![]() ![]() They implicate not just individuals, but entire municipalities - even the public at large. But Zootopia demonstrates, again, that the most pernicious ways these issues play out are really hard to dramatize (or, in this case, animate). And to be sure, Zootopia suggests that these conversations about policing and profiling have spread beyond the spaces we tend to see as expressly political. ![]() I know, I know - this reads a lot like come over here and get you some of this wet blanket. Hopps' reward for cracking the big case at the end? More prestige in her police department and an impressive new ride - which looks a whole lot like an MRAP. They get their by excelling at the game in its existing form. If they want to change the system from within, they have to move up the ladder and secure a position of power from which to do so - and no one gets to do that by flipping over tables. Tracie Keesee, a former captain in the Denver police force and one of the leaders of the Center for Policing Equity, told me recently that police officers - regardless of race - will become acculturated to the ethos and systems of their departments, even when they see their departments approach as unjust or broken. Which is to say, Hopps ends up doing exactly what any real-world cop trying to rise in the ranks might do - she doubles down on the status quo. Zootopia's take on diversity is a common one: its scrappy, pint-sized hero uses her gumption to win over her wary police department colleagues. (There's a fantastic, disturbing This American Life episode about an NYPD officer who tried to speak out against these ticketing quotas from his superiors, and what happened to him when he did.) Maybe they're a crusader figure or someone far more malign, but in the end, this treatment of Big, Thorny Issues suggests that promoting - or removing - those individuals will untangle whatever knots might be strangling progress.Īnd it's in this way that message films often end up so wildly mischaracterizing the way the Big Thorny Issues at their center actually work that the takeaways from those films becomes irrelevant - if not outright damaging - to how people understand the real-world expression of the Big Thorny Issues in question.Īt this very moment, there's a closely watched lawsuit in the works brought by several black NYPD officers who claim that these monthly ticketing quotas still exist in that city - where such quotas are technically illegal - and that those quotas are enforced most heavily in neighborhoods where people of color live. (There's also another storyline involving a racial-profiling panic inadvertently set off by Hopps, in which the predators are suddenly the ones under the microscope sadly, that arc could play as an allegory to any number of racial panics in America right now.)įilms about big social issues tend, almost by necessity, to follow along as one individual that impact the world. Through sheer determination, Hopps makes it her mission to convince Zootopia's big dogs that creatures who look like her belong just as much as they do. Because she's so ambitious, Hopps gives herself an even loftier goal: 200 tickets, by noon. But the police brass, staffed mainly by big, burly predators, dismiss her hire as a feel-good publicity stunt and promptly relegate her to meter maid work with the thankless task of handing out 100 parking tickets by day's end. She's the first rabbit officer in the history of Zootopia's police force - she was valedictorian of her class at the academy - which the assistant mayor counts as a win for the department's"mammal outreach program. In her first days on the new job, Hopps quickly runs into systemic problems in police departments that mirror the real world. When a fellow cop, a cheetah, tells Hopps she's "cute," she gently corrects him - only other bunnies get to use that word. Judy thinks she's complimenting a fox by telling him he's "articulate." The fox is later reprimanded for touching the wool on a sheep's head without permission. The movie is full of fun "Let's Talk About Race" Easter eggs. We learn that about 90 percent of the population are prey, while about 10 percent are predators. Zootopia, which is also the name of the metropolis where the movie is set, is populated by predators and prey of all different kinds who live in relative harmony. Along the way, she learns to navigate complicated interspecies urban politics and confront her own biases. A likable bunny named Judy Hopps leaves her rural community to pursue dreams of becoming a police officer in the big city. ![]()
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