Alternative Assignment- Zootopia
Emily Liberio
Marcelese
6 November 2017
Multicultural Fig
Zootopia
The movie that I had picked to watch was zootopia because as much of a “kids” movie it seems, it actually has a lot of deeper meanings throughout the movie that really applies to the real world and what exactly we are talking about in our multicultural fig class right now. The movie starts out by showing and telling us how a little named Jenny Hopps aspires to one day grow up and move to the city to be a police officer but sadly since she looks one way and is a woman she is looked down upon. One of the first problems that we see throughout this movie is the problem with racism. This is a huge problem that we see in today’s day in age where we look at one race or in this movie species and look at them a certain way as a whole group just because of something that we have seen one individual do. In the movie, the other animals are racist towards bunnies saying that they cannot be tough, and are very soft so they cannot be cops. The beginning of the movie it shows many ways where the main character Judy Hopps is looked down upon from the other officers. Even though Judy Hopps graduated top of her class at the police academy, she gets assigned to do parking meters and is not taken seriously because she is just a small, fluffy bunny. Her huge male boss who is portrayed as a Rhino laughs in her face and immediately puts her down and makes her feel like she is underneath everyone. The line in the movie is “Judy is a bunny, and we all know that bunnies are meant to be carrot farmers. Not cops” We talked about racism in class a lot and how it is not okay to stereotype one group and why this can occur sometimes. Throughout the movie there are a lot of lines that have a double meaning in them as well. One of the lines are “Bunnies can only call other bunnies cute” This can be viewed as how in today’s day in age African Americans can only call themselves by the N word. This real life and movie example both show how there in inequality and a very fine line between the one group vs the others. If we want to fix this problem than it should be that neither group can call each other the N word or say that bunnies are cute so that way we do not have to deal with the problem of inequality. Another line that is said throughout the movie is that “sloths tend to driver slower” this can be viewed as a stereotype that is said in today’s day in age relating to that Asians tend to be slower drivers as well. Both real life and in the movie the sayings are offensive because not every Asian and not every sloth is a slow driver. These sayings are stereotypes that are not true and can be very hurtful for those particular groups. It also shows a side of prejudice because when the fox first goes to the ice cream store the elephant worker denies to serve him because he thinks that all foxes are the same and are sneaky and bad. Nick Wilde the fox even states that he was bullied for being a predator and in turn, saw no place for himself so he became what everyone else thought he was. Even in one part of the movie Nick Wilde the fox states that, “everyone comes to Zootopia thinking that they could be anything they want. But you can’t. You can only be what you are. Sly fox. Dumb bunny.” This is very true to real life because sometimes people are seen as being one way due to a number of reasons like gender, race, or religion and then they end up continuing these behaviors because there is not pointed to try ad change which is just sad that they do not believe that they have another option. Another stereotype that we see throughout Zootopia is when Mayor Lionheart turns out to be a bad politician and tries to do the people wrong to get what he wants and he thinks that he can do this because he is high in power. This relates to the real world because a lot of people view people with high political power as bad people and who are very untrustworthy.
