The Grasshopper and the Ants Learn From Each Other

In the 1998 Pixar movie A Bug’s Life, the members of a colony of hardworking ants are routinely bullied into giving most of their carefully collected food to a thuggish grasshopper and his cronies. Decades earlier, Disney presented another story about diligent ants and a lazy grasshopper. In the 1934 Silly Symphony The Grasshopper and the Ants, the larger insect is not cruel, just irresponsible. Though the ants warn him to prepare for the harsh winter weather to come, he continues on his merry way until he is forced to concede that they are right and that he should have spent some of his time getting ready.

The book version of Disney’s take on this ancient fable was written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Larry Moore. The paintings have a drab and rather fuzzy look about them. It certainly looks like a throwback to an earlier time in animation. The grasshopper is a jolly soul with bright, enormous eyes and a wide smile. He wears a red shirt and a green jacket that matches his green top hat, and he plays his fiddle merrily, inviting anyone he meets to join in his revelry. The ants are a bit less distinctive; they are black with brown legs, and many of them wear no clothes at all. Those who do mostly wear only a hat or bow; the queen in her regal pink gown and golden crown is the only one fully dressed.

In the original version of the story, after the grasshopper fails to heed the warnings of the ants, winter catches him by surprise and he appeals to the well-stocked ants for mercy, asking them for food and shelter, but they coldly turn him away. The moral appears to be that it is best to prepare for lean times instead of spending all your days goofing off, but the ants’ lack of charity rankles, so it’s hard to really see their industry as a great virtue under the circumstances.

In Disney’s version, the ants have more sympathy for their foolish friend, so instead of simply leaving him out in the cold to freeze and starve to death, they invite him in and he has the opportunity to repent, make amends and turn over a new leaf. In the original version, I think that while the grasshopper is too lackadaisical, the ants are too harsh. Disney offers a better balance, showing that it is important to work hard but that life is also to be enjoyed and that kindness to one’s neighbors is as high a virtue as dedicated self-sufficiency.

The Disney short includes a song that the grasshopper sings, and that appears in the book as well, though of course, you have to imagine the melody as he sings. The World Owes Me a Living is the name of the song, and it’s rather obnoxious, at least until he changes his tune. The lyrics were written by Larry Morey, but most of the words in the book are Brown’s. A prolific writer of children’s books, she moves the story along artfully, a few sentences at a time. The narration and dialogue is set apart in brown boxes, with the illustrations either taking up a full page or a large portion of the page, set against a white backdrop.

With the new year upon us, we are now in the midst of the winter in which this book concludes, or at least I am in Pennsylvania. I can never quite decide if I am the grasshopper or the ant. I’d like to think I have a pretty decent work ethic and that I manage my resources wisely, but I also spend a lot of time in leisurely pursuits. I think the key is to stick to neither extreme. Be more like the cricket, known for its merry music but associated with the making of sound moral decisions. In the end, in this more optimistic version of Aesop’s classic, the grasshopper comes to appreciate the value of hard work and the ants recognize the worth of merrymaking. All of them are able to appreciate that giving of yourself and letting your efforts bless others carries the sweetest rewards of all.

It's Not Toy Story, But A Bug's Life Doesn't Bug Me

Reading Janell Cannon's Crickwing, a marvelous picture book involving a cockroach and two very different groups of ants, I was reminded of A Bug's Life, the Disney-Pixar follow-up to the hugely successful Toy Story. I was surprised to realize that I'd never reviewed it. Upon reflection, however, I think of all the films that pairing has produced, A Bug's Life is the least memorable because bugs just aren't as versatile and rich with creative possibilities as toys, monsters, cars or even fish. Especially when the vast majority of the characters are the same type of insect.

Flik (Dave Foley) is a clumsy inventor with a dream. He wants to make a difference to his fellow ants, and to make an impression on beautiful, feisty Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), princess of his colony. But no one seems to appreciate him except her little sister Dot (Hayden Panattiere), and he only manages to alienate the others further when his attempts to speed up production go hopelessly awry. When he goes off to find warriors who will help defend his kind from the vicious grasshoppers who will be coming to collect the ants' regular offering of food, he thinks he's on a noble mission, but Atta just wants him out of the way. Little does she know that he will actually succeed in his quest - well, after a fashion...

The ants in this movie are quite cute, and though I find it odd that they boast shiny blue or purple bodies, I'm not complaining. The grasshoppers are big, mean-looking brutes, though without Hopper (Kevin Spacey) they probably wouldn't bother terrorizing the ants; his dopey brother Molt (Richard Kind) is especially unintimidating. What really livens the movie up is the arrival of the group of circus bugs Flik finds on his trip to town. This motley crew is good for a lot of comic relief thanks to their varied and unusual appearances and personality quirks and the lauded actors providing them with voices.

There's Heimlich (Joe Ranft), the jolly, ludicrously chubby caterpillar with a German accent; tough-talking (male) ladybug Francis (Denis Leary); classy couple Manny (Jonathan Harris), a praying mantis, and Gypsy Moth (Madeline Kahn), who are past their prime; black widow spider Rosie (Bonnie Hunt); good-natured and wimpy rhino beetle Dim (Brad Garrett); twin pills bugs Tuck and Roll (Michael McShane), who don't speak English; and my favorite, long-suffering fussbudget Slim (David Hyde Pierce), a stick bug.

This eclectic group adds color to A Bug's Life's intricate depiction of that strange world of creatures going on unnoticed amongst the blades of grass beneath our feet; without them, I suspect the film would not have captured my fancy nearly as much as it did. As it is, while A Bug's Life doesn't quite measure up to the likes of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc., it won't bug me at all to sit down and watch it.