[polishgenius]

Seduce Goose, on 03 July 2017 - 04:52 PM, said:

First and foremost, it's a cartoon. It's made for kids and it's meant to be funny.

I've never been fond of this argument. The idea that because something is made for kids it should get less critique. Surely our children deserve more, not less? Particularly when we're giving them messages- and regardless of it also being a funny cartoon with talking animals, Zootopia is deeply a message film- we owe it to them to scrutinise what those messages actually are. I don't give a fuck about the racist who goes to see this film and sees support for his message: I give a fuck about his kids. Or, heck, just random kids who pick up the wrong message from the film.

I also don't really buy this:

Quote

I think you're injecting a ton of societal politics into this film that aren't really merited.

The film is literally about societal politics. And sure, it is about societal politics in a fictional animal city, but whether it means to or not (and I'd find it very hard to believe that it didn't mean to), those messages can be extrapolated to the real world. And some of those messages go awry.
Like, not everything about the film is bad. Absolutely you can take away the message that good and evil aren't inherent properties. But when it comes to the way it divides the animals and the way they're treated, the background seriously does make it a problem, and I do not think you can say 'well it meant to have this good message so great but it didn't mean to have this bad message so it can be ignored'. The intention reflects on the filmmakers, and I absolutely believe that they had the best intentions, but they made mistakes. Some bad ones.

[D'rek]

Yeah, I think you guys are just coming to whatever cynical conclusions you want to come to and then trying to find explanations for it.

amphibian, on 03 July 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

A rabbit absolutely does have something to fear from a fox. This is baked into real world things and the fictional universe that Zootopia is within too.

Nope. An anthropomorphic rabbit in the world of Zootopia has something to fear from some foxes or other "predator" animals, but that rabbit has nothing to fear from Clawhauser, Mr Otterton, Peter Moosebridge, or the adult Gideon Grey, and they have far more to fear from "herbivores" Doug or Mr Big.

amphibian, on 03 July 2017 - 04:25 PM, said:

that all the predators who aren't cops are bad, even if they're not eating other animals.

Except for Otterton, Manchas, Lionheart, reformed-Gideon, Koslov, Jumbo...

polishgenius, on 03 July 2017 - 03:47 PM, said:

Fine, except in the context of the movie the herbivores' prejudices are totally justified and based on obvious genetically wired differences between them and the carnivores..

How is a prejudice that the "predators" are uncontrollable, violent beasts justified when it only happens as the result of "herbivores" brainwashing the "predators" into doing that?

Like, are you saying that if "white people" espoused a prejudice that asians were naturally violent, then released a bio-weapon which specifically targeted asian people (based on Rosenberg genetic cluster analysis, let's say) and made them violent, that the white people's initial prejudice was "totally justified" ?

[Illuyankas]

I've not seen the movie, how do they deal with the whole food source thing? Is this a Goofy and Pluto thing where some animals are sentient and some aren't?

[polishgenius]

D, on 03 July 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

How is a prejudice that the "predators" are uncontrollable, violent beasts justified when it only happens as the result of "herbivores" brainwashing the "predators" into doing that?

Because in-universe predators are... well, predators. Historically they ate the others. They only don't now because they learned to be otherwise.

And please don't give me the 'you want to find reasons to dislike it' rubbish. I liked it when I first saw it. I don't hate it now. I don't think I've ever watched a film looking for reasons to dislike it.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 03 July 2017 - 06:22 PM

[D'rek]

polishgenius, on 03 July 2017 - 06:20 PM, said:

D, on 03 July 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

How is a prejudice that the "predators" are uncontrollable, violent beasts justified when it only happens as the result of "herbivores" brainwashing the "predators" into doing that?

Because in-universe predators are... well, predators. Historically they ate the others. They only don't now because they learned to be otherwise.

And please don't give me the 'you want to find reasons to dislike it' rubbish. I liked it when I first saw it. I don't hate it now. I don't think I've ever watched a film looking for reasons to dislike it.

"In-our-universe" historically many indigenous north american peoples practiced scalping. But eventually they "learned to be otherwise". Is it "totally justified" for me to fear all first nations peoples are going to scalp me?

