The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, February 10, 2021 — 7

Every child of the 2000s can 

recall exactly where they were when 
Jerry Seinfield’s magnum opus “Bee 
Movie” first graced the big screen. 
Indeed, I would argue that the 
defining moment of my childhood 
occurred when the all-too-fateful 
“Do ya like jazz?” playfully escaped 
the intoxicatingly seductive lips of 
Barry B. Benson. As a seven-year-
old, I lionized the insectoid idol with 
a fervor that could be characterized 
as obsessive. The lofty ideals and 
down-to-earth nature of dear Barry 
B. Benson, when juxtaposed with his 
almost flippant accessibility, crafted a 
black and yellow brand of heroism I 
couldn’t help but aspire to. 

Alas, as a jaded young adult, the 

family-friendly bildungsroman that 
once brought me such joy now brings 
me great existential agony. In my 
all-too-jarring transition into the 
adult world — a transition marked by 
adherence to a capitalist system that 
seeks to exploit my mind and body for 
profit, I discovered that the Bensons 
of this world are few and far between, 
and we need not examine their 
honey-tinted dogmas too long before 
uncovering a plethora of truly sinister 
forces at work. 

When analyzed in conjunction with 

similar industrial adventure narratives 
such as the iconic Marxist flick 
“Monsters, Inc.,” “Bee Movie” appears 
to follow a predictable but not trite 
formula. The marginalized worker 

gains an awareness of the manners by 
which a neoliberal economic system 
exploits him, and he consequently 
attempts to inform his comrades of 
their plight. He is mocked, rendering 
himself a pariah, a lunatic. He finds a 
way to seize control of the means of 
production, overthrowing the existing 
system of labor and rendering class 
order obsolete.

Or so it would appear.
In the first act of this laissez-faire 

tragicomedy, our six-legged savior 
agonizes over his career path, which 
he will inevitably pursue until the 
day he dies (much like you and me). 
He fears the inexorable absurdity 
that awaits him at the end of his life 
cycle, and cannot stomach a lifetime 
defined by the production and 
distribution of honey, a sticky and 
overt symbol for human’s monetary 
currency. Early in the film, Benson 
challenges convention by journeying 
outside the hive with the “pollen 
jocks,” who occupy the upper echelon 
of the proletariat (think “Mean 
Girls”’s Plastics of the bee world).

Benson’s 
journey 
into 
the 

commercial heart of New York City 
culminates in his realization that 
the bourgeoisie class of humans has 
profited from the labor of the bees for 
centuries. He then proceeds to sue 
the human race for their calculated 
exploitation of his species (evidently 
the ACLU wasn’t taking his calls). 
Barry’s unrelenting dedication to his 
fellow bees grants the audience the 
opportunity to view him as an altruistic 
savior, perhaps even as a metaphorical 
representation of Karl Marx himself. 

Nevertheless, despite his indefatigable 
commitment to justice, coupled with 
his fervent collectivist ideology, Barry 
B. Benson fails to bring about the 
dictatorship of the proletariat.

Benson 
seeks 
to 
overturn 

capitalist institutions using their own 
tricks. He pursues his cause through 
the human legal system with the aid 
of his Engelsian paramore, Vanessa. 
Vanessa’s involvement in Barry’s 
schemes is suspect, if not downright 
shady, as her flower shop depends on 
the exploitation of the pollen jocks. 
Hence, like Engels, her ideology and 
practice are ultimately contradictory 
in nature. The co-founder of Marxism 
condemned the treatment of factory 
workers 
while 
simultaneously 

owning several large textile factories.

Alas, the budding love affair 

between Barry and Vanessa cannot 
grow to fruition, primarily due to 
the inter-species divide; reality 
truly stings. This biological division 
serves as a mirror image of the 
socioeconomic 
division 
between 

bourgeois Vanessa and proletariat 
Barry. In his psychedelic daydreams 
about Vanessa, we see Barry floating 
in a pool of honey, as The Archies’ 
1969 hit “Sugar, Sugar” plays in the 
background. The constant invocation 
of “honey honey” is no accident. Barry 
associates Vanessa with honey, which 
in his world, is the sole marker of 
economic and social mobility. Hence, 
their love is ultimately superficial and 
economically motivated. 

