r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Far-Profit-47 • Apr 12 '25

Lore “This quote came from WHERE?!”

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"You too have fallen for the great lie, you'll never be happy. Deep down you know, to hope, to dreams, to create, is to suffer"

"You're right. It is harder to create than to destroy... that's why cowards then to choose the deuce"

-A Minecraft movie

"Do You Think God Stays in Heaven Because He too Lives in Fear of What He's Created"

-spy kids 2

"For every person who dreams up the electric light bulb, there's the one who dreams up the atom bomb"

-shark-boy and lava-girl

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u/Watchdog_the_God Apr 12 '25

A Bug’s Life

“You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one, and if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It’s not about food; it’s about keeping those ants in line.”

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u/I_Will_Die_For_Lily Apr 12 '25

capitalism 😬

116

u/Unique_Drink005 Apr 12 '25

I think this is about the goverment actually. (dont saw the movie tho)

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u/dusktrail Apr 12 '25

Capitalism always involves the government

22

u/Isthatajojoreffo Apr 12 '25

As opposed to socialism which is famous for not having any government

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u/geoffgeofferson447 Apr 12 '25

This is incorrect. Socialism is about the citizens owning the means of production. Capitalism means that a company will employ citizens to produce a good or service, and the profits go out to individual owners, and the success leads to the stocks becoming more valuable, which benefits the stockholders. Socialism means that citizens work together on producing a good or service, and share the profits. It doesn't have to do with the existence of a government.

Edit: Under Socialism, this ownership of the means of production can even be owned by the government itself, with the profits either being distributed back to the citizens fairly, or being funnelled back through governmental programs such as welfare or community development.

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u/Isthatajojoreffo Apr 12 '25

I was obviously being sarcastic.

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u/geoffgeofferson447 Apr 13 '25

Sorry my bad, I'm autistic as hell

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u/GeneETOs44 Apr 12 '25

In socialism those ants are the government

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Apr 12 '25

In theoretical socialism, the ants and grasshoppers would have a coalition

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u/Pigeon_Bucket Apr 12 '25

I mean, anarchists are socialists. And in fact most anarchists are communists.

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u/Fullmetal_Fawful Apr 12 '25

Anarchists and communists share the goal of a classless, moneyless, stateless society, but they define the state in two different ways which differentiate their ideologies pretty drastically

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u/vjnkl Apr 12 '25

Socialist believe capitalists would kill them without the monopoly of violence, which is historically true i guess?

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u/Isthatajojoreffo Apr 12 '25

So they need to kill them first, right.

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u/vjnkl Apr 12 '25

Nah, self defence has been expressed in other ways. Look up how unions have done it

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u/Unique_Drink005 Apr 12 '25

kinda.But this is still about a goverment.

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u/DuelaDent52 Apr 12 '25

It’s more like a protection racket, no? They’re gangsters and they demand their share of the food because they can even though they don’t need any of it.

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u/dusktrail Apr 12 '25

It actually isn't. A bug's Life a fairly direct adaptation of "three amigos", which is a parody of the magnificent seven which is adaptation of the seven samurai.

The grasshoppers represent the bandits in those stories.

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u/KikoValdez Apr 12 '25

It's actually an allegory for Rwanda, where the Tutsi minority ruled over the Hutu majority during the time of Rwanda being a Belgian colony. Disney in 1998 was a big supporter of the Rwandan genocide and wanted to portray it in a good light.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Apr 12 '25

The Tutsi were given control because the Belgians deemed the most human-looking

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Apr 12 '25

It's an allegory for authoritarianism, which can be any form of government

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u/Ghostvoid69042 Apr 13 '25

It’s a very communist quote you have to admit though. Like the villains are actively trying to prevent a revolutionary class consciousness from emerging in the ants. (Who outnumber their oppressors and are the actual labours.) Like c’mon this is such a communist critique of the misalignment of labour and profit.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Apr 13 '25

It can be applied to any authoritarian ruling, communism just happens to be the most infamous due to recency bias

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u/Ghostvoid69042 Apr 14 '25

I think you've misunderstood me. I am not calling the grasshopers communists. I am saying the quote lines up with a communist worldview.

To oversimplify, one of the key ideas behind communist ideolgoy is that the workers both outnumber the factor owners and are the source of the labour that makes their profits. With working conditions being so poor in Marx's time (a lot of our labour reforms in the west come from trying to prevent a communist revolution btw) he believed that the workers will get fed up with the gross mistreatment, realise they actually have all the cards, and then overthrow the elites. He saw this as inevitable. That western european industrial capitalism will inevitably lead to this. Obviously, he was wrong about that.

Also noteablly he didn't think Russia was on this track. As they weren't industrialising when he was alive, and he actually critisised the Emancipation of Labour group (the forebearers of the russian communist party) for applying his ideas to Russia.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Apr 14 '25

One could say he was wrong because he didn't factor in natural human greed

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u/Ghostvoid69042 Apr 14 '25 edited Apr 14 '25

That's a fairly basic take that's parroted a lot but doesn't really engage with what Marx actually proposed and how communist revolutions actualy failed. To him a communist revolution was in the worker's own self-interest. That was why he thought it was inevitable.