The Bechdel Cast - Zootopia with Matthew Mixon

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

This week, Animal Jamie and Animal Caitlin head to the city of Zootopia with special guest Matthew Mixon.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @matthewmixon on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Jamie, hey. Yeah. I don't have a great intro for this, but I was thinking that we should get those little like carrot shaped pens. There are also voice recorders that Judy Hopps has in the movie. And then use that to record the Bechdel cast on from now on. Just a pen with how much I had genuine questions about a lot of things in this movie. One of the lower stakes things was the pen.

I was like, how much storage is on that thing? there an sd card i think it's bluetooth i think it's blue we gotta we gotta uh go to i i don't want to go to utopia i really don't um well i'd still go i gotta be honest you would go yeah what would you do um we'll get to that. I don't want to step on it. Well, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie, I don't remember what that is.

Well, I can tell you what it is. Do you want? I do. Okay, I will. remember what that is well i can tell you what it is do you want i do okay i will um the bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test uh many permutations of this test here's the one we use we require that two characters with names of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue minimum and the it has to have some meaning to it it's got to have some heft oh i like that i don't think i've ever said i i don't find myself saying heft out

loud a lot but and for anyone listening to the show for the first time being like is that all you're going to talk about on the show no and in fact i'll say that this movie does pass um it's not really it's not as maybe not as much as i've shown but it does you know we'll talk about it something that has been happening to me for the past i don't know one to two years of this podcast is i forget to pay attention you very i mean it's and you're very on top you're great at your job thank you um but that is the one thing you always forget this is the name of the show we've transcended so far beyond the very basic low bar that is the bechdel test yeah our third eyes are open right and i just where are we at with the pod what episode is this

oh my gosh uh genuinely i think three we're coming up on 300 definitely with our matreon episodes we've covered around 350 movies wow wait yeah let me consult the wikipedia page also shout out to the mysterious benefactor who's been taking care of the wikipedia page also shout out to the mysterious benefactor who's been taking care of the wikipedia page for years now we don't know who you are but boy do you put me on blast in the footnotes sometimes holy shit i never i forget to check we're at uh 277 episodes as of today have been released on the main feed on the main yeah wow yeah we've been doing this for many moons oh my goodness well let's get our guests in the mix shall we he's a writer and director and that's our friend matt mixon hey what's up thanks for having me thanks

for coming on thank you for and thank you for bringing us a real pickle of a movie why did we do this one again was this on the the list? This was on your list. But I made my list based off of the frequently requested Bechdel cast list, right? Correct. Yes, we've gotten a lot of requests

for this movie over the years. And I, once again, as with many of our popular requests, I'm like, really? Everyone. Are we okay? But we're curious, Matt, what is your history?

Oh, yeah. The movie Zootopia. It came out in 2016, the greatest year of all time. Matt, what's your history with this movie? I watched this movie on the day of a funeral of like a really close loved one passed and i was in wisconsin and it was freezing and i was with my mom my sister and we popped it on and i remember really enjoying it it was my number 14 movie of 2016 i retroactively popped it on 2016 having seen it in january 2017 okay got it do you do yearly rankings yeah i do um um i keep a running ranking on letterboxd now nice but i also have a movie

journal so i can always know the date and like who i saw this wow that's so nice i should be more diligent about logging my movie activity it's just like a it's like a life journal you can just look back and remember you'll just see a weird name be like who the fuck did i see that with like you know or you know yeah it's just really it's a nice way to remember yeah i maggie may fish shout out uh to someone whose wedding we just attended um makes moofy journals i think maybe we'll drop the link in there because i because i i got one and I have yet to use it because I have a fundamental resistance

to remember things that happened to me. And that's a therapy problem. So, Jamie, what's your history and relationship with Zootopia? Nothing. I had not seen this movie. And it was, what a journey. Because I feel like maybe if i saw this

at the beginning of 2016 when it came out i probably would have felt different just because i but i don't know i mean i yeah i i hadn't seen it i didn't really know what it was about and i uh didn't like it it fucking sucks it a bad movie. Okay. I'm glad that the tension has been released because I fucking hated every second of this movie. It sucks so bad. It was like kind of vile and it like I don't think that there were like poor intentions behind

this movie but like just lazy. Every bad choice. Like it was I was blown away by how much I disliked it. I think people requested this movie originally because they liked it yeah but it's about a girl boss cop and who solves who causes racism and then solves it she fixes it but also she i this movie truly blew my mind for like how many very, I, at least 2022, very obvious,

uh, flights of logic, uh, that it just barrels through. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I'm,

I, I came to this movie with fresh eyes and boy, oh boy, I fucking hated it. Well, Caitlin, you, you remember liking it when you first saw it as well,

right? Which was in theaters in in when did it come out like march of 2016 and i remember having a good time but that was also the year that moana came out and i remember being furious that this movie zootopia won the academy award for best animated feature this won the academy award over moana yes and i was absolutely furious because i was like yeah zootopia was fun but moana is the far superior film and the gap now between the quality of those two movies because at the time i was like oh yeah zootopia is only slightly not as good but now i'm'm like, Zootopia sucks.

And Moana is still perfect. I think it is really, I mean, it's an interesting example of, like, how much public thinking has changed in the last six years alone. It came out less than six years ago. And I truly was, like, shocked at how poorly it's aged. Like, just, there's there's so much to talk about we're not like coming into i sometimes i feel like we come into a movie like this movie fucking so like if you liked the movie when it came out i'm sure i would like if i had

seen it in theaters i'm sure i would i would have enjoyed it and like if you still like it that's also fine but then also listen to us during the episode yeah should we just get into it i guess so yeah and matt feel free to jump in during the recap let's go here we go there's so much there's so many things that i'm gonna want to be like but wait if that's true how could that be, how did, she puts her phone in a plastic Ziploc baggie to like, when they flush themselves down the toilet, but why doesn't she do that for her little pen? That's the first thing you're taking issue with? Well, only because we were talking about, yeah, that's the, my only gripe with the film. End of episode.

Everything else, message, net positive. I think it made a ton of sense. This, ugh. Well, can I just say again before we start shitting all over this movie i enjoyed it when i saw it yeah a lot has changed in four or five years sure so whatever let's have a good time here but you know just i i it was my number 14 of the year i mean that's crazy that's wild i mean it's like yeah so so again it's like as always on the back to the cast never feel bad for loving him unless i mean there's a again, it's like, as always on the Bechtelcast, never feel bad for loving them.

