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Zootopia - theories
10 years ago
(Yeah yeah tl;dr, shut up.)
Either you know what I'm talking about or you're living under a rock. For you rock-dwellers, check out the new trailer.
So now that it's been a full day since the trailer, and I've seen it, the blogs, the hype, the fanart, the '34, the objections against the '34, the speculations, the arguments, the anti-furry comments, the defense-of-furry countercomments, and a wide spectrum of attitudes directed at Disney on the topic of this movie, I feel ready to theorize all over it just like the FNAF kids.
One of my favorite aspects of furry fiction has always been picking up on the clever ways that writers marry zoology with anthropology. As much as I like all those scribblings of dog cocks, the main reasons I'm into furries is really just that I think the basic idea of an anthro wolf driving a car or texting on his phone is a pretty cool idea. From the little bit I've been able to gather about this movie, it seems to be advertising this exact thing.
The underlying premise seems to be that it's an alternate timeline where instead of humans evolving, various animal species evolved to develop human-like traits, while retaining their basic traits of their respective species.
This means we're looking at a sci-fi movie.
I suspect this is why they're making the claim that it's nothing ever seen "be-fur" (despite the fact that Disney has made countless furry movies in the past), since the point is to emphasize zoology. Seeing as it's caught the attention of a zoologist or two, they must have done the zoology part right, more or less. That's pretty cool, I think.
At the same time, there seems to be a strong anthropological element too. If this is anything to go by, the city's residential districts are divided into "habitat" neighborhoods, natural enemies make for social prejudices, and the city's "melting pot" of species "from all over the world" equate cosmopolitanism with the species diversity of the "zoo" (hence the "zoo" in "Zootopia").
From stuff like this, there's a lot of potential for some really cool, sophisticated ways to blend zoology and anthropology. In that respect, I'm more than stoked to see this.
I do have a concern or two, though. I'm a scalie before I'm a furry, yet on multiple instances the movie is suggested to be a "mammal-only" movie. Some scalie artists have objected to this. Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much - I wouldn't mind a nice fun little break from reptiling to see a mammal movie.
What does bother me is this: lately, I've heard some wild rumors that reptiles might feature as villains. I would hate that. It would seem backwards of Disney to do something like that, after the recent effort of transitioning away from unethical black-and-white formulas and toward progressive messages like Frozen's "Prince Charming isn't always good," the independent feminist hero, and so forth.
And quite frankly, I don't see Disney being particularly keen on doing something like this, because after all that effort to blend zoology with anthropology, something like a "mammal/reptile" "hero/villain" divide would look suspiciously like it's condoning racism. I would expect Disney to want to cover its tracks of that as much as it can.
Now if they did like an "attacking stereotypes" thing to where they initially portrayed reptiles as evil and then shed light on them as normal creatures like any other, and just different, that would be pretty cool. Except it looks like the story's going to focus on attacking the rivalry between Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps in a situation where they're forced to team up. If they do make a "reptiles aren't so bad" message, it would have to be something pretty quick in the last 30 minutes, or in some little 10-minute episode like the sharks in Finding Nemo.
We'll just have to wait and see. In any case, I'm definitely looking forward to it. ^.=.^
Either you know what I'm talking about or you're living under a rock. For you rock-dwellers, check out the new trailer.
So now that it's been a full day since the trailer, and I've seen it, the blogs, the hype, the fanart, the '34, the objections against the '34, the speculations, the arguments, the anti-furry comments, the defense-of-furry countercomments, and a wide spectrum of attitudes directed at Disney on the topic of this movie, I feel ready to theorize all over it just like the FNAF kids.
One of my favorite aspects of furry fiction has always been picking up on the clever ways that writers marry zoology with anthropology. As much as I like all those scribblings of dog cocks, the main reasons I'm into furries is really just that I think the basic idea of an anthro wolf driving a car or texting on his phone is a pretty cool idea. From the little bit I've been able to gather about this movie, it seems to be advertising this exact thing.
The underlying premise seems to be that it's an alternate timeline where instead of humans evolving, various animal species evolved to develop human-like traits, while retaining their basic traits of their respective species.
This means we're looking at a sci-fi movie.
I suspect this is why they're making the claim that it's nothing ever seen "be-fur" (despite the fact that Disney has made countless furry movies in the past), since the point is to emphasize zoology. Seeing as it's caught the attention of a zoologist or two, they must have done the zoology part right, more or less. That's pretty cool, I think.
At the same time, there seems to be a strong anthropological element too. If this is anything to go by, the city's residential districts are divided into "habitat" neighborhoods, natural enemies make for social prejudices, and the city's "melting pot" of species "from all over the world" equate cosmopolitanism with the species diversity of the "zoo" (hence the "zoo" in "Zootopia").
From stuff like this, there's a lot of potential for some really cool, sophisticated ways to blend zoology and anthropology. In that respect, I'm more than stoked to see this.
I do have a concern or two, though. I'm a scalie before I'm a furry, yet on multiple instances the movie is suggested to be a "mammal-only" movie. Some scalie artists have objected to this. Honestly, that doesn't bother me too much - I wouldn't mind a nice fun little break from reptiling to see a mammal movie.
