The Zootopian Agenda

Zootopia was fun and funny and entertaining. I recommend it, with a caution that there are some parts that would be super scary for little kids (like, scarier than Ursula getting huge in The Little Mermaid; about on par with that Jekyll and Hyde thing in The Pagemaster--not quite that bad but getting there).

Having said all that, I have to comment on its agenda. The film had a very clear one: that biology is immaterial (excuse the pun) when it comes to living the life you want and achieving your dreams. Spoiler alert: they had a rookie 2-pound bunny consistently outperform experienced 2,000-14,000-pound animals like rhinos, elephants, and cape buffalo in the field of law enforcement. While it is of course not impossible that a bunny could do that, the movie goes beyond "it happened one time and it was special" to emphasizing that it should be this way for all at all times, and biology is nothing but an old-fashioned state of mind that, if abolished, would usher in utopia. Wait, like, what? Do these moviemakers inhabit the physical world like the rest of us?

Because it was a movie, they were able to carefully craft the narrative such that the bunny's job never required her to do something she physically couldn't do; her brain won every battle for her. For instance, she hops off the backs of her classmates in police school to scale a wall she couldn't otherwise have any hope of surmounting. This impresses everyone (the teacher) rather than makes them ask, "What if the test had required her to climb the wall alone? Do ten police officers usually handle the same situation at the same time?"

I accept that movies are often unrealistic. It's damn hard to craft a believable story in a compressed space. Real life is way more boring, so you have to skip lots of parts in a story, which can make it seem "too easy." You have to partially shave off the inconvenient bits of reality to make your point. But this movie's flouting of reality is vast and noteworthy.

Judy the bunny had a lot to offer the police squad, but that doesn't mean that she was equal in every way to all the stronger animals, with no differences, as the movie implied. We all have different strengths and weaknesses (yes, often based on biology), so working as a team we can achieve a lot more. In this case, the police force needed brute strength as well as passion and smarts.

Biology is a real thing. It matters, sometimes on a small scale and sometimes on a large one. It's wonderful to tell children to pursue their dreams, even if they seem far-fetched. But rising above one's circumstances or biology is different than denying or ignoring one's circumstances/biology. Zootopia does the latter, and that's why I'm concerned.

A tragic example of what happens when we tell children they can be and do whatever they want unconditionally, no questions asked, is the story of Jessica Dubroff. She's the 7-year-old whose parents never taught her the word "no." She had 35 hours of flight training when, upon the suggestion of her father, she decided to become the youngest person to fly across the North American continent. Great emphasis was placed by both her parents on the fact that she chose this for herself. Here's a mention of her biology from Time Magazine: the "Federal Aviation Administration... permitted a 4-ft. 2-in., 55-lb. seven-year-old whose feet did not reach the rudder pedals to fly an airplane across the country." Tragically, Jessica didn't reach her goal. She died in a crash that also claimed the lives of her father and her flight instructor. Famously, her mother said she had no regrets, emphasizing her daughter's freedom of choice as an American. Time's take: "Many wondered whether the freedom to pursue personal identity had been pushed too far."

Asserting that biology is a real thing feels oddly risky in our day and age. Then again, maybe it felt that way in 1996 as well (the year of Jessica's flight) and I was not old enough to know it. It reminds me of the Emperor's New Clothes story. It involves a lot of group pretending to arrive at and stay at the conclusion that the physical world doesn't matter, is nothing but an inconvenience on the road to human self-realization. As it relates to Jessica: "The hype of the whole enterprise, in retrospect, seems reckless. Let us tick off the deceptions that everyone involved pretended were true: the trip was Jessica's idea; she was doing it for the joy of flying; she was truly piloting the plane; it was safe; she wasn't scared. For the most part, the public played along with this game, for it is easier not to question the received platitudes." I won't go into the full list of topics these sentences could apply to. I'll simply say that ideologies like the one blatantly promoted in Zootopia push us to pretend certain things are true. It's still easier (and more politically correct) not to question them. May we as adults encourage the children in our lives to participate in reality as it is, even when our aim is to rise above where it finds us now. Even if that means a conversation on the way home from Zootopia.