What We Can Learn from Zootopia about Complacency
**SPOILER ALERT
Zootopia follows Judy Hopps, a passionate rabbit with moral integrity beyond her years, who, with all odds stacked against her, becomes a police officer. She teams up with a Fox named Nick Wilde, a popsicle pushing street hustler, to locate one of several missing mammals, but uncovers a perpetrator transforming civilized animals back into “savage” predators who lose control of mind, thought, and consciousness.
It’s pretty heavy for a Disney film. Prejudice, race, culture, and drug trafficking are all packed in there and you could read about those issues in a myriad of reviews. So I won’t go into topics you can read elsewhere, but I will link a few great reviews I believe discuss the topic well at the end of this article.
I liked Zootopia. I thought there were some very positive messages for kids, but mainly for adults. I was struck by the philosophy of how developing a sound work ethic can triumph over complacency.
Complacency is a feeling of being satisfied with how things are and not wanting to try and make them better. In essence, it is the unwillingness to cultivate or embrace new ideas into your life, especially in your work environment. If you don’t change, you don’t evolve, you just stop learning for the sake of learning. Zootopia tackles complacency in several ways.
Judy’s parents — Family
Nick Wilde — Society
Mayor Lionheart — Government
Familial Complacency
There is nothing more blatantly expressed in this film than familial complacency. Judy’s parents are carrot farmers with over 275 children. Everyone in their family has been involved with carrot farming because it’s a safe and familiar career. There are no risks. Her dad even says, “See that’s the beauty of complacency Jude. If you don’t ever try anything new, you’ll never fail.” Her families core value is complacency.
Complacent families can lead to prejudice. Judy’s parents are nice people, but they have a prejudice against predators, particularly Foxes. They don’t like them or trust them. In their community, Foxes are portrayed as ignorant malicious animals with low IQ’s. Judy is attacked by one as a child, Gideon Grey, for standing up to him after he was bullying a group of sheep. He slashed her in the face to make his point that no bunny would ever become a cop. This is important because Judy’s entire experience with Fox have to do with the ones she has only ever seen. Which is why when she meets Nick Wilde, a highly intelligent Fox, she talks down to him calling him a “real articulate fella”.
Even though Judy is different from her family, she struggles with the complacency of culture ingrained in her personality. She acknowledges that Gideon was a jerk and that she knew rabbits who were jerks as well. Yet, she still has a fear of Fox even though she truly believes that anyone can be anything in Zootopia. With support from her parents though, she rises above her family’s fear of the unknown as the first Bunny to break away from their culture, but is still compelled to carry her Fox repellant with her everyday on the job. Familial complacency runs deep. If you settle for all you ever know then you will miss all the beauty in the unknown. Ultimately, you carry complacent behavior into the workplace. How does Judy battle this? She works hard in her police academy to prove her family and culture wrong.
Societal Complacency
Nick Wilde is a hustler on the streets of Zootopia. He is the product of his society, one of bullying, prejudice, and corruption. Zootopia claims to be a place where anyone can be anything, but Nick proves that there is deeper complacent issues on hand. Ever since he was muzzled by a group of Cub Scouts when he was a child, he became a corrupt popsicle hustler working on the streets since the age of 12. He never changed who he was or had any intention of changing. Because of the muzzle attack Nick said he learned that “If the worlds only going to see fox as shifty and untrustworthy there’s no point in trying to be anything else.” He was complacent because society was complacent. He began getting involved with Mr. Big, leader of the Mousy Mafia, and became a con-artist simply because that’s what society expected fo him.
Nick always saw a lesser version of himself. When he first meets Judy he tells her “Everyone comes to Zootopia thinking they can be anything they want, but they can only be what they are.” In Nick’s case he is referring to stereotypes, him as a sly Fox and Judy as a dumb bunny.
The Zootopian society that promises freedom from familial complacency is corrupt with prejudice of its own. The ice cream shop that Nick tries in to buy a jumbo pop from refuses to serve him because he is a Fox. Benjamin, the police officer that first meets Judy, calls her “cute”, a stereotype only other bunnies are allowed to use for each other. There is a disconnection between the mammals of Zootopia, one that Nick Wilde was a victim of until he connected with Judy.
There is a work ethic that Judy reveals to Nick that helps him overcome his complacency. Judy doesn’t merely accept societies placement of her or Nick. She owns her mediocre responsibilities until they transform into grand responsibilities. Ownership thinking. Instead of meeting her ticket quota as a meter maid she exceeds it to prove to herself that she is more than her mundane tasks. She shows Nick his own individual value by believing in him when the rest of society cast him out for being himself. She shows him that the effort he puts into being a hustler is better spent on enforcing diversity rather than conforming to societal complacency.
For the first time in his life Nick believes he can be better by simply being himself especially when presented with the idea that he could be more than a hustler, like a Police Officer. How do Judy and Nick battle societal complacency? They go against the expectations of Bunny and Fox and team up to take down the government conspiracy.
Government Complacency
Mayor Lionheart’s Mammal Inclusion Initiative is front and center in the battle of government complacency. Judy becomes the first Rabbit Police Officer as a result of this new law. On the surface this initiative to include all mammals into the professional workplace seems like bold change for Zootopia whose police force is made up of mostly predators, but it is a mirage.
The Mammal Inclusion Initiative was not established for the benefit of the citizens of Zootopia, but for the political advancement of Mayor Lionheart. This becomes clear when we discover that predators are starting to turn savage and attack innocent victims. The Mayor was willing to lock up the infected animals rather than seek appropriate solutions or treatments because of his complacency towards his own biology as well as the government’s complacency for the sake of controlling mass panic.
There is clear prejudice within the city and mostly from prey. The prey become the predators in this new society. It is similar to Christians who bomb abortion clinics. It goes against their own message and stance. In Zootopia, anyone cannot be anything because the city is made up of 95% prey who look down upon the 5% of predators. The government is complacent to change this because of their fear of uprising as most of their police force is dominated by predators.
It is revealed that Mayor Lionheart’s assistant Mayor, (Belwether) a Sheep, is behind the conspiracy of transforming predators into savages. The fact that the outbreak began within the organization is testament to the complacency on the issue of predator and prey.
Complacency is a choice
In the end, complacency is always a choice. Sometimes we make it as an individual sometimes as a group, but complacency is always in our control. We can accept things how they are or muster up the courage to “try everything” even though it could result in failure.
Originally published at www.frankonfilms.com.