“Bee Movie” cannot be accurately 

categorized as a Marxist triumph. In 
fact, I would assert that it is its very 

antithesis. Barry’s attempt to overturn 
the existing order for the greater good 
culminates in him instituting a free 
market economy for the bees. Their 
exploitation will continue, merely 
under a different label. Any attempt 
to take action outside of the neoliberal 
institutions of power ends in tragedy, 
which is further emphasized by 
the mortal wounds Barry’s friend 
Adam experiences in his attempt to 
physically attack a human. 

The supposedly happy ending 

of the film takes place when the 
bees return to the existing system 
of production with the addition of 
a few inconsequential concessions. 
They 
remain 
enslaved 
to 
the 

humans, producing honey with 
the efficiency of a disgruntled 
union worker, only this time with 
marginal improvements to their 
working conditions. Barry embraces 
his profession as a pollen jock and 
part-time lawyer in a futile attempt 
to integrate himself into the petite 
(no pun intended) bourgeoise of the 
human legal system. 

In his attempt to spearhead a 

proletariat revolution, my childhood 
idol finds himself trapped in the 
very system he sought to overturn. 
His 
overreliance 
on 
bourgeois 

institutions to take down the class as a 
whole leads to his ideological demise. 
The temptress Vanessa returns to 
her exploitative ways, utilizing bees 
for capital gain. In his glorious rage 
against the dying of the light, Barry 
finds himself less like a bee and more 
like a moth, incinerated instantly in 
his futile attempt to embrace glory.

The following is an excerpt from 

“Burning,” written by Jo Chang, a 
writer who typically avoids writing 
romances but decided to experiment 
with this short fiction piece. 

Where did you find this woman? 

I’ve never met anyone like her before. 
Last week, the first time I heard 
Naomi’s cries from the living room, I 
texted you in a panic.

 Hi naomi is crying? What should 

i do

Is she in her piano lesson rn
Yes
Its fine dont worry about it
“What?” I muttered to myself.
I guess in my head I was expecting 

someone like my own old piano 
teacher, a terse older European woman 
who seemed to get off on smacking 
the backs of my hands with a ruler she 
brought especially for that purpose. 
You’ve never met her, since I stopped 
taking lessons after the accident. But 
out stepped that woman who was 
almost as short as the eight-year-
old girl bouncing after her. The first 
thought that came into my mind was 
that she looked vaguely ill. I wondered 
how old she was. Younger than us, 
probably, maybe mid-twenties? She’s as 
small as a child and extremely fragile-
looking, pale skin with a greenish tint 
and dark circles under her eyes.

“Uh, hey,” I said. I had been in 

the middle of bringing up the clean 
laundry from the basement, and it was 
only after I instinctively reached out 
for a handshake that I realized I wasn’t 
wearing my usual cotton gloves.

The piano teacher hesitated also, 

and I thought it was in response to 
the scarred and twisted flesh I was 
extending out to her, but when she 
took her left hand out of her pocket I 
saw that she only had two fingers, the 
thumb and the pinky. Between them 
lay a smooth basin.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said 

quietly. She had a lilting accent, a mix 
between British, and maybe Chinese? 
I flushed and tore my gaze away from 
her hand. “My name is Stella.”

“Nice to meet you,” I repeated. “I’m 

Olive.”

Her skin was clammy and cold, 

smooth and weightless as plastic. 

“I used to play the piano too,” I 

find myself telling the table over 
my plate of overcooked pasta. The 
three of us are sitting all together 
and the atmosphere feels amazingly 
awkward. Maybe it’s just me though; 
Naomi and Stella eat quietly but seem 
rather comfortable in the silence. I rub 
at an imaginary stain on my gloves, 
feeling like I am part of a weird parody 
of a nuclear family.

“Really?” She says. She’s barely 

made a dent in her pasta; Naomi 
reaches across the table for a second 
serving.

“When I was like, super young,” I 

ramble. “My parents really wanted me 
to learn music.” There’s a long pause, 
punctuated by the slurping noises of 
Naomi finishing up her second plate.

“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I did.” The 

pasta is practically mush.

On her way out, after giving Naomi 

a final hug, Stella turns around and 
whoa she is way too close, I take a step 
back —

“Um,” she says. “If you ever want, 

I can teach you some piano. Again. If 
you want.” Her breath smells sweet, 
but the nauseating kind of cloying that 
makes me think of something rotting.

