Zootopia was accidentally Fascist

 

  

I have never been able to stop thinking about this; the 2016 animated film ‘Zootopia’ is a defence of liberal cosmopolitanism so earnest and poorly thought-out that it accidentally becomes crypto-fascist.

 

 

A Quote from Matt Zoller Seitz 

"Zootopia is constantly asking its characters to look past species stereotypes, and not to use species-ist language or repeat hurtful assumptions. This all seems clever and noble until you realise that all the stereotypes about various animals are to come extent true, in particular the most basic one carnivores eat herbivores because it’s in their nature”

 

 

Some Warnings; 

This is me going full schitzo-autist on a funny animal movie from 2016, AT LENGTH. 

None of my commentary is aimed directly at modern headlines or intra-group relationships, but the parallels are obvious and are absolutely necessary to the film itself, so its impossible to talk about it in detail without mirroring some of that stuff. 

So BE WARNED, this is what you are in for. If you don't want to read about that then stop reading! 

 

Not Deliberate 

To be clear, I don't think Zootopia is crypto-fascism. There are no deliberately 'hidden messages'. Instead I think it presents a case for liberalism so flawed, garbled and intense it accidentally says the exact opposite. 

So I am accusing the makers of being fools, rather than monsters. 

 

But What Is Zootopia Patrick? 

Zootopia is 2016 animated film by Disney set in an imagined utopian city if sentient, language-using partially humanoid animals. 

“Zootopia is a gleaming metropolis populated by anthropomorphic mammals, divided into several districts including Sahara Square, Tundratown, Little Rodentia, and Rainforest District.

 

This film begins with a jungle which fades into a children's play about the history of Zootopia. One day, Judy Hopps, a bunny rabbit from rural Bunnyburrow, fulfills her dream of joining the Zootopia Police Department as the first rabbit officer, however, she is regularly assigned parking duty by Chief Bogo. During one of her shifts, she is manipulated by Nick Wilde, a con artist fox. Judy unlawfully arrests Duke Weaselton at Little Rodentia and is reprimanded by Bogo until Mrs. Otterton, an otter, arrives pleading help on locating her missing husband, one of the many recently missing predators. To Bogo's dismay, Judy volunteers and the assignment is praised by assistant mayor Dawn Belleweather. However, Bogo gets Judy to agree to resign if she cannot solve the case within 48 hours. With Nick as a key witness of Mr. Otterton's disappearance, Judy locates the fox and coerces him to assist her with the investigation lest he be charged with tax evasion, which he openly admitted and Judy recorded with her carrot pen, saying "It's called a hustle, sweetheart." 

After acquiring Mr. Otterton's license plate number from Mystic Springs Oasis, Judy and Nick track the vehicle from the Department of Mammal Vehicles to Mr. Big, an arctic shrew crime boss in Tundratown. Mr. Big spares their lives after learning that Judy had rescued his daughter earlier, and informs the pair that Mr. Otterton is his florist and had been picked up by his chauffeur Manchas, a black jaguar, to bring him to Mr. Big to talk about something important. However, en-route, Otterton suddenly "went savage" - meaning he reverted to a feral state - and attacked Manchas before running off. Judy and Nick locate Manchas at his home in the Rainforest District for questioning. Manchas describes the attack on him and mentions that Otterton had been yelling about "night howlers". However, before he can reveal anything else, Manchas suddenly turns savage himself and chases the pair, but they manage to escape. Judy calls the ZPD for help, but when Bogo and his reinforcements arrive, Manchas is nowhere to be found. Bogo demands Judy's resignation, but Nick takes a stand, insisting they have 10 more hours to solve the case. As the pair leave the Rainforest District, Nick opens up to Judy, revealing that he was bullied by prey animals as a cub for being the only predator and subsequently became a con artist, resolving to live out the "sly fox" stereotype, as he felt no one will ever see a fox as anything else. 

