#it’s like bugs life we are the ants and we need to overthrow the grasshoppers

[disneydatass]

They literally cut off the power so the world wouldn’t see the genocide they are about to commit…fully backed by the US government meanwhile said government also does nothing to the people who continue to get killed by the regular mass shootings

[welcometofolkvang]

Marxist Propaganda in children’s media: why millennials are socialist

The nineties was an interesting decade for children’s films: the DIsney renaissance had just kicked off, giving us The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and computer animation was just beginning thanks to studios like Pixar and Dreamworks.

This piece will examine two films released during this period: Chicken Run (Aardman, 2000) and A Bug’s Life (Pixar, 1998) - two films with plots rooted in Marxism and workers empowerment.

Chicken Run was released at the turn of the millennium, and I, and most of my friends of the same age were subjected to it every Christmas from then on. The story centers around a group of chickens on an egg farm, but as the profits dwindle, the owners of the farm decide to branch out into making chicken pies instead. THe chickens rightfully fear for their lives, but come across a rooster (Rocky, played by Mel Brooks) who is injured but claims he is able to fly. As he heals, the chickens ask him to teach them to fly so they can escape until it is revealed he is a fraud. The chickens instead modify one of their henhouses into a plane and escape that way before any of them can be made into pies.

The first act here lays the foundation of the marxist rhetoric. The chickens are forced to produce more and more eggs and those who cannot produce enough are slaughtered. This mirrors employers forcing workers to ever produce more with: concerned only with profits and not the worker’s well-being.

The second act and the introduction of the pie-making-machine brings to light the idea that workers are disposable: the employer can bake you into a pie and will still be able to find a replacement for you. The eggs barely matter once the pie machine is running, so the value that the worker produces is just as disposable as they are. Though not a planned act of sabotage, when Ginger and Rocky destroy the pie-machine, buying more time for the chickens can be interpreted as a union negotiation which indeed buys time but is ultimately useless.

The chickens learning how to fly is the first step in their empowerment, and realising that there is more to life than endlessly laying eggs and fulfilling the farmer’s demands. They are learning to fly both physically and psychologically, dreaming of the better lives that await them beyond the farm. When Rocky’s lies are found out, they realise that this utopia of flying chickens is too good to be true… So what do they do? They take it upon themselves to fly away by constructing a plane. They take their condition into their own hands (wings): these steps represent the steps of any workers revolution: the realisation of one’s situation, negotiation and ideas for improvement and finally, revolution.

A Bug’s Life was Pixar’s second film, following Toy Story. Aside from being an ant version of Seven Samurai, it too lays out the structure of a Marxist revolution. From the very start of the film, the class hierarchy is laid out:

“The ants pick the food, the grasshoppers eat the food, the grasshoppers leave”

Some kind of agreement has been made, presumably for generations at this point, wherein the ants must first harvest food for the grasshoppers to ensure that the grasshoppers don’t destroy them, and then they are left with whatever food is leftover.

The main character, Flik, accidentally destroys the grasshopper’s portion. The grasshoppers give the ants an ultimatum: they must replace the lost food before the last leaf falls: this implies, however, that no food will be left for them.

Flik then voyages to the big city to find some warrior bugs who would be capable of fighting off the grasshoppers. He unknowingly enlists a circus troupe that he mistakes for warriors, though they play along, until they are found out not very long before the last leaf falls.

Flik then decides to use the Hopper’s biggest fear against him and builds a fake bird from leaves.

The grasshoppers attack, the plan doesn’t go entirely to plan, but we see this exchange between Hopper and Flik which sums up the plight of the workers incredibly succinctly:

Hopper : Let this be a lesson to all you ants! Ideas are very dangerous things! You are mindless, soil-shoving losers, put on this Earth to serve us!

Flik : You're wrong, Hopper. Ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers. I've seen these ants do great things, and year after year they somehow manage to pick food for themselves and you. So-so who is the weaker species? Ants don't serve grasshoppers! It's you who need us! We're a lot stronger than you say we are... And you know it, don't you?

Flik here points out how the workers are numerous enough to overthrow the ruling class but also that the ruling class depends on them, and not the other way around. This is the bottom line of every workers’ empowerment movement. The grasshoppers, in turn, belittle the worker ants, making them feel worthless and stupid: a method that worked until now.

In these two examples we can plainly see how children’s films portray Marxist ideals and even revolutions. Of course, these films are family films, so parents also enjoy them - one would think that this means that the parents also sympathize with the characters and the plot, but judging by the voting habits of over-thirties, this does not appear to be the case. It is an endless frustration that those who truly are in the position of the chickens or ants from these films empathize with the characters, but not enough to see it in their own case. They don’t realise how much like the main character they truly are, because if they did, they would have taken the same path.