Zootopia and Zootopia and Hype

   I haven't posted a Zootopia Watch in a week; that is, my most recent ZW was last Monday. Which maybe wouldn't be so unusual, but, I didn't even break to announce that the 4th marked, like, just one month until Zootopia's release, or that the 5th marked one month until its release had this February been a non-leap-year one. Or that the 3rd would've marked a month were this not the February-March season at all, for that matter, nor the 2nd for a 31-day month. But that's quite literally ridiculous, and, yes, it's the 2nd I want to talk about here.

   For that is the day that the writer Corgi W. (undoubtedly his real name ("his," that is, I assume "Corgi" is a male name...)) Corgi W. put up the essay, Zootopia and Hype, on [adjective][species]. Which is a, what did the "about "page call it, "metafurry resource" (which phrase gives me the giggles, even more so than the phrase "furry fandom" itself)? Basically a collection of furry essays written by a collection of furry essayists (alright, and now you've got the giggles-- "furry essayists." Yes such things exist yes they can be of mixed quality and yes [a][s] is one of the more trustworthy ones quality-wise.) This particular essay, Zootopia and Hype, is... well, look at that title. All about the kind of thing I've been doing so far, hitting me straight in the paradigms.

   So, pertinent!

   Hitting me right in the paradigms, and I suppose it's taken me this long to digest everything. And plus it's easier not to update you on every dang twitch in the calendar.

   There's a lot to think about. The comments section of the essay has already probed at some of the assumptions made and everything, but there's still a lot that can't be answered so easily. For those of you who can't be bothered clicking that link and reading the essay all the way through to the end and also all of the comments (when I tell you to read the comments section, bro, you read those comments bro,) I can sum up for you the most salient ideas, which boil down to two parts.

1. this film's not out yet why are you buying plush Nick Wilde dolls like you've already seen it and loved it enough to spend all your money on memorabilia for it, the dictionary may not technically distinguish all that much between them but there is a (colloquial at least, which is enough semantically) difference between excitement for a thing and just plain hype over it, and
2. wasn't there this thing once where the furry fandom was supposed to be about fans of each other and flocking into a community that way, and now you're supporting a major corporation as an original content provider like it's one of our creators/artisans, when, it's still actually just actually a major corporation instead of that thing I just said.

   I'm cross-referencing his arguments against TV Tropes's pages about Hate Dumb and Fan Dumb right now and at this very moment (because remember this blog is live,) and... well, first of all, whoooa new site redesign, and, second of all, our friend Corgi clearly clears of all of those hurdles, so, dang boy I must concede those are actually good points (though I suppose falling under any of the arguments on those pages wouldn't automatically make you wrong, either?) Also third of all, sorry for linking you to TVTropes. Meet me back here in three hours once you're done linksurfing, a'ight?

    Hey you're back.*

   "Hype," if a Wikipedia hyperlink I hovered over once is to be believed, comes from the word "hyperbole" (and fan will always mean "fanatic" in my eyes.) Yes, even though we know the plot and everything from all the tie-in stories that've been released already, we can't automatically assume that a movie that won't come out in the US for almost a month will be, any good, I mean, there's so much that could go wrong. We still don't know if the rest of the film's going to be as funny as the sloth trailer, or as catchy and insightful as the Shakira, or...

   holy crap this is a real thing I'm writing about here, none of it is being made up, this is actually happening, of course it's going to be great did you not just read all of those things I just described, goshdarn Shakira is in this and I'm not making any of it up...!

   Sometimes I still think I am. Making it up. Sometimes, I wonder. Now we know at least where the hype comes from... absolutely nowhere; it just is.

   Inside the broader "furry" fandom now, for Corgi W.'s second point: as the comments point out, the fan-dom has always been of precisely that, anthropomorphic animals, however ill-defined that concept may be and however un "fandom"like such a definition would actually make it ("fandom" being defined as a group of fans generally around a specific property, like the Carolina Panthers or something.) Accepting "furry" as not revolving around a property but a concept, even with part of the pantheon of that concept being independent creators of anthropomorphic work, Zootopia = city of, yeah exactly that type of deal, so it easily finds its place in the pantheon as well.

   But as deft as that answer may be, it's still a little glibbish, and it doesn't solve all of the problems raised... Corgi W., in the essay:

The premise of Zootopia isn’t unique (furries have imagined what a society of anthropomorphic animals would be like countless times before Zootopia). It probably won’t be a revolutionary, insightful, cultural classic. Yet furries seem to be holding it up, not because of its quality, but because it’s mainstream. **

   d-... dang. I know that's the exact same thing I dissected in the appendices(?) of my initial review of BARSK: The Elephants' Graveyard, (where I did call BARSK all of those things in the second sentence there, if that makes a difference one way or the other) but that's still... dang.

   We can't know if it is quality or not, yet, of course, but, that's precisely the point, and it ties the theme back together into the notion of hype. Is there another option, aside from quality or mainstream? If there were, would that prove the hype something else? Or would it prove it something else?

   I did still dissect the idea in my initial review of BARSK... bringing it up in the first place, because, I was also falling into that, so I guess that calling it all revolutionary and insightful and potentially culturally classic DOES make a difference one way or the other, and proving I'm not above the attitude...

   I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to go stare at the wall for a while.†



 *Yeah, this blog is live, but it's always that way, always live, so I've just been here, waiting for you. Always.

** Material from [a][s] is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.
†Which I'm also doing right now, because this blog is live.  

Pleasant dreams tonight by the way.