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Civic Imagination

Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children

Judy Hopps, a bunny from a rural farmland, succeeds in becoming the first species of her kind to become a cop, and moves to the city of Zootopia where her dreams of fighting crime dwindle when she is assigned to parking duty by Bogo, a bull that doubts her potential. Willing to prove herself, Judy takes on a serious and tough case. She teams up with Nick Wilde, a fox that is not one of her kind, and through clues and interviews, they find that animals are ‘going savage.’ At a press conference after supposedly solving the case, where the mayor of Zootopia had these savage animals in a lab, Judy upsets Nick by saying that there is a biological cause for the predator behavior, or the minority group. Tensions between predators and prey only grow stronger over time and with the institution of a new mayor. Judy then learns that a plant is the reason for the severe psychotropic behavior, and finds that the new mayor, a lamb, has been responsible for the events in order to gain power.

This story is extremely relevant to social issues that are happening in America today. Judy is a female, petite bunny where the strong and robust animals (lions, boar, etc.) don’t believe in her capabilities in a male dominated career. Prey and predators represent race, and predators, a minority group, are being targeted, and the government is a catalyst in these events. The most important message to take away from Zootopia is that prejudice is the underlying cause of racism, and that in order for us to defeat institutional racism in America and the world, we and our children must learn to overcome prejudice—which is only possible through not the mere integration of different groups and the false ideology of “not seeing color,” but the acceptance and appreciation of others’ differences.

I first encountered this movie with my father; watching Disney movies with him has always been something we shared. However, instead of a princess movie where the girl relies on a male figure to save her, my father and I had heated discussions throughout on current events that related to the story. What appealed to me most was that this story, with themes that are obvious, are not that transparent to children, who the story is targeting with talking animals. It made me wonder what would have happened if I saw this movie in my childhood rather than now; would I ask more questions? Would I understand the problems that the characters faced? In any case, I hope the film is thought provoking enough for these children to shape their actions towards a common good; and that when they see these issues in reality, they have an educated, proper response. Just by the numbers of people that saw this movie, the story is broadly known, but still new. Disney used to say through their stories that if you believe hard enough, you can achieve your dreams, whereas now, they try to address real and pressing issues at an elementary level.

If anything this movie has inspired debate and has people communicating about the issues, but it also introduces these topics to children in a way that they can understand. In turn, it educates them on, particularly, how to treat people that are not like themselves, and has twisted the message from believing hard enough to working hard enough in order to achieve something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zootopia#Character_development

feminism, race, young narratives, prejudice, Disney.

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3. The Lion King
5. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
6. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
8. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
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24. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children
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Contents of this tag:
6. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
8. The Lion King
11. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
12. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
16. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
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38. The colonial city
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57. Nora S
59. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
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124. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children
132. The Infinite Forking Possibilities of the Future
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Contents of this tag:
1. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children