their predator mayor!  The police department just hired their first bunny – so progressive!  And on the surface, everyone seems to get along; Judy thinks moving to the city will get her away from small-minded ideas about both prey and predators.  But the cracks are there.  Clawhauser, the only animal at ZPD who doesn’t resent Judy for daring to think she can be an officer, patronizes her (turns out, only bunnies can call one another “cute.”)  Store owners exercise their right to refuse service when they don’t like a customer’s teeth, and how could a fox cub ever think prey would play beside him without fear? 

And just as in life, prejudice sneaks up on the characters.  Judy thinks of herself as enlightened; she groans at her parents’ belief that all foxes are dangerous, but in her time with Nick, her hand reaches more than once for the Fox Repellent Spray her dad foisted on her when she left for the city.  It’s more than an unconscious fear response.  It goes deeper than Judy realizes (I reeled when she complimented Nick for being “articulate.”)  I really like that not just “bad” characters are susceptible to bias.  Judy is a delightful, lovable character, but she’s also been shaped by broken ideas in her society, and she’s unaware of how much they affect her.  In this way, the film is a story about bigotry rather than bigots, which is a vital distinction.  Words like “racist” and “sexist” put people on the defensive, and that “Nuh uh, not me!” reaction closes them off to constructive dialogue.  It’s important that Judy is a well-intentioned bunny with unconscious issues, and that during the movie, she learns to take a harder look at herself and work on them.

Prejudice can be directed internally as well.  Judy initially sets out to tout her belief in Nick and her insistence that his being a fox doesn’t make him a bad animal, but when she realizes that he’s a grifter who conned her, she thinks he’s just like everything she’s ever been told about foxes.  But that’s intentional; years of being dismissed as untrustworthy and feared as dangerous have left their toll on Nick, and after a traumatic experience with bigotry in his youth, he didn’t see the point in trying to convince animals of what they refuse to believe.  And so, he gives himself over to their ideas of him, being the good-for-nothing con-fox because no one expects anything better.

With all this simmering tension, it’s no wonder the city erupts into fear and profiling when the news comes out that the missing predators have in fact “gone savage,” regressing to their pre-evolved ways.  Judy doesn’t mean to start the maelstrom, but as prey, she doesn’t think how it will sound when she explains to the press that every one of the “savage” mammals is a predator (shades of “I’m not saying all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims!”)  That’s when things get really chilling.  The words “biology” and “DNA” get thrown around, suggesting that predators are innately, uniquely susceptible to this regression, that it’s in their nature.  Then it all explodes:  increased arrests, loss of employment, protests, xenophobic jeers, prey edging away from predators on the subway, hate, ad infinitum.  It resonates strongly, the way a community crawls toward progress/unity, and then the actions of a few individuals turn the tide in an instant.  Everything that’s built up gets swept away, and everyone is reduced to their smallest definitions.  Much respect to Zootopia for not shying away from this complex dynamic.

On Prejudice in Zootopia

As I said in my review, Zootopia is a surprisingly sophisticated social allegory for race and gender discrimination.  The film deftly explores both the overt mechanics and the subtle microaggressions of prejudice in modern society; I’m still a little amazed that it exists.  There’s so much here that it can’t be covered all in one day.  This post looks at the general framework for the film’s major metaphors (spoilers.)

Even though plenty of the beats in Zootopiafeel incredibly, depressingly familiar in terms of real-world biases and stereotypes, I like that it doesn’t offer a straight one-for-one analogy.  Yes, we most clearly see hallmarks of racial prejudice when it comes to ignorant assumptions and fearmongering about predators, but there are harmful stereotypes that exist about prey as well.  The film follows Judy’s perspective, and while she’s clearly aware of prejudice against predators (she chides her parents for thinking all foxes are shady,) we open on several demonstrations of ways prey might feel disadvantaged.  Assistant Mayor Bellwether, a sheep, is the most vocal proponent of this idea.  Through her, we see that a number of prey don’t just view predators as dangerous animals to be feared.  Some also view them as the mammals with all the power.  Bellwether confides in Judy about how her lion boss pushes her around and is sick of – in her mind – the predators grabbing all the seats at the table, when in truth Zootopia is “90% prey” and these predators in charge don’t represent the “real” city.

