2011-01-06
Explanation
This comic retells the classic Aesop'''s fable of "The Ant and the Grasshopper" with a bitterly modern, pessimistic twist. It begins traditionally: "The ant worked all day while the grasshopper played his fiddle." And: "Come winter, the grasshopper was cold and hungry while the ant was warm and full." But then the story takes a dark turn. "Next spring, the ant was informed that his job was outsourced to a more efficient ant in Asia." Later, the ant tries to explain the value of hard work to his children, "but they didn'''t believe him since he was a pensionless cashier at a discount retailer." Meanwhile, "the grasshopper got rich because a video of him getting stepped on by a celebrity became an internet meme."
The story continues its bleak trajectory: the ant still works hard, but his money goes to his "shiftless adult children who play video games all day." His main form of amusement is "yelling at cable news shows and being acutely aware of how right his wife was to leave him." The story ends with a deadpan "THE END." In the final panel, a woman remarks, "It'''s a little bleak, no?" and the storyteller replies, "Really? In this version, only one dies."
The comic is a savage deconstruction of the moral from Aesop'''s fable -- that hard work and diligence will be rewarded. In the modern version, the industrious ant'''s labor is rendered meaningless by globalization, economic precarity, and the randomness of internet fame, while the lazy grasshopper profits from sheer dumb luck. The votey adds an extra punchline about the Asian ant losing his job to an African ant, who in turn lost his job to a robot -- extending the comic'''s commentary on the global race to the bottom in labor markets and eventual automation.