Unless, I mean, there's a few where it's like, you should feel bad. This is not one of them. Right. But also, you know, if we can bring maybe a few red flags to your attention, we would like to do that. That's our job. Okay. So Zootopia takes place in an advanced animal society where predator animals and prey animals coexist in harmony big cats can be accountants sheep can be astronauts anyone can be anything though it wasn't always that way in this world uh predators used to eat prey just like in our world uh but again huge problem number one but uh the animals have evolved beyond that yeah so we meet judy hops she's a young rabbit who wants to be a police officer for the city of zootopia when number two is also voiced by um mrs he's just not that into you herself oh jennifer goodwin

i hadn't heard of this person oh really she's i i'm sure she's in other things and it's but uh i know her as the person who really was not fun to watch in a movie that wasn't fun to watch he's just not that into you sure wow okay so she wants to be a cop when she grows up something that her carrot farmer parents try to discourage her from doing saying that there's never been a bunny cop before that's uh again it's like it's so at first when the parents are like don't be a cop i was like all right i'm listening and they're like because a bunny a cop it wouldn't have i was like oh god okay we missed it and then it's like oh not wanting a bunny to be a cop is prejudice and misogyny it's um

right the muddled allegory is really muddled and the movie is confused anyway okay so her parents are like don't be a cop and then also a bully this fox named gideon also tells her that she'll never be anything more than a weak carrot farming little bunny and then he scratches her face so now she has all this fox related trauma cut to 15 years later judy is now attending zootopia police. She struggles at first, but learns to play to her strengths and she starts to excel at the academy. This whole scene was really giving me

the worst possible version of that sequence from Mulan. Oh, wow. Where Mulan becomes a really amazing soldier, except this is her becoming a semi-competent cop and it's like she keeps hearing the like you'll never be a cop and it's like sometimes it's like listen to the voices in your head i mean there's nothing wrong with giving up yes okay so then at her graduation from the academy the mayor of zootopia a lion named lionheart wow so creative and his assistant mayor a sheep named Jenny Slate yes literally Jenny Slate the sheep's name

yes aka also Bellwether they recognize Judy's accomplishments she's the valedictorian of her class, and she's the first rabbit to become a police officer in Zootopia. So Judy's about to ship off to Zootopia. Her parents tell her to be careful in the big city, to beware of predator animals like bears and wolves, and especially foxes. Then they give her some fox repellent spray. Judy then gets assigned to Precinct 1 of Zootopia. It's the city center, though there are like a dozen different ecosystems in the city, like Tundra Town, Sahara Square, and Rainforest District. Wow. Wow. So on her first day on the job judy learns about 14 different missing animal cases they are all predators who have gone missing but she doesn't get assigned to work on any of those chief bogo voiced by idris elba assigns her parking duty and while she's doing that she sees a fox who seems to be up to no good but then it turns out

he's just it's jason bateman and he's just trying to buy his son a popsicle from an elephant who is prejudiced against foxes but then it turns out he is up to no good his name is nick wilde by the way this is like the first of many examples in this movie where a prejudice is referenced but then canonically in the world it's like and she was right like you're just like right what is the point what is the function of that i will say that there's all these like little moments towards the beginning of the movie when judy is like i want to be a girl boss cop but then she's like i guess i'll take out all my frustration about not being able to be a real cop

which again is like that's loaded into like issuing petty parking tickets to the working class and what if i did that it's like okay right yeah are we are we jumping in to talk about it or should i do you want to finish your thing? Because I got thoughts. Well, let's get through the recap. Okay, okay. And then we will. I'm going to keep jumping in. That's fine.

Okay. So Nick Wilde, the fox, is actually up to no good. He's. Good name, by the way. Yeah. Not bad. He melts down the popsicle to make a bunch of smaller popsicles to sell to lemmings to make a profit fun hilarious he's on his hustle yeah right so then judy confronts him about it and

he's like no i have all the permits i need also you're a loser and you thought that you know you would live here and it would be this equitable utopia, but that's not the reality. So then she goes home and she feels all dejected. But then the next day she stops a thief from stealing a bag of onion like vegetables. Those are important later, I guess. But even so, Chief Bogo isn't happy with her and he's about to fire her. But then an otter named Mrs. Otterton comes in. Another, sorry, another genius name.

Perfect no notes. Voiced by Octavia Spencer. Is that right? Yeah, what a thankless voice role. She has like 30 seconds of screen time. I know. So she comes in saying that her husband Emmett Otterton has been missing for 10 days. And Judy's like, well, I'll help find him. So Chief Bogo gives her 48 hours to

find the missing otter. But if she can't, then she's off the force. And it seems like there are no leads for this case. But then Judy notices Nick the fox in the photo of emmett otterton's last known sighting so judy finds nick and makes him help with her investigation emmett otterton had bought a popsicle from nick then he went to a spa where judy gets a lead that emmett left the spa and got into a white car she also like every time that she's moving the plot i mean she's moving the plot forward yeah but she often moves the plot forward by um breaking the rules of being a cop uh where she threatens to put nick in jail for tax evasion she's pretty much just a classic cop yeah she just does fucking cop shit right yes she's kind of

born born to do it because she and then there's that part that we're about to get to where she's like well there's ways around getting a warrant you're like what the fuck dude she fuck sorry well go ahead she fucking tricks nick into climbing the fence so she has probable cause to break in yeah like that's like fucking cop shit jennifer goodwin yeah so then they go to the dmv and run the license plate that the guy at the spa just happened to remember then there's a scene with sloths that i find so annoying well it's another example of like oh my god i hated it they used that as promo for the movie for a while and i was just like i don't want to see this movie because this scene sucks oh really i hated it so much i thought it was so tedious yeah i thought it was a funny idea but again it is like another example of like the prejudice is correct right yeah we're leaning into the

stereotypes of sloths i don't know but as but as a but as a funny comedy setup where he kept changing the words in the sentence i was good i was laughing it's a good bit i was laughing maybe the movie's only truly good bit uh yeah i i suppose you're right i just found that the way the the line delivery of the sloths i was was like that. I just didn't like it. The performance is what I really took issue with. Wow. Anyway. Harsh. And inside is Emmett's wallet and a bunch of claw marks. Judy and Nick are like, what the fuck? But then they get caught by the limo's owner, which is this crime boss, Mr. Big.

It's a whole, like, homage to the Godfather. This reminded me of, like, there's a few sequences in this movie where this movie's, like, going for, ooh, this is not the first time I've said this on the show. They're going for a Shrekian energy. But it's perhaps not working um because they're just like there's this like long homage to a movie that no child has ever seen and they're like hopefully the parents are gonna crack up at this weird godfather interlude that will come back i hated that it came back yes also we should put shrekian on some new merch shrekian yes something about you know shrekian energy shrekian vibes something it rarely works outside of shrek and this one i mean because there's like multiple points where it's like this movie is very like leaning into pop culture she's like listen anytime there's like a movie where they play all by myself when the character's sad i'm like okay shrekian uh-huh um but it doesn't work

it wasn't laughing not in zootopia straight up never seen shrek what i we need to stop the recording all right let's go shrek rocks i'm done it's good there i mean it has its problems but then and then shrek 2 you gotta see shrek 2 shrek 2 is has suffers from many of the same problems also can i just say this this seek this part rips off training day oh does it yeah you know part of training day where they're like having the bathtub and they're about to kill ethan hawke and then they find out that he saved the dude's daughter it's like the exact same thing that happens here okay and again it's like that reference is for who i don't think it's a reference that was just a straight stealing it that was just plagiarism that was so and that was like another bizarro girl boss cop moment where

if you like i mean it's like if you apply a second of thought to a lot of the things that happen in this movie it just completely falls apart or becomes deeply unethical right um where it's like she saves the what animal is the godfather is like a little mole i think no that's not a possum i'm uh from the woods, so I know about woodland critters. Possums are huge, and they're fucking on my neighbor's roof every single night. I think it's like a little mole, maybe. But she saves the godfather's daughter from... And I haven't seen The Godfather, so I'm just assuming...

