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According to Ewen’s theory, “the notion of personal distinction [in America] is leading to an identity crisis” of the non-upper class. (185) The source of this identity crisis is mass consumerism. As a result of the Industrial Revolution and mass production, products became cheaper and therefore more available to the non-elite classes. “Mass production was investing individuals with tools of identity, marks of personhood.” (Ewen 187) Through advertising, junk mail and style industries, the middle class is always striving for “a stylistic affinity to wealth,” finding “delight in the unreal,” and obsessed with “cheap luxury items.” (Ewen 185-6) In other words, instead of defining themselves based on who they are on the inside, the people of middle class America define themselves in terms of external image and material possessions. A Bug’s Life is an animated Disney film that tells the story of how a colony of ants fight back against and overcome the domination and oppression of the bullying grasshoppers. When looking at the movie through the lens of Ewen’s theory about identity, several connections concerning identity are found between A Bug’s Life and The Chosen People. Furthermore, by looking at identity issues in A Bug’s Life under this new light, Ewen’s theory becomes incomplete. In the Chosen People, Ewen fails to explore the positive aspects of conformity, gender in relationship to identity or the correlations between tradition and identity. Under the microscope of Ewen’s theory, A Bug’s Life changes from an everyday kid movie to a film riddled with identity issues. The first connection between A Bug’s Life and The Chosen People occurs when Ewen is explaining the rise of industrialism in the United States. He asserts that “For those laboring in many of the factories, industrial conditions systematically trampled upon their individuality and personhood” and that “artisan craft and small-scale manufacturer fell to an emerging economy of larger scale.” (187) The ants of the colony can be seen as beings who have had their “individuality and personhood” trampled because of the grasshoppers forced the ants to provide food for the colony. More specifically, Flick (the main character) can be seen as a small-scale artist and inventor whose individuality was crushed at the start of the movie for the sake of the ant colony’s progress in collecting food. Also, the queen of the ant colony explains the colony’s identity in terms of class position instead of individuality in her statement: “It is the same every year. They [the grasshoppers] come, they eat, they leave. It’s our lot in life – it is not a lot, but it’s our life.” This coincides with Ewen’s idea that “Class identity was not a matter of individual choice, but of the position one inhabits in relation to the forces of production. This conception of class encouraged people to look at groups of people not in terms of individual claims they made for themselves, but in terms of where they stood within the objective relations of power.” (188) The ants define themselves in terms of providing for the grasshoppers instead of by their individual talents and aspirations. Another connection between the two texts is the abuse of power to achieve personal goals. Hopper, the antagonist in A Bug’s Life, bullies the ant colony into thinking that they need protection from all the other bugs higher up on the food chain. In exchange for the protection, the ants collect food for the grasshoppers. This is similar to how “In its symbolic identification with power, this ‘middle class’ performed, and continues to perform, a political function; it effects divisions among people who otherwise might identify with one another.” (Ewen 191) By abusing his power and making the ants afraid of other insects (at the start of the movie), Hopper separates the ants from ever wanting to associate or get help from other insects. In relationship to this, Ewen uses two advertisements to demonstrate that advertising is used to keep the middle class interested in material items and image in order to keep making money. This is similar to Hopper explaining to his mates that he must not let the colony off the hook for not having the food ready on time …………………………………….. In The Chosen People, Ewen asserts that an identity crisis is the result of conformity by the masses to middle class ideals. Throughout the essay, conformity is portrayed in a negative light because it feeds the identity crisis within the middle class. Ewen fails to explore the positive aspects of conformity in relationship to identity, or the negative aspects of individuality, as A Bug’s Life does. In most cases, including the middle class, people attribute some part of their definition of self, or identity, to being a member of a group. Within this group, individuals find safety and security. When Flick leaves the colony to find help in the city, he is very concerned with not looking like a country bug. Flick realizes that he is an outsider in the city and is not comfortable because he cannot identify with his surroundings. In a sense, Flick was experiencing a small identity crisis in the city because he was not able to fit in. Similarly, Flick was ostracized from the colony because he made inventions and had new ideas about making things easier for his colony. Instead of being interested in his inventions or helpful suggestions, the ants of the colony brushed Flick off, told him to “get back in line” and not cause any more trouble. As a result of this, Flick was singled out and made fun of by several ants including Dot’s playmates. Though he does not recognize it until the end of the movie, Flick looses his sense of group membership, i.e. part of his identity, by going outside the lines of conformity within the colony. This demonstrates how conformity and belonging to a group can actually produce a sense of identity. In contrast to