Un-Bee-Effing-Lievable... Well Not Really. But I Was Really Excited for a Hot Minute!!!

So as I sat avoiding the more substantive things I should be doing with my Sunday evening, I decided to bide my time until the next episode of Californication by watching Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie... At first I got all excited. The obvious parallels to a marxist critique of American society were just too good to be true, I thought. Bee comes of age in hive, realizes he's just a cog, leaves the hive, realizes he's a cog in a much larger system. And lo and behold, the bees themselves are blind to their own real oppression. And too good to be true it was...

After a successful and controversial lawsuit against the human exploitation of bees (the defense in full-throttle right-wing fundamentalist mode à la John Goodman), the bees renew their commitment to the system they fought against. How can there be a Rose Bowl if there aren't any pollenized roses?!?! Tragedy strikes!!!! Rather than salvaging the progressive elements to the plot and forging some Utopian society that could only work in a cartoon, the narrative exhorts a loud "no!" and our little protagonist buys into the system he worked to subvert. At the end, he is like any main male character in any ol' movie out there: savin' the human woman he loves and everybody around him as business continues as usual. Literally. Cows can talk and file complaints in the Insects at Law office, but they just couldn't take the extra step and make it really progressive... Not sure whether I want to blame Seinfeld or society, but it definitely doesn't do much in the way of dismantling any capitalist ideology for the kiddies who might be watching it, radical potential or not...

Here I was, all excited about transgressive Pixar movies and alas, foiled again...

I hear that if I really wanted marxist, I should have just waited to see Wall E.

-- Andrea