Zootopia's Metaphorical Exploration of Racism and Stereotypes

Shows, movies, songs, and even books are known for having subliminal messages hidden in them that usually are not noticed upon first watching them. These messages can be derogative or they can actually have meaning to them, which in some cases help the person who is experiencing the message to gain a better insight to a situation. Racial profiling is an issue that needs to be taken more seriously and people do need to have a better insight as to what really goes on in the world instead of shutting it out.

Disney did a great job at depicting racial profiling in the movie “Zootopia” by showing how people of higher authority and even society as a whole can be racist by using animals with human characteristics who label one another with racial profiles.

Judy Hops is a bunny who grew up in Bunnyburrow, outside the city of Zootopia, a place where animals of every kind live together in peace, on a farm with other countryside animals such as sheep and foxes.

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Ever since she was a kid she wanted to be a police officer in Zootopia, but the people around her, including her family told her she could not because that is considered a job fit for the tougher animals such as predators. Judy Hops ignored all the comments and quickly became Zootopia’s first bunny cop, Officer Judy Hops. This is the first insight to racial profiling because all of the animals told Judy she could not become a cop simply because of her genes.

This can be related to the real-world because many times, whether people like to believe it or not, people discriminate against other races when applying for jobs. 

Nail technicians are predominantly of the asian race and just recently did people of another race begin to do nails because people believed that asians were the only people who were able to do nails. On Judy’s first day as a cop in Zootopia she gets assigned to parking duty whereas all of the other officers, who are the more aggressive animals, get put on the big cases, one of these cases being to find 14 missing animals. She was upset because she knew she was capable of much more than parking duty and she felt that she was only assigned that job because she was a bunny. People are discriminated in the work force everyday because of their race, many offered lower paying jobs and certain jobs make it harder for a certain race to get that job.

Assistant Mayor Bellwether, a sheep, is another character in the movie who experiences racial profiling and is a racial profiler herself. Bellwether believes she was only hired as assistant mayor because she would appeal to the minority vote, which was the prey, therefore they only gave her the job so the predators’ could get the prey vote. This situation happens a lot in politics because people running, especially those that are white, want to appeal to the minorities especially if they are trying to win over a certain state that has more minority groups. Assistant Mayor Bellwether also profiled other animals by their race because she was the one who made all the predators turn savage so the minority group would think they were bad just because Bellwether was upset she was racially profiled herself. It is absurd that people of society tend to act this way but it makes sense because when a person puts a racial profile on someone, it makes that person feel attacked and they feel that they too should put a racial profile on somebody else. People need to realize that racial profiling not only damages others but it can come back to damage themselves as well.

Nick Wilde, is a fox who is sly, manipulative, and everything a fox is made out to be in folk tales, and he encounters Officer Judy Hops when he is on one of his corrupt jobs. Since Judy already made a racial profile on him, when she found out what he was doing and how he was manipulating others, she had every reason to support that profile. Racial profiling has not gone away because there are cases where the person of a certain race fits the general racial profile made on them so people begin to believe it is true for everyone in that race. It is difficult to determine why people of a certain race act to fit their racial profile because if they know others’ will be racist to them for that, then why would they want to act like that and give people a reason to set these profiles. Towards the middle the movie, Nick gives a flashback about how when he was a kid he wanted to join boycotts but the prey would not let him join because he was a predator. Nick tells Judy after the flashback “ I learned two things that day…. If the world is only gonna see a fox and shifty and untrustworthy, then there is no point trying to be anything else,” (Nick Wilde, Zootopia, 59:44-1:01). This was the perfect way to word how people who have been racially profiled and decide to just act that way because if everybody already thinks of a person one way, then why should that person try to make them believe they are different.

Disney, since mainly kids watch these movies, advertised the movie as being about a bunch of animals living together in Zootopia, ‘The Melting Pot’, where anyone can be anything including Judy who became Zootopia’s first bunny cop. This was a clever way to advertise it because America is considered the ‘The Melting Pot’ of the world and it suffers the most from racial profiling. People need to understand one another and realize that everyone is more alike than one may think. Until that happens racial profiling will be an issue in society and it will be detrimental to the growth of society. Disney should make more movies that give out messages like this because kids are the most susceptible to learning these messages and since they will be the future population, society needs to start making this change with themselves and the future generation.