Tuesday 7 June 2016
Race in Zootopia
The film Zootopia is a family-friendly film that describes a land of animals and follows characters through their adventures. However, the film deals with many current social issues and topics that society is facing in a subtle way.
The website Consequence of Sound explains Zooptopia as a world in which "society is divided between predators and prey, both of which have put aside their biological differences in an attempt to live in harmony". Already, we can see parallels between the real world and the world of Zootopia through the segregation and division of blacks and whites before the Black Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. The character of the fox is used as an expression of the burden of representation as he is an example of stereotyping and believing someone is a certain way because of how they were born as the parents of the main character, Judy the bunny, tell her to never trust a fox and to stay away from all of them. This relates to how those who are African American can be stereotyped to be related to negative actions or to be involved in violent and criminal offences. Of course, this stereotype isn't true but it has been reinforced through constant media depictions of this type of behaviour from that group.
The film also describes institutional racism through the police department and their judgements of a bunny (Prey) who wants to be part of the department as the rest of the officers are predators. This relates to how schools, governments and other institutions can be racist towards individuals based on their race alone. However, Disney challenges this well through allowing the character of the bunny to show people that she can be just as good of a police officer as those who are predators even though she is less aggressive and intimidating. This shows that progression in society can be achieved through the withdrawal of discrimination and the use of equity rather than equality.
This film demonstrates the use of everyday racial obstacles that people have to overcome and shows how a balanced society can come together after feeling segregated for so long. However, there are some issues related to how the end of the film doesn't really explain that the issue was to do with the system rather than the individuals. The film could have expressed institutional racism in a more direct way to ensure that people would understand the backwards mindset isn't just something that each individual needs to change, but it's also something society and entire institutions need to change as well.
References
1 - http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/03/how-disneys-zootopia-gets-racism-wrong/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I actually quite like Zootopia, it’s hilarious and so deep in meaning of racism- though is hard to say if children will be able to internalise the idea of racism into real-life situations, but the “fictional” construction of racism between predators and prey, I find very interesting and praise Disney for making such a topic so creatively and fun.
ReplyDeleteI find Zootopia to reflect on the scientific racism, as well as your points. The idea of genealogy defines what you are and it is not changeable- for example predators with their carnivore teeth: that is an evolutionary and naturally selected feature that is used the easily eat/kill their food. A feature that was not a choice to be imprinted in their DNA, but it is the choice of the predator, whether to use it or not; A real-life example of scientific racism, the “warrior gene”, said to be found in Maori/Pacific males, a gene that is “makes” them violent and abusive… all of which, as seen in film and real-life, is not necessarily true to everyone. The idea of “once a predator, always a predator”, is such a crude saying- it indicates that there is no development, no evolution, and no change in living beings- the fact that they carry a specific gene that they are all the same (a cultural flattening), and because it is something inside one-self, not visible to the naked eye or can physically removable, that the assumption that they shouldn’t “act out of character” and be their “natural” violent self.
When you pointed out "the warrior gene", a couple of movies sprung to mind. I've always been annoyed at the way in which the film "Once Were Warriors" (1994) portrayed Maori in this light as if they were "naturally" abusive. Likewise, the prequels of Star Wars sprung to mind where all the troopers are essentially clones of Temuera Morrison. The fact that they are essentially slaves to the white Emperor Palpatine makes the imagery even worse.
DeleteSuch a great film! I think you touched on the stereotyping perfectly. It's not quite related to this paper, but what I really enjoyed about Zootopia was the relationship between the two main characters, a male-female relationship that has no romantic nonsense attached which is rare in Hollywood films. Both characters have strengths and weaknesses which the filmmakers pulled off perfectly, off topic I know sorry!
ReplyDeleteI loved this film and agree with you: the foregrounding of these social mores was quite pronounced for a family film. I wouldn't say it's uncommon for contemporary film to grapple with such issues as a secondary element of its plot, but to have it play such an important part in a film that, on its surface, wouldn't look to deal with something like that at all is pretty cool. Your reading of institutional racism was certainly very interesting.
ReplyDelete