But I know what happens in the movie, basically. It's pretty good. Wait, that's a hot take. I've never heard that before. You should check it out. But Godfather 2? Godfather 2 suffers from many of the same problems. By the way, this person just told me

they saw House of Gucci twice in two days, like 15 minutes ago. Look, I see true cinema. I get it. I haven't seen Shrek, you know? That's true. I mean, look, we all have our areas that we need to improve upon. My Godfather spot is not good.

But, well, we've been talking about for years maybe doing Godfather Month on the Matreon. Oh, yeah. Because we covered a Francis Ford Coppola movie recently, but it was Peggy Sue Got Married. That's a Francis Ford Coppola movie? Right? Yeah. Damn. I think you told me that, actually I did it's a weird one uh but oh so the the logic is that Judy saved the daughter from a large donut whatever and and then Judy compliments her wedding dress and then all of a sudden it's like, okay. Now the cops can collude with the mob.

And then that's just canon for the rest of the movie. The cops are colluding with the mob, which happens in real life. But I don't think that that's any, like the movie's not commenting on anything. They're just like, the mob is funny. So, and we love cops here in Zootopia. Oh my God. They love cops. So the crime boss is like all right you

can get some more information from the driver of the limo so judy and nick go to the rainforest district to talk to the limo driver a jaguar named mr manches who says that all of a sudden emmett the otter went wild in the limo he He became violent and attacked him, all while yelling about night howlers. And then right then, Mr. Manches also turns into a wild animal and attacks them. Judy and Nick narrowly escape, but when Chief Bogo shows up to the scene, Mr. Manches is gone. So Judy has no evidence to support her theory that for some reason these animals are going wild. But Judy still has a few hours to crack the case. So she and Nick, who are getting along better, maybe they're even becoming friends.

What? They set off to City Hall to get help from Assistant Mayor Bellwether, who... Jenny Slate. Assistant Mayor Jenny Slate. Wait, you're missing a major piece. Which thing? Nick's trauma reveal. Oh, yes.

Okay, so there's a flashback. Yeah, I figured we'd get... Sometimes I gloss over. Yeah, sorry. Do it your way. Let me do my job matt um so they go to bellwether who can get them access to traffic cams to see where mr manchas went they discover that a couple wolves grabbed mr manchas and put him in the back of a van judy's like oh those must be the night howlers because

wolves howl so they track where the wolves went, which leads Judy and Nick to this facility where they find a number of predator animals, basically all the mammals who have recently gone missing, including Emmett Otterton, but they're all like feral and wild. Then Mayor Lionheart comes in. He seems to be the bad guy behind this whole operation. So like Judy calls it in, the mayor is arrested, in he seems to be the bad guy behind this whole operation so like judy calls it in the mayor is arrested and it seems like the case is solved and this is one of the points in the movie that i got so frustrated because it's like okay city hall corruption yeah totally right a percent but like but but but you know what institution is above criticism the cops you're like oh fucking hey come on anyways so then

during a press conference about this case judy mentions that all of the animals that went wild were predators and mentions that maybe it has something to do with their biology which greatly upsets nick since as a fox he is a predator so he storms off and then following this press conference there is civil unrest around zootopia oh yeah with more predator animals going wild and attacking prey animals wondering if they're safe there's protests also there's shakira is in the movie as a gazelle she's like everyone's everyone in zootopia is a huge fan of shakira also that song does slap though to be fair try anything pretty good you didn't do watch for me and i'm a fan

i don't dislike shakira at all but i just feel like there's other pop stars there i i recently watched don't look up which i also didn't really like very much but ariana grande fills a similar role in sure and don't look up in the song and i was equally underwhelmed by the song sure i quite liked don't look up but that's just me you know anyways so it wasn't shrekian and also as matt pointed out i saw haza gucci twice so we're just different people at the end of the day okay let's get through this recap yes yes so judy feels responsible for this civil unrest and resigns from her cop job much to to the disappointment of Bellwether, who is now mayor. So then Judy goes back home to become a carrot farmer.

But when she's there, she learns about these vegetables that, when eaten, can make an animal wild and aggressive. And guess what they're called? Night howlers. So turns out that's what Emmett Otterton was talking about. Also, her bully owns a food truck now, question mark. Awesome. And there's like the most aware, self-aware bully you've ever seen in a movie.

He's been in therapy for... Oh, this was one funny like one of the funnier flights of logic of the movie is that all the animals in the zootopia expanded universe live human length lifespans because at the beginning it's like you know judy is bullied by a future food truck owner and then it says 15 years later and it's like oh judy's fully dead she's 15 years later you're telling me a 24 year old rabbit is good for you piss me off didn't i was like there's so many there's huge high level issues and then there's little things that's like come on well you know you've got to suspend your disbelief no you're fair fair what can i say to that okay so so it turns out these vegetables are what has been

making the predators become violent so judy rushes back to zootopia she tells nick her theory that someone is targeting predators on purpose and making them go wild. So then Nick forgives her and they team back up and find a lab where this ram named Doug. Love this. Love that detail. Is like making a serum with the night howler vegetables that he's been shooting predators with. So they grab the evidence and make their way to the police department. Also really clunky breaking bad reference scene. So on the way they run into mayor.

Shrek. Yeah. That is an attempt at the Shrek Ian, but it's not where it doesn't quite work the way this movie does. Like in the way that I was like, I know what you're talking about, but unlike Sh shrek it's making a reference and i'm not laughing it's just a reference for a reference's sake yeah so on the way to the police department they run into mayor bellwether who ends up being the bad guy who was behind the whole thing she tries to sabotage them

and she shoots nick with the serum so that he will go wild and kill judy but nick had loaded the gun with blueberries so it didn't work classic switcheroo how does this factor into chekhov's gun principle there's a gun on stream Jason Bateman has to load it with blueberries by the third act or it shouldn't be there um okay so and then they managed to get an audio recording on Judy's little carrot pen that is also a high quality voice recorder um of bellwether confessing to this whole conspiracy bellwether is arrested lionheart is reinstated as mayor i think or maybe that doesn't happen i don't know um no he he's like also in trouble right yeah yeah because he was complicit but judy is a hero and then nick also becomes a cop slash judy's cop partner and then the movie ends on another sloth joke i was blown away that it was like it was like there's no he's he's good

and he's a cop at the end and they're like and don't we love that and don't we love it let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.