Nick realizes that the city's traffic camera system may have captured how Manchas disappeared, and the pair consults Assistant Mayor Bellwether. They then discover that Manchas was captured by wolves, which Judy assumes is what Otterton had meant by "night howlers". Judy and Nick locate Cliffside Asylum, where the wolves have detained the missing predators (including Mr. Otterton), all of which have gone savage, and eavesdrop on Mayor Lionheart consulting with a doctor about their condition, revealing that he is keeping the savage predators hidden from both the public and the ZPD, and that the cause their strange behavior is unknown. The pair escape, inform Bogo and the police swarm the area, arresting Lionheart and those involved. Bellwether subsequently becomes the new mayor. 

Having developed a friendship with Nick throughout the case, Judy requests that he joins the ZPD and become her partner, which Nick happily considers. However, a pressured Judy describes the savaged predators' condition during a press conference as them reverting to their natural instincts. This confirms Judy's bigotry against foxes to Nick, who angrily walks out on her offer after he asks her if she sees him as a savage predator (along with her almost reaching for her fox repellent after he asks if she thought he would eat her). When fear and discrimination against predators spread across Zootopia, a guilt-ridden Judy resigns, feeling that she made things worse. During this time, Gazelle holds a peaceful protest and publicly asks for the harmonious Zootopia she loves to be restored. 

Two to three months later,[3] Judy has returned to Bunnyburrow and rejoined the family business as a carrot farmer. However, she later learns from her parents and reformed childhood bully, fox Gideon Grey, that "night howlers" are toxic flowers that have severe psychotropic effects on mammals. Realizing that the flowers are what Otterton was referring to and that they must be the cause of the outbreaks, Judy returns to Zootopia, where she reconciles with Nick. They then locate Weaselton, who explains that he has been collecting night howlers for a ram named Doug Ramses, who owns a lab hidden in the subway tunnels. The pair finds the lab and discovers Doug creating a night howler serum, which he has been exposing to predators via paintball-like pellets fired by an air-powered sniper gun.

 

 

Judy and Nick hijack the lab (which is on a still functional train) and race to the ZPD with the evidence but are pursued by Doug's henchrams, whom they barely manage to defeat. The train is destroyed in the process, but Nick manages to save a case containing Doug's sniper gun and the serum pellet.

Just short of the ZPD, the pair encounters Bellwether, who insists she takes the evidence. Realizing she is the mastermind of the conspiracy, Judy and Nick try to flee but are knocked into a pit by her henchrams. Bellwether shoots a serum pellet from the evidence case at Nick and frames a call for help to the ZPD. Nick seemingly becomes savage and corners Judy, but it turns out the pair was acting in order to trick Bellwether into openly admitting her prey-supremacist scheme to take over Zootopia and rid it of all predators, and that they replaced the dart gun ammo with blueberries from the Hopps' farm. With Bellwether's monologue recorded on Judy's carrot pen just as Bellwether made her short-lived threat to frame them as she did with Lionheart, Chief Bogo and the ZPD arrive and arrest her and her henchrams upon hearing everything. Upon being informed and interviewed on the matter, Lionheart denies any knowledge of Bellwether's plot, but admits to having illegally imprisoned the savage predators, claiming it to have been done for "right reasons".

 

 

Later, Judy is reinstated into the ZPD. An antidote is discovered for the effects of the night howlers, and all the infected predators, including Mr. Otterton and Mr. Manchas, are cured. Months later (about a year after Judy started her job at the ZPD), Nick joins the ZPD as the first fox officer and Judy's new partner. The final scene (during the credits) has almost all Zootopian citizens attending Gazelle's concert while Bellwether angrily as Doug, Jesse, and the other prisoners patting on their lap views it on a television set in prison.”

 

 

THINGS THAT ARE TRUE IN ZOOTOPIA 

Ok, imagine you are the average Zootopia resident. statistically you are likely to be a 'Prey' animal. (90% according to the Wiki). 

You surround and outnumber, but are in regular day-to-day contact with a minority group  who are specifically designed to kill and eat you, and who could do so relatively easily. 

