The House that Walt, Ashman/Menken, and John Built: The Zootopia Revolution

All right everybody, we need to talk about Zootopia. This one is a game changer. This one should not go quietly into the night and it’s not exactly for the reasons you think. Better scribes than me can talk and should talk about its handling of current race relations in this country, its realistically strong female lead, its treatment of fear mongering, and the list goes on. What I want to talk about is the fact that it handled these issues at all. By taking on these sensitive issues thoughtfully and methodically without shoving it in your face like a “Once upon a time…” moral, Disney animation proved they were able to take huge steps forward in content much like Pixar has recently proved they can take huge steps forward in the look of animation.

I was once got very lucky and got the chance to ask a famous live action director who had worked with Pixar a question. Me being me, I did not ask him about the film that had just been screened, but I did ask him what it was like to work with Pixar and would he go back to animation. He said he loved working with Pixar, but that he looked forward to animation that broke the mold and handled more adult content. His answer touched on a very sensitive issue when analyzing animation and that is the question of who is it for and what limitations does that impose on the artists who create animated films? It seems obvious now to say that the American animation industry’s primary audience is children, but what is less obvious is that it doesn’t have to be or more importantly, that children should not be underestimated in what they can handle. I say this with the full knowledge that there have been animated film’s released intended for more adult audiences, but never on a very large scale. They have tended to live in the worlds of independent and experimental cinema.  For some reason they have never caught on. Idealistically, however, there is nothing dictating what animation can and cannot be other than layers and layers of tradition. It therefore seems that it is up to the larger companies to break these traditions to prove to audiences (or show that audiences understand) that animation has larger potential and to be honest, I did not think it would be Disney.

Let me rephrase that. I did not think it would be Disney who would break this particular tradition. Kids are Disney’s market and I actually don’t think that is an issue, but now that they are playing with that a bit I’m excited. What I do think happened though (and this I do give myself credit for kind of seeing coming) is that Disney Animation right now is the most innovative group of storytellers out there. They have stiff competition with Pixar and Laica, but both those studios have hit a bit of a lull and Disney is in the midst of a revitalization. American animation has a long history of cycling formulas and many of them have come from Disney Animation itself. For a long while you had the classic Disney fairy tales that Walt himself was behind. Those understandably set the gold standard for American long-form animation for the first half of the 20th century and you don’t see much variation within in it. Those were beautiful, classic tales, but did they did not test boundaries in terms of what message their content relayed to their audience. They did not stretch themselves far beyond the classic stories. They did, though, make animated film a viable commercial art form and the work is beautiful and fun to watch. Once Walt died, however, and the studio was left with a power vacuum, it was difficult to maintain the same high level of quality while keeping the same format. It took the Disney Renaissance in the 90s and the revolution of fusing such films with Broadway musicals that kicked off the second cycle. Those films stretched the classic formula dramatically in terms of format and did push their boundaries a bit when it came to message. It was like suddenly they realized that maybe the princesses should have brains and that being yourself is a nice thing to tell kids. These messages were not nuanced however. They are in your face so that the 5 year old in the audience took that message away with an issue. Safe to say, though, that like their predecessors, this format worked beautifully. It took far less time for the third cycle, however, and when Pixar released Toy Story in 1995 they were quite vocal about not wanting to do a musical in the same vein as Disney was doing. Instead, Toy Story kicked off a long string of emotionally complex storytelling that really delved into human relationships and how we feel and react to our everyday lives. They were certainally more nuanced than the Disney Renaissance films, but they dealt with concepts that can’t really be argued with. Fear is powerful, but not as powerful as love. A father’s love is a beautiful thing. We need to allow our children to grow up. I treasure theses messages more than anything, but like I said, they are not really cocktail conversation pieces and they are starting to feel less fresh. The Good Dinosaur is a heart wrenchingly beautiful film, but many of its plot points feel overplayed. To me that really sets the stage for Zootopia. It is the opposite of stale.

While Zootopia may not exceed Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur in terms of form, it does take a leap with content. It proves there is a place in animation for far more cerebral and intellectual issues. Zootopia is a movie that makes you think more than it makes you feel and while this can be somewhat a red flag when it comes to live action filmmaking, in animation there is so much bias to the latter, it feels like it’s making up for a deficit. The crux, I think, is figuring out its appeal for children. There are very few, if any, laughs directly targeted at the 5 year olds in the audience. There is minimal slapstick and no fart guns. This is incredibly refreshing for the adults in the audience (or at least for this adult), but it could hinder Zootopia’s success and it also begs the question of who these movies are for. One thing Pixar is incredibly adept at is appealing to both sides of the age gap and in the pursuit of fresher, more intellectual content, the kids should not be left behind. This is all about proving the incredible range and possibilities for animation, rather than advocating for replacing other forms. That being said, what I really hope for is that kids love it just as much as adults so the world can see that we do not always have to dumb things down for those of us who haven’t hit puberty yet.  I’m going to be increasingly curious of it’s lasting impact and kids’ reception to it, but I think Zootopia is an incredible first step in what could be a wonderfully fruitful journey.