The Connection between A Bug’s Life and The Chosen People Essay example

The Connection between A Bugs Life and The Chosen People In the essay The Chosen People, Stewart Ewen, discusses his perspective of middle class America. Specifically, he explores the idea that the middle class is suffering from an identity crisis. According to Ewens theory, the nonion of person-to-person 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 functional 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 relation 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 peop le of middle class America define themselves in terms of external image and material possessions.A Bugs Life is an animated Disney consume 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 pic through the lens of Ewens theory about identity, several connections concerning identity are order between A Bugs Life and The Chosen People. Furthermore, by looking at identity issues in A Bugs Life under this new light, Ewens theory becomes incomplete. In the Chosen People, Ewen fails to explore the positive aspects of conformity, sexual activity in relationship to identity or the correlations between tradition and identity. Under the microscope of Ewens theory, A Bugs Life changes from an everyday kid movie to a film riddled with identity issues. The first connection between A Bugs 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 thriftiness 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 grasshop... ...nd less likely to change. Ewen does suggest that the trends of the middle class are becoming more and more ingrained in the values and mindset of the middle class because of World War II and the yuppie culture of the 1980s. (196) Yet, Ewens 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 Ewens The Chosen People, the sources and characteristics of identity crises in Ewens essay are found incomplete. Ewen limits hi s 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.BibliographyA 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.