But... they don't eat you. Instead they eat Fish, plant protein and bugs. 

The Mayor of the city, much of the police force, and many of its celebrities, are all of this minority group. 

So if you did, for instance, suspect that the minority group were secretly killing members of the majority and covering it up. Or, if a member of this minority group ‘ran amok’, , you would go to the police, who are made up of that minority, and who report to the Mayor, who is also of that Minority. 

It seems that, even when given a free choice, the majority group will vote for, promote or valorise this minority group, they are just that much more charismatic and powerful .

 

 

There are rumours of the minority group losing control, running amok and attacking the majority. There are rumours of the minority group “disappearing”. 

Its revealed that this has in fact been happening. Minorities have been ‘running amok’ and savagely attacking others at random. A situation made much more dangerous by their terrifying natural weapons. The mayor, who is a member of this minority, has been secretly imprisoning the guilty parties and hiding the truth while he investigates this matter. 

The Mayor is fired and the deputy Mayor takes his place, this is one of the majority group. 

The police officer who revealed this scheme (one of the few majority members of the police force), speculates that the minorities biology might be behind these violent attacks. This is in some senses a truism, they a literally designed to kill you and you are their natural food. For most of history the minority group could not live without destroying you. They simply choose not to. 

A chill falls over the city and suspicions rise. 

A beautiful and charismatic Gazelle music star appeals for the return of normalcy. 

After a short interval, the same police officer reveals the origins of the situation; the new majoritarian mayor was secretly developing chemical weapons to drive select minority members violently insane so they would attack members of the majority group, all as part of a plan to put the majority group fully in charge of the city, this whole situation arose because of Her scheme. 

The Majority group mayor is imprisoned, and the old Minority group Mayor is back in charge. He says imprisoning violent members of his own group secretly was ‘the wrong thing, for the right reasons’. 

The problem now solved, you and the city relax, everything is back to normal. 

............

 

Now, let me know at what point any of this reminds you of; 

• Blood libel conspiracy.
• Hitlers fantasies.
• Modern headlines.
• Alex Jones.
• The internal sound of your brain melting as you suffer a schizophrenic break. 

 

Predators and Prey are Fundamentally Adversarial 

.. and this is the point of the film. From the Wiki; 

“The primary issues centering the film, as mentioned, are prejudice and preconceived notions based on stereotypes. To further emphasize this, the creatures that inhabit Zootopia were limited down to mammals, to portray a sense of segregation between animals of predator and prey mentality; animals such as birds and marine life were left out like most, if not all, are consumers of other living organisms, making it difficult to narrow them down within the status quo of the story's conflict.” 

Of course, if you imagine a world of sentient, tool-suing and civilised compulsory carnivores, living in close integration with equally sentient prey animals, what you have is a moral horror story. All of the good stories using this as a premise include some element of moral horror because it is inherent to the setting.

 And ‘Zootopia’ was very nearly this. Again, from the Wiki; 

“In response, the story was tailored to center the relationship between the "predator and prey" group while reflecting modern day society by having the story serve as an allegory for racism and prejudice. In this version, predators, despite having evolved, were generally viewed as dangerous threats and were forced to wear electric shock collars as a means to keep their "aggressive natures" under control at the hands of prey. The "tame collar" concept stuck through most of the film's production, even being approved by John Lasseter, but when screened for the team at Pixar, the response was negative. The city of Zootopia, in this state of being so blatantly unjust, was deemed too unlikable, and the story too dark, whereas the goal was to create a city that the audience could fall in love with while making a film that—despite its serious subject matter—can still be a fun family film”

  

I Get "Don't Think Too Hard About It" 

But Zootopia DEMANDS you think about it! It was designed specifically as an allegory for racism from early development. It is a very, EXTREMELY values-laden film. 

It’s all about the greatness of cosmopolitanism, how wonderful diversity is and how evil twisted members of the majority group might try to destroy that wonderful peaceful diversity with evil schemes. 

