FA+
Shop
Zootopia review part 1: predictions I got right
9 years ago
This is part 1 of my Zootopia review, which ended up being really long, so I split it up into parts.
***SPOILER WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
***SPOILER WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
***SPOILER WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
It's nice see just how many of the predictions I made in this journal back in June came true, and just how on point some of them were. I'll go over three main things I predicted:
(1)
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.
It seems I got most of this right. Perhaps there wasn't quite as much "anthropology" in the movie as I expected, due to Rule of Funny (more appropriately a more generalized "Rule of Whimsy," I think) relaxing the need for rigorous scientific accuracy. But what does stick out here from the movie is the part where Bellweather mentions that the city's residents are "90% prey." That jargon is demographic jargon, and it's paralleling the way we talk about the statistical presence of this or that race, religion, language, and so forth in a given real-world human community. Not only that, but "prey" isn't even a specific species, but an extremely broad, and quite vague, collection of species. If it wasn't for the fact that Zootopia's concept is already pretty simple, we would find it rather manipulative of Bellweather to fall upon such vague categories as "predator" and "prey" and oversimplify those concepts in order to take advantage of the city. I think this quite cleverly hints at the way politicians in the real world deliberately muddle and vagarize science in order to push an agenda that, in the end, amounts to nothing but gaining more power, influence, and money. Our rich variety of political opinions, for example, is oversimplified into a dualist "conservative" vs. "liberal" system, and this makes it very easy for politicians to glorify their own opinion and demonize that of their opponents, and thereafter win their fame and fortune. Especially since, far too often they care more about manipulating the moral principles of their party for selfish gain than they do about the moral principles themselves.
(2)
This brings me to the next prediction I made:
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.
Someone commented on that, and I responded:
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.
I think I got the basic idea of the movie dead-on here. Just substitute "predators" for "reptiles."
So back then, I was calling BS on theories that suggested a black-and-white divide between species, because it seemed like something Disney these days would not be inclined to do. I suspect Disney nowadays has something of a guilt complex with respect to their earlier films: not only did they objectify women in this and that way, but their older films were very unkind in the way that they featured certain kinds of animals, and for that reason we're seeing these more unfortunate kinds being given better chances in Disney's Neo-Renaissance. And to me it comes off pretty strongly as a "we're sorry we were mean to you in our older movies" kind of gesture. Disney generally seems to have a pretty good nature about being critical of their older movies, for example, the little "let it go" jab from Chief Bogo making fun of how annoyingly fairy-taleish Frozen was, and I can tell the reason for the jab was because of the anti-hype that resulted from Frozen having been so ridiculously popular. Given that thought, whatever it is Disney makes, what's certain is that they're going to be extremely self-conscious about what political message their movie might end up suggesting, so as to refrain from making the same mistakes that they made in their earlier films, and not only steer clear of any bad messages but also try to promote good ones.
On that line of thought, I suggested that they might try to use Zootopia as a way of attacking stereotypes. I didn't get the particular details right, but it is nice to see that ended up being the main point of the movie. Again, it turned out there were no reptiles, and I'd said before that I was perfectly fine with that, and that I'd rather they not present reptile species at all than present them negatively.
But now, in light of the fact that the move put so much focus on attacking stereotypes, I'm starting to have second thoughts about that opinion. Reptiles could have benefited really well if they were in the movie, under that overarching theme of deconstructing stereotypes. Given how wildly popular this movie was, it's rather inevitable that derivative material is going to come after it, and given the fact that a huge number of fans are asking where the birds, reptiles, fish, insects, etc. are in the world of Zootopia, Disney is probably going to opt to put those into the derivative materials. My biggest hope, then, is going to be that the "critique stereotypes" message will continue to carry over into the derivative material and help these newer species that get put in, and not get lost due to the cheapening trend of sequels. Again, we'll just have to see.
(3)
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.
I mentioned it as a passing comment, but I never really considered how much impact the movie would end up having in helping furries bridge to the mainstream. We're getting a lot of positive attention now, both from this movie and from the VancouFur Syrian refugees story.
