Is Zootopia a show targeted towards the demographic of “furries,” or is it a symbolic and personified take on real-world problems?
Nowadays, the media is inundated with a variety of different presentations of prejudice, but the most hated one by far has been that of animal personification. Shows and movies that use an anthropomorphic writing style, like Zootopia, have faced immense backlash over their use of animals in human-like situations, though they play a crucial role in getting important messages across.
Zootopia is a movie that follows a rabbit named Judy Hopps and a fox named Nick Wilde as they both overcome the preconceptions that come with their animalistic roles: prey and predator. Judy moves to Zootopia, a town that’s more diverse and filled with a variety of species, which differs drastically from her hometown of Bunnyburrow. She’s promised the Zootopian dream of becoming anybody she wants to be but quickly realizes, through her newfound friend Nick Wilde, that that statement is just not true.
The animals are constantly placed in a box that traps them into their species’ stereotypes, and this trend intensifies when the mayor, Leodore Lionheart, and assistant mayor, Dawn Bellwether, conspire to seize more power by playing into these roles. They attack predators to make their instincts come out while spreading typecast propaganda that helps instill fear in prey. They were eventually conned out with the help of Nick and Judy’s detective skills, and later on, both cops helped instill laws against the prior mayor and assistant mayors’ actions, helping to protect the rights of both predators and prey, finally living up to Zootopia’s slogan.
Zootopia is an allegorical film; even though the bright illustrations, funny dialogue, and animal personification can make the viewer believe that this is just an innocent children’s film, the movie’s message draws on a variety of social topics. Its allusions help spread awareness to otherwise overlooked problems in our day-to-day society.
The film helped demonstrate how discrimination is ingrained in our everyday society with scenes that depict these prejudices. A memorable scene that helps portray this symbolism is a scene in which a mother bunny pulls her child closer to her as a tiger takes a seat next to her on the bus, being used as a stand-in for an everyday scene that minorities have to experience during their day-to-day life.
A further instance that illustrates this claim is our deuteragonist Nick Wilde and his aspirations to be a part of the Junior Scouts, a club that mainly consists of prey animals. As he tries to fit in, the prey animals just wouldn’t accept him due to the stereotypes they were led to believe. The prey animals just laughed and ridiculed his species, yelling things like “sly” and “dangerous,” as they took it as far as to muzzle Wilde because they believed that predators are savages that needed to be detained. Ever since that instance, he never viewed himself as anything more than the stereotypes others pushed upon him to believe that day—an occurrence that sadly distorts the outlook minorities have upon their identity: not knowing whether they can truly escape the discriminatory notions placed upon them.
Moreover, Zootopia’s writing also includes the act of fearmongering, a practice that was commonly done to inflict fear and shun a certain minority group from society. This can be seen in Mayor Lionheart and Assistant Mayor Bellwether’s plan to conspire against predatory animals. This included them implanting photos and videos of “vicious” predators across all different types of news media outlets, helping them further spread the false propaganda about predators’ true savage nature. This plan would also involve instilling a greater fear in the prey citizens of Zootopia, making them believe they should be on guard and wary of all predatory species.
Moreover, the last topic I feel is the least talked about when the movie’s symbolism is brought up is that of one’s own unconscious biases. This feeling isn’t commonly addressed in the media and is often believed to be just a negative, internalized thought. But Zootopia does a great job at representing this niche subconscious feeling, and it’s used as a device to add additional depth to our protagonist’s and other animals’ thought processes, to their actions, and to their beliefs. Examples of this can be seen through various incidents, like when Judy was given fox repellent by her parents due to the negative connotations they’ve heard and when Nick made a multitude of microaggressions towards Judy, as if he’d been accustomed to this thought process his whole life. He called her a dumb bunny and also said she’ll never be a true cop, but one of her kind could gladly just be a cute meter maid. Both of those incidents showcase characters unconsciously believing implications that are led on by harmful propaganda spread through Zootopia.
Overall, I think that when people watch films where anthropomorphism and personification of animals are used, they should not view this as strange or meant for only a certain audience. Instead, it is a way to teach important ideas about social equality to young people. More broadly, it helps spread messages around the world in a way that is easy for viewers to understand.
