The Staggering Racism of The Secret Life of Pets

Earlier this year, the Disney brought the world Zootopia, a charming film that is (on the surface) about natural adversaries becoming unlikely allies while solving a mystery. But on a deeper level, however, Zootopia engaged with complex thematic material related to race, the crack epidemic, and the brutalization of the black community by the Reagan era war on drugs. That is engaged with these issues without ever once raising the hackles of political reactionaries in the target audience should give us some sense of the deftness of the filmmakers. Zootopia was a significant cinematic and political accomplishment.

The same can not be said about The Secret Life of Pets. For those interested in seeing the film unspoiled, I would suggest you look away now, because plot details are coming. But check back in after you've seen the film, because the political issues at play are too important to ignore.


The Secret Life of Pets is one of the most racist films that I have ever seen. That this racism was couched in a children's animated feature is enough to positively boggle the mind. A brief list of factors for consideration include:

1. The film's primary antagonist, Snowball, is voiced by Kevin Hart. Even if you didn't know that the voice actor was one of the most famous black men in America, the diction and delivery are blatantly encoded as "black." Furthermore, Snowball is the leader of "the struggle" of a group of abandoned pets who have an antipathy for "owners." The main characters in the film, Max and Duke (voiced by Louis CK and Eric Stonestreet), have, through plot contrivances, been separated from their owner, and are trying to get into the good graces of Snowball's cadre. To do so, they must pass through an initiation (incidentally, the second part of this initiation is eerily reminiscent of the idea of a beat-in, oriented around the bite of a venomous snake) wherein they are required to explain, in graphic detail, how they murdered their owners.

What's so troubling about this all, is that Snowball's "struggle" to raise awareness of the value of pets who have been discarded (he himself was a magician's rabbit who ceased to be useful) could be easily summed up in the phrase "pet lives matter," with the implication being that any pet who holds this view (rather than being loyal to a benevolent owner) is a rampaging psychopath bent on the literal annihilation of the human race. This depiction of the Black Lives Matter movement in this film was LESS problematic than the depiction they received in The Purge: Election Year, and THAT is saying something.

2. Once the stakes of the above have been established, one notices an uncomfortable undercurrent to the film's rhetoric. A "good dog" is one who is a) owned, b) faithful to that owner, and c) opposed to the notion that pets can enjoy any level of autonomy (despite the fact that they have language, the ability to use technology, and other markers of sapience). If you know anything about the history of race in America, this rhetoric is uncomfortably, but undeniably, linked to the traditional notion of the house slave as the best, most acceptable form of black person. It was like Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey told through the narrative stylings of D.W. Griffith.

3. At the end of the film, as one part of the composite "happy ending," Snowball is seen by a young, white girl wearing a paper crown who adopts him as "her bunny." The moment she picks him up, and begins to scratch his head, the eyes of this character, whose overt rhetoric has been representative of black nationalism at most, and the black lives matter movement at least, glaze over and he immediately takes on visual markers of being "tame." Because, ultimately, no "pet" can be happy without an owner, and no owner wants an uppity pet.

As the screen went to credits and the lights came up, I looked around. The theater was full of laughing children busy telling their parents how much they had enjoyed the movie, and I remembered Roland Barthes' description of the power of cinema, when you leave the theater, some part of what you have seen is stuck to you, has become part of you. I felt sick inside.