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I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session.

24 hours bpm 110 120 she's terrified should we wake her up absolutely not what was that you didn't figure it out i think i need to hear you say it that was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Thoughts? Where should we begin here?

I think we gave a preview of some of the major issues, but we didn't even touch on all of them there's joe biden's america i know this movie came out in obama's america but this is a joe biden yeah all day yeah um okay so what who is jason payne black like what's what the fuck they're great questions so many questions okay are foxes black what is it okay i know this movie doesn't know but what do you think they thought i think there's a lot of shrugging going on between these couple of writers i feel like the movie gets so law like because when the movie starts i thought i was like oh bunnies are being presented as a minority because they're like well bunnies don't become yeah cops bunnies can't do anything but be carrot farmers and there's no reference to like gender or anything like that so i was like okay so is that the allegory being set up?

But then it turns out, no, that's not. And then, so it's like every new character, I feel like contradicts the logic of what the movie has been saying so far. I don't know. Here was my best guess. Okay. So I think that the movie is setting up a parallel, basically, that's not even reflective of like a major metropolis where like a lot of cities are extremely ethnically diverse so that doesn't even track

right but then also although i would say you know the piece where her parents are super afraid of letting her go to the city that's real sure you know like they're they're like oh there's all these predators there don't go you'll get mugged or whatever right eaten i'm not saying that was like a good point or anything i just i'm just saying it tracks right right there were like moments where i was like okay i think i understand what the movie is trying to do here and then there were other scenes where i was like i just don't know i just like right because it's so muddled the the messaging and the allegory is extremely muddled and you'll never guess why it's because the people who made this movie were a lot of white men

what hold on are you sure let me i'm checking okay so here's a little here's some context corner so yeah and i got a lot of this information from... So there was a screening of the movie in 2016, and there was a Q&A panel with several of the filmmakers after the screening. So it was Jared Bush, Rich Moore, Byron Howard, who all directed the movie. I will say Rich Moore is a great white guy name. He wants more money, baby. Jared Bush also co-wrote the screenplay.

And also present in this panel was Phil Johnston, the other co-writer of the screenplay. The movie also has several story by credits. Damn, Jared Bush is also credited on Moana. Big year for a guy. Big year for that guy. And Encanto. Which I haven't seen yet. I still haven't seen it jared i saw it we'll do an episode on it someday we gotta do it with melissa right okay so this panel got written about in the rap so here's where i'm getting a lot of this information so basically in this like write-up the filmmakers are really patting themselves on

the backs being like wow our intentions were like so honorable when we were making you know developing this movie we wanted to do a movie with like a easily digestible allegory for racism isn't that cool and then they talk about like the research they did and they were like yeah yeah yeah this movie is so prescient during this time of political unrest because it was released during the time that was leading up to the 2016 election uh and they're like yeah but you know we've just been paying attention to what's been happening which is not even reflective of the movie's production history even remotely yes because it was supposed to be a 60s heist movie yeah like an espionage produced by john lassiter and you're just like that sounds like so okay so yeah the movie went through several

drafts and just like wild rewrites so the the filmmakers they're talking about how relevant their movie is um you learn about the research they did which was mostly on animals uh at the animal kingdom they didn't even they literally are like um let's go to disney world we can do that for free and let's just stare at lemmings for six days and be like, all right, let's go write our movie about racism. You're forgetting about the two week safari they went on in Kenya, where they studied animal behavior. They did not seem to do nearly as much research on, I don't know, critical race theory or anything like that. It seems as though they talked to exactly one person dr shakti butler who is a filmmaker and an educator on racial diversity uh director byron howard said quote she taught us everything there was to know about bias and discrimination things we had no idea existed end quote so this is the background, like this is the context that these filmmakers had for trying to develop this allegory for racism, I believe, five white guys.

Oh, yeah. And then one white woman, Jennifer Lee, who is the director of the Frozen franchise. And then one woman of color, Josie Trinidad, who is currently, and I think at the time of this movie's release as well was in charge of the disney animation story team so it's kind of unclear how much actual story she wrote because her job is primarily translating script to visuals right um like storyboarding type stuff right right and that seems to be kind of her her primary job so it's like impossible to know who contributed what in a team this big but the team is vast majority white guys and then you know white people in general right so they fumbled it in a number so okay this movie made a billion dollars you guys a billion dollars that's so many

okay but it still doesn't make sense it does right who is hops what's hops's deal supposed to be right so we've got this like you you were saying jamie the the movie is setting up this like idea that people are prejudiced against rabbits and saying you can't be a bunnies can't be cops hops is is a woman that okay so right right but it's like if that's the case they need to make that clear because it's like not like bunnies covered the gender spectrum and but they were just like no bunny cops period right so that's confusing and right so i guess like in this movie uh rabbits are women because there's there's a few other references to that too where it's like oh you rabbits you're you're so emotional and oh you

throw like a bunny yeah you're bad drivers you throw like a bunny. Yeah, you're bad drivers. You throw like a bunny. Like all these things that are stereotypes about women. But we know that all rabbits are not women because we meet her dad on multiple occasions. Yeah, and the front desk cop calls her cute and she says that only another bunny can call her cute. cute okay so there's a bunch of like weird very cringy jokes that are like specifically referencing either aspects of black culture or stereotypes about black people right where it's like oh a bunny can call another bunny cute right that makes no sense but if she's who we think she is right jennifer goodwin and then there's another scene where nick is touching bell weathers wool on her head this was and she's like you can't touch a sheep's wool that's right which is like i guess analogous to you you can't touch a black woman's hair right so this sheep with her wool so there's that thing that doesn't make sense but it's jenny's it's jenny's slay jenny's slay it's been in this pickle a

couple different times oh yeah that's right yeah and then there's another scene where shortly after judy meets nick in like the popsicle place she's like oh wow you're so articulate dude yeah that was i had that part highlighted but it's jason bateman yeah it's jason bateman he's pretty he's pretty articulate actually right the metaphor is so messy where sometimes it's a metaphor about discrimination that women face but we only see that with one character in judy hops and she's a prey animal and then the rest of the metaphor is about race rather than gender but sometimes references to people of color are attributed to prey animals when the larger allegory is that predator animals are the allegorical people of color question mark like it's so messy and like i understand that movies

especially ones like directed toward children if they're trying to tackle a complex issue like a complex allegory they will simplify things in the interest of like making it digestible for a younger audience but there's also a responsibility to make that allegory clear and make sure it makes sense and that it tracks and the movie like again just fumbles it every step of the way i also feel like that not to bring shrekian back but if you are like it's clear that like disney at this point this is true of all disney movies they're very self-referential and they make it clear it's like we know that adults are watching this too and we want to give you something to enjoy too so it's like if that's true then you

need to really think through the entire metaphor you can't just like throw in a couple song references and be like it's for grown-ups too it's like that right yeah and then another reason that this whole metaphor doesn't track is the copaganda thing where the irony of a movie that is trying to make a statement about racial prejudice that also centers a character who is like this hero cop and in a movie that seems to have like a very pro-cop agenda, keeps saying like, wow, cops are awesome. We need them to make our community safe. They help make society a better place.