Naomi is asleep and I am in your 

office, at your desk, intent on working 
on my novel. A framed picture of you 
and me stands next to one of you and 
your first husband on your marriage 
day. There are no pictures of the new 
man. I do my best to avoid looking at 
both pictures. It’s so bizarre, to see 
photos of myself in your house. There 
are several that I have found in here so 
far, hanging and standing and pressed 
behind glass. In this one, we are 
around ten or eleven, just a few years 
older than Naomi, and we are sitting 
on the front step of our old apartment 
complex, smiling so hard it must have 
been painful. My red-raw hands sit 
inert in my lap. The golden beads in 
your hair flash in the sunlight.

You’d worn your hair in its natural 

style since I met you, but when we 
were nine years old you got your hair 
done in long box braids for the first 
time; your mother added these thick 
golden bands at the ends. I think you 
caught me staring at them wistfully 
once. They were so beautiful, they 
glinted in your dark hair like stars.

“Our hair isn’t the same,” I said. 

“We’ll never look the same. Because 
we’re not sisters.”

I think you took that the wrong way. 

I think you thought the expression on 
my face was sadness. “I know that,” 
you said. “But I think of you as my real 
sister —”

“No,” I interrupted. I held your 

gaze. “We’re not.”

I think that was the first time you 

saw the thing that was festering inside 
of me. The burning.

I am in love with you and you know it.
I tried to hate you, once. I don’t 

know if you even noticed, but that 
promise only lasted for maybe half 
a day, until you smiled and asked if 
I wanted to watch a movie together 
after school. I wish that I could. Hate 
you, I mean.

I accidentally fall asleep slumped 

over your desk, my neck limp as if it 
has been snapped. I have a dream 
about my lungs. I am at the doctor’s 
office and a woman who smells like 
thyme and coconut is raking her 
nails softly across my bare shoulders 
and down my spine with her cool 
dry hands. She slides a stethoscope 
between my breasts from behind and 
I try to remain as still as possible when 
I breathe in and then out, my breath 
is too loud in this white room. I can’t 
bear to turn around. I don’t smoke, 
I tell the doctor quickly. I already 
know, she replies and I can’t hear her 
voice but I know that she is speaking. 
Take a look. I peer down and my flesh 
has become transparent, everything 
inside of me has turned into paper. 
My liver and intestines are masses of 
origami, my heart is a crumpled ball. 
My veins have become dark lines of 
ink that seep all over the pages.

Before your family moved into the 

apartment three doors down I was 
losing my mind. I was six years old and 
dying of boredom and loneliness. Do 
you remember how in our apartment 
complex, we were the only living 
creatures under the age of thirty-five? 
Except for the hideous white dog that 
lived above us that had an unsettling 
habit of jumping off high surfaces with 
as much force as its tiny body could 
muster, so that at night it sounded like 
there were literal cats and dogs being 
flung onto the roof over our heads.

I’ve always had beautiful hands, 

it’s what everyone used to tell me. 
My mother would always say I had 
princess hands, all long fingers and 
soft skin. She was only half-joking 
when she’d tell me I should be a 
hand model when I grow up. My 
father would protest, only half-joking 
himself. “No,” he’d say. “Mi princesa 
is going to be someone big. Something 
special.”

We were all surprised when your 

mother took me in as her own after 
the accident. Our parents were not 
exactly friends, mostly because mine 
didn’t know much English and yours 
were always leaving early and coming 
home late from work. I was in a coma 
for a week after the accident, so I did 
not have time to worry about the 
fact that I was now an orphan — an 
orphan — with no living relatives in 
this country who did not even know 
how to spell the word “insurance.” 
That drunk driver didn’t just steal 
my parents from me. When the fire 
licked my arms up to the elbows and 
my long dark hair, I became someone 
who wasn’t a princesa anymore, a 
royal gown traded for a shorn head 
and hospital gown and hands encased 
in thick layers of plaster. Your mother 
was sitting at my side when I woke up, 
and hers was the first face I saw after 
being born into this new life. Even 
now, I will never stop thanking the 
God my parents prayed to every night.

Naomi looks almost nothing like 

you. I’m sure you’ve heard this many 
times already. She takes almost 
completely after her father, save for 
her ears, which stick out in the same 
endearing way that yours do. And 
you two eat the same way, quickly as 
if someone is about to steal each bite. 
When you two eat cereal, your teeth 
scrape against the spoon.

