Wide Reading #6

Level 1 Wide Reading Log:

Text Title – Zootopia

Author – Byron Howard, Rich Moore

Text Type – Film

Date Watched – Term 3

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Brief Plot Overview(3 sentences)

Zootopia is an animation/comedy film that is aimed at younger ages around the world. It is directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore. From the biggest elephant to the smallest mouse zootopia is where various mammals live. This movie is about how a young rabbit dreams of becoming a police officer but when she reaches her dream she finds out how hard it is to enforce the law, especially with the academy being hard on her based off of what she is. 

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Characters You Find Interesting And Why

One character that I found interesting in this film was Judy. Judy was one of the main characters, she was faced with many different challenges and barriers but she pushed through them and found a way to make it a less stereotypical city. I found Judy interesting because from a young age she wanted to stand up to people, this pushed her to attend the police academy. Becoming a police officer showed people that not just big, strong, males can stand up for other people and enforce the law. I think that in societies today we are very stereotypical with specific things such as jobs, sports, emotions and so much more that we don’t even realise that in children’s films just like this one it really shows how easy it is to assume something that we base off of a fixed image that we have created. Judy helps people to realise this and understand that to actually know someone is good at say a job or a sport or anything you need to find that out first and not assume otherwise based off of a fixed image. 

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Messages You Took From The Text And Why

A message that I took away from this film was racial profiling and stereotypical  naming. Racial profiling was shown in this film as a major crime was commited but immedeatly people assumed that the prediters were going savage again. This really showed how much people actually worry about what was in the past because straight away people went to that reasoning there was not a single person who proved this reason because they assumed the past was coming back to the predators and becoming savage. In societies today we have a big problem with racial profiling but just in general racism. Black people are given because you are a different colour and we can treat you differently. Why are our societies like that? Has it really come to assuming bad things about people based off of their skin colour. For example one person might be done for a major crime and have dark skin and lighter, white skinned person could be done for the same crime but because they have darker skin some people assume that all black people are the same. This is of course not the case, societies again remembering the past and assuming that certain people can treat others differently because of it. I also found that there was a message of stereotypes in this film. Judy passed the academy and got into the police force but she was not as big or as tough looking as the others so she wasn’t as trusted as the other police officers. This showed to me the same thing that sometimes happened in societies today with females being treated differently in certain jobs because of their gender. For example the gender pay gap, in some situations some jobs will pay men more money for doing the exact same job as a female is doing. In this film I feel like Judy had to prove herself to her workmates to get some approval and more trust in certain jobs. Sure she had to work a little harder to get in but everyone had that difficulty sometimes. I want our societies to believe that men and women are both equally able to do something hard or easy and if not then I wish it was not because of the gender we are but based off of our own qualities or weaknesses.  

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Challenges That Characters Had To Deal With And Your Response To These

A challenge that Judy had to deal with in this film was when she had to go out alone to help find who was involved with the predator changing. With no one listening to her because they thought she was making it up so she could make it in the force this helped no one. She instead changed how she looked at things and used other people to help side with her which helped her to get across her point to the wider community. In societies today I think that this relates really well. People don’t want to listen to one person who they don’t really know unless they can see that there are other people higher in power that agree with that one person. I feel as though this is realistic in societies today. For example elections and protesting you can notice this.  

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Discussion About The Title Of The Text And Why It Was Appropriate

The title of the text being Zootopia, I feel like this has no meaning or relation to the film itself. I don’t think that it is appropriate for the film. The title has actually been changed to Zootropolis because of the UK release. A spokesman for Disney explained that in the UK we decided to change the US title (Zootopia) to Zootropolis to allow the film to have a unique title that works for the UK audiences. But I still think that neither titles are appropriate for the film because I don’t find that they have any relation to it.

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Who Would You Recommend This Story To And Why 

I would recommend this film to a younger age as it is an animation film. It has hidden messages behind the kids animated characters. While I watched this film I didn’t think about what sort of morals there would be in it. I just assumed that with it being a kids animation that there was not a message that was purposely put in the film. But as I saw it again I realised these certain messages and that it was quite a amazing idea putting it into a kids film as without realising younger kids will relate this back to real life.