When in the real world, like law enforcement is an institution that was founded on and is one of the biggest enforcers of racial prejudice which renders the allegory of this movie a complete paradox like it just doesn't make sense the movie ends with both like the movie begins with neither of our protagonists being cops and ends optimistically with both of them being cops they should have ended the movie at the end of act two where she she stops being a cop right that was that was the best part of the movie well that was the second best part of the way i'll get to the best part okay okay but um yeah i was like hell yeah go off hops like i backed hops right yeah be a be a farmer you know

just like work the land. Or be something else. That's why it's like, I mean, even the opening sequence of the movie, they're like, anyone can be anything. And then they come up with like accountants and cops. Yeah, the Jaguar's like, I want to be an actuary. I don't even know what that is. And I didn't bother looking it up. I don't know. Sounds boring. i'm like dream

bigger kids like what are you doing and yeah i mean that's of the many things that gets muddled here it's like i don't know i mean in a movie even in 2016 it is a very bizarre specific route to choose being a cop and then kind of like doubling down on that by i mean in my head i'm like this is girl boss logic firing on all cylinders where you know her parents are like it's great to have dreams but don't don't dream too big you don't want to dream out of your pay grade kind of thing which is something you see happen very often at the beginning of a story where a woman is told you know this isn't your place and then drew barrymore does whatever and then the movie's over and that's very clearly what's being

set up here but her dream sucks and so you're sort of like well maybe your parents are right yeah okay so let's let's just say that she is like the girl boss white woman. On top of that, she fucking sucks. Like she's a piece of shit. Yeah. Okay, so what do you both think? Is the movie saying that, okay, because she has this idea of like, her idea of being a cop has nothing to do with like helping people.

It's like. She says it does, but it doesn does but it does she ever say that yeah because she says i want to make the world a better place by being a cop okay yeah but her actions do not reflect that right she wants to like cuff bad guys yeah basically right and so she gets clawed up by gideon as a kid and that gets like linked to her dream of being a cop right yeah and her i you know punitive ideas of justice and like you know yeah tracking people down and like you know hunting weaselton who i'll get to in a bit weaselton's the shit weaselton's the dopest character in this movie weaselton who i was like that sounds a lot like steve buscemi but it's not no it's alan tudyk doing a steve buscemi impression totally which is i mean good for him didn't hate it yeah so i don't know what they're trying to say they're

trying to say that foxes are bad so that's why she's gonna stop them or she's traumatized by a fox and so now she holds an unfair prejudice against foxes maybe both because she wants to be a cop prior to that but like that moment where she like stops the bully and then he specifically says you'll never be you'll never be and it's like it's like okay i'm rooting for him like yeah totally gideon ross you're you're love the pies like really good good stuff there i like it's so i don't know this movie like really reeked to me of like this movie went through five million drafts because it was like there's so many loose ends her character like regresses throughout the movie because before she leaves for cop academy she you know her parents are being prejudiced towards foxes and they're like you know you got to be careful here's repellent

and then she says well i was bullied by a fox but it was a mean person who happened to be a fox and then rabbits are jerks too yeah like anyone can be an asshole you're like okay like children's movie i see where this is going but then like later in the movie she i mean i guess this is maybe reflective of reality becoming a cop sets her views backwards just reinforces yeah and she becomes more prejudiced totally as the movie goes on right to the point where she almost fox maces jason bateman who's a black guy but just try to constantly reorient your brain of like right what is the movie saying right i don't know very stressful right she be she like really even after she's become friends with this fox who she again had this like prejudice against up until

this part of the story and he had shared with her this like very traumatic story which is like that part of the movie like does move me to tears where there's a flashback where he's like i wanted to join the junior rangers and uh but i was the only predator, and I thought I was going to be welcome. But then I got harassed and assaulted by who I thought were my friends, and they put a muzzle on me. And I learned to accept who I am. And if everyone's just going to see me as a sly, sneaky little fox, well, then that's who I'm going to be. And he tells her this story and like it opens up and she's like oh my gosh that's awful and then she becomes more prejudiced like at a

press conference she's like yeah well she's spouting eugenics she goes in on him yeah like it's so wild right so like that scene is like bizarre because the movie is suggesting that racism is the result of a press conference from one rabbit and also a conspiracy like one sheep's actions of shooting blueberry looking paintballs at animals and not like systemic like a systemic widespread problem yeah i mean it's like this movie is like really determination to not interrogate systemic anything is kind of like i mean but they kind of do with the mayor's office but for some reason like they're willing to go for it there right but nowhere else not in like right not in law enforcement yeah but in within this allegory what is jenny slate's end game so what is she doing too like what what is because also like otterton's a predator he's like smaller than the jenny slate right so like what's the what the fuck it's

so i mean i feel like one of the and this is not a new point this point's been made about zootopia many times and i know that we have a famous tweet from friend of the show kate young about this but the huge issue like one of the huge issues is like implying that like in this world there are predators and prey and conflating minorities with predators that have been integrated into society like plays into so many yeah the fucking super predator thing right like how how did they i mean this is classic five white dudes in a room like this should be chill uh this is the fucking hillary clinton c-span press conference where she's like super predators are like mindless killing machines these black teens are like mindless killing machines or whatever

um fucking hillary clinton yeah um girl boss yeah and so then the whole the entire conceit of the movie is set up between predators and prey like you're already like on fucking third world city there right you know and and that's like one of the many i mean i think it's like maybe them it's hard to say what about this movie is the most egregious but like that like taking that logic and then making it canonically true in this world is so fucked like yeah the i want to so the the tweet you're referring to so christina holland at american wombat which is an amazing handle tweeted a couple years ago i think a big problem with kids allegories for racism is it's like the green people and the purple people hated each other just for being the other color isn't that silly and not the purple people kidnapped the green people and

treated them like livestock for hundreds of years so that's the original tweet and then friend of the show kate young quote tweeted it and then just said glares at zootopia which is like very much the problem with this movie it's ignoring the zootopia wishes it was coherent enough to be guilty of that it's missing so many points but like right but i mean shout out to kate yes yeah this movie is like incoherent in such a frustrating way but like casting like the white coated animals question mark because that fluctuates throughout the movie wildly but like i think ultimately who we are supposed to believe are the white coated animals as prey is like well no like it's just i mean we should say that jason bateman's partner in crime is like the blackest dude i can think of it's it's tiny lester who is like debo from friday and you know he's

