Zootopia Exposed! (Part Two)

Pushkin.

So I went to see Utopia at three fifteen PM on a Friday afternoon. It was me, seven children and their associated mothers or nannies, no father's present. I was the only I was the only adult male.

In the theater.

So I not only was I there as a professional, but I have never been so demonstrative about the fact that I'm a professional. I took my notebook out of my backpack and I was like, I'm not here to enjoy the film. Silence children, this is a I'm close reading.

I sent my colleague ben A. Daph Haffrey, a film buff and literary scholar, to see Disney's new blockbuster animated film, Zutopia two. I told him it was urgent. First things. First, did you enjoy the film?

I did, I really did. I actually liked Utopia one better. But I think they're there. It's a good it's good intellectual property.

Yeah. Now, you so you came in knowing that there was this controversy that exists around Zetopia two and why the particular plot choices that they pursued were pursued and so, and you came to as I understand it, you came out of the theater with some really strong ideas about why this movie is the way it is.

Is this correct? Yes, it is correct.

Ben called me up a few days later, so Utopia two was now available online. He told me to pull it up. He wanted to show me something that he thought was a clue to unlocking the true meaning of the film.

At twenty minutes and ten seconds when.

Going on right now, the heroes of the Utopia franchise are two cops, Judy Hops, a rabbit, and her partner Nick Wilde, a fox. In Utopia too. They launch an audacious investigation into the Lynxleys, the ruling animal family of the city of Zutopia, who live in a giant mansion called Lynxley Manor.

Okay, so twenty minutes and ten seconds, okay, just to set the scene, Judy Hops and Nick Wilde, the heroes of the movie, are going to the to the Lynsley manner because, oh my goodness, it's the zouit tennial.

Oh my goodness, it's insane.

You know what I'm you know what I'm gonna say. You know what I'm gonna say.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is the second part part of our investigation into the very curious mystery behind Zutopia, the Walt Disney Companies insanely successful and possibly soon to be two time Oscar winning movie franchise

The camera is like high above Lynsley Manor, and we see the fireworks going off because it and it is the Disney logo is the Magic Kingdom logo.

Ben Every single night for the last two and a half years, I have sat in my little study with one or two of my daughters and we have seen that exact scene before we watch a Disney movie and I missed it.

I missed it? How did I miss it? Right there? It's an unbelievable there.

It is an unbelievable visual quotation.

It is a exact visual quotation of how every Disney film starts with the fireworks over the over the Magic Castle.

So, just to be clear, what this image is suggesting is that Lynxley Manner, the home of the Fat Cats who stole thep from Gary to Snake, is essentially the Disney Castle. The Fat Cats are in the Disney Castle.

The Fat Cats are in the Disney Castle.

Disney. Famously, the Fortune five hundred company, most consumed with protecting its association with everything wholesome and good, has done something completely out of character. They've made a movie, a huge movie, in which the home of evil cats who steal ideas from innocent reptiles is presented with exactly the same visual language as the iconic Disney Castle.

Well wait, Malcolm, maybe maybe this is too much. Maybe you know they had a party, there's just the fireworks display whatever, like it's you know, you could write this off if you were a true skeptic. But I would say, then we should look at the frame at twenty six minutes in forty two seconds.

So this is after.

Twenty six forty two Okay, hold on.

So Gary the Snake has rebuilt himself.

Ben had me take a look at the moment where Gary to Snake has finally gotten a hold of the evidence he needs to prove that snakes really invented Utopia, the crucial bit of evidence in his case against the Lynx lays.

You can hear the emotion in his voice.

We are the bad guys they are, and this journal, ohs the secret that will prove it.

I have to prove it.

I was thinking to myself as this happened. I was like, I had seen the fireworks displayed you six minutes earlier, and I was like, wow, that really looked like the Disney logo. But if it were Dizzy, then surely there would be some other sign in here that were meant to read this as a parallel to the Magic Castle. And so twenty six minutes and forty two seconds, watch what happens when they race out of the ballroom and through the kitchen.

Okay, i't watch it right now. The snake goes through the kitchen. It's mayhem. They're racing for their lives. She follows them down the hallway, going through the kitchen. They take the hat off the chef.

Do you know what that is? That's from Ratitui, a famous Disney film.

Oh my god.

It goes on. At one point we see a weatherman. What's his name, Bob Tiger?

Get it?

Bob Iger is the CEO of the Walt Disney Company in a movie about the weather in z Utopia. The person charged with telling everyone about the weather in Utopia is the head of Walt Disney.

Tomorrow's weather is again everything to.

Announce, they brought Bob in to voice the character. Of course, there's more later in the movie. Judy Hobson, Nick Wilde leave the Castle and pass o'asel selling bootleg DVDs of Disney films. Surely this is gratuitously self referential. Just listen and then you.

Need I got him sequels, pre quolls requals who.

Says the industry's going down?

The two So I think the whole thing is just like fuck you Disney And okay, last thing.

