_{Note: This essay contains major spoilers for Antz, a twenty-two year old kid’s movie. If that bothers you, go watch it first and come back.}

Z: “When you get down to it, handling dirt is, you know, not my idea of a rewarding career. It’s this whole “gung-ho superorganism thing” that, you know, i can’t get; I try, but I don’t get it. What is it, I’m supposed to do everything for the colony? And what about my needs? What about me?….The whole system makes me feel insignificant”.
Therapist: “Excellent! You’ve made a real breakthrough”.
Z: “I have?”
Therapist: “Yes Z. You are insignificant!”

With this opening exchange between the worker ant Z and his therapist, the key themes of Dreamwork Animation’s debut film Antz (1998) are immediately made clear: this is a film that deals with heady concepts such as worker alienation and the dichotomies of individualism and collectivism, authoritarianism and freedom. Ants representing the workers of the world may not be subtle as metaphors go, but it allows for a film that intelligently examines political themes in a way that still manages to appeal to the whole family.

The world of Antz is one in which millions of workers labour for some apparent greater cause that they cannot possibly fully comprehend or appreciate, but nevertheless tacitly accept as being the best possible system that they could hope for. This “cause” is, of course, dictated by the whims, desires and conflicts of society’s elites (in this case a queen and her General). The workers here simply exist to work as a part of a greater whole, the exact details of which they are not privy to or even expected to be curious about.

Rather than feeling a sense of community and purpose in this, the workers are alienated – in other words, they have no sense of connection between the work they do and the finished product – to the extent that they don’t even realise that the goal they are working towards will eventually kill them: the ants are building a tunnel, under the command of the fascist General Mandible (Gene Hackman), which will eventually be filled with water, killing the Queen and all of her workers.

However, the ants cannot see this truth, for they live under a hegemonic economic order similar to our own. For these workers, so alienated from the product of their labour and so beaten down by the colony’s strict hierarchical system, it is barely even possible for them to imagine an alternative. One is reminded of Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism: the ants have accepted that the system in which they live is the only viable system there is. The workers work, the soldiers fight, and in the end it is all for the “good of the colony”. To quote Bruce Hornsby, “that’s just the way it is”.

The main plot of the film follows Z (played by Woody Allen) as he realises, and helps his fellow workers realise, that they do not simply have to accept their current situation, that there is an alternative. Initially Z thinks that this alternative is escape: he hears of a fabled promised land called “Insectopia” and is determined to set out and find it.

He doesn’t care much about the other ants at first: he sees his colleagues as part of the problem and mostly fails to establish any sort of sense of solidarity with them. Like pretty much any other Woody Allen character, Z is depressed but still sees himself as the smartest guy in the room. As such, he selfishly aims for love and escape for himself, accidentally inspiring a worker’s revolution along the way. Throughout his journey, Z faces up to royalty and the military (and an utterly contemptuous middle management bootlicker) before eventually realising – now bare with me on this one – the true radical potential of collective action.

While Z and Princess Bala go on an exciting adventure more typical of these kinds of films, the ants back at the colony are beginning to organise and build class consciousness. The workers begin to talk to each other in hushed tones about the nature of the work they’re doing, and begin to ask questions about the economic relations they live under. It is in this scene (posted below) that an ant literally says “it’s the workers who control the means of production!”, and while the line is definitely on-the-nose, one has to be impressed at such a brazen injection of Marxist thought into a big-budget children’s film. This scene also includes the film’s funniest moment, and also its most empowering: when the middle manager mentioned earlier urges his workers to “get back to work”, one of the ants stares at him blankly and asks “Why?”. Why indeed.

On the face of it, these radical themes of Antz may seem a bit ham-fisted, but the film is actually much more clever than it may at first seem, offering a thoughtful examination of the relationship between radical politics and authoritarianism. Indeed, for most of its length the film seems to be more of a critique of authoritarianism, in all its forms, rather than a critique of a particular economic system. Z rarely calls for a radical rethinking of social and economic relations, but rather reminds his fellow ants of their individualism: he promotes the idea of making one’s own choices and resisting the dogma of only acting for “the good of the colony”.

It initially seems as if this is the film’s main premise: individualism and individual liberty is always preferable to authoritarianism. Despite characters talking about the means of production and starting a revolution, the film appears to be on its way to a realisation that individualism is best, an Animal Farm-like allegory condemning both Nazism and Soviet-style communism for their totalitarian qualities. Even the way in which the ants turn Z into a mythical hero, forming around him what some liberal commentariat ants might call a “cult of personality”, seems to betray any notion of potential collective action like that seen in the other animated film about ants from 1998, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (it is definitely worth examining why late 90s culture produced two successful animated films about insects with left-wing themes, but that’s for another day).

Towards the end of the film Z’s dogmatic belief in individualism-at-all-costs is finally challenged, as the true horror of General Mandible is revealed: a clear stand-in for Hitler, the General wishes to “wash clean” the colony of its weaker elements (the workers) and begin again with purity and strength (provided by the soldiers). The General has ordered the workers to slave away digging a tunnel that, unbeknownst to them, will lead to a water source that will fill the tunnel and drown them all. By the time this utterly twisted and deranged plan is unearthed (no pun intended), it is just about too late. An urgent question arises: how are the ants (and Z) going to stop him? Is individualism up to the task?

In the end, it is the collective effort of all the ants that defeats the fascist general and saves the colony. but the difference this time, in comparison to the colony’s previously held idea of what constituted a collective effort, is that the “good of the colony” actually takes centre stage. This is collectivism in a much more democratic way than before: the worker ants form a massive ladder, propped up by Z’s soldier friend Weaver (Sylvestre Stallone), and literally break free through the ground above them. Rather than simply being the rhetoric of the Queen or the General to represent some nebulous idea of glory, purity or productivity, the “good of the colony” here takes on a much more urgent and real nature: survival. The workers realise that, faced with a system that is literally about to kill them, they have nothing left to lose. On the other hand, they have a world to win.

As the worker ants break free from their death sentence in the drowning tunnel, General Mandible pleads with Z one last time to let go: “Don’t you understand? It’s for the good of the colony!” As the entire worker population literally hangs on to him for dear life, Z delivers the key line of the whole movie, which encapsulates the political philosophy that I’ve been talking about: “What are you saying? We are the colony!”

This is a perfect put-down of any sort of sacrificial talk from General Mandible, or Hitler, or even contemporary capitalists who have basically argued that it is good and proper to sacrifice the elderly and vulnerable to coronavirus for the good of the economy, “for the good of the colony”. This line is a radical expression of class consciousness and raises the key question for every viewer, both young and old, to contemplate: what should we work for if not for the good of all of us?

In the end it is not individualism that wins the day; rather, only when the colony reverts back to operating as a single organism (almost literally), but this time with the common good in mind rather than the shady desires of the elites, only then is fascism defeated; only then are the workers saved; and only then can a better world begun to be built (the new colony even has a public swimming pool!).

It may be telling that the original script by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz is much more overtly anti-fascist: cut out of the final film is General Mandible explicitly drawing on the eco-fascist myth of over-population to explain a food shortage to the Queen, and in the original script the General adopted a much more nationalist strongman approach to riling up the soldiers for the fight against the termites. But Antz is still an impressively radical big-budget children’s movie, with a star-studded cast, that offers a glimpse into an alternative future in which Hollywood executives continue to make bold choices like this one. Remember: it doesn’t have to be this way, there is always an alternative.

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