How Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Bee Movie’ Became a Tool for Protest Movements
Even though it’s been derided by interspecies romance subplot, Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie continues to endure.
A favorite of Quentin Tarantino’s, Bee Movie is currently climbing the Netflix charts, which may be less of a testament to the film’s quality so much as it is a testament to how little parents care about what they put on TV for their kids just in order to get two minutes to themselves.
Bee Movie’s most significant role in today’s society isn’t as a movie, or even a meme factory, but rather, as a tool to protest the far-right.
Don't Miss
Earlier this year, then-”special government employee” Elon Musk sent a condescending mass email to federal workers asking them to list five things they accomplished that week, or else lose their jobs. “Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere,” the Tesla CEO wrote at the time.
When the email address leaked online, countless people messaged Musk and his DOGE team. But the emails didn’t list workplace accomplishments, instead, they contained 131 pages worth of text outlining the wacky adventures of Barry B. Benson.
Yup, folks mass-emailed the complete Bee Movie script to Musk. And this was hardly the first time that the terrible script was used to protest harmful government policies. Back in the fall of 2024, The Texas Department of Public Safety announced that they would bar trans Texans from “changing the sex listed on their state identification card,” and even more chillingly, would “track people who request a gender marker update.”
The news broke when an anonymous source leaked an internal Department of Public Safety communication, which included an email address for employees to “send the information of people who unsuccessfully requested gender marker changes.” Reportedly, they only received one message containing “an actual report of someone’s request to change the sex listed on their driver’s license.” The rest of the emails were either outraged criticisms or, you guessed it, “the complete Bee Movie script.”
Before that, Missouri’s “trans snitch form” was flooded with copies of Seinfeld’s screenplay and Utah’s “anti-trans bathroom complaint form” received several photos of Bee Movie characters. Back in 2021, The New York Times reported that Texas Right to Life launched a website asking locals to inform on anyone who violated the state’s restrictive abortion laws. The tips included accusations against Gov. Greg Abbott and several of The Avengers, plus “copies of the entire script to the 2007 animated film Bee Movie.”
Bee Movie wasn’t the only animated kids movie to be utilized in that particular protest, Texas Right to Life also received an assortment of Shrek memes. But the Bee Movie script is clearly the greater punishment, second only to sending in a Blu-ray copy of Bee Movie and forcing people to watch it, A Clockwork Orange-style.
