Review of Zootopia (2016) by Alice S — 07 Aug 2016

A bustling metropolis of "cute" prey and "aggressive" predators living together in perceived harmony is the setting for an astonishingly smart allegory about the overt prejudices and subconscious biases within humankind that don't rear their ugly heads...until they do. The parallels to our contemporary society are troubling and true. No identifier is left behind, running the gamut from race to gender, from class to ability.

In Zootopia, bunnies are assumed to be dumb, foxes are assumed to be untrustworthy, but first lady-bunny cop Judy Hopps teams up with street shyster Nick Wilde to uncover a government conspiracy against predators, but not before revealing her own privileged "But my best friend is a fox, and he's not aggressive like them" notion that tries to mask censuring the Other by claiming individual exceptionalism.

Overall, lots of great lessons, but one nit I have is that all the animals' names are so specist, you know what I mean? Mayor Lionheart is a lion; Mrs. Otterton is an otter; Gazelle is a gazelle. It's the equivalent of naming people by their races. But it's a cartoon. What're you gonna do? :-P.