Helena speaks for the trees: The Lorax

Over the last three weeks, as I have been lain flat on my back by an attack on my sciatic nerve, Helena has watched, read, and acted out The Lorax at least a hundred times.  Though I had read her the book before, this extraordinary attack of repetition began when she saw the 2012 version, made by the same people who did Dispicable Me, but has reached on to include the early 1970s film broadcast on TV, two editions of the Dr. Seuss classic, the spanish version, an improvised Portuguese version (Helena has insisted that Rita translate the book), and numerous games in playgrounds, at home, and in the woods above Santa Fe.  As you might guess, I have had quite a bit of opportunity to compare different variations on the story -- almost as much as a Biblical text critic looking at 17 versions of the Gospel of John in different greek monasteries -- and I have come to a rather unexpected conclusion: the highly commercial, computer-driven 2012 version is the best of all of them.  Yes, even better than Dr. Seuss's book.

No knocks to Dr. Seuss here: The Lorax was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, Rita bought it for me to read to Helena before our little girl was even born, and I had memorized most of it even before Helena got into this Lorax craze.  The movie, however, manages to be even more politically radical -- and at the same time more hopeful -- than the book.  Helena has been right to fall in love with it.

A book -- especially a poetry book -- can be a fable, but a movie can't really get away with that.  The characters need back stories, clear motivations, a framework for identification and catharsis.  The movie gives as the Once-ler as a young man, naïve and hopeful that he will change the world with his Thneed.  He's not the faceless evil of the book, but a sympathetic guy, a little clueless, but a portrait of young America at its best.  After cutting down the first truffula tree, he comes to see that the Bar-ba-loots and the Swammy Swans and the Humming fish all depend on the forest; he agrees not to cut any more trees.  He and the Lorax chat, dine, and play cards together: they become friends.  Before he is a success, we identify with the Once-ler, we like his music and his innocence.

Evil doesn't come from inside the Once-Ler, but from a nasty one-two punch: the demands of the market and the weakness of his family.  After failing to sell even one Thneed for days, the Once-ler throws it away in frustration... only for it to land on the head of a cute teenager.  Everyone confounds the Thneed for a fashionable hat, and the floodgates are loosed.  Hundreds of people march on the forest, each demanding a Thneed.  Second, when the Once-ler calls his family to help him produce Thneeds in the factory, we see his weakness: as he had left home, his mother said, "Now if you don't succeed, dear... then it's just what we expected!"  As she, his father, aunt, and the rest of the family arrive on the scene, we see how much he wants their approval and love.  When his father points out that to increase production they need to cut down the trees instead of just gathering the tufts, we can see the internal debate on the young Once-ler's face.  Finally, his need for family approval overcomes his promise to the Lorax, and he says, "Well, cutting down just a few trees can't hurt..."

This expansion of the story is much more honest to how evil comes about in late capitalism.  It isn't just, as the Lorax puts it, that the Once-ler is "crazy with greed," but that he is weak.  The market wants Threeds.  His family wants success.  He is flattered by their desires for him, for their ideas that he can fulfill what they want.  The Once-ler accepts the desires of other people as his own desire, even though they will not make him happy, either.  If we look at Google in China, Nike in Indonesia, Apple and Foxxcom... the backstory of the Once-ler explains that kind of banal evil much more than the simplicity of greed or malice.

Helena at the Wildlife Conservancy Preserve outside of Santa Fe.

A return to the innocent days of the Once-ler also explains his final act, keeping the last of the Truffula seeds and giving it to the boy (unnamed in the book, named Ted in the movie as a tribute to Ted Geisel, Dr. Seuss's given name).  Wracked with guilt, the Once-ler is himself unable to do anything to right his wrong, but Ted gives him the opportunity at redemption.  The Once-ler is not a bad person, but a person who has done many bad things, and has become a prisoner of that history (symbolized by the slats he nails to his window so that no-one can see him... and so that he cannot get out.

The movie also gives us a backstory for the boy who goes to the far end of town where the grickle-grass grows.  He's a young teenager in love, and the girl wants to see a tree.  For a Brazilian, the story reminds us of the strategy of the Brazilian Communist Party, which worked to recruit the best looking young women, who would in turn inspire men to join... but it also rings true.  As the Once-ler remarks to Ted, "If a guy does something stupid once, it is because he is a guy.  But if he does it two times, there is sure to be a girl in the story."

Ted, like the Once-ler, is living someone else's dream... but he soon takes it on as his own.  He comes to care about trees, to long for nature and clean air.  He soon brings in Audrey (the cute girl; her name is probably a tip of the hat to Seuss's second wife) as an ally, and not only as an object of desire.  In this way, the film recognizes that just as the motivations of those who do evil are not always evil, the motivations of those who do good are not always pure.

In my next post, the subversive critique of Thneedville...