Are Animals Workers? On the Question of Labour in 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'

When we normally think about the concept of labour, the default assumption is that we're speaking of work done by humans. In this view, what animals do is relegated to the space of 'biology,' i.e. external to culture and society. But when one considers the contribution of animals to human history, it becomes quickly evident that what they do is inseparable from the flourishing of our species. There is no version of human history as it currently stands without their contributions: we eat animals, we ride them for transport, we use their fur to keep warm, we hitch them to carts to till our fields, and they are our companions that provide emotional and physical support—the list goes on and on. All of this raises the question, are animals workers? French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon would probably say yes: he specifically argued for the definition of the working class to include animals, as they, like humans, are ripe for exploitation and expropriation in the service of capital. Perhaps Wes Anderson, director of the 2009 stop-motion masterpiece Fantastic Mr. Fox, would agree as well.

The first scene of the film is a flashback, in which the titular Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) end up in a fox trap after stealing some squabs from a nearby farm. In the cage, Felicity informs her husband that she is pregnant, and that if the two of them are to ever escape their predicament, he needs to abandon his practice of stealing birds for a living for the safety of their new family. Fast forward to the present day, and Mr. Fox is now a white-collar worker and has seemingly abandoned his life of theft, writing a little-read column for the local paper. He's clearly itching for a change and is tired of their life in their burrow, so moves himself, Felicity, and their son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) to a flashy property in a tree at the top of a hill, located in close proximity to the farms of three malevolent poultry farmers. This temptation becomes too much for Mr. Fox, who reneges on his promise to his wife and returns to his old ways, stealing birds from the farms at night.

For any casual viewer, the themes of class in the film are quite clear: the tyrannical farmers own all of the land in the valley, and Mr. Fox is depicted as a self-conscious member of the middle class who wants to feel 'less poor.' And the farmers wield an upper hand. When they discover that they have been stolen from, the men bulldoze the entire area, displacing all of the animals of the valley as a form of collective punishment. Fantastic Mr. Fox thereby serves as a parable about a population seeking to regain their independence and livelihoods against the force of their oppressors.

But how are we to understand the relationship of the animals to work in the movie? Personified, all of the animals hold jobs and are involved in their community in a way legible to the human viewer: Mr. Fox writes, Badger is a lawyer, and Weasel is a real estate agent. One of the primary concerns of the film is Mr. Fox's struggle to define himself as an upstanding citizen against his baser nature of a life of scavenging and theft: he wants to return to his true state as, per his parlance, a 'wild animal.' However, the Mr. Fox and co.'s victory against the farmers is ultimately due to a combination of both their animality and their humanness, banding together with their natural strengths (Rabbit is fast, Beaver chews through wood), and their professional interests (Linda the Otter writes shorthand, Badger is a demolitions expert).

So the 'wild' that Mr. Fox seeks is ultimately more of a feeling of freedom than an actual  break from human society. In the movie and in reality, there is no longer a true wilderness: in the age of the Anthropocene, there sadly remains no aspect of our natural world that is not affected by human enclosure and industry. After all, the movie's 'happy ending' is one not in which the foxes escape to the woods to fend for themselves, but in which they move into the sewers permanently and discover a new source of food to steal from—the local supermarket.

So in the end, the animals continue to happily steal from the humans to feed themselves, doing us no favours whatsoever. But I'd argue that they're not to blame for this predicament, as humans are the ones who put them in the position of being scavengers in the first place. Having a fox serve as the book and film's protagonist is a particularly apt choice in this regard. In England, where the story is set, foxes are everywhere, often found picking through bins or lounging on car roofs. The human reaction to them is variable: I, for one, found them a welcome sight, but many others consider them a nuisance or pests. As a result, foxes do not provide an easily discernable use value and social legibility to people.

But Mr. Fox and real foxes must work to feed themselves and their families, scavenging and yes, stealing, to survive. So an interpretation of work that encompasses foxes and other animals with no social legibility to humans does not neatly align with Proudhon's definition of animals-as-workers. Regardless of whether one subscribes to Proudhon's view, however, I argue that animal work requires close consideration and value, particularly because of its resistance to expropriation. In essence, my belief is that our definition for what encompasses work needs to expand—not for the sake of finding new realms to enclose, but to broaden our understanding what constitutes an act of self-sufficiency or care. Fantastic Mr. Fox reminds us that there is more to our world than the goings-on of humans, and they need to reckoned with if we are to take our relationships with animals and the natural world seriously.