[polishgenius]

D, on 03 July 2017 - 06:49 PM, said:

polishgenius, on 03 July 2017 - 06:20 PM, said:

D, on 03 July 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

How is a prejudice that the "predators" are uncontrollable, violent beasts justified when it only happens as the result of "herbivores" brainwashing the "predators" into doing that?

Because in-universe predators are... well, predators. Historically they ate the others. They only don't now because they learned to be otherwise.

And please don't give me the 'you want to find reasons to dislike it' rubbish. I liked it when I first saw it. I don't hate it now. I don't think I've ever watched a film looking for reasons to dislike it.

"In-our-universe" historically many indigenous north american peoples practiced scalping. But eventually they "learned to be otherwise". Is it "totally justified" for me to fear all first nations peoples are going to scalp me?

Are you seriously suggesting that scalping is genetically hardwired into First Nations people?



Eta, because that comes out harsh: I don't think that you're suggesting this really. But the point stands that a cultural practice, however violent, is different to something one is genetically and evolutionarily compelled to do.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 03 July 2017 - 06:59 PM

[Aptorian]

I'm waiting to reply about the whole race thing until tomorrow. Too sleepy to argue.

Illuyankas, on 03 July 2017 - 06:18 PM, said:

I've not seen the movie, how do they deal with the whole food source thing? Is this a Goofy and Pluto thing where some animals are sentient and some aren't?

They sort of ignore it as far as I noticed. The predators are seen eating things like ice cream, donuts, blue berries, etc. I imagine that they could be eating insects, fish or birds, since it is mentioned that it is mammals specifically that have evolved to become humanoid and sentient.

Thinking about it I wonder what happened to whales and dolphin species? Are there hundred foot whale citizens walking around in a city somewhere?

[D'rek]

polishgenius, on 03 July 2017 - 06:53 PM, said:

D, on 03 July 2017 - 06:49 PM, said:

polishgenius, on 03 July 2017 - 06:20 PM, said:

D, on 03 July 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

How is a prejudice that the "predators" are uncontrollable, violent beasts justified when it only happens as the result of "herbivores" brainwashing the "predators" into doing that?

Because in-universe predators are... well, predators. Historically they ate the others. They only don't now because they learned to be otherwise.

And please don't give me the 'you want to find reasons to dislike it' rubbish. I liked it when I first saw it. I don't hate it now. I don't think I've ever watched a film looking for reasons to dislike it.

"In-our-universe" historically many indigenous north american peoples practiced scalping. But eventually they "learned to be otherwise". Is it "totally justified" for me to fear all first nations peoples are going to scalp me?

Are you seriously suggesting that scalping is genetically hardwired into First Nations people?



Eta, because that comes out harsh: I don't think that you're suggesting this really. But the point stands that a cultural practice, however violent, is different to something one is genetically and evolutionarily compelled to do.

It's not "hardwired" into First Nations people, as evident by how they don't still do it.

Likewise, eating rabbits is not "hardwired" into the animals in Zootopia, as evident by how they don't still do it.

[worry]

I said this before in my initial post after watching it, so forgive the repetition please: the perspective of Zootopia is a world in which the White Man's Burden has been successfully fulfilled, and now something is threatening to "revert" predators (aka minorities) back to their "natural state" (aggression, violence). It's all about imposing white comfort on others, and self-congratulations on "civilizing" everyone else. Frankly I'm not sure how you can glean any other message from it, since it is very explicit throughout. They use the word "savage" constantly, I'm surprised they had the wherewithal not to say "phrenology" and "eugenics" out loud too. They really couldn't have made it any clearer that herbivores are inherently more civilized and predators are inherently less evolved, and left unchecked threaten the fabric of society. The hero, of course, is a cop (and her informant) -- as tone deaf as it was, even the Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial recognized that the cops were the potential aggressors, had the means and the will to do real damage. Zootopia argues that the threat is just a large swath of the population that has the genetic predisposition to turn savage at any moment.

[D'rek]

Well, I completely and utterly disagree, Worry. I think they took bits and pieces of different real-world instances of racism as inspiration but deliberately made a fictional world that doesn't match any particular real-world society. I don't think the "herbivores" and "predators" are supposed to match up with being any particular groups - there are some ways that "predators" are more like "white people" and other ways that they are more like other population subsets, and likewise for the "herbivores". I think that's a deliberate choice by the filmmakers so that they *can* be able to show discrimination on all sides in Zootopia without its meaning being bogged down by having the "side" that matches up with a real-world "side" not being the same.

