By Eileen G'Sell
As someone in love
with the new movie Zootopia, I just
had to write my next TOW on it. And I am
not the only one to have something to say about Zootopia, as Eileen G’Sell of Salon
magazine compares the Disney cartoon to the 2016 election, more specifically to
the all the comments surrounding Trump’s campaign.
As evidence, G’Sell points out the similarities between the protest surrounding Gazelle and the Black Lives Matter protests. As the pop star says “Give me back the Zootopia I love,” a protestor yells for “predators” to “go back where you came from,” which is (agreeably) eerily similar to how a Trumpist called “If you’re an African first, go back to Africa!”
Behind Disney’s sweet plotline about a bunny dreaming of becoming a police officer, G’Sell argues that Zootopia is really an animated movie AND political film that “challenges any who seek to see it as simply either/or” (para. 20). She quotes Cinemablend critic, Dirk Libbey who agrees that “Zootopia isn’t simply another fun Disney animated movie” and The Washington Post for dubbing it “the best political film so far this year” (para. 4). And G’Sell also includes testimony from reviewers who criticize Zootopia for its shortcomings in addressing racism; but regardless, the contention between each of these critics share in common the idea that Zootopia is certainly more than just a Disney animation with the usual message of “dream big and anything is possible.”
Perhaps Zootopia does not offer us an exact solution for the stereotyping and racism rampant throughout our world today, but it surely and clearly reveals a major societal issue prevalent in the 2016 election, and like the inhabitants of Zootopia did among their various species, we need to find a way to coexist within our own divided species.
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