Size is a further complicating factor in the mess of stereotypes and biases permeating through this society.  For instance, Judy, a bunny, and Chief Bogo, a water buffalo, are both prey, but he’s seen as powerful in a way that she’s definitely not.  And the chief places top priority on the Missing Mammals case (all of whom are predators,) but there’s one disappearance he brushes off as less important – the otter, the smallest of the missing animals.  And of course, size isn’t binary the way society tends to think gender is.  An animal isn’t just big or small.  Nick is bigger than Judy but smaller than Chief Bogo, and while Judy is smaller than nearly everyone, she’s practically a Godzilla-esque figure when she chases a perp through the miniaturized neighborhood of Little Rodentia.  And so, while prey and predators create an us vs. them mentality, size becomes more of a pecking order.  When we look at these different dynamics at play with Bellwether, we find that she sees herself being pushed around as a small animal and so blames the predators for being authoritarian bullies, completely missing the fact that “small” and “predator” aren’t flipsides of any coin and that predators have a ton of reductive stereotypes of their own that they also have to deal with.  (Rather than band together as similarly-marginalized mammals, she seeks to create further divisons.  Sadly, this is pretty familiar, too.)

This leaves us with an intriguing intersectional web of identities and potential biases, with herbivore elephants throwing their weight around with carnivore foxes, the lion mayor and his long-suffering sheep assistant, and a fairly equal mix of predators and prey in the police department but – with the exception of Judy – only large mammals.  As a wide generality, you could say predators = PoC and small animals = women, but although the prejudices against both groups bear obvious resemblance to dynamics we see in the real world, there’s more going on here.  (The film increases this ambiguity with its casting.  Obviously, the size of an animal does not determine its gender, and some of the predators are voiced by white actors and vice versa.)  I like that.  All the lines of comparison are there, but it’s not a straight shot.

Coraline (2009, PG)

Coraline the movie veers off from Coraline the book in a few places – the American-ness kind of weirds me out, there are a few criminal line omissions, and while I enjoy Wybie, his presence lessens some of Coraline’s accomplishments.  Overall, though, this is a pretty faithful, beautifully well-rendered adaptation of the Neil Gaiman book, done in gorgeous stop-motion by Henry Selick of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame (or rather, would-be fame, were it not for the fact that most people don’t realize that Tim Burton didn’t actually direct that movie.)

As in the book, Coraline Jones finds an escape to the doldrums of life in her new home via a mysterious door between her apartment and the next, leading into a fantastical world populated by her button-eyed Other Mother and Other Father.  Soon, however, the fun and instant gratification of that world take a sinister turn, and it’s up to Coraline to save her parents from the Other Mother’s clutches and get back home.

First things first:  the stop-motion is amazing here.  Full-on stunning.  I love the washed-out colors and apparent drabness of the regular world compared to the eye-popping vibrance of the Other World.  So many visuals are realized just perfectly.  I especially love Coraline and Wybie in the fog, the garden in the Other World, the passageway between the worlds, and the stunted, barely-sketched-out detail as Coraline ventures too far in the Other World.  Just fantastically well-done all around.  And the scary parts?  Majorly creepy – mission accomplished!

I kind of miss Coraline’s signature unflappability from the book, but I like how the movie makes her a bit brattier.  She goes back and forth between worlds more often before the penny starts to drop re:  the evilness, and you really get a sense of how she’s being seduced by the Other World.  Her relationship with a new character, her neighbor Wybie, reflects that as well.  Even as Coraline is bored and itching for some excitement, she turns up her nose at this obviously-eager potential friend, and it’s clear from her early interactions with the somewhat edited Wybie in the Other World that she mostly thinks of herself, not others.  In this way, the message of Coraline learning to be happy with the family/world she has rather than the one she wants comes through more solidly.

Like I said, though, I miss some of the book dialogue.  The name conversation between the cat and Coraline is sadly gone, as is Coraline’s wonderful little speech about getting whatever you want.  Plus, there’s the fun, random quirky lines that are lost, too, like “Everyone knows that a soul is the same size as a beach ball,” and, my favorite, “I’m on my own.  I think I’ve probably become a single child family.”  Who passes up stuff like that?

Dakota Fanning voices Coraline with spunk and aplomb.  Teri Hatcher is Coraline’s mother (both versions,) and she’s excellent – she has the alluring/sinister thing down pat.  The film also features the voices of Ian McShane (Silas from Kings,) French & Saunders, and Keith David (recently, Elroy on Community) as the cat.

