Entry tags:
Zootopia
I saw Zootopia in theaters back when it came out and stand by my enthusiastically positive review (including the comment at the end that I would LOVE to see more stories set in Zootopia: the world-building is so rich and textured that it seems like a shame not to explore it further), but watching it in the current world-on-fire atmosphere makes it feel…
Well, it’s too thoughtful and detailed about the various types of speciesism in Zootopia to feel naive. But it does feel like it’s presenting a best-case-scenario world, a pluralistic society that is trying earnestly if imperfectly to live up to its ideals, and where at bottom most people are good-hearted and at least want to overcome prejudice, even if that wanting is only the first of many steps toward actually overcoming prejudice. Like Judy, devoted to the Zootopian ideal that any animal can be anything, but nonetheless carrying around the fox-repellent spray that her parents gave her, partly to soothe their fears over her safety in the big city but also because, well, their lessons about the untrustworthiness of foxes have sort of sunk in.
Our world, in contrast, has clearly diverged from the best case scenario. Trump’s election and everything that followed have made it ever-more-clear that there is a much larger segment of the population than many people realized (as evidenced by many people’s certainty in 2016 that Trump could not be elected) which earnestly loathes the entire idea of a pluralistic society and would set it on fire if they could.
So it's sort of bittersweet to watch. It came out just six years ago and it feels like it's from a different era.
Well, it’s too thoughtful and detailed about the various types of speciesism in Zootopia to feel naive. But it does feel like it’s presenting a best-case-scenario world, a pluralistic society that is trying earnestly if imperfectly to live up to its ideals, and where at bottom most people are good-hearted and at least want to overcome prejudice, even if that wanting is only the first of many steps toward actually overcoming prejudice. Like Judy, devoted to the Zootopian ideal that any animal can be anything, but nonetheless carrying around the fox-repellent spray that her parents gave her, partly to soothe their fears over her safety in the big city but also because, well, their lessons about the untrustworthiness of foxes have sort of sunk in.
Our world, in contrast, has clearly diverged from the best case scenario. Trump’s election and everything that followed have made it ever-more-clear that there is a much larger segment of the population than many people realized (as evidenced by many people’s certainty in 2016 that Trump could not be elected) which earnestly loathes the entire idea of a pluralistic society and would set it on fire if they could.
So it's sort of bittersweet to watch. It came out just six years ago and it feels like it's from a different era.