The Secret Feminist Message Hidden in Zootopia 2

The world was a different place when Zootopia came out in March 2016. President Obama was still in the White House, Hillary Clinton seemed poised to be the first woman president and the prospect of a Trump presidency seemed unlikely at best. Safe to say that an animated movie led by a female bunny cop with a message against racial profiling fit perfectly in the media landscape.

Ten months into a second Trump presidency, however, and much of the U.S. (if not the world) has become openly hostile to anything that whiffs of “wokeness.”

That's why I was pleasantly surprised to find that Zootopia 2 didn’t shy away from social justice, and even leaned into some complex cultural issues, while yes, still managing to be a fun fast-paced family movie with a crime-fighting caper plot (and an earworm club-worthy hit song from Shakira).

But back to social justice: The film featured overt themes about colonialism, and how it can lead to segregation and disenfranchisement. Will kids get those themes? Maybe not, but in my family, the movie opened the door for conversations about greed and racism with my 6 and 9 year old. And I call that, a start.

There was one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene that to me at least stood out as subtle commentary on the long history of men taking credit for women’s ideas. In the movie, Agnes De'Snake, a female pit viper, has an idea for an invention called weather walls, that will allow animals from different climates to live in the same space. Her idea is born of altruism—she wants to help all of the animals live together. A wealthy male lynx named Ebenezer promises to partner with her, but instead plans to steal the idea behind her technology and use it for his own gain. 

When his maid—a female turtle—tries to stop Ebenezer, he murders her, then frames Agnes De'Snake for the crime, using that to villainize all snakes and, by extension, all reptiles. He claims credit for Agnes's invention, then tries to prove the superiority of mammals. This goes on for generations and Ebenezer's ancestors use it as a justification to expand their territory and further push reptiles to the fringes. 

Beside those larger themes of racism and manifest destiny, the movie reminded me of all the men in history who took credit for women’s ideas (even if they weren't quite as malicious and terrible as old Ebenezer).

Here, a few real-life examples of women who did the work while men got the credit. 

Elizabeth Magie earns only $500 for Monopoly 

Here’s the story that was used to sell the game Monopoly in the 1930s: An unemployed man named Charles Darrow dreamed up the game during the Great Depression. He sold it and became a millionaire, just like the man in the top hat on the box. The message: Darrow’s  bootstrap inventiveness saved him from financial ruin. The truth: At a dinner party one night, Darrow played a game invented by Elizabeth Magie called "The Landlord's Game." Afterward he went home, added a few flourishes and went on to distribute the game himself as "Monopoly." When Parker Brothers learned that Darrow was not the inventor, the company bought the rights to Magie's patent for $500.

Elvis gets credit for Big Mama’s hit 

Elvis Presley holds the place of one of the most iconic figures in American Music, but it’s well known that he lifted much inspiration from Black American Music. One of the most egregious examples is R&B singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s country blues song “Hound Dog.” The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame called Elvis’s hit version of the song “the most illustrative example of the white appropriation of African-American music.”

Margaret Keane’s husband signs his name to her paintings

Walter Keane became famous in the 1960s for his paintings of big-eyed children and animals. Years later, his wife revealed that he had locked her in a room, forcing her to paint and then signed his name to her paintings. The two eventually divorced and she sued him, but by the time she won the case he was too broke to pay up.  

Disputed origins of the cotton gin

In the late 1700s, Catharine Greene befriended and worked with Eli Whitney on the invention of the cotton gin.  Her daughter, Cornelia Littlefield, has described her mother's role in "perfecting" the device by suggesting the use of a brush to separate the seeds from the cotton (a key element of the machine). The claim that Greene came up with technology hasn’t been verified but early feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage used Greene as an example of men getting credit for women’s ideas in an 1883 article. In the 1990s a historian gave a name to the prevalence of men taking credit for women’s ideas, calling the phenomenon the "Matilda effect.” 

Margaret Knight and the stolen patent for the paper bag 

In 1868, Margaret Knight invented a machine that folded and formed flat, square-bottomed brown paper bags. While her machines was under construction, a man named Charles Annan stole the idea and patented it. He received credit for it, but Knight filed a lawsuit and won the rights to her invention in 1871.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell deprived of a Nobel Prize

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was working as a research assistant at Cambridge University in the 1970s when she shared her discovery of irregular radio pulses with her advisor. She then worked with a team to uncover that they were neuron stars or pulsars. Her advisor Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for the discovery, but Bell Burnell’s name wasn’t mentioned.