While Disney's target audience is children, they've been known to throw adults a couple jokes here and there in their movies. With Walt Disney Animation's latest movie Zootopia, released March 4th, there aren't only jokes for adults (and trust me there are good ones in Zootopia), but lessons that maybe we've forgotten over the years. The main plot of the story is about crime fighting talking animals and differences between predators and prey, however, upon a closer look at the movie adults will be able to read more into the story line than most children.
Just as humans have different races, there are different animal species, in Zootopia, specie isn't suppose to matter, however the idea "that anyone can be anything" it is all talk. Animals can be anything they want, as long as what they want is stereotypical to their predator or prey category. Judy Hopps graduated top of her class from the police academy, yet was set as meter maid because the Chief of Police didn't think a bunny could handle real tough work. Later in the movie Nick, a fox and Judy's partner in crime, shares his childhood struggles of not being a typical sly fox. Sound similar to gender stereotypes? I think so.
Assistant Mayor Bellweather, a lovely little sheep, works with Mayor Lionheart, who is yes, a lion. This predator-prey duo seems pretty functioning throughout the movie, Bellweather may be overworked but she seems to enjoy it, until we find out that she is actually the driving force between the war outbreaking between predator and prey. Bellweather spits out facts left and right about how there are 9 prey to every 1 predator and if the prey rally together they can overtake the predators, which already started after the initial warning that predators may become dangerous to prey again. But wait- all the police officers are predators! Sound similar to issues going on now? Yup. Not to mention the prey begin running their lives on fear of predators based upon appearance.
This is only touching the surface of how deep Zootopia goes on discussing todays politics on race, gender, riots, bullying. The most important aspect out of all of this is how the film resolves it. An apology. A simple, heartfelt apology that addresses what the offender did wrong and how it will be remedied. and then, crazy enough, the apology was accepted! Zootopia reminds us, through animals, how humans behave. Especially in election season, people can become incredibly worked up over their political beliefs, feel as though they need to have an opinion on everything and that their opinion needs to be louder than the people their next to. Zootopia reminds us that the issues are real problems, not just news articles to gossip on, but also that the solutions can be a lot simpler than we may think. Disney Studio's manages to accomplish all of this in a kid's movie, where the children leave the theaters with a sense of "I can do anything" and "everybody matters". You've done good Disney. You've done good.