like the big bald scary dude right he has a very deep voice and in the movie he's the tiny little fox with big ears or i don't even know what kind of animal that is but he's like pretending to be jason bateman's character's son when they do their whole like scam scam by the way he rules too because the second he the second the cop comes around he's like not fucking with her and then when bateman decides to help the cop he's like i'm not fucking with you either he leaves the movie him and weaselton just weaselton's like oh so now you're helping a cop that's why okay weaselton rules because he calls that out off the rip and then later when he gets like mr big is like gonna kill him he's like dangling him above like an ice pit and weaselton's still like fuck you for hanging out

with cops like i would never fucking i'll never fuck with you you fuck with cops like he's just down to die for the cause like weaselton's the hardest dude in this movie he's also selling an array of dvds that are references to shrekian references to other disney movies that were coming out around this time such as but they're all like the animal versions of it my favorite one is obviously meowana so it's moana as a cat meow hilarious i like this part so that's the best part of the movie hops his ipad was tight too she had some cool design animal bands stuff but um let you know what let's take a quick break and then we'll come back god all right Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017

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We're back. We're back. Now where do we go? Okay. There's so many places we could go. Here's where I would like to go next. Okay. there's so many places we could go. Here's where I would like to go next. So the movie repeatedly uses a word that is a slur. I will use the word to identify it.

The word is savage. Again, the movie uses it repeatedly to refer to the animals who have gone wild and have like become violent and attacked. So this word is a very offensive slur toward indigenous people in particular i will say i guess in the movie's defense the conversation around this word being a slur was not a very mainstream conversation at the time of this movie's like making and release it's been in kind of like more recent years that this conversation has been

brought to the forefront of cultural consciousness but even so one of the many elements of this movie that aged extraordinarily poorly in five years right um i asked friend of the cast jess merwin their thoughts on the use of this word in the context of the movie. I said, you know, is it still offensive in the context that it is being used in this movie? Or is it just a word that should be eliminated from our vocabularies entirely? And this is what Jess had to say. Within Western culture, the concept of savage exists in a binary with the concept of civilized. The idea of one cannot exist without the other in opposition. Even though in the film the word isn't being applied to human

beings, this binary still presents itself in the behavior of the animals being labeled savage. They are violent, they are volatile, they are quote quote, other. When we associate violence, volatility, being uncontrollable, being other, with the word savage, we perpetuate the harm that the word was intended to do when it was applied to Black and Indigenous people. So basically, for any listeners or anyone who's just not aware aware this word, don't use it. Thank you, Jess. Yes.

Thank you so much, Jess, for your time and thoughts. So, but yeah, I was counting the word gets used in the movie, no less than a dozen times, possibly more just like constantly,

especially like after the halfway mark, which, and it's the way it's used is to kind of reinforce this gigantic failed metaphor that is like the word is used to apply to predators which again is like a hillary the hillary clinton yeah it's infuriating and and i wanted to get into that part too i don't know just like as this movie was going on they're just more and they were i feel like every time one metaphor would kind of sputter and fail they would start another one and that one would also be really poorly realized and and not good the last big set piece of the

movie that's trying to comment on something unclear is the what is it that howling the night right where they're implying you know i it's and there was a lot written about this like not right when the movie came out, but like for some reason in 2017 and 18, I think people rewatched this movie and they were like, now hold on a second. Is Zootopia trying to comment on the drug epidemic in the U S? Oh,

I didn't even consider that. Uh, well, the arguments for that include the, including this like very throwaway, goofy, breaking bad reference and like basically implying that the government is bringing drugs into, quote unquote, predator neighborhoods and accurate turning them into like. I don't I don't know what to. But you know what I mean? Like,

and so I think that in the third act of this movie, they're trying to like comment on the crack epidemic. And like, but again, it's so poorly realized. And so like in this movie, like last minute, like that,

you're just, it's like, what are you doing guys? Like execute one thing correctly like truly one thing they simply can't wow yeah that didn't even occur to me either it's now that you bring it up it is very wild this is from um it was like referenced in a review of this movie from birth movies death um they did come out at the time that the movie came out but yeah just sort of reference that it's like it appears that

like yeah the government is bringing drugs into certain neighborhoods and then you know using the media to inspire fear and hatred among everyone else like in the quote-unquote in Zootopia world pray right this movie is so fucked and then like and on top of that the depiction of media in this movie I also found to be very bizarre where media is obviously very very up for criticism but the way it's used here is primarily oh the only reason that judy really fumbled and couldn't stop spouting eugenics at her one press conference is because the media was twisting her words and like they were like oh yeah nick wilde had to give her media training right which she immediately forgot and they like and it's like implied that like the media is misreporting on police press conferences which i wouldn't say is the problem like

it's and i i don't know it's just incoherent like every issue they try to tackle it's like i don't know what you're saying but i think i disagree and then other ones it's like oh yeah i definitely disagree but like that was another moment where i'm like what is the take like believe cop press conferences like what is the takeaway from that to quote mawana what is the lesson what is the takeaway don't mess with maui when he's on a breakaway this movie needed more maui big time one thing i think this movie gets pretty accurate is um dirty cop bullshit because uh hops pulls out all the tricks but that's not the movie's intention good it's made it's like presenting her as being like look how clever she is she's so resourceful she can get stuff done because like

i think maybe one of the reasons this movie was requested so frequently especially like shortly after it came out is because it's like an example i mean very much on the surface you could look at this movie and be like oh it's a female character who is really motivated and really active and she's driving the narrative and she's smart she undergoes an arc and she gets more racist but like she literally almost shoots jason babin at the like at the end of the second act just for like because he kind of scared her classic cop shit by the way oh my god he like flinches at her and she almost fucking kills him this movie made one billion dollars so anyway what was i saying um oh you're talking about um highly motivated female character like surface feminism right so so i i guess it has that going for it. But as we've pointed out, that female character is just like girl boss cop lady who is like doing crooked cop shit.

