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Apr. 22nd, 2012 11:25 amRight okay so I watched the seventies Lorax cartoon and the recent movie last night and obviously the recent movie is dumb and whatever but here’s what I keep thinking about:
the two films have a fundamentally different position on thneeds and therefore on what the whole story is actually about.
in the old cartoon, the fact that a thneed apparently does everything possible for a thing to do is a clear signal that it’s a macguffin — the actual object itself doesn’t matter. The Once-ler could literally be selling ANYTHING; the whole point is that he knows how to SELL. He deliberately creates and manipulates desire for this weird shitty scarf-thing he’s made. That the thneed is what it is becomes totally incidental, the point is that he creates demand in order to then provide the supply.
whereas in the new movie, Once-ler genuinely BELIEVES in the transformative awesomeness of the thneed. He’s going to CHANGE THE WORLD. He’s gonna make his family PROUD OF HIM. The townspeople take more convincing to believe that thneeds are good THAN THEY DO TO AGREE TO CHANGE THEIR ENTIRE CONSUMPTIVE LIFESTYLE TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE MODEL AT THE END. Like, for real, WHAT?
Thneeds aren’t meant to be a thing with intrinsic worth! They’re not something people suddenly through their own observations realise are great! They’re a weird shitty nonsensical thing without a point. Because if you make them a genuine thing that a well-intentioned kid is working hard to bring to the world in order to make life better for people, then the Lorax actually does come off like a mean bossy jerk who’s standing in the way of genuine compromise. He tries to DROWN THE KID IN HIS SLEEP for fuck’s sake.
So, like, of COURSE people end up loving Greed-ler or whatever you want to call the ‘How bad can I be?’ Once-ler. Because yes he’s an asshole, but EVERYONE ELSE IS ALSO A SELF-RIGHTEOUS ASSHOLE in the movie. And at least Greed-ler does it with some fucking panache.
Like, okay, to use a GoT analogy: if you put a single toe out of line of What’s Best For Everyone, Ned is not actually any less fucking likely to chop your damn head off than any of those blonde assholes, he’s just going to be self-righteous about it while he does it instead of saying yeah okay whatever I don’t care if what I’m doing is totally awful and greedy and shitty, because everyone’s screwed either way and at least I look fabulous while I cause havoc.
I’m not being a Once-ler apologist here, I’m just saying that this is not a fable that benefits from the introduction of moral ambiguity, because it goes from ‘big business devours the delicate beauty of the natural world for no good reason because seriously you don’t need a shitty thneed what the fuck’ to ‘don’t have any kind of dream or innovation kids because your family is never going to be proud of you either way and also the penguin from batman returns is going to try to drown you in your sleep’.
A MORAL LESSON FOR EVERYONE AMIRITE?
the two films have a fundamentally different position on thneeds and therefore on what the whole story is actually about.
in the old cartoon, the fact that a thneed apparently does everything possible for a thing to do is a clear signal that it’s a macguffin — the actual object itself doesn’t matter. The Once-ler could literally be selling ANYTHING; the whole point is that he knows how to SELL. He deliberately creates and manipulates desire for this weird shitty scarf-thing he’s made. That the thneed is what it is becomes totally incidental, the point is that he creates demand in order to then provide the supply.
whereas in the new movie, Once-ler genuinely BELIEVES in the transformative awesomeness of the thneed. He’s going to CHANGE THE WORLD. He’s gonna make his family PROUD OF HIM. The townspeople take more convincing to believe that thneeds are good THAN THEY DO TO AGREE TO CHANGE THEIR ENTIRE CONSUMPTIVE LIFESTYLE TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE MODEL AT THE END. Like, for real, WHAT?
Thneeds aren’t meant to be a thing with intrinsic worth! They’re not something people suddenly through their own observations realise are great! They’re a weird shitty nonsensical thing without a point. Because if you make them a genuine thing that a well-intentioned kid is working hard to bring to the world in order to make life better for people, then the Lorax actually does come off like a mean bossy jerk who’s standing in the way of genuine compromise. He tries to DROWN THE KID IN HIS SLEEP for fuck’s sake.
So, like, of COURSE people end up loving Greed-ler or whatever you want to call the ‘How bad can I be?’ Once-ler. Because yes he’s an asshole, but EVERYONE ELSE IS ALSO A SELF-RIGHTEOUS ASSHOLE in the movie. And at least Greed-ler does it with some fucking panache.
Like, okay, to use a GoT analogy: if you put a single toe out of line of What’s Best For Everyone, Ned is not actually any less fucking likely to chop your damn head off than any of those blonde assholes, he’s just going to be self-righteous about it while he does it instead of saying yeah okay whatever I don’t care if what I’m doing is totally awful and greedy and shitty, because everyone’s screwed either way and at least I look fabulous while I cause havoc.
I’m not being a Once-ler apologist here, I’m just saying that this is not a fable that benefits from the introduction of moral ambiguity, because it goes from ‘big business devours the delicate beauty of the natural world for no good reason because seriously you don’t need a shitty thneed what the fuck’ to ‘don’t have any kind of dream or innovation kids because your family is never going to be proud of you either way and also the penguin from batman returns is going to try to drown you in your sleep’.
A MORAL LESSON FOR EVERYONE AMIRITE?