The Movie Antz Compared To Real World Political Systems
In the movie Antz, the colony’s government was set up with the Queen as the supreme ruler over the entire colony. All decisions for life in the colony were made by the Queen. All ants were required to work together for the greater good of the colony. Ants were not allowed free thought or to be individuals and make choices for themselves. The Queen’s daughter, Princess Balla, was to take over the Queen’s position and rule the colony simply because she was the Queen’s daughter. She inherited this right. There were three social classes of ants that were determined at birth, Royalty, Soldiers and Workers.
They remained in that class their entire life and are not allowed to mix between the classes or change. Each of the classes entitled ants to different rights and styles of living, with Royalty being the top citizens and workers the bottom citizens. Within each of the classes, all ants were equal and expected to follow the rules of the colony. There was a General appointed by the Queen that ruled over the soldiers. The purpose of the army was to protect the colony.
The Queen ruled the Ant Colony in all of the ways of a Monarchy. The right to rule the Colony is inherited at birth. In this case, the Queen, is the supreme ruler of the Colony. The Queen has all of the wealth of the colony and determines how it is divided among the colony. As in a Monarchy, the Queen will rule the Colony for her entire life and then control will be inherited by her family. The Queen makes all final decisions for the Colony. She also rules with with the idea to “work together for the greater good of the Colony”.
The Colony Government also resembles a Communist government because they were not allowed any free thought or choice. All of the ants carried out life like programmed robots. This was true under both the Queen and General Mandible. However, her goals were for the greater good of the colony as a whole which is more like a Monarchy. General Mandible’s goals were self serving which is like a Dictatorship.
General Mandible lead the soldiers with an iron fist. His leadership style was very much like that of a Dictatorship. A dictatorship does not allow any freedom or individual thought to the people. Many of General Mandible’s traits were the same as Adolph Hitler’s dictatorship way of ruling. General Mandible felt the way to total control was to “cleanse the colony” and make a new “pure colony” according to his ideas of the perfect class of people. Hitler had the same goal. To achieve this they needed complete and total control of everything.
They did not allow anyone to question their directions, not even their second in command. To do so would mean death in a dictatorship. General Mandible stated “do as I say or suffer execution”. Both General Mandible and Hitler had commanders under them that were required to enforce and carry out their orders. They were both planning to use genocide to get rid of the classes of people they felt were inferior to themselves. General Mandible’s dream was for “the strong to rise above the weak and wash away the past for a new day to dawn”.
He wanted to build a colony with none of the “worker filth”. Even though General Mandible told the soldiers it was bad to act as an individual, that is exactly how he behaved. Under General Mandible’s rule there would be no private ownership of property and he would determine how the wealth was to be divided which is another trait of a Dictatorship.
Insectopia is an example of Anarchy because there are no leaders, no rules and no government. Each individual does whatever they want all of the time. The goal is peace and harmony. Although there is the ultimate freedoms with Anarchy, the system can quickly become chaotic due to the lack of any government authority if any one group tries to control another. Z wants to experience all there is to life and not be told what to do and how to do it. He sees Insectopia as the perfect place to live because of the total freedom.
The changes that occurred at the end of the movie with the General being defeated and royalty, soldiers and workers coming together reminded me of the changes that occurred in the USSR with the fall of the controlling government and the beginning of a democracy. The new Colony recognized the good that can come from individual freedoms and choices that are allowed in a democracy.
The Colony came together as one whole and chose their new leaders the way an election happens in a democracy. These leaders would work with the Colony to carry out the wishes of the majority of the Colony with no one class being better than another. The individuals would now be free to make their decisions of daily living based on what they wanted. There were still some basic rules that would need to be in place to assure no one group got too powerful and tried to take over control. This is how democracy works in the USA with the people electing their leaders based on the majority wishes for a representative democracy.