Sorry, I'll stop after this.

No, don't stop, don't stop. Coming up after the break, we invite some other critics to join the party. Before we go on, it is important to establish a few

In the movie The Shining, we see Danny is wearing a sweater which has Apollo eleven writing on it. It's due to the fact that Stanley Kubrick directed this movie, and he was also the guy who directed the fake moon landing.

Maybe or maybe not. Sometimes a sweater is just a sweater. On the other hand, speaking of Kubrick, there's a whole sequence in Zutopia two that also seems to reference The Shining. The villainous Pobert Lynxley grimaces and limps his way through a maze behind the castle. In an exact visual quotation of the way Jack Nicholson famously grimaces and limps his way through a maze in the actual shining. That is not a coincidence. There are no coincidences in animated movies.

No one will believe you over us. We've always been better than you and we always will be. Nothing you do matters.

Well, it matters to him now that I think is the crucial part. Nothing you do matters. This film is not gonna change it. It's not gonna change anything, but Disney owns Utopia, but it matters to him.

Talking about Gary the Snake, You've just pointed me to a scene that is, in essence, the climax.

Of the movie. This is the end of the film. The Lynxs have finally been brought to justice. The fat cats are going to live in the Magic Kingdom.

Fat cats are going to live in the Magic Kingdom. And our heroes, the Bunny Judy hops and Judy says it does matter, and she looks at Gary the Stake and says it matters to him. And this is I mean, it's I can't believe I missed this. This is screenwriter saying to Gary, Gary, I understand what you've been through.

It's like, it's insane, it's crazy. It's very explicit, it's it tracks so perfectly.

Ben and I talked about this moment with the filmmakers britt Marlin and Zoel, but language on my instructions, brittainzol dropped everything and went immediately to see Utopia too.

It's not like they made it subtle, as if someone in the writing team knew the score and wanted to do it wink to Gary like, hey, I know what went down. This is our internal apology, a quiet apology to you that only you would understand.

They made it in a way that like.

Any part of the audience, his family, the surrounding community that knows anything about it, would know that this is what the movie is like. It's not quiet, it's it's public.

It is not a Stroussian reading of the controversy in a sense of you know, you know the fame mysteries of Leo Strauss, who argue that texts in conflicted times have hidden messages, and the goal of the scholar is to decode the hidden message. Right the person attacking the church in the six fifteenth century would never do a real attack. They would they would, they would make it so, they would make it subtle. Below they would praise the church.

Between the lines.

It's the lines is literally the lines on the book.

Yeah yet, and it's not Iranian cinema, which has to get through all the censorship.

So that is an interesting thing about Disney.

It shows you there's no one.

At the wheel.

Like they were able to get this through because they're no the powers that be, the Lynxes did not know what was happening.

He's right.

Before any script is greenlit, it has to be reviewed by the studio's legal team, the last stop before the wheels start to turn. Is there anything in the script that is potentially problematic? Do we have the rights for everything that needs rights? Is this bit of dialogue or description defamatory? Is this character a little bit too close

It is a roadmap for true authorship.

Yeah, I agree, it's an acknowledgement. It's only I think, an apology if it's just directly to the person you harmed. But when you make something that's not between the lines, but the line themselves, that you're talking to the entire community.

All of us involved in the forensic analysis of Utopia two agreed it's the perfect literary crime. The perfect crime reading of Zutopia is that there was a quiet insurrection in the creative ranks at Disney where they felt that the Disney overlords had committed a kind of moral crime against this brilliant man, Gary Goldman. They contrived to come up with a secret form of revenge in the form of two. That was a crime in a sense that they were violating their implied contract with Disney. But it's

Because the movies have all this money and to punish them.

So the way to get away with a crime in Hollywood is to make a work of art, a work a work of great commercial art. And that makes you that that makes you completely above the law. It's genius.

I think that there is there is a strong message being sent about Disney and it revolves around authorship and a snake named Gary.

And that's a lot of coincidences.

And who is this genius who pulled off the perfect literary crime after the break our best guess at the culprit.

Well, I have no idea what direction we're heading. But let's if on our seat belts and we'll go.

All of this starts with a man named Lester Bush Junior. Not the fancy bushes of Texas and Connecticut and sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, the bushes of Iowa. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to speak with Lester Bush Junior because he died in twenty twenty three. But I tracked down his best friend and longtime collaborator, Greg Prince, who told me that his friend, Lester was a physician who joined the CIA and rose to the position of the agency's medical director.

He was in a family whose mother converted to Mormonism, and he and his younger brother were brought along at the same time his father converted. Many years later, he became aware of the discriminatory policy of the church towards blacks, was always uneasy about it, never felt that it was quite right.

Up until the late seventies, the Mormon Church had a policy that said that black people could not serve as priests in the church, which is a big deal because the Mormon Church has a model of lay priesthood. Priests come directly out of the congregation. And if you have a policy that says that black people can't be priests, you're effectively saying that black people cannot fully participate in

Conventional wisdom all the way up to the top of the church was, well, this was a revelation that started with Joseph Smith, and we have never allowed blacks into our priesthood.

