Disney’s ‘Zootopia’ Tackles Fear, Prejudice, and Well-Intentioned Progressiveness

Fear. Treachery. Bloodlust. The three words that start the Disney-Pixar’s newest film tell a story of how the world used to be when it was segregated into two categories, predators and prey, up until modernization and intelligence brought a new frontier of peace and harmony. That’s right, of everything we expected this movie to be – a spritely bunny who would prove her naysayers wrong by becoming a cop – Zootopia is actually a thinly-veiled look at diversity… and it’s glorious. If you expected the cute-underdog-cop tale you weren’t wrong by any means, only Zootopia is unexpectedly more. Zootopia uses the “chase your dreams” theme almost as a bait-and-switch to hit you over the head with a message that’s still strikingly relevant today: even for the well-intentioned (especially for the well-intentioned), diversity is hard. The movie follows Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) as the intrepid daughter of carrot farmers who live out in the country. She’s a cute bunny (but don’t call her cute — it’s okay when one bunny calls another bunny cute, but… you get the idea), but to the terror of her loving, overbearing parents, Judy doesn’t want to take the traditional rabbit job of becoming a carrot farmer, but instead wants to become a cop in the big city of New York Zootopia. There’s never been a rabbit cop before, as she’s constantly reminded, but Judy sets out to prove that it can be done, and that she can do whatever she sets her mind to do.

Judy reaches Zootopia – concret…