Zootopia

Zootopia is a place where animals of all kind can live and become whoever they want (or that was the thought of a small bunny named Judy). The largest animals all the way from giraffes, to the tinniest mammals, shrews, thrive in this city. Judy becomes the first of her kind to join the police force. Unfortunately, she is treated badly due to stereotyping of small animals. Others believe she isn’t capable of enforcing the law because they have a pre-conceived perception of the type of animals who are successful police officers such as: elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, and any large, intimidating animal. Judy is one of many examples in the movie who receives prejudice. Judy Hops had to leave her home on the farm and her family to pursue her lifelong dreams. She ran into a con artist the first few days she was working names Nick Wilde; who was a fox. Foxes are an animal who have a stereotype of being sneaky scammers. They end up working together to save Zootopia. This scandal reveals that all animals don’t live in harmony; similar to us. In the movie, it clearly shows how stereotyping can not only hurt the one receiving it, but the one saying it as well. Judy is stereotyped and yet she was deceived my stereotyping the lamb as nice and yet it turns out she was the villain. In most movies, the scary guys usually end up being the bad guys, but not in Zootopia. They drive home over and over the idea that judging a book by its cover can lead to dangerous situations. In the movies, they also emphasize how prejudice is unfair. This is the idea that stereotypes for different people are used. Several times throughout the movie you see this occur. Prejudice is the reason that the lion head officer assigns her the task of meter maid instead of giving her a case to solve. There is a scene in the movie that is a flashback of the fox’s childhood where he joined the cub scouts club. He was very excited to be in this organization because most foxes do not get in. He is then taunted by the rest of the group on his first day and they tackle him and attach a muzzle to his mouth. It’s a sad example of exclusion in the movie. The animals in the story not only notice the discrimination, but they fight against it. They use different strategies to fight; they connect with their family and talk about it with friends. The movie does a great job at showing how people who are stereotyped have to work twice as harder to prove to others that they are just as good or worthy. It also shows that even sometimes when you fight it, it doesn’t always work. Judy works twice as hard and graduated yet she still was discriminated when she arrives at Zootopia. This movie relates to a lot of ideas and lessons we talked about in class; diversity, equality, stereotyping, and prejudice. All these problems are issues we deal with in today’s society. People across the world deal with these issues. We come across scenarios like ones in the movie every day. Whether it be about our culture, gender, or sexual orientation, individuals are faced with people who do not believe or think the same. Everywhere you look, you see differences in power, wealth, and status. This inequality within our society allows for things like prejudice and stereotyping to evolve. Like the example we talked about in class, even when you ride a bus, you choose who to sit by, and in your mind, you are stereotyping people and comparing others to yourself. If we live in a world where we only collaborate with others like us, there is no evolving innovation. In order to progress we have to understand others culture and opinions. People belonging to one nation may discriminate another country. This is especially true when it comes to wars. People who are not like us or do not believe what we do, we often question and doubt. We looked at this idea in class when we played the game and each group was assigned a country. Countries discriminated one another and often just went back to the one they were friends with to trade. They did this because they already formed a relationship where they trusted on another, and instead of reaching out and forming more with other countries, they stayed trading with the same one.