But if you want to assign the "herbivores" to "whites" and the "predators" to "minorities", then how does a story about "white people exploiting a genetic loophole to brainwash perfectly humane and law-abiding minorities" give that meaning of the minorities being savages? If anything, I'd say that the meaning that gives is that the "white people" are inherently less civilized/accepting - the "minorities" integrated into a mixed society just fine, but the "white people" couldn't do so and had to keep being prejudiced, then force the schism.

[worry]

You can delete posts using the Delete button in the lower right.

[Malankazooie]

worry, on 03 July 2017 - 08:52 PM, said:

You can delete posts using the Delete button in the lower right.

Cool, thanks! Is that new? Because I sorta remember that you used to only be able to edit your posts (and could not delete them).

[worry]

D'rek I think your second paragraph is essentially what they were going for, and imo totally failed to do, because what you describe in your first paragraph is wholly not the case. I didn't just conclude through light inference that herbivores were white and predators were everyone else; I felt like it was shoved down my throat, constantly. Of course there's colorblind camouflage, because obviously the animal kingdom is more diverse than our one species, plus doing like a Godfather parody gives you racial cover, but I think you'd have to ignore the entire historical context of the word "savage" -- which again is like the key word of the movie, used constantly -- to think ultimately they weren't making a very stark European Civilization vs Everyone Else categorization. That's the metaphor. Beyond that, while it explores the current-day "prejudices" of certain herbivores, these prejudices are constantly confirmed to be warranted -- the predators WERE savages for most of this world's history, they WERE an existential threat to herbivores, they DID have to be tamed in order to catch up with more civilized animals, they ARE one step away from returning to savagery. Absolutely zero of the prejudices explored in the movie are misbegotten, they are simply treated as anachronisms for the current (and seemingly precarious) state of society.

[D'rek]

worry, on 03 July 2017 - 09:15 PM, said:

D'rek I think your second paragraph is essentially what they were going for, and imo totally failed to do, because what you describe in your first paragraph is wholly not the case. I didn't just conclude through light inference that herbivores were white and predators were everyone else; I felt like it was shoved down my throat, constantly. Of course there's colorblind camouflage, because obviously the animal kingdom is more diverse than our one species, plus doing like a Godfather parody gives you racial cover, but I think you'd have to ignore the entire historical context of the word "savage" -- which again is like the key word of the movie, used constantly -- to think ultimately they weren't making a very stark European Civilization vs Everyone Else categorization. That's the metaphor. Beyond that, while it explores the current-day "prejudices" of certain herbivores, these prejudices are constantly confirmed to be warranted -- the predators WERE savages for most of this world's history, they WERE an existential threat to herbivores, they DID have to be tamed in order to catch up with more civilized animals, they ARE one step away from returning to savagery. Absolutely zero of the prejudices explored in the movie are misbegotten, they are simply treated as anachronisms for the current (and seemingly precarious) state of society.

But the rabbits/herbivores in the film are the ones shown to have prejudices preventing them from attaining leading societal roles. No one believes a bunny can become a police officer. A sheep can be the deputy-mayor but the mayor themself is obviously going to be a predator. The "a bunny can call another bunny cute, but when other animals do it..." is an obviously parallel to the N-word.

So by my examples the herbivores are obviously supposed to represent minorities, especially USA black people, and in order to reach *your* conclusion you have to ignore the entire historical context of black people being discriminated against in public office as well as the long history of racial slurs, represented here by the term "cute" -- which again is like the key word of the movie, used constantly.

[Aptorian]

D'rek has pretty much covered all the based I wanted to address.

Like she mentions the bunnies are stylized black people. Bunny Cop is pretty much a teenage/20 something black girl, you're just not supposed to say it out loud because that would be profiling.

When the film mentions savages, it refers to all the animals past. Not just the predators. The Predators changed to not just straight up eat prey but the prey have also changed to become more accepting and trusting of predators. In the real world, herbivores are naturally skiddish and will jump at the first sign of danger. If one wanted to put that on a pin, one might argue that the herbivores are naturally racist. And they have to work to not let their instinctual prejudices come before their relationships with the predators.

