I hated Zootopia.

This took me by surprise because the movie got great reviews, and everyone I know took their kids to see it and loved it. RottenTomatoes said this about it, and they’re usually pretty spot on: “The brilliantly well-rounded Zootopia offers a thoughtful, inclusive message that's as rich and timely as its sumptuously state-of-the-art animation -- all while remaining fast and funny enough to keep younger viewers entertained.” I went with Avi and my dad, and though I can pretty much sit through anything if it is giving my child joy (even The Wiggles, people), I was acutely aware of how looooong Zootopia was. But it was more than boring; I actually found it deeply offensive.

Zootopia is a cute premise: in some near-future utopia, animals have learned to conquer their biology and live together for the prosperity of all. Rabbit Judy Hopps is the star of the film. She’s a plucky bunny determined to become a police officer and make a real difference in the big city: Zootopia. Her unlikely sidekick is a fox called Nick Wilde, a scam artist whom Judy blackmails into helping her solve a mystery about animals gone “savage.”

Despite the semblance of animal unity in Zootopia, animals in the film retain the stereotypes associated with their species: foxes are tricky, rabbits timid, etc. Nothing new about this idea; it appears across literatures, from children’s books to West African folk tales. The prevalence of stereotypes causes the animals in the film to make snap judgments about each other, which in turn allows the plot to open up into a thinly veiled message about overcoming your own prejudice to accept others. One discovers that Zootopia is not in fact utopian when Nick the fox is refused service at an elephant ice cream shop, an expression of prejudice further complicated by the fact that it actually was the fox’s intention to rob the shop.

In the central plot line -- the animals gone savage -- only predators are afflicted, leaving the prey animals feeling vulnerable and vindictive. This then affords the film’s writers a chance to work in some hokey and forced conversations about how predators are “only ten percent of the population” and how not all predators are evil, it’s just that there are only *some* crazy ones, a too-obvious and preachy allegory about immigration and terrorism.

Finally, Judy and Nick learn to really trust each other, and they discover that the whole mystery of predators going savage has been orchestrated by a sheep (prey) in the mayor’s office who wants to sow discord among the prey and the predators to gain power through fear. Timely. Pertinent. But *yawn*.

Here are the major points outlining my hatred of this film:

1. Avi, age six, didn’t laugh. Like, at all. I understand that Pixar has set the bar really high for animated films, but come on. Kids’ movies should have at least a couple of super-goofy big belly laughs for kids. There was one mildly amusing sloth bit where the rabbit and the fox were in a huge hurry but the sloths were super slow because they’re sloths. But it’s almost as if the directors realized they had better make the most of this one funny moment in the film because. it. lasted. foreeeeeeeeeever.

2. My dad and I not only didn’t laugh, but he fell asleep and I was seriously wishing for a nail file. In addition to making kids laugh, cartoons and other media for children should have plenty of content to keep grown-ups entertained so they don’t stop bringing their kids to see movies. This shouldn’t be that challenging. Sesame Street has been doing it for, what, forty years? There is no shortage of great writers out there looking for work. We shouldn’t have to read and watch crap. Instead, we live in a world where Michael Bay always has work and people think that teachers make too much money. 

3. The film is trite. Unity, acceptance, and love-thy-neighbor are important messages, and we really need to all learn them as individuals in society. But deliver the message with a modicum of sophistication, for fuck’s sake. Zootopia makes the horrible mistake of confusing the appropriate developmental stage of its target audience with stupidity. But kids aren’t stupid and they don’t need to be spoon-fed hard and important ideas. There is really no attempt to hide the wizard behind the curtain here.

4. When Judy sort of figures out the first part of the mystery, she gives a press conference in which she suggests (having heard it elsewhere) that perhaps what accounts for only predators going savage is – wait for it – biology. In the movie this unleashes a shitstorm of protest and unrest in Zootopia, with predators feeling victimized and prey feeling defensive, superior, and aggrieved.

The problem with using this animal imagery and this story line in particular to promote diversity, though, is that in this case, there really is a biological imperative that each animal has squelched in order to live peacefully alongside others. If we take that metaphor to its logical conclusion, what the film’s authors are really suggesting is that the predator outsiders (Muslims? or…?) that valiant bunnies (Americans? Westerners? Whites?) are supposed to be learning to accept are actually biologically predisposed to kill and eat them. They therefore can never truly be trusted, even though they might learn to live peacefully, because they are fundamentally and inalterably different. That biological imperative is lurking in there, waiting for its chance. Let’s assume for fun that the movie is about Syrian immigrants and I’ll spell it out: the metaphor developed in Zootopia suggests that even though Syrian refugees will be able to come to the U.S. and live with Americans in peace – even become Americans – to do this they will need to overcome the most fundamental murderous aspects of their nature. Further, they will never truly be able to do it, because their difference from “us” is more than social, it is part of their genome.

This language of racial division is as outdated as phrenology or Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, part of a 19^th century push to use science to justify colonization, some of which science was later used by the Nazis to "prove" the physiological superiority of the Aryan race. Vestiges of these ideas clearly live on in the minds of some folks, as amply evidenced by the current political climate in the U.S. Watching this film, I couldn’t help but wonder whether, instead of being a clumsily written liberal allegory as I first suspected, the film was actually a sophisticated ultra-conservative allegory masquerading as a clumsily written liberal allegory.

6. Lastly, the use of the word “savage” harnesses a whole mess of colonial civilizing craziness onto this utopian project of all the animals living together and not behaving according to nature. Specifically, use of the term to refer to an animal whose behavior is appropriate for its biology but inappropriate for civilized society casts us down the rabbit-hole of the white savior, the civilizing missions, and the brutal pacifications that went along with these.

Poor Avi.