this, Ewen only explores the negative aspects and effects of conformity in respects to the middle class thereby overlooking the consequences of rejecting the comfort and safety of membership within the middle class. Ewen mentions how the members of the middle class are terrified of “the shame of being thought poor” and how “a poor man is an unsuccessful man.” (190, 193) Yet, he doesn’t explore, for example, how quickly a freshly bankrupted businessman can lose his social and political connections, or how his wife of fifteen years takes off because he cannot support her way of life. Ewen overlooks how the identity of this “unsuccessful man” is void of everything he knew it to be: friends, family, connections, the façade of wealth, his career and group membership. Another issue addressed by A Bug’s Life, but overlooked by Ewen’s The Chosen People is that of gender in relationship to one’s identity. In every society in the world, gender roles are assigned to males and females. Consequently, males and females feel obligated to stay within the limits of their gender roles and do not fully explore specific aspects of their identity. For example, at the start of A Bug’s Life, Francis the Ladybug (one of the circus bugs) feels obligated to display his manhood when thought to be a female by some flies. He approaches the flies, taunts them and then agrees to meet them later to fight like “real men.” This illustrates that Francis is not in touch or comfortable with his “feminine side” and actually resents bugs assuming that he is female. Therefore, it can be said that Francis is experiencing an identity crisis because he is limiting himself only male characteristics. Francis actually has a chance to address and partially overcome this gender related identity crisis later on in the movie when he is forced to become a den mother for several little girl ants after breaking his leg. As the movie progresses, he learns to be more appreciative of his feminine side, learns to like it and does not want to leave the colony. Yet, at the end of the movie Francis still has not totally overcome this aspect of identity crisis. He is still hesitant to admit to Mr. Walking Stick (another circus bug) that has discovered his more feminine side and tells himself repeatedly not to cry when he is about to leave the colony. Not once does Ewen address how the limitations of gender roles influence identity crises within the middle class. Because of this, questions pertaining to the differences between the male and female experiences of identity crises within the middle class remain unanswered. A possible source of identity crises that Ewen fails to mention is tradition. The traditions of a culture have a lot to do with an individual’s identity and how they relate to their surroundings. In A Bug’s Life, tradition, the way things have always been, has a much larger affect on the identities, and consequently identity crises, of the ants than image or materialism. The queen of the ant colony demonstrates this when she says, “It is the same every year. They [the grasshoppers] come, they eat, they leave. It’s our lot in life – it is not a lot, but it’s our life.” This statement shows how the queen and the majority of her followers blindly accept their role in life and do not challenge themselves to be anything more. Another example of tradition causing an identity crisis is at the start of the movie when a leaf falls over the trail the ants follow back to the anthill. The ant that discovers the break in the trail totally freaks out. He did not know how to handle the break in the tradition of always staying on the trail even though it started back up on the other side of the leaf. This displays how tradition dictates the lives of the ants in such a way that does not encourage basic thinking and problem solving skills. Consequently, most of the ants do not have the capacity to define themselves as individuals outside of tradition. By allowing their lives be dictated by tradition, the ants do not really know who they are as individuals and suffer from identity crises. This idea of how tradition influences identity crises is not specifically included in Ewen’s theory that the source of identity crises is the material obsessions of “image, attitude, acquisition, and style.” (189) Instead of the word tradition, Ewen uses words such as “trends,” “fashion,” and “style” to explain the common characteristics and tendencies of the middle class. While these words are similar, they cannot necessarily be used interchangeably. Fashion, style and trend refer to customs or recurrent behavior that is subject to change. Traditions, on the other hand, are handed down from generation to generation and less likely to change. Ewen does suggest that the trends of the middle class are becoming increasingly ingrained in the values and mindset of the middle class because of World War II and the “yuppie culture of the 1980’s.” (196) Yet, Ewen’s trends, fashions and styles that could be appropriately deemed traditions, are not explored from the perspective of tradition. Upon comparing the issues of identity crises suggested in A Bugs Life with those in Stewart Ewen’s The Chosen People, the sources and characteristics of identity crises in Ewen’s essay are found incomplete. Ewen limits his exploration of the sources and characteristics of identity crises of the middle class to consumerism and materialism as well as the obsession with image, style and fashion. By restricting his analysis to these issues, Ewen overlooks the perspectives of identity crises in relationship to tradition, the positive aspects of conformity and gender roles. Bibliography: A Bugs Life. Walt Disney and Pixar Productions. 1998. Ewen, Stewart. “The Chosen People.” Literacies. Ed. Terence Brunk, Suzanne Diamond, Priscilla Perkins and Ken Smith et al. New York:: Norton, 1997. 183-97. Word Count: 1978
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