[QuickTidal]

I said I wasn't going to chime in...but now I feel like I should at least bit.

polishgenius, on 03 July 2017 - 05:46 PM, said:

Seduce Goose, on 03 July 2017 - 04:52 PM, said:

First and foremost, it's a cartoon. It's made for kids and it's meant to be funny.

I give a fuck about his kids. Or, heck, just random kids who pick up the wrong message from the film.

I think I can guarantee you that the demographic for this film, young kids, did not and would not get the wrong message from this film. They won't see the societal parallels that some of you all are ascribing it. They saw a film about an anthropomorphized animal kingdom all of whom have learned to fight against their various earlier natures (earlier natures which largely parallel what animals are like in our world today) before they established a civilization, being ravaged by a drug-induced savagery.

I mean that’s it. They won’t read into it like you have noted they might.

Let’s think about a few past instances.

Is every girl who watched BEAUTY & THE BEAST going to get the wrong idea that Stockholm Syndrome is a good thing?
How about THE LITTLE MERMAID…doesn’t it technically preach that if you aren’t comfortable in your own skin that you can change it, but you have to make a deal with a devil and sacrifice to do it? All for a man?
Did the SMURFS give the wrong message about xenophobia, or that magic practitioners are all evil?
Early Looney Tunes are very much about race…but do you think that anyone who watched it as a kid saw ANY of that?

This isn’t about taking down to kids, or assuming them stupid….it’s about what they take in at that age from a given narrative, and how deep they will go beyond the surface narrative…which is not much. I can list off a string of films I watched as a child that I missed ALL the context that adults would have gotten (which I noted upon adult re-watches). It’s not that kids are hard-wired to be stupid or anything, it’s that they aren’t yet entrenched in analytical dogma of society at a level where things like subtext permeate the shiny, colourful veneer of a cartoon. Their world is simpler.

worry, on 03 July 2017 - 07:55 PM, said:

I said this before in my initial post after watching it, so forgive the repetition please: the perspective of Zootopia is a world in which the White Man's Burden has been successfully fulfilled, and now something is threatening to "revert" predators (aka minorities) back to their "natural state" (aggression, violence). It's all about imposing white comfort on others, and self-congratulations on "civilizing" everyone else. Frankly I'm not sure how you can glean any other message from it, since it is very explicit throughout. They use the word "savage" constantly, I'm surprised they had the wherewithal not to say "phrenology" and "eugenics" out loud too. They really couldn't have made it any clearer that herbivores are inherently more civilized and predators are inherently less evolved, and left unchecked threaten the fabric of society. The hero, of course, is a cop (and her informant) -- as tone deaf as it was, even the Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial recognized that the cops were the potential aggressors, had the means and the will to do real damage. Zootopia argues that the threat is just a large swath of the population that has the genetic predisposition to turn savage at any moment.

I guess I'll make this simple. You've gone and assumed that the message is about a NATURAL reversion to a previous "savagery". It's not. Even a little bit. And it doesn't even affect the whole predator populous, not yet. And let's be clear...the predators are very much as civilized as the prey at the start of the film (and the end)...evidenced by Fox and Bunny being friends, or that a Lion is mayor, and his underling sheep is prey. To indicate that this is otherwise as you have, means you saw what you wanted to see, and not what was presented or implied.

The film is about the Predators and Prey living in late-state-civilized-harmony until something starts to turn the Predators back to their more savage roots. That something is discovered to be a drug called Nighthowler. It is discovered over the course of the film that a member of the Government (Bellwether), VIA the mob, has been inserting the drug into the populous to get the predators to revert to their earlier more instinctual forms. This is done so that Mayor Lionheart and all his predator kin will be looked down upon and feared by the populous, and then a non-predator (Bellwether) can gain the office in charge.

If you wish to ascribe this the correct societal allegory...it is literally an allegory for the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980's, and the notion that the government themselves (The CIA) may have inserted the drugs into the black communities to promote fear and racism, and so push them down the humanity totem pole in the view of white America.

