Bee Movie is a 2007 American animated film. The main character (Barry B. Benson) is a honey bee, his voice is played by the star Jerry Seinfeld. The story follows Barry on his adventure to sue the human race for exploiting bees after he found out humans steal honey from bees. It starts with Barry not wanting to get a job in the hive after finding out that this will never change once he picks his job. So he goes out of the hive, gets lost, and starts talking to a human (which is against the bee rules). They go to a supermarket and this is when Barry first sees that humans have been stealing honey. So he comes up with a plan to sue the human race. His allegations attract a lot of attention, many people show up to watch the trial. After a lot of work, Barry wins the trial, forcing the honey companies to shut down and free their bees. All of the honey was returned to its rightful owners, the bees. But this stopped the production of honey so the bees didn’t know what to do with their selves. Barry goes and meets with Vanessa (a florist), to talk about his success and he realizes that all of the flowers have died. Since there was no need to collect pollen, no pollination was happening, so all of the flowers died. So they went on a journey, stole some flowers, and re-pollinated the whole of New York. The bees went back to their jobs and the equilibrium was restored.
Some of the themes Bee Movie explored were capitalism and the importance of bees.
I believe Bee's movie is based on capitalism. To start off all of the bees are just assumed they when they grow up they will work in the hive producing honey. Barry realizes this, and he seems to be the only unhappy person about it. The only thing that drives the plot forward is Barry not wanting to do manual labor. His parents worked in the hive and his parents - parents worked in the hive. In the movie, he was getting a tour of the hive and he asked the tour guide ‘So you’ll just work us to death’ and she responded with ‘Ha-ha we’ll try.’ This really triggered Barry, as he did not want to grow up in a capitalist environment. The bees are born, then they get one job, and they work until they die. They have been doing life like this for ‘27 million years.’ When Barry found out that humans were exploiting bees for their honey he was upset. Because their honey was being taken and sold to profit honey farm owners, the bees were being isolated from the product of their labor. Barry argued that by taking the honey the bee farmers are taking more than just their material goods, they are also taking away their sense of purpose. This happens because the only thing the bees do to fulfill their lives is making honey. Barry also argues that the bee’s right to their labor has been violated. Barry wins in court and starts returning honey to its rightful place, with the bees. But he just fixed a problem and caused another problem. They had an influx of more products that they could possibly use they had no incentive to work. Then bees lose their sense of purpose. Before the bees were separated from the object of their labor, but at least they had the labor to keep them busy. But when they got all of the honey back it eliminated the need for labor and it left them bored and depressed. This is how the theme of capitalism is explored in The Bee Movie.
The next theme explores the importance of bees. As you know the bees had no need to make honey, which means they had no need to collect pollen. This resulted in all of the flowers in New York dying. This can be related to a real-world problem, because if we saw a sudden drop in the bee population something like this would happen to us. Bees are the number one pollinators, they pollinate a large portion of our fruits and vegetables. There would still be other pollinators left, and a few of these can successfully pollinate plants. But if bees were put out of work or died (like in the movie), there would be a major gap in our ecosystems. Without bees, there would be fewer successful pollinations, which means fewer seeds and fewer plants. This will evidently lead to the animal population decreasing, and eventually the human population decreasing. Plants would not be able to be grown on such large scales or be sold as cheaply as they are. Hand pollination is possible for plants but it requires intense labor. A real world
Without bees, the availability and range of fresh food will decline, and human nutrition will likely suffer as well. The human race won’t go extinct, but we will go through extreme hardship and possibly famine. This wasn’t directly demonstrated in the bee movie but it did show the importance of bees, because if the bees died, plants will die, animals will die and eventually we’ll end up dying