But while he did his medical training, Lester began to dig into the Mormon church archives, spent years reading old manuscripts that no one had ever bothered to look at.

What he found first was, now, that wasn't the case, because during the administration of Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, there were well documented cases of several black members being ordained to the priesthood.

Lester's discovery was that the ban on African Americans was started by Joseph Smith's successor Bring Him Young. Lester wrote up his findings in an academic article in nineteen seventy three that rocked the Mormon world.

Lester's article showed that this wasn't revelation, this wasn't etched in concrete doctrine. This was a policy, and it was a policy that began with Brigham Young, and it arose out of would you believe it that there was racism in the United States in the eighteen forties and fifties.

And here I will admit we are in the middle of the cornfield. But trust me the interstate of weights. Five years after Lester published his manuscript, The Mormon Church Recived ends the ban on African Americans. And it's Lester's article that provides the justification for that decision. When you look at the history of the Mormon Church, which over the past half century has exploded in size, particularly in the developed world, everything begins with Lester Bush's stubborn desire

He paid a prize for it. He was shunned by the church. Eventually, he just withdrew from activity in the church, as did his three children. His wife remains an active church member, but she has her is open. I thought that it was the cumulative pain that caused him to withdraw, but eventually we were talking about it and he said, no, it wasn't that, it said it was just that I saw that there was less and less room in the

Only at the end of his life did the church make amends. Lester was invited to give an honorary lecture in Salt Lake City, an acknowledgment of his contribution.

So here I am feeling like Rip van Winkle and looking like something from a storage closet and a museum. So it's in honor to speak to this symposium, and quite a surprise both be asked after so many years and that the subject is still active.

Afterwards, he had private breakfast with an official high in the church, a man named Jeff in the Mormon hierarchy, a so called apostle.

And then as we walked out to the underground garage, Jeff put his arm around Lester's shoulder and said, Lester, I just want you to hear it from me how much I appreciate what you have had done for the church. So we did have closure eventually.

Lester Jr. Was a moral warrior, a man who took on giants on behalf of truth. Oh and, by the way,

Very good family men had three kids just as a sidelight wait for it. His second child and first son, is the director of animation for Walt Disney Studios.

Leicester Bush's eldest son, Jared Bush, runs all of animation for the Walt Disney Company and ten guesses what script Jared Bush is most famous for writing. He's this guy who wrote Zutopia.

Two Andawana and in content.

But here this is a question I had though, because this is actually what led me into all of this. I watched Dutopia Too. And Zotopia Too is a movie about how an excluded class of animals. The reptiles had been kept out of the world of the animals, and the movie is all about bringing those, bringing the reptiles back into the fold, bringing the despised snakes back into the fold, and honoring them as And I'm wondering, is is utopia? Am I correct? In reading? Zutopia too? Is a kind of Jared is?

Is?

He is he continuing the family intellectual tradition here.

I haven't talked to him about that, but I think you're onto something there. If you go back and look at Encanto, you see the same type of thing there. Number one, the focus is on extended families, which comes right out of his heritage. But the other is that the star in it wears glasses, and there had never been a star of an animated movie who wore glasses.

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jared has a very strong moral compass.

Yeah yeah, because it does seem I mean it fascinates me that the father is the one who provides the intellectual foundation for bringing a group fully into the excluded group, fully into the Mormon Church, and then the son writes a movie that's all about bringing an excluded group fully into the animal kingdom.

I think it's a brilliant storyline. I had not considered it.

Go for it.

But I did find something in a New York Times article that gave me some sense of how he thinks about these things. The Peace came out before z Utopia too, and in it there was a moment which makes no sense unless you were the one sitting at the dinner table at the Bush Family Thanksgiving. The reporter wrote, mister Bush's emotions sometimes run close to the surface. Mister Bush started to tear up, for instance, while talking about the

Yes, that's my interpretation.

The bushes. The bushes are standing up for the Goldmans.

That's my interpretation. It makes me feel very good. I have to tell you. I mean, so, this is a weird thing. I'm in this telling you this story, and I feel I've been done wrong in a lot of ways. But I feel so close and connected and grateful in a certain way to Jared Bush. And in my imagination he's a courageous person.

Have you ever met Jared Bush?

No?

Well, I sent him a handwritten letter.

Oh you sent him a handwritten letter?

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait?

Where did you send this.

Letter after I found out that Gary de Snake was a good guy?

Did he respond? No, he can't, he can't because Disney they would go nuts. Right Somewhere somewhere Jared is listening, Jared, are you out there on behalf of everyone who saws Utopia two? Let me join the Goldman family chorus? Well done. Revision's history is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence, Lucy Sullivan, and ben Ada fh Haffrey. Our editor is Karen Chakerji. Fact checking by Sam Russick. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence, original music by Luis Qarra,