Nature vs. Nurture

Rating: 5/10 (19 March 2016)

Overall the message is a positive one. Problems arise when we begin to explore the message from a more granular perspective.
Zootopia is an animal utopia. That's a relatively straightforward naming convention. What exactly is an animal? What exactly is a utopia?
To answer the first question we can look at the phylogenetic tree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree) to see how our current system of classification places our animal ancestry. (If you disagree with this system of classification please help to make it better by pursuing studies in some form of biological science.) Animals appear to appear somewhere around 2500 to 1000 million years ago* and have given rise to the plethora of forms seen in Zootopia as well as other forms unseen**.
The second question, that of utopia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia), has a mixed history. Quite possibly the history of the meaning of the word is as diverse as the thought-processes of the animals that imagined the word. An article in an encyclopaedia can only give us so much of a definition; a foundation on which to build. Utopia, in my mind, brings up the concept of a dystopia. Do we currently live in a dystopia? Are there pockets of utopia and dystopia? Is my utopia another's dystopia? Ignoring my atopian ramblings, a utopia has as one of its primary parameters an implicit agreement between all involved that this particular environment is the the plateau of social dynamics; there is no improvement that can be made and any change will diminish the experience. Zootopia is not a utopia. This is evident in the fact that there are disagreements about who can be what within the Zootopian society. Zootopia is clearly intended to be a mirror on human society.
So, what does Zootopia ask us to question about human society? Primarily difference. How do we hold back our fellow humans through the nurturing environment we call society***? Zootopia looks at the mutability of social status. A rabbit can become a cop. This is unheard of until the days portrayed in the movie. The struggle begins in the family. Mom and dad are worried for their daughter's well-being in a world that doesn't like change. Mom a dad don't like change. Daughter doesn't see it as change; just that she wants to be something that already exists in her world.
In training rabbit finds and overcomes more than one barrier. These barriers exist because society has not recognized them as barriers simply because no-one that these barriers exist for has ever come forward to attempt to move past the barriers. This is complicated. Testing for barriers requires either a vast imagination to think of all possible combinations of situations or requires members of society to bump into those barriers. In the bumping, slamming, or general feeling out of societal barriers how many members have to undergo this "feeling out" to elicit a change in the hardware of society? From Zootopia, how many rabbits have to jump onto a too-tall commode and fall in before commode height is changed? Additional questions like these come up when rabbit finds herself assigned to meter-maid duty instead of detective work. She does the best she can in a menial task. Is there an ethical imperative to do the best you can at a menial task? Zootopia doesn't explore this.
Eventually our heroine, a rabbit, is placed in the spotlight of greatness and flubs it up by placing the emphasis of Zootopia's current criminal activity on the nature framework (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture#Genomics); in this case the division between predators and prey; a division that has been overcome to the point of a societal revulsion (taboo) against primal animal tendencies. Our heroine doesn't see the harm in her comments and thereby propels herself into a political fight that ousts the current mayor (a predator) and breaks her friendship with the fox. She has to rebuild her relationships.
In the end it all works out. Animals are just living their lives. The rabbit, through hard work, finds her place in society and the society, through several hundred thousand years of inertia continues the slow grind to the next moment.
Things you can participate with me in being bothered about:
The concept of a predator no longer being a predator. What do predators eat in Zootopia?
There is a clearly a crime syndicate run by moles. They ice people. Is this more acceptable than "going primal"?
How does society change? How do we examine barriers to others? How do we imagine barriers that don't exist today, but will certainly exist tomorrow? How do we get ourselves and others to act on eliminating those barriers when only one person or very few people are affected by the barriers that exist? How low can barriers be made if they must exist at all?
*Though today's DNA techniques are only useful on DNA up to 1 million years old. **What would the movie have been like if humans had been thrown into the mix? We are, after all, animals not that far removed from all of the others. And what about insects? ***I use nurture atypically here. It simply means the environmental milieu through which we are born, subjected to, and die.