Honey Bees Sociology

Created in 2007, the Bee Movie discusses many different sociological concepts, which would be expected since Jerry Seinfeld was a writer of the film and voiced Barry B. Benson, the main character. The first concept is groups. The sociological perspective that the film is centered around is functionalist. This can be seen in how the hive works. Every bee has a certain job that intertwines with another. The overall goal of the hive is to create a well-balanced system through everyone doing their part until a perfect society is created. The world of the bees and humans is based on this perspective since the movie shows how much the two species need the other. After Barry wins his court case against the humans, the quality of the human race beings to decrease without

the bees pollinating the flowers, and the bees become unhappy since they have nothing to do. So, clearly, the humans and bees cannot thrive without the other.
Barry’s beehive is set up like a bureaucracy since every bee has a certain job to do that leads to the overall production of honey. An example of this can be seen when Barry and Adam learn all about how the hive works through a tour. There, Barry learns that he will only have one job for life and never have a day off. This leads him to try to go against the path the hive wanted to give him. As the film continues it becomes clear that it is very hard to change the laws and rules of the hive, which Barry discovers as he tries to defy the expectations that his friend Adam and his parents have about what he should be like as a bee. Overall, the beehive forces the bee workers to lose their individuality just for the goal of producing more honey, and any bee who does not think the same as the others is criticized.
Another concept from the Bee Movie is sex and the film’s enjoyment of talking about the taboo of bestiality. Bestiatlity is defined as when a human has some sort of sexual attraction to an animal; however, in the film, this situation is reversed. Barry the bee is clearly attracted to Vanessa, a human. Throughout the film, there are loads of examples of Barry’s attraction to Vanessa whether it is Adam exclaiming that Barry is dating a human, Barry’s parents believing that a female bee is distracting Barry from getting a bee job, and Barry’s sexualized fantasy about Vanessa with the song “Sugar Sugar” playing throughout the scene.
It is clear that relations with other insect or arachnid species are considered okay in the hive. Adam and Barry state that bees do have sexaul relations with spiders and wasps, and it is easy to infer that they probably get together with other insects. So, bestiality might not be considered taboo and could be an accepted concept of bee life, which would show the differences between human and bee society. Afterall, Adam was surprised that Barry was dating a human since humans and bees do not mix, but not upset over the fact that Vanessa was a member of a different species compared to them.
The third sociological concept the film deals with is race.

From the perspective of Barry, the honey bee race are slaves to humans. Bees are locked in steel cages, forced to produce honey that is later stolen by the humans, poisoned daily, and they are never given any profit from the honey sales. Even if the humans do not mean to be, they clearly are treating honey bees as second class citizens, and so are being racist to this race of bees. In correlation to that, it is clear that all the beekeepers know that the bees are intelligent as their hives at the honey farm are filled with pictures and decorations. So, the beekeepers choose to ignore the fact that bees have feelings and thoughts, and they still attack them and take their honey. Discovering this, Barry sues the human race for the crimes they have committed against the honey bees. The humans, instead of admitting that they have been treating the bees terribly, take the bees to trial in which the honey bee race is taunted, Adam is nearly killed, and they are again poisoned with lethal gas. During the trial, Barry points out that the humans are being racist to the honey bees by stating the fact that the humans abuse and take advantage of the

bees.
The last example of a sociological concept from the Bee Movie is death. With bees being so small and fragile, anything can kill them. Due to this reason, a good portion of the film’s dialogue is centered around death and the ways the bees try to prevent it. Scientist bees work hard to develop technology to protect honey jocks when they are outside the hive and worker bees take anger management classes to keep themselves from stinging anyone as stinging usually means death for the bee. Like the humans, the bees are clearly afraid of death, but it is also considered a fact of life. Since bees work until they die, the members of the hive see and experience death everyday.
The death of all the plants following the bees not pollinating anymore also shows the struggle humans and bees have with mortality. After realizing that not having bees will end all life on Earth, Barry and Vanessa do everything they can to bring the plants back to life. This can be seen as them fighting against death and also the constant battle all living things have to stay alive, even if it is clear that the person will not survive. Overall, it shows that when one life ends, for this instance the plants, all the other lives around it are affected in some way. Basically, it demonstrates the fact that death is the one thing that can bring everyone together.