Stealthy Libertarian Flick

We’ve all become accustomed to big Hollywood producers shamelessly and thickly laying on a progressive bent to pop culture for decades now. It’s become so mainstream, in fact, that almost every movie that parts from this collectivist and a statist box of allowable themes is a little too obvious, heavy-handed, or only focuses on one singular issue. Of course, the liberty movement has had some success in recent years. If one looks at the theme of the movie “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” it becomes obvious to the watcher that the FDA is far from the altruistic regulatory agency it presents itself as. In “Captain America: Winter Soldier,” the attack on the surveillance state is in full force.

Disney’s “Zootopia,” passes itself off as another talking animal, small town girl becomes big city hero kind of story. I’ll admit, even during the opening scenes, it was ready to present itself as a horrifying indoctrination of Political Correctness onto young, impressionable children. Honestly, it takes a libertarian to notice such heavy-handed and blatant pushing of such an agenda. Then I realized: that was the point. After giving the rest of the movie a chance, however, I couldn’t help but smile at the scope and subtlety to which the story writers had expertly crafted multiple tenets of liberty and individualism, and stealthily wrapped it up in a cute Disney-style bow. Throughout the course of the movie, it is the state which comes under more constant fire, and the would-be criminals and nefarious, sneaky, greedy, and dishonorable street “criminals” shine through.

The beginning of the movie, of course, sets up the picture as follows: a long time ago, savage predators forced their wills upon the poor, meeker prey. The movie starts out presenting young Judy, a rabbit whose family numbers in the hundreds, explaining the pretext in a kind of class play. Afterword, she is bullied standing up for other “prey” against a bully predator fox, predictably with a southern, hillbilly drawl. I couldn’t help but think to myself the parallels to hated, southern hick “regressive” was a little obvious. The prey is little and small, and it’s the predators who still haven’t really given up their old ways and who secretly still want to exploit the peaceful prey animals. Judy gets some battle scars but resolves herself to still pursue her dream as the first bunny cop. The stage has been set up for the audience to sympathize with the poor little prey animals, and to be wary and suspicious of all predators. Sociology and Liberal Arts professors everywhere approve.

A short Rocky montage later, and a short throwaway line for the city’s “mammal inclusion policy,” (a nod towards modern affirmative action) it seems like thanks to Zootopia’s progressive and forward-looking policies that Judy graduates from the police academy and gets herself a job in district 1, the inner city. (Later on in the movie, however, Judy reminds the Police Chief that she had actually graduated at the top of her class- thus, her employment as Zootopia’s first bunny cop had nothing to do with the mammal inclusion policy).

As she then walks into her first day on the job, the receptionist at the police station remarks at how “cute” she is, given that she is so small in comparison to all the other larger, and tougher looking police animals. Judy remarks how “only a bunny can call another bunny cute,” and the receptionist covers his mouth and apologizes profusely for his insensitivity. I snorted out loud at this point in the movie when I finally realized that this movie was not a heavy handed indoctrination picture aimed at the minds of small impressionable youth. This movie is a subtle satire of not only the PC police but upon the state as a whole.

The movie maker’s distaste for the government is apparent on multiple occasions. Despite graduating top of her class, Judy is assigned to Parking duty, which is not the glory of being a police officer was in her mind. She aspires to make an impression by resolving to not only meet the obviously stated quota of writing 100 parking tickets but to write 200 instead. As a libertarian, I couldn’t help but cry out in disgust, but was pleasantly surprised by what happened next. Judy is portrayed as the consummate government busy body, determined to enforce the law and extort the taxpayer even further by using her skill and speed to write tickets seconds after the parking meters expire. The sentiment from the movie makers is expressed through the eyes of the civilians with lines such as “My taxes already paid for this,” and “My mommy wishes you were dead.” The ridiculousness of her religious zeal to impose the state’s will on others is even more apparent when she has to write herself a ticket. Justice is served, I thought to myself, kind-of.

One of my favorite shots were taken at the state and its slow, bloated, and inefficient bureaucracies were the scene at what could only be the DMV. Judy, not having permission to access the police license plate registration, makes a trip to the department of motor vehicles- run by none other than a herd of Sloths. In what is easily the funniest scene in the entire movie, the subtle set up is glanced over in less than a few seconds as we see the familiar developing line zigzagging through the building. The sloths not only work slow but are perfectly content and remarkably un-self-aware at the fact of their speed. Judy goes in during the day but is finished with the DMV at 9:00 at night.

