Antz: Governmental Issues Like Monarchy, Communism And Democracy

In the movie “Antz”, the producers tied many governmental issues into the story. The colony was led like a Monarchy, Communism, and Democracy. Communism for example was a major part of the story. Communism is a system where everything belongs to “the community”, so people own nothing much more than the clothes on their back, and the State owns everything. It leaves no reward for personal incentive, and even the lives of the populace don’t belong to them, but to the State. Resisting was often death. Communism is the next step between socialism and death. The government dictated the entire colony and every aspect of the ant’s lives. The person leading this type of government was General Mandible. An example of why it is communism is because the ant workers are forced to work and everything that General Mandible orders gets done. General Mandible made the decision that the termites were going to attack and asked the queen for authorization to send troops which she agreed to do.

Another major classic type of government depicted in the movie was Monarchy. Monarchy is an idealized form of government, a monarchy where the ruler has the power to rule his or her country and citizens freely with no laws or legally-organized direct opposition telling him or her what to do, although some religious authority may be able to discourage the monarch from some acts and the sovereign is expected to act according to custom. As a theory of civics, absolute monarchy puts total trust in well-bred and well-trained monarchs raised for the role from birth. The way that this government functions in the film is that the queen is the one that makes all the decisions, although she has an advisor by the name of General Mandible which is a form of a unitary system. We know what she runs a monarchy because the term “Queen” obviously belongs in the Monarchy definition. Although General Mandible is able to make decisions on his own, he can always be override by the queen since she has Absolute Monarchy.

Throughout the film, the classic government that is preferred is Communism and Democracy. Monarchy is mostly not shown due to the fact that the queen rarely appears. She only appears in a few episodes. The film prefers communism and democracy because most of the movie consists of a young ant by the name of “Z” who represents democracy while General Mandible represents communism. There is a clash between the both of them. That is basically the plot of the story. Z (democracy) is trying to overthrow General Mandible (Communism). An example of these two governments clashing together is when the soldiers are going to war. Z tries to leave but the soldiers do not let him since they are following orders from General Mandible.

Toward the beginning of the film, the system of government that is used is Unitary. A unitary state is a state governed as one single unit in which the central government is supreme and any administrative divisions(subnational units) exercise only powers that their central government chooses to delegate. They were a unitary system in the film because of how General Mandible was supreme to any other positions such as the queen. The queen (Monarchy) is mostly in the movie just for the show because she rarely gets to make any choices. General Mandible decided to flood the whole colony without the queen knowing, and a lot of the soldiers followed him. Toward the end of the movie the type of government that shows that is flourishing is a federal system. A federal system is both a political and philosophical concept that describes how power is given to governments. Federal systems may vary widely in application, but all feature a central government with specific powers over the whole union. a federal system allows powers that concern the whole nation to be granted to the federal government. For instance, in most countries with a federal system, only the national government can declare war on another country. We can infer that the princess will marry Z and the queen will give Z a few things to be in charge of. So if there was an Antz 2 we could expect the queen to appear more and make more decisions while Z only does what the queen wishes.

When Z and Princess Bala went to Intectopia, they encounter a way of living what was new to them. This way of life consisted of not having any government and having all the freedom one needs. In my opinion I believe that we sometimes have too much freedom. We humans are made to be ruled by others. There is two types of people in this world: leaders and followers. Even if we try to have a life of freedom someone will eventually come to rule us. This is due to the nature of humans. Freedom does not exist, nor will it even exist. We are slaves to our own thoughts. If leaders did not exist we would extinct ourselves from this world, but if there is too much leaders… Conflict will rise and that will be the end of men. There must be a balance between leaders and followers.

In society an individual can bring change, but in order to bring that change one must first believe in a cause. In the movie Z brought change all by himself. He managed to turn the second in command of Mandible against him which brought a wave of conflict between those two.