Warnings

Scary images, a bit of suggestive humor, and kid-movie violence.

Zootopia (2016, PG)

Okay, yes, the sloth scene from the trailer is a delight – even having seen most of it more than once in ads, it’s still wonderfully funny – but that alone wouldn’t have brought me to the theater.  I opted not to wait for the DVD for three reasons.  1) I found out that Ginnifer Goodwin voices the lead character, and no matter how hard the the Once Upon a Timewriters often try, they can’t make me hate Snow.  2)  I read that said lead character is a terrifically rootable heroine.  And 3) I heard that the movie was all about stereotypes and prejudice.  The last one was what really intrigued me; the fun, clever “animal city” jokes in the trailer never hinted at that!

In a world where animals have evolved such that predators and prey cohabit peacefully, Judy Hopps – bunny, country bumpkin, and cock-eyed optimist – thinks she’s on the verge of making her dreams come true.  Despite being told all her life that she’s destined to be a carrot farmer like her parents, she’s moved to the city and worked to become the first bunny in the Zootopia police department.  The city, however, isn’t the borderless utopia she’d hoped for, and outdated stereotypes about predators and prey persist, meaning no one thinks she’s up to the task.  But when a major Missing Mammals case hits the docket, Judy shirks her parking enforcement duties to investigate the disappearances and prove her worth.  Along the way, she teams up with Nick Wilde, a smooth-talking fox/grifter, and each attempts to reconcile what they’ve heard about one another’s species with the animal standing in front of them.

I feel like that summary is somehow simultaneously convoluted and oversimplified, neither of which is a good fit for the movie.  To be sure, there is a lot going on plot-wise, but I think the story moves along at a fine pace and hangs together pretty nicely.  Similarly, while the movie makes no pretense about its social allegory, its message is surprisingly sophisticated and gets at a lot of the myriad factors involved in prejudice; I’m going to have to talk about this more another day, because there’s so much to look at here.  On top of being a well-told story with a clear message, it also has engaging characters, clever world-building touches (I love the ongoing attention paid to what infrastructure would look like in a city for animals of widely varying sizes,) and smart, adult-friendly humor (there’s a good reason the trailer shows so much of the DMV scene.)

The aforementioned Ginnifer Goodwin is perfect as Judy:  sunshiny and a bit naïve, but also tough and determined.  Jason Bateman’s Nick is an excellent foil for her – it’s a little hard to picture, since I still associate him so much with Michael Bluth, but he makes a great conman.  They’re especially fantastic as a duo, each playing so well off the other.  Idris Elba and JK Simmons give fine vocal performances as the police chief and mayor respectively (although it drove me crazy that I couldn’t place either one until the end credits,) and the film also features Octavia Spencer and Alan Tudyk in small roles.

Warnings

Thematic elements, scary moments for kids, and a little suggestive humor.

Favorite Characters: WALL*E (WALL*E)

I believe WALL*E is the first non-organic life form to grace the blog, so bully for him; he deserves it.  This is an all-around great movie that I’ve been known to love to bits, and that’s largely because of its leading robot.

Not many movies (especially children’s movies!) could pull off a nearly dialogue-free opening sequence, a long stretch that mainly focus on one character going about his day.  Thanks to the strength of WALL*E’s personality, this movie not only pulls it off – it excels at it.  Watching WALL*E on his solitary mission – taking the massive landfills of the abandoned Earth and converting them into skyscrapers of garbage, one compacted cube at a time – is honestly one of the highlights of the film.  I like the cheerful way he goes about his lonely job, keeping himself occupied by finding whimsical treasures in the refuse and chirruping away to his cockroach companion.  Unlike his broken-down predecessors (and most likely his contemporaries,) he keeps going by repairing himself whenever he gets too rattly, and his enthusiasm never wanes.  His little abode, bedecked with DIY decorations and holding such precious objects as Rubics cubes and a spork, immediately gives us a look into his imagination and appreciation for simple, wonderful things.

It’s also where we see his most beloved pastime:  watching Hello Dolly! ad infinitum.  His treaded-tire dance is, of course, ridiculously endearing, but it’s the rapt attention he pays to “It Only Takes a Moment” that completely and utterly sells you on WALL*E.  His enormous, inquisitive eyes get so wide and so still, and when he brings his clawed metal hands together, trying to imitate holding hands, I defy anyone not to be on his side forever.  He wants sodesperately for someone whose hand he can hold, but, although we don’t even know how long he’s been on his own, he never wallows in it.  He simply keeps on – keeps on working, keeps on dreaming, keeps on finding things to delight in. 

