Brooklyn Zoo: Why Zootopia Has No Chill

[divider type=”thin”] Zootopia goes HAM, confronting the rampant hypocrisy of race, gender, class, and politics in the United States. Seeing this movie, I looked around at the many young people (toddlers to teen moms to young professionals) and thought: “Word? We getting our transparent political commentary from a Disney movie?” Which opened another Pandora’s box — who and what do we rely on for this type of digestible, critical social analysis? This movie is on some real life ish. The main character, Judy Hopps, personifies and exemplifies privileged liberal ideology, feminism, and ableism… Alone… in the first fifteen minutes.

The film doesn’t stop there, not even close. The largest conflict in the narrative is about prey species vs. predator species in an integrated city. The language used to cause the division between the two kinds of animals echoed Hilary Clinton’s “Black boys as super-predators” rhetoric so closely I was looking around the theater for another POC nerd-scholar to lock eyes with.

It didn’t happen. At the climax, the “species as race war” metaphor shifts into overdrive. This movie had the prey characters shouting, “Go back to the forest!” at predators peacefully protesting their slander in the media (like #BLM since Ferguson). The prey acted with the same thirsty, ignorant fervor that Trump supporters employ when chanting, “Go back to Africa!” to any Black person they can see.

“Go back to Africa,” suggests camo-clad Trump supporter. Video: pic.twitter.c…