So yeah, the film is about race and racism and supremacy and conspiracy.

But not at all in the way you seem to be indicating you viewed it.

It's actually about Disney saying that they believe that YES INDEED the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's was white CIA members pushing drugs into black communities to keep them down, and spike homicides. Something that is still disputed today...but this is the position that Zootopia and Disney took...that they believe that white people in charge, kept black communities down by pushing addictive hard drugs (drugs which make people unpredictable and often violent) into them.

And in ZOOTOPIA, in the end it's a drug-induced, and nefarious blip on an otherwise happy civilization who seem to go back to that after the fact, with predator and prey (Bunny & Fox) becoming partners, and a Mayor Predator who is still in charge, and now even more respected.

And that's how I saw it.

[Silencer]

Both sides of this debate are right, I feel.

In general, I saw it as QT did (hah! We agree on something completely for once!), but the unfortunate implications ARE still there. And the problem with that, is not that the movie teaches kids this stuff, or that the movie went into it with that intent, it's that it reinforces a cultural bias that is already in place. And, as kids get older, looking back on their beloved childhood movies...and seeing the same messages...yeah, that's problematic. Plenty of young kids have already been exposed to these kinds of messages. It's a "kids" film - but what is that age range? 0-5? 5-10? 10-15? I'd argue that right smack in the middle of the potential "primary audience" age range there are a bunch of kids who are old enough to be aware, on some level, of race and racism and see those parallels in this movie.
And yes, as someone who has fairly racist parents, they may have on occasion used films to reinforce their opinions - on me. Some of that was unintentional (raucous laughter in response to a racist joke, for example), but in other cases it was direct ("See, Silencer, that's what is wrong with those lazy ----" you can see where this is going. Didn't happen much, but it DID happen.) and while plenty of kids might grow out of that influence, and for many more where it is less direct it might go over their heads, for those that don't it is damaging to have an example enshrined in mainstream media that CAN be seen in that way. Exceptions, of course, being made for period-accuracy and films rated appropriately which are exploring the subject.
And that's not to say the movie is bad. Hell, it might have a positive effect on the majority of kids who watch it. But it is perhaps disappointing that it didn't avoid the potential misinterpretations and dodged some of the more on-the-nose allegory that it used badly.


(And side note - QT: I assume you are aware of it being a bad idea to try and use Disney princess films as examples of how they haven't negatively impacted women, right? Like, those are Case 0 in the "things that screw up girl's impressions of themselves" files. >.> Just sayin', maybe not the best source of counter-examples in this kind of debate. XD)

[QuickTidal]

Silencer, on 04 July 2017 - 03:06 PM, said:

(And side note - QT: I assume you are aware of it being a bad idea to try and use Disney princess films as examples of how they haven't negatively impacted women, right? Like, those are Case 0 in the "things that screw up girl's impressions of themselves" files. >.> Just sayin', maybe not the best source of counter-examples in this kind of debate. XD)

Yeah, you're right on that score, I admit. But they aren't the only thing to blame, and more recent efforts have begun to try to rectify that (FROZEN, BRAVE). The point does still stand that B&B (for example) didn't engender anyone to stockholm syndrome...and with a few tweaks (see most recent live action film) it can even be fixed of the things in it that negatively impact women.

But yeah, I see your point.

[Illuyankas]

Yeah but the predators still eat the herbivores, right? Like, do they have herbimorgues for herbivores that feed directly into predator restaurants? Do they synthesize herbivore meat? Someone sat next to you on the bus eating a sandwich filled with a slice of your cloned aunt? Or are the predators now scientifically adapted to flora instead of their fellow fauna? If so, why do they still have canines when they suck for handling their new food source? They can develop a way to allow them to digest plant matter but dentists are extinct?

I feel this universe has more issues than how hamhanded a metaphor for racism it is.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 04 July 2017 - 05:59 PM

[Illuyankas]

I think if they really wanted a metaphor for racism, discrimination and the inhumanity of man against man portrayed through animal people they'd have filmed Maus

(I think I already saw a movie about a powerful member of a majority population illicitly giving dangerous substances to members of a minority group in order to manipulate their physical characteristics and reduce their perceived threat to themselves and the majority, and it was called Black Dynamite)