Of course, taking shots at busy-bodies and inefficiencies isn’t the movie’s only libertarian calling card. One of the more brilliantly laid out showcases of entrepreneurship in action is made in this movie. The gist of the situation is this- a fox (remember, they’re sneaky and exploitative predators, as you’re set up to believe), purchases, or, in this case, finds a way to have Judy purchase, a large Popsicle, larger than himself in fact, for $15. What he does next, is a classic example of how an entrepreneur finds a price discrepancy in one sector of the market and uses his skill and knowledge to transform and transport these resources into other sectors. Judy catches the fox melting down the Popsicle, re-freezing it into dozens of smaller, more manageable sized treats, and re-selling them to mice when they get off of work. The fact that these mice rush over to his Popsicle stand and willingly shell over $2 a pop is evidence to the fact that they value this entrepreneur’s work- but the good times don’t stop there. Taking it a step further, the fox, Nick, recycles the used Popsicle sticks and sells them in bulk to another colony of yet smaller rodents to help them undergo construction projects. Now, gross, you may say, and even though the sticks were still mis-colored red by the Popsicle, the rodents still hand over cash in order to acquire the available and de facto valued “lumber.” We then see Judy confront Nick about his schemes, but even then the astute observer is already smiling at the amount of satisfaction the fox’s entrepreneurial skills have brought to different and previously disadvantaged portions of the Zootopia economy. After all, how is a little mouse supposed to lift a Popsicle that’s larger than a fox? And even if they could, how could a family of mice consume or store it for later in their tiny mouse house? Besides the $15 cost to buy the Popsicle, such a mouse family would have to spend inordinate portions of their income on space and storage. To the economist, Nick is a hero. Yet to the indoctrinated statist cult, Nick is still a “greedy capitalist sneaky exploitative predator,” despite how many wants and needs of others he fulfills along the way.

Judy is eventually able to conscript Nick into helping her with an investigation, by threatening him with a tax evasion statute when the movie’s plot begins to pick up. Without going into too many spoilers, it involves predators all over the city going missing. Eventually, we learn that something is making these predators “snap,” and revert to their savage, prey-eating ways. We then find out that the mayor is hiding all of the missing predators who have reverted to their primal instincts, and is trying to keep them away from the rest of the population. Even though the Mayor is taken into custody, the audience is left with an uneasy feeling about predators, that small portion of the population who might suddenly turn on you at a moment’s notice. A quote by Judy is then taken out of context by the media and run throughout Zootopia. The new mayor is then elected, riding a wave of anti-predator sentiment, driven by the “90% prey population.” The slogans and news presented around the city against predators eventually leads to Judy resigning, and going back home, having still felt sorry for letting her reverse-discriminatory instincts push her new friend, Nick, away.

However, once back at home on the carrot farm, we run into the same once-bully hillbilly fox all grown up. If the Popsicle capitalist scene didn’t already put you into the view that this was a stealth libertarian movie, this scene will. Despite the fact that the bully fox had harmed Judy in the past, her parents and the fox had gotten together to form a mutually beneficial relationship, in which the fox supplies Judy’s family with pies to sell at their farm stand. Why? Well, because the fox is the best in town, and it shows that real tolerance comes from those who set their differences aside for what the now confused democratic socialist movie-goer would call “mutual greed.”

SPOILERS ABOUND, because at the end of the above-mentioned scene, we find out through a twist that the predators have been induced to go savage by some sort of plant. We then find out that the true mastermind is none other than the newly-elected mayor and her cronies- fittingly all sheep. Why is this note of species important? The new mayor, in her climax-scene monologue about her evil plan, even remarks how she had used the fears and prejudices of nearly 90% of the population to come into power, and that she would induce every last predator to go savage if it meant conformity and submission to keep her in power: literally turning the diverse population of Zootopia into conforming, bleating sheep. Fortunately, her plan doesn’t succeed, as is predicable with all children’s movies. Even then, the old mayor doesn’t get to reclaim his post due to his actions of secrecy earlier, and he repeats a hilariously political tactic of “answering questions by asking yourself a different question, and then answering that one.”

All in all, Zootopia a brilliant, hilarious, and fun move for the entire family. The creators expertly set up the audience’s prejudices using commonplace PC tactics and scare-mongering, only to bring them crashing down later in the movie. Couple this theme with the aforementioned creativity of entrepreneurship, and anti-statist shots at bloated and inefficient government bureaucracy, and we have a mixed pot of stealthily crafted libertarian messaging. Go see it for yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

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