In class we discussed Disney movies and how they portray traditional roles of males and females. The men are typically strong and take care of the women.
Nowhere is this image more prevelant than Dreamwork's new film, Bee Movie. In the film the main character, Barry, decides he doesn't want to work on the assembly line making honey like the rest of the bees.
Of course, as a recent article in the New York Times points out, this wouldn't even be a problem for Barry because, in the real world, male honey bees actually serve very few purposes.
Almost all the jobs within the hive are completed by female honey bees. The sole job of male honey bees is to fertilize the queen bee. As the article points out, they have large eyes to see the queen, and large antennae to smell her, but little other means of survival. Once a male bee has mated with a queen, it dies.
There is little use for the male honeybee in the hive. This explains why, in a hive population of 40,000 bees, approximately 200 are male. So, why then, does a male get the leading role in this film?
It all goes back to the roles of femininity and masculinity. The movie producers still believe that men are the ones who go out on new adventures. Women are supposed to stay behind and maintain the house, or the hive. Ultimately, the man is supposed to be the hero and rescue the colony.
This film is reinforcing the idea that women need men to defend them. It tells boys and girls to adapt to the stereotypical roles of breadwinner and houswife respectively. It seems surprising that in a movie such as this, where it it would be easy to make the main character female, the studio does not.
I'm disappointed that producers would go out of their ways to produce this inaccurate portrait of a bee colony. It would have been an excellent film to help empower girls and women. Instead, it's no different than any other children's film.
1 comment:
I completely agree with Emily. This story could have been a great way to empower girls considering the females are actually the more dominant role in a bee colony. By having the male play the dominant role this movie is not only inaccurate but also somewhat sexist. Although most of their other movies have the accurate portrayal of a male in the dominant role this movie would have been a great opportunity to change the tables a bit with a story line that really hasn't been portrayed before.
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