介绍:
LW: Zootopia came out about two weeks ago, and it’s already the largest grossing Chinese animation film in Chinese box office history. Maybe you can give us a small synopsis of what exactly happens in the film.
BK: Sure. So I guess, unfortunately, if you want to avoid spoilers, you maybe want to miss out on part of this discussion here but, [LW: Okay, don’t, don’t…] part of it may come out in this discussion. So, we got this rabbit, who was bullied as a kid and then she decides, you know what, I’m gonna grow up, I’m want to be a police officer, and she works hard, goes through all the rigorous training, comes out, goes to the big city, Zootopia, like utopia there, ready to take on the world, and she gets there, and she’s set to do parking tickets, a meter maid. So disappointing, but she actually finds herself wrapped up in a missing person disappearance thing [LW: Okay], a crime case and it goes from there, to quite a few twists and turns.
LW: Yeah, it’s very interesting, because one of the kind of the central allegories of it is that she is a prey, she’s not a predator. Obviously, all the animals are living together, so for her to be a police officer, this has never happened before, so you can clearly see, like there’s, whether it’s built along long-standing racial or gender discrimination as well, and this is kind of like one of the more subtle things in the movie.
WY: There are some scenes very interesting. First of all, there is a sloth in the movie, whose name is Flash. But actually he can work very slowly, even in talking. And also, the other point is that the rabbit just have the feeling that anyone can make it, so it’s very optimistic, Judy Hops [LW: OK], but fox is more cynical, but they can cooperate at last. But after all, they play with the words: the Zootopia actually is a combination of the word zoo and utopia.
LW: Now this is the interesting thing here. It seems that you – there can also, from certain parts, it can be the reading that, this kind of just, if you were more cynical, that this is just a representation of – a kind of rote one at that – of the American dream.
BK: I think that wasn’t necessarily the intention there – that does kind of figure in, ‘cause, you know, I’m gonna go to the city, you know, make it there, that kind of thing. Zootopia certainly is not a utopia, that’s for sure, you know, the main themes of prejudice and whatnot, as well as other sorts issues there.
LW: There’s inevitability in it that she’s going to be successful, whereas in real life, it’s not always the case. Sometimes you don’t always overcome those obstacles because, more often than not, you don’t always see that they’re there.
BK: Right. It’s – it’s a tricky thing. Everybody, you know, you start out and if you work hard you’ll make it, and if you don’t make it, that means you didn’t work hard. But that assumes that everybody’s starting from the same place, and one of the things that societies try to do, some harder than others, and it’s difficult thing to do, is ideally to get everybody starting at the same place. Not that you want everybody to end up in the same way, that everybody, you know, everybody has an equal amount of income or whatever and that such thing – obviously, life is often not like that. A lot of people just – they don’t even have the chance to succeed. Maybe you’re born into a family with just one parent who has to work a couple jobs, who doesn’t have time to, you know, raise you the right way, and you know, maybe you’re born into poverty and things can just be hard.
WY: I can totally understand what you’re saying, but from the other side, nobody can really start at the same place. It’s not overall purely equal for everyone [BK: Right]. After all, you need to aim high to achieve high. Even though you can’t achieve it, but at least you achieved something.
BK: Right, right. I would say on an individual level, that’s absolutely what you need to do, but on a societal level, you know, the government, society needs to work to give everybody that equality of opportunity.
LW: Also, the point being is, we got all of that from a movie that has the picture of a rabbit.
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