Zootopia

Have you seen Zootopia? No? Go see it now! Drop all responsibilities and just go watch it in the nearest theater. It is wonderful. The storyline is great, the characters are funny, but more than anything, the movie sends a great message.

In case you haven’t seen it, it is about a bunny who wants to be a cop in a world where animals coexist and predators and prey live in harmony. Don’t worry, no spoiler alerts here, but throughout the movie there is a play between predators and prey and how they are perceived by the other side. What is so amazing about this movie is that there is no underdog. Clearly, the animals who are conventionally animals who are preyed upon have different struggles that predators and it could be argued that they have a more difficult time breaking from their characterizations, but it is also shown in the movie that predators are stereotyped and have the same problem.

This allegory may be lost on the 6 year old children who sat next to me in the theater, but I got the message and I hope all the other adults who saw it did too. Everyone has their own struggle. Every group has their own stereotypes and prejudices. Whether you are a fox, a rabbit, a jaguar, a mouse, or a man, everyone faces hardship and we all have to work together to break those by recognizing that they are wrong. Just because one fox is sly doesn’t mean all are and just because one black man committed a crime doesn’t mean they all will. This also means that not all southern white people are racist and not all Indians smell bad. These seem like obvious stereotypes that people understand are wrong but we have to truly believe them for anything to happen.

One of the most pivotal moments in the movie (for me at least) was when the fox called out the bunny for saying stereotypical things about predators when just moments before she had told the fox she knew those things weren’t true about him. Even though she knew not all predators were dangerous, she said it because she fell into the mainstream of thinking and didn’t fight against it. Of course she later fixed her mistake but that’s the point. It is easy for me (a white woman) to sit with one of my black guy friends and say I know not all black men are violent and scary, but until I perpetuate that understanding it does no good. I have to then speak up when I’m somewhere else and I hear people talking about how violent and crazy black men are. We have to act.