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