The Buggy Nature of Bug Movies
Hello, folks! Here’s another post from the lovely and talented Mei Ling!
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Bees and ants live in hives where the great majority of the individuals are female.* But CG movies of late have wholly ignored this. A Bug’s Life has something of a romance between the lead male character and the princess. Antz… does the same thing. I haven’t seen Bee Movie (and don’t plan to, because it’s more like a “C Movie” according to Yahoo’s user reviews), but the lead is, surprise, surprise, male and in fact, based on the trailers and promotional clips, a great number of the population seems to be male.
What about something that exploits the gender disparity instead? “Oh, all men ever do is sit on the couch and drink beer nectar!” “Men are so helpless! You know they’d never survive if we women didn’t take care of them!” “You know men only have one thing on their minds.” There’s a lot of humor to be mined there, right?
Okay, okay, back to reality. Without a male protagonist, movie makers are generally shooting themselves in the foot as far as target demographic is concerned. And hey, it’s fiction, plenty of films take liberty with facts. But even if the protagonist isn’t a bee or an ant, they could have some other male creature interact with more accurately depicted bees or ants. Portray the bees as Amazon women, for instance.
So, am I alone in being bugged bothered by this? Or do you think utilizing this aspect of bees and ants in movies would result in a commercial flop, and thus, justifies this practice?
*I’m aware that this is a generalization, as there are many, many, many species of bees and ants with all kinds of behavior and social structures.
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