All in all, it's a nice little self-esteem boost to confirm all these predictions, I guess, haha.
***SPOILER WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
***SPOILER WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
***SPOILER WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
It's nice see just how many of the predictions I made in this journal back in June came true, and just how on point some of them were. I'll go over three main things I predicted:
(1)
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.
It seems I got most of this right. Perhaps there wasn't quite as much "anthropology" in the movie as I expected, due to Rule of Funny (more appropriately a more generalized "Rule of Whimsy," I think) relaxing the need for rigorous scientific accuracy. But what does stick out here from the movie is the part where Bellweather mentions that the city's residents are "90% prey." That jargon is demographic jargon, and it's paralleling the way we talk about the statistical presence of this or that race, religion, language, and so forth in a given real-world human community. Not only that, but "prey" isn't even a specific species, but an extremely broad, and quite vague, collection of species. If it wasn't for the fact that Zootopia's concept is already pretty simple, we would find it rather manipulative of Bellweather to fall upon such vague categories as "predator" and "prey" and oversimplify those concepts in order to take advantage of the city. I think this quite cleverly hints at the way politicians in the real world deliberately muddle and vagarize science in order to push an agenda that, in the end, amounts to nothing but gaining more power, influence, and money. Our rich variety of political opinions, for example, is oversimplified into a dualist "conservative" vs. "liberal" system, and this makes it very easy for politicians to glorify their own opinion and demonize that of their opponents, and thereafter win their fame and fortune. Especially since, far too often they care more about manipulating the moral principles of their party for selfish gain than they do about the moral principles themselves.
(2)
This brings me to the next prediction I made:
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.
Someone commented on that, and I responded:
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.
I think I got the basic idea of the movie dead-on here. Just substitute "predators" for "reptiles."
So back then, I was calling BS on theories that suggested a black-and-white divide between species, because it seemed like something Disney these days would not be inclined to do. I suspect Disney nowadays has something of a guilt complex with respect to their earlier films: not only did they objectify women in this and that way, but their older films were very unkind in the way that they featured certain kinds of animals, and for that reason we're seeing these more unfortunate kinds being given better chances in Disney's Neo-Renaissance. And to me it comes off pretty strongly as a "we're sorry we were mean to you in our older movies" kind of gesture. Disney generally seems to have a pretty good nature about being critical of their older movies, for example, the little "let it go" jab from Chief Bogo making fun of how annoyingly fairy-taleish Frozen was, and I can tell the reason for the jab was because of the anti-hype that resulted from Frozen having been so ridiculously popular. Given that thought, whatever it is Disney makes, what's certain is that they're going to be extremely self-conscious about what political message their movie might end up suggesting, so as to refrain from making the same mistakes that they made in their earlier films, and not only steer clear of any bad messages but also try to promote good ones.
On that line of thought, I suggested that they might try to use Zootopia as a way of attacking stereotypes. I didn't get the particular details right, but it is nice to see that ended up being the main point of the movie. Again, it turned out there were no reptiles, and I'd said before that I was perfectly fine with that, and that I'd rather they not present reptile species at all than present them negatively.
But now, in light of the fact that the move put so much focus on attacking stereotypes, I'm starting to have second thoughts about that opinion. Reptiles could have benefited really well if they were in the movie, under that overarching theme of deconstructing stereotypes. Given how wildly popular this movie was, it's rather inevitable that derivative material is going to come after it, and given the fact that a huge number of fans are asking where the birds, reptiles, fish, insects, etc. are in the world of Zootopia, Disney is probably going to opt to put those into the derivative materials. My biggest hope, then, is going to be that the "critique stereotypes" message will continue to carry over into the derivative material and help these newer species that get put in, and not get lost due to the cheapening trend of sequels. Again, we'll just have to see.
(3)
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.
I mentioned it as a passing comment, but I never really considered how much impact the movie would end up having in helping furries bridge to the mainstream. We're getting a lot of positive attention now, both from this movie and from the VancouFur Syrian refugees story.
All in all, it's a nice little self-esteem boost to confirm all these predictions, I guess, haha.
I talk some more about that over at http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7441262/