This innate sense of hope, the way he always finds something positive on which to focus, is his best quality, and it dovetails into another – his general irrepressibility.  Over the course of the movie, we see that there’s plenty at which he isn’t adept; EVE rebuffs all his early, excited advances, he’s definitely more gung ho than competent, and he gets himself into all manner of ludicrous trouble.  However, he never stops trying.  He’ll blunder into absolutely anything, and there’s a better than even chance he’ll make a mess of things at first, but he’ll keep attacking the problem until he gets it right.

And usually, he does in the end (there’s a reason he’s the one robot left after all the others have fallen apart.)  He learns quickly and can generally be counted on for his creativity and resourcefulness.  One of my personal favorites is when he’s on a space walk with EVE (who, unlike WALL*E, can fly,) and he uses a fire extinguisher to propel himself.  More than that, he’s so earnest and loving that he acquires allies almost the second he’s put in close proximity to anyone else.  Granted, EVE is a tough nut to crack, but pretty much everyone else is immediately won over by the little trash compactor with the big heart.  From fellow machines to pampered humans, he inspires others to step outside their hardwired routines, connect with one another, and do great things.  Not bad for a robot that hardly counts as lingual.

Relationship Spotlight: Brendon Small, Melissa Robbins & Jason Penopolis (Home Movies)

It’s high time another trio joined the Potter gang as a Relationship Spotlight triple threat.  There are oodles of reasons to love Home Movies, and some of the others – the fantastically bad movies, McGuirk’s ludicrousness, hilarious supporting characters like Erik or Mr. Lynch – may loom a little larger, but the relationship between the core three is a consistently entertaining asset for the show.

We don’t know when or why Brendon, Melissa, and Jason (aged 8, 8, and 7) started making movies together, but by the time the series begins, that’s Their Thing.  It’s what they do – making sets in Brendon’s basement, writing scripts, obsessing over fish-eye lenses, and shooting spy movies mid-soccer game.  Other people sometimes get involved, of course; some are cajoled, others leap at the chance, and still others beg for it but are shut out.  However, it’s clear that they’re just day players – Brendon, Jason, and Melissa are where it’s at.

Even though their dialogue and perspectives are often far more mature than their ages would suggest, I like that the show never quite loses sight of the fact that they’re little kids.  Despite the sophisticated game they talk, they can’t manage conflicts to save their lives, and their movie shoots are plagued with frequent power struggles.  Brendon is tightly wound and tends to perceive any on-set dissent as a knock on his skills as a writer/director/actor.  It’s not unusual for Melissa to solve problems with her fists, and given the smallest shred of authority, Jason goes full-on dictatorial.  Every once in a while, they have earnest blowouts that result in Brendon firing everyone or someone loudly breaking from the group, and these fights occasionally happen while the camera’s running and wind up in the movies themselves (evidently, 8-year-olds “never fix anything in post.”)

The above may seem like an odd reason to enjoy the relationship, but first, it’s endlessly watchable.  I can’t get enough of these kids squabbling and throwing their egos around, and it’s fun to see one of them go off on an especially immature tear when they usually act so grown-up.  Second, it’s a testament to their bond that they continually recover from these rifts and get back together.  All three are simultaneously insecure and conceited to varying degrees, and their feelings bruise easily, but they always make up in the end. 

A big part of it, undoubtedly, is the movies.  For whatever reason, Brendon, Melissa, and Jason have eschewed most typical elementary pastimes and instead devote their time, energy, and imagination to filmmaking.  They reference Truffaut and Das Boot, they know how to write slug lines, and they work in every genre from romantic comedy to wuxia.  They’re friends because they’re the only ones who do what they do.  Even when other kids are cast in extra roles, they’re playing – Brendon, Jason, and Melissa are working.  If they weren’t together, where else would they go?  What else would they do?  Every time they have a temporary falling out, it’s painfully clear that they don’t really know how to fit in anyone else’s company, doing “normal kid things,” and that’s what gets them past any fights or slights.  At some point, they found one another and found their niche, and now, nothing else feels quite as right.  I really love that about them.