Zootopia, Umasou, and the Failures of Race Allegory

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INTRODUCTION 0:00
YOU ARE UMASOU 0:58
AD BREAK 2:08
YOU ARE UMASOU 2:56
ZOOTOPIA 11:06
RINGING BELL 19:35
CONCLUSION 25:18
OUTRO 28:46

Voices:

LINKS:

Music by Epidemic Sound.

This video was sponsored by Skillshare

[Fusilier]

I'm a zoologist, we do not use predator or prey to define animals for our research, we use carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, it is more accurate to classify an animal on what it eats. Yes, carnivores are hunters, but herbivores can either run away successfully, or fight back, a cape buffalo can cause serious harm to an African lion, or an American bison can kill a grey wolf. In the wild, carnivores eat mostly carrion, it's a effective strategy that gives carnivores easy food, hunting can be risky, and the reward is not guaranteed. There is something else left out of the thesis, a herbivore can be a destructive animal too, deer for example can deplete vegetation, they can keep on eating before the plants have time to grow back, the goat is the most destructive, they pull the roots out of the earth, they can turn a meadow into a desolate, moonscape. People assign predator and prey to humans as well, this is the problem with metaphors, they take abstract thoughts, and apply it to something that has no use for human symbolism, carnivores and herbivores do coexist together, better than most human civilizations in fact, so Zootopia does have some scientific fact.

[hellmasterbean]

The thing that always bugged me about Zootopia (and now Beastars) is ignoring the existence of omnivores and carnivores that only eat certain types of meat (like insects or fish) and would never be a threat to most other animals.

[sycastells]

"I've never met a Tyranosaurus Rex, and I'm sure we'd get along fine..."
-Jack Saint

[catendway]

There’s a Disney channel movie literally called “Z-O-M-B-I-E-S” and it tries and fails to be a race allegory

The stand-in for the minorities are zombies, mindless monsters that eat human brains, _that can’t have horrible subtext and implications to it at all_

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: the humans _built a wall_ to segregate themselves from the zombies (production began in 2017 just a reminder) and make them wear these bands so they can suppress their _zombie urges_

The movie tries to justify its race allegory by shoehorning a Romeo and Juliet love story between the zombie and human protagonists, and they try to that thing with where the human love interest has a birth defect everyone hates _but it’s actually beautiful and it’s what makes her special_

And the lesson they give is pretty awful too. When one of the side zombie characters gets pissed off at the discrimination, she’s put in the wrong and is told that if she fights back against the humans, _she’ll be just as bad as they are_

This is especially bad because what motivated the side zombie to fight back was when the human antagonist turned off their trigger bands, which basically reverted the zombies to their brain-eating instincts and put everyone in danger

NO SHIT SHE WOULD WANT TO FIGHT BACK THE DISCRIMINATION

And it’s even worse because we never learn what her plan was, so no one knew if it was going to cause harm like the human antagonist did (who BTW gets redeemed despite being a bigot who caused the conflict in the movie)

On one hand, this is a Disney channel movie, so why should I expect nuance and substance?

On the other hand... _BIG OOF_

Edit: there’s gonna a be a sequel now, but instead of making zombies the minorities, this time it’ll be _werewolves_ (can’t wait for Disney to milk the message with every single monster species out there)

[artemiswolf]

This is why it makes me uncomfortable whenever fiction equates vampires or werewolves with minorities.
Werewolves are creatures that turn into unrepentant killing machines when they get too angry and vampires need to literally suck the life out of other people to survive, if we were to coexist with them there are some legitimate concerns we would need to address and that’s just not a thing with actual minorities.

Same thing with robots. If you wanna tell a story about how authentic we can make an AI before there’s no difference between them and us that’s fine.
But please don’t frame their discrimination as real world racism, because “how human are they?” Is a question we really shouldn’t be asking about actual minorities.

[joshjones]

It’s “ooh-mah-soh” not “ooh-mah-sue”

Umasou literally means “looks delicious” in Japanese

[SomeGaymerNerd]

the original book for fox and the hound is essentially "hound dies, hound's owner goes on a genocide against foxes and gets the entire town in on it"

[TinyFoxTom]

"Is this a story about animals, or is it a story about people?"

Furries: "Allow us to introduce ourselves."

[Shirokroete]

The anime is super problematic


because the dinosaurs don't have feathers

[JennWanderer]

When I was growing up, my carnivore dinosaur toys were boys and the herbivores were girls. I also grew up in a severely abusive household, so I think there was a correlation there.

[onibarubary]

Repeating some of the Beastars comments. Beastars succeeds most of the time due to the fact that it doesn't have the carnivores/herbivores as stand-ins for anything, but builds the world around them and targets the systems that would exist in such a state of evolved animals and what the types of prejudice that exist would become. It's not shouting out "See?! It's like black people in while having monsters as the stand in for black people or something. It's moreso about touchstones that we recognize in our world giving us a starting point to seeing how the world works in Beastars and the similarities that exist in the creation and maintaining of prejudice and bigotry.

But also it's really good. So watch it. Don't listen to people who say the CG is terrible, it's Studio Orange, it's amazing. Or conversely just read the manga with it's fantastic art

[Tiedyeban]

So you’re telling me Zootopia isn’t about abortion?

[ChipmunkiousD]

In Zootopia, though, they said those flowers used in that drug that made the predators go on a rampage can also make herbivores go on a rampage if they come in contact with it, so, in the end, it's not anything distinctly biological, just prejudice creating more prejudice

[maybeishouldbuyahorse]

Predators are literally wired to eat prey

Humans don't typically eat eachother

The end

[Ichiyama]

Huh...I always took Ringing Bells as a cautionary tale of how desires of revenge can corrupt us and make us monsters

[helveticastndrd]

“Please don’t read the summary of the original [Fox and the Hound]”
...
Holy s**t Walt, what did you see worth adapting in this thing?

[riccardoleone]

Ok, humanizing animals and creating interspecies conflict inspired to natural equilibria always bothered me. How this tyrannosaur was able to survive on berries?

[sackoflizardsRN]

With Zootopia when I watched it I didn't feel as though it was 1:1 allegory. It was obviously about prejudice but I took it more literally, like "IF this anthropomorphic world existed, THIS is how their racism might be" (rather than "the predators are 1:1 for real world minorities")

[Jack-xths]

I was promised a duck, and yet there is not a single lemonade stand, nor a man running the stand.

[EphemeralTao]

For Umasou, it also helps to remember that Japanese culture is still intensely racist and socially-stratified; and the "keep to your own kind" lesson is considered a valid and positive one in Japanese society to a very great degree.