I only half-believe her when your 

daughter insists that you let her eat 
this kind of sugary garbage all the 
time, but she seems to be enjoying it so 
much that I can’t feel too bad. I pour 
myself some of the cereal too, to see 
what it tastes like.

“What d’ya wanna do today?” I 

ask her over my own bowl of what 
is essentially mini chocolate chip 
cookies soaked in milk. “It’s the 
weekend, there’s probably a lot of stuff 
to do around here, right?”

“Mmm,” she says absentmindedly. 

“I can’t think of anything.”

When you called me and asked 

for a favor, I agreed before you even 
finished explaining what it was, that 
you really needed to find someone to 
watch over Naomi for a week while 
you and he went on your honeymoon. 
Everyone else was too busy with 
work, or had their own kids, but even 
so, you would have asked me anyway, 
since you trust me the most in this 
entire world.

“But even so,” you continued. “I’m 

so sorry to ask, I know it’s a lot — ”

YOUR WEEKLY

ARIES

Take the heat out of disputes with 
friends by trying to look at the 
situation calmly and objectively.

AQUARIUS

GEMINI

It’s a choice to worry or not – so 
choose not to. Pay attention to 
detail, but stop fretting about the 
future.

SAGITTARIUS

CAPRICORN

SCORPIO

CANCER

Issues or trauma from the past 
can be successfully dealt with this 
week by therapy or counseling – 
don’t be afraid to open up.

TAURUS

The New Moon in your career zone 
helps you to get a better picture of 
where you’re heading – and how 
to get there.

VIRGO

PISCES

LIBRA
LEO

The New Moon in your love zone 
means romance and passion 
aplenty, provided you allow time 
for love when you’re so busy at 
work.

Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv

Let the world turn without you for 
a while. You’ve spent too long 
juggling everything for no thanks 
or appreciation.

The New Moon in your dating zone 
brings plenty of flirtatious fun, so 
don’t take love too seriously – just 
enjoy.

Family members may be pushing 
your buttons, but a New Moon in 
your family zone will help you 
regain control.

Get organized if you want to 
succeed in this hugely busy week 
– you’ll need to brush up on your 
time management skills.

 A New Moon in your money zone 
helps you to keep better control of 
your finances. Don’t be miserly 
but do be sensible.

A New Moon in your own sign 
encourages you to put your own 
needs front and center for a 
change. 

You may feel emotionally raw, but 
by sharing your feelings and your 
experiences you are helping and 
inspiring others.

WHISPER

“You are ruining the
pharmaceutical industry.”

“I want to become a helper.”

“You’ve yee’d your last haw.”

Burning

JOE CHANG
Daily Arts Writer

Capitalism’s cautionary tale: 
The fall of Barry B. Benson

DARBY WILLIAMS

Daily Arts Writer

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s 

day? He asks.

The world must seem so beautiful
Through his rose-tinted looking 

glass,

Blinders fashioned from

Bouquets, Jewels, Promises.
The delusions of a romantic —

Is this sincerity? 

I’m not sure.

For a summer’s day is as beautiful 

as a dream,

A wish;

To dream of summer is to wish for

Escape. 
Perhaps

Flattery is an offense hidden

Behind soft petals of red,

A thorn —

For if this love be genuine,

Why escape

When I already await you here?

 

But thy eternal summer shall not 

fade, He says.

 But even statues must die.

An eternal summer is destruction 

disguised,

The Earth frozen in time,

The death of reality,

The end to natural bounty —

Love destroys even at its brightest.

 I am but a simple girl,

A simple woman,

Who longs for the snows of winter

The thunderstorms of spring

And the hovering death of 

autumn.

What do I do with this lover’s 

sonnet?

 A lover whose eyes

Stand captured by distant 

horizon,

Seeing past me, Through me

Anything but me.

What to do when love

Makes blind, Its willing victim,

Its unwilling sacrifice.

So long as men can breathe or eyes 

can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life 

to thee, He promises.

Am I now to be

Trapped —

A bird in a gilded cage

Of unfading green?

Is this love?

 I have never loved, and

My question echoes through the 

abyss

Of this hallowed chamber

Of the apple of his eye.

If he loves me, then why

Must I be punished to eternity?

Death is an old friend —

Does love demand abandonment?

Who is to say,

When the only one who speaks 

of love

Writes sonnets

Rose-tinted
Rose-stained. 

The Lover’s Sonnet (pt. 1)

MADELINE VIRGINA GANNON

Daily Arts Writer