It is a very, very, very earnest film that is intensely anxious about having 'something to say'. This quite intense seriousness is written through the whole of the film

  

Zootopia demands you pay deep attention to exactly the ideas it cannot sustain 

One thing that hit me very hard on viewing Zootopia was the gravity of the scene where Judy Hops states that the minorities that ran amok were reverting to their natural instincts. 

This is treated with deep and overwhelming seriousness by those in the imagined world and by the structure and tone of the film itself. it feels like a grave sin against the rules and ideals of this world. 

I must be autistic as fuck as I may have been the only person in the room thinking "Well yea, they are wolves, lions and tigers of course they are biologically dangerous to fucking rabbits or whatever". 

I know what the film intended. The deep tragedy, gravity and sinfulness of this statement only makes sense if we view Zootopia as an allegory or metaphor for relations between human groups. 

In a statement about humans saying "Well they are just biologically dangerous, of course they were going to flip out and kill someone, its inherent to them" would be monstrous and this matches the feel of the scene 

But as a statement about Lions and Tigers and Wolves it’s just obviously true. 

And Zootopia insists we think about this. 

Or more precisely, it demands we think about this in precisely this way and no other. It is so confident of its argument, its premise and the way its scenes and message are meant to be felt and considered, that it just leaps ahead. It is a story for an audience that already knows what the answer is and is just waiting for the story itself to fill that in 

Prejudice  = bad 

Brining up biological differences in discussion of violent acts - horrible 

they clearly didn't think, or were so confident, or so half-Intelligent that they didn't even consider that anyone would possibly read it any other way

  

The Fascist Reading of Zootopia 

You surround a minority group of biologically dangerous potential killers. 

It’s considered social death to point this out. 

This is very important; saying the wrong thing, making assumptions about someone’s nature just because they, for instance, have teeth and claws, is considered very terrible. so you have to not mention these very clear and obviously physical and innate behavioural differences. 

Just don't bring it up. Don't bring it up or our fragile society will implode. 

There are rumours of attacks by the minority. 

There is confirmation of attacks by the minority. 

They have been going crazy and TEARING APART members of the majority at random. 

The city government has been covering this up. 

The city government is headed by a member of the same minority and the police force is dominated by them, so essentially they rule over you. 

Later another conspiracy is revealed, the conspirators are of the majority faction. 

They have been triggering the dangerous minority with drugs made from certain commonly available garden flowers. The old Mayor is returned and the conspiracy ended, everything is fine now. 

You still surround a minority of potential killers,  and they could be triggered to kill randomly at any time by the use of a commonly available chemical. 

So this is hell, surely? It’s the Liberal Polity as seen through the eyes of a Fascist. Fundamentally opposed groups bound together by a tissue of lies under the leadership and control of elite members of the powerful minority group with anyone who defies the lie by pointing out basic biological and historical fact ostracised and driven into poverty. 

 

Beastars is Zootopia Done Right

Beastars – is an animated series based on almost exactly the same setting and concept as Zootopia; an urbanised society of anthropomorphic sentient animals which hands, language and tools, but still massively different body types and huge differences in natural capacity, and with obligate predators and obligate prey animals “trying to get along”. 

Beastars is a weird, queasy, sometimes disturbing story and the main reason it works as anything at all is because it directly acknowledges and is largely about the massive innate differences between Predators and Prey and the fact that this society is a thin strand of compromise over a roiling churning mass of potential conflict.

 

 

In Beastars Predators do occasionally Run Amok, and eat Prey citizens. Its not quite covered up but is down-valued by the media. Predators have secret meat markets where they go to eat flesh and criminal groups who supply them. Many Prey-citizens live in a state of quiet helpless terror about being killed, many Predator-citizens live in a state of consuming dysphoria and self-loathing about their own nature. 

Despite being a pervy, weird, strange and intense story Beastars feels more moral and sane than Zootopia because the characters in it are grappling directly and honestly with the unresolved darkness at the centre of their society while in Zootopia; it was all an evil conspiracy by bad majority group members and things are back to normal now.