But the movie is not actually the movie's intent is not to be like, look at how crooked cops are. It's like, look at how resourceful this clever bunny is well and and like jason bateman fox with nick nick like says that once like when she's in the middle of doing a cop crime he's like smart little bunny i was like what the fuck is happening do we um did we hit on all of the cop crimes she did because we we did reference we should run it down yeah do you does anyone have a comprehensive list because there there was a bunch okay so she tries to um well first of all she profiles gideon in the beginning before she's even a cop she's on her fucking kyle rittenhouse shit and she just fucking sticks her nose into some shit that's not

frankly her business i mean i guess her friends were getting robbed but you know don't snitch um so she profiles gideon and then when she gets to zootopia she profiles well first she's like hype to give out parking tickets yeah right she's like 100 i'll give out 200 by noon and this is supposed to endear us to her yeah and if it's a parking ticket in a city like los angeles for example that thing costs somewhere between like 65 and 75 dollars and she's so she's like basically robbing the civilians of zootopia she doesn't want to help people she just wants to facilitate she's trying to exact getting 70 from everyone then she um tries to basically blackmail

wild after he explains his scam she pulls up she has tax forms where did she why does she have those i don't know to blackmail him with i know but i guess she like planned ahead that was like a pre-meditated blackmailing if she already had the forms yeah she tricks wild into jumping a fence um so she can use probable cause to also jump the fence and break into a car to get evidence i mean mr manchas is basically having a mental health episode and she just calls more cops to the scene to fuck him up which historically has never gone well yeah like she does so many cop crimes and then also like there's just like these kind of i mean again and maybe this is more like kids movie stuff but it's like kids copaganda so it's complicated but

there's like multiple moments where she's fired and then she's just like no i'm not and then she's not and then at one point jason bateman's like no she's not and then it's like you can't you don't even work here what are you talking about like but he will also we should point out that like bateman is like you know he's the criminal or whatever and then when he reforms he just becomes a cop so like that's like that's like the station that all good-hearted animals in zootopia aspire to right it's the dream the pipeline from he could never before he meets hops he could never dream of being a cop oh it's like catch me if you can when he's like first i'm a con artist and i'm so good at that that i'm gonna help the cops learn about con artists and that's what happens at the end of that movie oh yeah they both fucking suck they suck so much it's so like it's so frustrating

like and i feel like the way that idris elba's character is used is also like he's one of the only black voices in the cast and he's cast in the police chief role which is at least right now is a very popular trope of like the black police chief who just kind of unquestioningly holds up the establishment it's just I don't know the fact that this movie has no interest in interrogating policing at all is just so like mind-blowingly frustrating to the elder thing elbow thing is so muddled too though because he has such a specific like south london accent and like voice why is he british yeah if they want if they needed to like get a black cop like he's like the not he wouldn't even be in like my top 100 voice list you know right nothing makes sense it's just so like i just feel

like it's yet another example of like this movie just like no one is in the room who is thinking it through right and the little tiny bit of research they seemed to do was to ask one person who she taught them everything and then they went to disney world to congratulate themselves oh my god so so oh wait one more thing um there's a fucking y'all ever seen like the tiktok or instagram videos where like cops play basketball with kids no like like yo we're community policing we're like we're cool you can talk to us like we're down you don't know what i'm talking about no well like all over well they always happen it's just like bad cop propaganda to be like look we're

actually cool but it's like pretty popular in the social media age. There's a thing at the end where she plays soccer with these two kids. Oh, yeah. Did you catch that? As she's walking in the city, she's like, hey, kids, check this out. Hello, fellow kids.

It's me, a cop. OK, here's a thing I'll say. Ready? So Gideon the Fox speaks with a thick accent from somewhere in the American south i don't know oh yes i have to state um so there's obviously a tendency to assign like american southern accents to someone who has like a backward way of thinking someone who has like regressive politics i myself have been guilty of doing this in the past but it's like it's basically doing

what the movie is trying to say hey don't do this don't make sweeping generalizations about people don't like lean into stereotypes and that's what they're doing with that character i had that as well wow look at us look at us um it is a small thing and I feel like it is something that it's not even like inherent to animation although I'm animation tends to be a worse perpetrator of most tropes because it's such an exaggerated form but yeah I mean I feel like that's something we see all the time of like the person who is wrong quote unquote even though he's like don't be a cop, but like, he's wrong. You know, he shouldn't have hit her.

Okay. I think so complicated. The person who is wrong is given a Southern accent and the person who is right has a coastal accent, even though they live in the same place. And like, why is everyone here have and why does everyone here have a different accent it is truly i think like just assigning heroism and nice good ideas to people from the coasts and if you have any kind of any i mean really like most regional american accents are applied to people who you're not supposed to think are as smart as someone who talks like they,

you know, like work in Manhattan or whatever the fuck, you know what I mean? Sure. Sure. So yeah, that's just yet another weird L this movie voluntarily takes $1 billion. Another one I would say is the movie leans into some fat phobic tropes and stereotypes with the Klauhauser character.

And that he's constantly eating. He's like very sedentary and out of shape. The one time he has to like chase after someone. He like is not able to physically move very well. Just different things like that and there's there's the movie being shitty yet again in a in a different way i know like we've we've like referenced a lot but there's just like so many individual moments in this movie where you're like the moment that you brought up matt where um where judy quits being a cop at the end of the

second act and we're like let's call it we did it movie done but again how it's like just like such a nasty feminism that is being expressed here that is extremely white and in service of all things capitalism where it's like the framing for her quitting being a cop because she in the world of this movie has ruined the city is like but what about your dream girl like they're like girl don't give up on your dreams to fucking ruin society you're like what but the movie believes that the movie believes that she would be morally wrong to give up on her dream of ruining society like it's just so misguided and so like i don't know yeah and then idris elba says the world has always been broken that's why we

need good cops like you and then she's like i quit and then she's like no you're right i'm gonna get a new cop on the force and now recruit i'm recruiting people so um but that sex spa they go to fucking kicks ass that's like where i would hang in zootopia i was trying to think of like what microclimate i would want to go to oh sure sure because that sequence where she first she takes the train gotta give it up that part is awesome yeah she's cruising through all these climates you've seen zootopia which looks very much like asgard from the thor movies by the way oh yeah it kind of does and i was like yeah i wonder where i would live i think i chose the jungle but then once i saw the sex bot it's wherever that is that your number one favorite part of the movie

i mean no my favorite part of the movie is when weaselton is just like i'm ready to die motherfucker like i will never help the cops like fucking kill me but um yeah the sex boss part is tight sex bot rules yeah the world building in this movie from a strictly visual point of view not like cultural or societal but just like visual it's like very pretty and and cool i loved i loved was it called rodentia or something oh yeah where i was like where it was just a bunch of doll houses i liked that that was fun the the filmmaker so speaking of kind of the world building the the filmmakers consulted experts such as zoologists who were like this is how animals move and what their fur looks like i just feel like that shouldn't be priority number one

right that's what i'm saying like but they they went so far as to like consult specialists from the americans with disabilities act who helped construct a city where like a two inch little rodent would live in the same city as like a 27 foot giraffe um they also consulted hvac system designers to figure out how to for example build a tundra neighborhood next to a desert but they just only talked to that one lady about how to do racism i like that all sounds pretty cool she taught them everything though but there's one part there oh god that's i mean it's like and that research i'm sure that that was really fun I mean, it's like, and that research, I'm sure that that was really fun and interesting, but it's like, you got to do the whole movie. You can't just do, yeah.

It could have been awesome if they had just gone with a different story. I mean, the setting is awesome. It's great. I read that, I forget which of the directors this was, but basically when he was pitching to John Lasseter, who obviously, fuck John L john lassiter but he was like yeah when i told him we wanted to do a movie about talking animals who wear clothes john lassiter reportedly picked him up and like hugged him and was like we green light i was just laughing because just like picturing a grown man picking up another grown man and like an excited hug. The idea of animals in clothes.