What does bother me is this: lately, I've heard some wild rumors that reptiles might feature as villains. I would hate that. It would seem backwards of Disney to do something like that, after the recent effort of transitioning away from unethical black-and-white formulas and toward progressive messages like Frozen's "Prince Charming isn't always good," the independent feminist hero, and so forth.
And quite frankly, I don't see Disney being particularly keen on doing something like this, because after all that effort to blend zoology with anthropology, something like a "mammal/reptile" "hero/villain" divide would look suspiciously like it's condoning racism. I would expect Disney to want to cover its tracks of that as much as it can.
Now if they did like an "attacking stereotypes" thing to where they initially portrayed reptiles as evil and then shed light on them as normal creatures like any other, and just different, that would be pretty cool. Except it looks like the story's going to focus on attacking the rivalry between Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps in a situation where they're forced to team up. If they do make a "reptiles aren't so bad" message, it would have to be something pretty quick in the last 30 minutes, or in some little 10-minute episode like the sharks in Finding Nemo.
We'll just have to wait and see. In any case, I'm definitely looking forward to it. ^.=.^
1. children who have never seen any of disney's previous furry movies
2. adults who have never heard of furries
this is further hinted by the fact that disney feels the need to explain what anthropomorphism is; through the use of simple, comical terms that anyone could understand. it's to show that disney is trying to break down what social stigma people might have on furries, perhaps.
i think the jury is still out on the reptile/mammal divide. we've seen protagonist reptiles in the past such as mushu in mulan, or louis in the princess and the frog. but given disney's record with antagonists like snake jafar or hydra, it's a 50/50 split. i'm hoping the storyline implement somewhere that the reptiles are simply misunderstood, which highlights how prejudice works: you discriminate against that which you do not know. potentially, because zootopia is described as a 'mammal metropolis', it means it's only one city and there could already be many reptilian/mammal societies outside of it, it seems unlikely that zootopia is a singular civilisation.
after all, they did note that in zootopia, humans did not exist. this can mean two things
1. humans exist outside zootopia.
2. if humans exist outside zootopia, then other animals exist outside zootopia. what about bugs, reptiles, marine life? we just don't know
One thing's for sure, if by some tiny chance they didn't have furries in mind when making the movie, they certainly will when they see its reception. ^^
As for stereotyping, I personally have some pretty high hopes that they'll do the right thing in some way. If you go any farther back than, say, the '80s, there's pretty much nothing to save Disney's face on the topic of stereotyping. Pretty much every animal character in a movie that wasn't exclusively furry was either a marginal character created for the purpose of looking at the hero character(s), or a villain. And pretty much every character in a furry movie had their species chosen largely according to the mythological role that's most closely associated with that species. I think Lion King broke that formula a little bit by diversifying the possible roles a lion character could play, but the early '90s still had a lot of stereotyping, like you noted about Hydra (which couldn't be helped, European mythology is hopelessly stereotypical) and snake Jafar. Even in Lion King, there wasn't much room of diversification for the hyena characters - they were all pretty much just the same role with different caricatures. But a lot of mold was broken after that and into the 2000s, I think, with things like the Pixar movies, Frozen, etc.
I agree, there is something of a split in attitudes toward reptile characters, but I think if you line them up from old to new, there's a pretty nice slope of progress. I'd imagine with this one they would only want to continue that progressive trend.
Of course, that assumes it won't be a mammal-only world. They suggest it is, but maybe reptiles/birds/bugs are some hidden secret to be found out in the movie or something? We can only speculate, haha.
Also I'm given to understand John Lasseter is playing a big part in this movie, and he's one of the biggest guys behind Pixar. For that reason, I would expect much of Zootopia to reflect something like Monsters Inc., which was kind of a similar idea. There's Randall, admittedly, but other than that the world of Monsters Inc. was pretty well shaken up. The prequel Monsters University even changed Randall up a little bit to make him something different and give him a motive for being villainous other than just "he's got scaly skin." It gave him a reason for why he squints. :p If Monsters Inc. is anything to go by, I'd expect a very similar kind of spontaneity to go into the look of Zootopia, with species all over the place taking all kinds of roles.
You can kind of see it when you look at the crowd go by in the trailer - you really gotta watch that part a number of times to really take it all in I think, haha.
It looks to me that with this movie Disney wants to put a spin on its usual animal-people movie by putting more emphasis on science and less on fable. One thing I thought was interesting about their Robin Hood was that the characters were based on the medieval Reynard the Fox fable - in fact, it was originally going to be Reynard the Fox, but they changed it to Robin Hood because they decided Robin Hood was a better role model for children than the lawless thief that Reynard was. But they kept the original medieval use of animal species.
As for Zootopia, it looks like it's not going to be based on fable on all, but instead mostly on zoology and science. That'll lead to a very different way of using animal characters I think, and could hopefully make for some great new ways to use species in storytelling roles.
In short I think there's a lot of potential in the movie. There's the possibility for it to suck, sure, but at the same time there's the possibility for it to be a groundbreaking film, and could certainly be a huge foot in the door for furries to connect with the mainstream.
And I would so fall in love with this movie if they did that kind of "misunderstood" message you described, haha. That would be really great! ^^
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Oh also it took me a while to realize Nick was narrating the trailer, haha. :p