Birds choke on pollution (9:10), housing complexes are constructed (10:00), people litter mindlessly (10:19), advertisements abound (13:30). People flock to the opportunity with their smog-emitting cars (7:30), and in order to accommodate the rising need for Thneeds, infrastructure is made, highways are built (8:58) driving away the bar-ba-loots. Seuss shows us how the Thneed took off, as the Once-ler expands his small operation into an industry. Like a soulless robot, he hands over the cash, no questions asked, and drives away.įrom here, Dr.
I WANT TO WATCH THE LORAX DRIVER
In that little clip we are shown just how mindless our buying is when a faceless driver (perhaps ourselves?) screeches his car back in reverse to buy the Thneed, not knowing what it is, driven not by his own intuition but by an external idea that he needs it.
Why there’s no one on earth who would buy that fool Thneed!” (5:55) But then, in the next scene, the Once-ler creates the “need” by putting up a sign: “Last chance to buy Thneeds for 100 miles”. The Lorax voices this, “Sir you’re crazy. As the Once-ler speaks of all the purposes it could serve, listing Thneeds most of us I’m sure have had at one point or another in our lives (socks, pillows, clothes, etc…), the Thneeds look so silly and unnecessary in the context of the beautiful, naked world of the Truffula Tree.
In 4:54 we are shown the first ever Thneed: “A thing of beauty.” I remember as a kid thinking how ugly and disgusting it looked and wondering why anyone would want one, and I imagine this effect was intended.
I WANT TO WATCH THE LORAX MOVIE
This is something that the movie does so well throughout: it helps us visualize very big concepts that are difficult to grasp, like stages in the development of the consumerist mindset, human’s relation to nature, and the consequences those perspectives inevitably cause.
The Once-ler exclaims, “What you doin’ in my tree stump, buddy?” To which the Lorax replies in incredulity, “YOUR TREE? YOUR TREE?!!!” The scene, interestingly added in the movie, points to the strangeness that exists in claiming possession of land, which is notably the first step in consumerism. I knew just what I’d do! I unloaded my cart,” the reader immediately sees the failure of the Once-ler’s character, and the irrationality of connecting the love one has for the land with his desire to plunder it.Īnother interesting scene occurs at 4:14 when the Once-ler chops down the first Truffula Tree and the Lorax jumps out. So, at 3:44, when the Once-ler says, “I felt a great leaping of joy in my heart.
I WANT TO WATCH THE LORAX FULL
It sets the stage for the transition at 2:12 to the entirely different world of the Lorax, an Edenic land full of healthy Truffula Trees, bar-ba-loots, and happiness… “When the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean.” Here The Lorax implicitly asks, “Which world would you rather live in?” Moreover, by way of making the pre-consumerist world so beautiful and perfect, it instills in the audience a feeling of, “Why on earth would anyone want to change this?” and the associated belief that anyone who does so is seriously disturbed. Even a 3-year-old kid can make the connection: consumerism in the end leads to our destruction.
In the very beginning of The Lorax, we are thrown into the wasteland world of Grickle-grass, the world the Once-ler and his Thneeds created. For the purpose of this blog post, I’ll be referring to the 1972 edition of the movie found here: Continuing on the first part of this segment, I’d like to discuss how we see the history of “Thneeds” play out in The Lorax.
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