Exactly. Which does happen all the time. The design of Zootopia reminded me a lot of Richard Scarry's Busy Town. Oh, I don't know that. Oh, I really loved it when I was a kid. Oh, I can't wait to show you. It was just like, it was a city where all animals live together

and they wear clothes and they have jobs. And they, as far as I can remember, don't attempt any themes that are way out of their depth, like Zootopia does. I do feel like with this movie, it's kind of another example of, and we've talked about this, I think,

from a lot of different angles over the years but like taking a massive societal ill like racism and prejudice in general and making it like one person's fault and then being like and then they either learn from their like they learn and then they say let's all get along and then one person goes to jail and we're not going to talk about jail like and then problem is solved and that's like what because one rabbit solved the problem because one rabbit became more racist like i firmly believe she became more and more racist as the movie was going on but like by sending jenny slate to jail racism is solved is the logic that this movie is

operating under i also think it sucks that it's like the only other like dominant female character in this movie is like the most evil person in the world which you know it happens but but it's a there's just i feel like we've we've seen this i always go back to i don't know why i always go back to the girl with the dragon tattoo we talk about this but like there is a character who assaults lizbeth salander in that movie and he is like this you know a symbol of all misogyny and by defeating this one man we have we've we've fixed it and nothing bad is ever going to happen again and i feel like that's like there's a version of that going on here with a different theme right that it's right just like attributing a systemic centuries millennia long problem to there's

one person who's responsible for this well like refusing to even reference any of the issues within the system even though the movie is about yeah i mean the the conspiracy goes to city hall so they they they're aiming at the system right like and city hall and cops get along like that's another like i don't know right i i don't know does anyone have any other thoughts um good for shakira good for shakira i will say that a far far far better animal movie with a climactic showdown between the protagonist

and the villain that takes place in a natural history museum is Paddington 1 wow oh you know what else this is like um Tailspin you ever watch Tailspin Wow. Didn't think of that. Oh, you know what else this is like? Huh? Tailspin.

Oh, there's... You ever watch Tailspin? What's Tailspin? Yeah, but it's... It was like jungle book characters, but they live in a city. Oh, I... Wow, I haven't thought about that in decades. Yeah. Whoa, it was like on Disney Channel.

Yeah, it might have been on like regular-ass TV too. I can't remember. I watched it a lot. Like a Saturday morning cartoon thing. Whoa whoa i wonder if that holds up sounds fun i think i remember they're doing a new disney plus one oh okay well that's the law you have to every piece of intellectual property must be rebooted and if it's anything like zootopia if please's making it it'll be more copaganda one billion dollars yeah I part of me is like what about though like the target audience and is this despite its many problems is this movie an okay jumping off point for young children to learn about racism and prejudice it could be i don't want to like undermine that as a possibility but no it's way too confusing i was like i wouldn't

show this it's so fucking confusing and inconsistent yeah so never mind scratch that i mean and it's again it's like listeners if you, we're not parents. So if your kid loves this movie, we would be interested to hear. Yeah, personally, I don't know. This one is too messy. I wouldn't want my kid's first introduction to these themes be this movie. Because this movie doesn't know what it's saying. Yeah, very true.

It passes the Bechdel test though apparently between Jenny Slate and Jennifer Goodwin iconic wow what do they talk about it's like sticking together they're talking about cops us little guys gotta look out for each other says Jenny Slate yeah and then she's Women's solidarity, the cop and the evil mayor. Um, okay. So as, as far as feminist, that is feminism.

Five nipples. As far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares when examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I'll go with, we'll give this movie a half nipple because uh the main character is a woman and um she's you know people are sexist toward her question mark um but again that this is i just speak this is where we find out you've been friends with officer hops the whole time yeah um so yeah obviously i'm having a hard time justifying this. I'll give it half nipple because of Weaselton's character.

Fuck yeah. And the horny, horny, horny animals at the horny, horny sex spa. Yes. And those are the only redeeming things. Judy, shut up. She's just so happy you gave the movie half a nipple. Honk, honk. Judy's pissed. Judy's like like you should have been five what about at the end they're driving like a militarized tank oh my god

oh my god and they just fucking pull over the slot dude like come on and even though he was speeding it's implied that they're like we'll let you off the hook because you're my friend oh yeah oh i thought babin was like hyped to throw the book at him i don't know hard hard to say i'm giving this movie no nipples i i really didn't like it i did i mean there are like small characters and like small scenes that I liked, but I just like, I don't know. This movie was such a bummer to watch. It's such a bummer that it came out so recently.

I just think it's just like, and I, I know I sound like an asshole saying this, but it, I think it's a neoliberal trash and I think it's useless and I don't like it. Weaselton was fun I laughed at the sloth scene and the Shakira song was okay it's it's slightly better than okay anyway yeah

Matt how about you what do you think I'll give it one okay I think it's uh problematic and uh neoliberal trash but uh if you aren't thinking too hard or it's on in the background or you want to just drag it with your friends it's pretty good looking I mean visually the world building is kind of fun just talk over it

one nipple if you are not watching it if it's on mute and you close your eyes every time there's a cop on screen, it's actually awesome. No, I'm just doing the thing of like thinking about how I really liked this movie like five short years ago. Sure.

But it's like, yeah, like we said, it's a testament to how things are progressing and it's fun to reflect on that this is this was this this this one broke my brain a little bit this was a tough this was a tough prep but i'm i'm glad we did it thank you for uh thank you for bringing it to us matt even though it sounds like you kind of didn't want to no i mean thanks for uh whoever requested it because I was thinking, I didn't realize it'd be such a rich text to dive into. Yeah, I didn't either. I genuinely did not know what this movie was about. I was like, they're at the zoo?

It's Madagascar? It's that movie, We Bought a Zoo? We Bought a Zoo? We should cover that movie. I'm kidding. I don't know. I mean, I'm assuming that's about people the sentence buying a zoo but i've been wrong before you know well matt yes thank you so much

for being here it's been a delight thanks so much for having me where can people follow you on social media or if there's anything you'd like to plug um yeah i don't really post too much but it's matthew mixon at twitter and instagram oh actually can i plug my mutual aid thing absolutely okay um yeah we have a small mutual aid group and um we're not very big but if you go to the links on my in my link tree or whatever all the money i'll just like or you can buy like amazon stuff like socks and tents and blankets and stuff it's pretty cold in la right now we just go out every couple weeks and yeah if you send me money it'll go to tents and cool stuff that people need or if you just want to buy stuff off the

amazon links um i'd really appreciate it hell yeah awesome amazing and you can follow us on social media at bechtelcast on twitter and Instagram. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon. That is at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. It's $5 a month. It gets you two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back catalog. More than 100 episodes. Wow. This month on the Matreon, we read books.

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