A Close Look at The Lorax | Big Joel

hey everybody today I'm gonna talk about the 2012 film The Lorax I feel like those words immediately invite a question why why am i interested in this pretty bad pretty irrelevant movie is there some secret thing that I want to talk about and I'm just gonna use the Lorax as a way to talk about that thing well no surprisingly enough I really just want to talk about the Lorax I think it's genuinely an interesting film and if nothing else my dream is that you've watched this video chew it over and think yeah big Joel you're right the movie is interesting wow that's a pretty humble dream there let's get started making it come true before we get into the 2012 Lorax I think it's important to establish what it's ostensibly based on in the way for the purpose of this video I'm gonna forget about the picture book and pretend like the 1972 cartoon was the original Lorax it's really good and dr. Seuss wrote it so whatever ricky'll grows coracle grass [Music] more than anything the first floor acts is a film dedicated to the relationship between two things truffula tree and earth need the entire story centers on the conflicted process by which the former object becomes the latter thing you made out of my truffula tree look Lorax calm down there's no cause for alarm I chopped down just one tree I'm doing no harm more than that the film makes it as easy as humanly possible to substitute these objects for ideas the feet of course isn't meant to be read as a thing that only bears on the world of the Lorax it's meant to stand for commodities all commodities the needs are amorphous they're efficient and they feel any desire any person could possibly have as such they represent technological capitalistic progress likewise truffula trees are a simplistic metaphor for nature they're pure lard useless to humans and easily destroyed and it's through this accessible symbolic language that the original Lorax makes a really clear point when we turn over our future to systems that are only devoted to profit the planet suffers tremendously as a result the main reason why I'm giving you this reading that a literal first grader could figure out is to juxtapose it with the 2012 version see where the original cartoon is clean and pointed the new movie is defined by its messiness and by its sheer number of elements in addition to truffula trees enth needs there's bottled air because the world has become so polluted that purchasing clean oxygen is necessary there's fake trees that the citizens of tonight Ville by the once-ler has a face now and seems motivated more by a sense of insecurity than by profit there's a new antagonist Aloysius O'Hare a new protagonist Zac Efron there are walled cities that conceal things and there are marshmallows and honestly just listing all of this I feel like I need to take a deep breath cuz you know it's very easy to engage this film on its own terms to recognize that it feels incredibly uninspired and see that it's number of elements are the fault of lazy unfocused writing but if we choose to engage the movie on different terms try to read into it a cohesive vision then what we have here is a lot of stuff that needs untangling so let's begin our analysis at the first act of the movie when we're introduced to thneed Ville on the face of it the structure and economy of tonight Ville seems to be a thinly veiled critique of capitalism the citizens there are forced to purchase air that's supplied by Aloysius O'Hare [Music] [Applause] we can read O'Hare and the society he's created as a sort of dumbed down more extreme version of the original Lorax just like the once-ler he's concerned only with profits and doesn't care about whatever negative results his actions might have the more smog in the sky the more people will buy but here's the thing the film's surface-level critique of big bad business doesn't really work at all see if we wanted to problematize O'Hare's business practices our arguments would have to look something like this when a person sells a thing they're implicitly saying they're okay with not everybody being able to buy it and if that thing is necessary to human survival as air is then not being able to buy it could cause some major problems people might suffocate they might be forced to do horrible work to stay alive it might be pretty awful but the Lorax doesn't make this argument in fact it seems to devote a tremendous amount of time and energy to not making this argument from the outset of the film an evil is presented as a sort of post-scarcity utopia nobody in this society seems to want for much they all have enough to live comfortably at least and nobody seems to hate their jobs or work overly long hours either even err the thing that we would expect to cause some problems for the citizens of the need ville is a totally unconnected resource in the film I mean we're told that people by air we see their home air supply but all this doesn't seem like much of a problem after all people are able to go outside their houses without thinking about their oxygen supply who's paying for that outside air is it Aloysius if so how is he making money on that or maybe he's not making a profit on it he just supplies that air out of the kindness of his heart but in that case what's stopping people from opening up their windows and getting some free air look air is free everybody problems solved the point isn't to get the lorax for all of its juicy plot holes it's to show that the movie has such a convoluted logic surrounding such a problem free society that it can't possibly function as a direct critique of capitalism and its oppressions so if nivel isn't meant to get at that sort of idea then why is it there what does the film want us to understand about this place well to put it briefly the movie makes one thing very clear tonight Ville is fake the town represents a crude consumer culture one that's deluged with a series of commodities which don't refer back to any concrete need or any real life meaning I think the most obvious place we can see this tendency is with the Society's strange fixation on artificial trees thin evil is just filled with these things at the beginning of the movie we see this guy blowing up a fake shrub and we learn a little later on that Zac Efron's mom is also really into them and you know how strange is that here we have a group of people who haven't seen an organic tree in 50-plus years what are those those are trees but for some reason everybody is obsessed with their likeness as such these fake trees stand for an absence they refer back to nothing simply because there are no real trees left and this idea that need Ville is pervaded with absent or hollow signifiers comes up again and again in the first act for instance we learned that Aloysius wants to start selling bottled air well here goes another lame Saturday but what need does that product fill everybody seems to breathe fight already so the only way to sell such an object is to convince people that it solves a problem that it doesn't solve convince them that it will make them happy or more appealing or whatever or let's look at one of my favorite lines from the movie [Music] we pray to the Lord for all we've got including this brand-new parking lot ah gives me chills we see this and things like it and the idea is clear tonight Ville is a place where any semblance of authenticity or genuine meaning has been replaced with a vast and artificial commodity culture and at this point I kinda hope there's a movie that's springing up in the back of your head say it with me now that's right it's the matrix yeah The Matrix is a weirdly apt companion piece of The Lorax both films present a society that is inundated by false images and absent signifiers both center around a plucky hero who escapes that society and sees the world for what it is and in both films the protagonist decides that the real dismal world needs to be revealed I would go so far as to say the lorax and the matrix are almost thum Attica Lee identical in fact there's only one place that the films seem to differ on a conceptual level but it's a really really important place see there's a huge presupposition that exists at the heart of the matrix that the matrix can be escaped yeah it's hard and not everybody can do it but when neo takes that red pill and wakes up in a world totally unlike the one he's always known the audience is supposed to accept that this place is real things have substance here actual meaning they have a sense of worth that transcends anything the matrix could offer you've been living in a dream world neo this is the world as it exists today and it's this presupposition that the Lorax seems to take issue with not only does the film problematize the idea that there can be some escape from the ideological conditions of our culture it also questions our very ability to delineate what is fake from what is real so you can see what I mean by that let's talk about truffula trees and the world they seem to represent as I said before truffle and the original Lorax are a really easy symbol to understand they don't get their value from what they can do for us or how pleasant they are rather their meaning is intrinsic they constitute the natural world and they facilitate all sorts of life that is totally unrelated to human society and when the once-ler destroys the forest when he chops down the last truffula tree that's not bad for a lot of reasons not bad because he won't be able to make the needs anymore or something like that it's bad for one reason the environment was good and it kinda sucks that it's just gone now it really is as simple as that but let me move to the 2012 Lorax trophy Lazar no longer simple at all and we can start to see how complicated and sort of unnerving their depiction is by looking at the reasons that characters want to have them again see the value that trophyless have is not intrinsic in this movie protecting the environment isn't its own reward anymore instead the film gives us three extrinsic reasons why trees are good first they enable the protagonist to date the lady he likes in the inciting scene of the movie Zac Efron and his love interest the Taylor Swift have a conversation a real living tree growing in my backyard so if say I'm just thinking out loud here if a guy somehow got you one well I probably marry him on the spot here truffula trees are posed as a MacGuffin their value is totally instrumental he can use their seeds to get the girl he needs second trees solve the supposed air crisis of thneed Ville as we know by now Aloysius profits on air sales and since trophyless provide free air part of their goodness comes from their ability to disrupt this mean guys mean business so I say third and maybe most importantly organic trees are used to appeal to a sense of nostalgia and childlike wonderment when Taylor Swift talks about how much she likes trophyless she never mentions the forest or the creatures who live there instead she's only concerned with the ways trees can signify how they can function as a powerful potent object in her life they used to grow all around here and people said that the touch of their Tufts was softer than anything even silk and they smelled like butterfly milk and here considering these three motivations we can start to ask the question what is the difference between a truffula tree and the bottled air that Aloysius wants to sell there really isn't one is there both convey the idea that they will make you more desirable get you dating the person you want to date or whatever both solve the supposed air problem albeit in different ways and both serve as commodities representing some absence in the consumer that needs to be filled and if these two objects bottled air and trophyless are fundamentally the same then what does it mean to escape from the former object and go to the latter nothing is what it means it means nothing and as such we can see how the film problematizes the passage from fake consumer culture into the quote-unquote real world there is no escape in this movie because the prospect of escape the symbol that represents escape is interpolated as just another commodity within a commodity culture and this theme becomes so much more potent in the most iconic scene of the film where the once-ler destroys the entire forest and sings this song how bad can I be I'm just doing what comes naturally geez I feel like that line is just so dense with meaning I mean look we're watching this movie right and the movie is supposed to be about a conflict between two worlds the worlds of commodity and industry and the world of nature but in one little line the film calls into question the idea that there's a difference between those two worlds within the once lers imagination truffula trees and the life they produce aren't really natural in any meaningful way to him our vision of nature is prefigured by a higher order of naturalness one defined by consumption and ownership and you might be thinking right now isn't the once-ler an antagonist why would we assume that when he says I'm just doing what comes naturally that he's supposed to be right about that what if he's just deluded himself and what he's doing to the environment isn't natural at all well that's fair enough but then we have to ask if the once-ler is wrong well how is he wrong what does nature mean that the once-ler isn't getting see it's not really important if the once-ler is doing something natural or unnatural here because the second he raises that idea the word nature suddenly has no clear referent within the film's logic it could be a bunch of trees and the animals that live near those trees or it could be a disposition to destroy and consume weak things the idea of nature that appeared concrete and easy to parse is revealed to be as constructed and convoluted as the society zac efron thought he was escaping in the final moments of the Lorax were left with one clear image a truffula tree planted in the center of the need Ville and I think that image is maybe the most important thing about the movie because this film is not the original Lorax where that cartoon poses trees as inherently good this version sees them only as instrumentally good I mean the most important place to put one is in the center of town where it can be used and enjoyed for all its sweet air or whatever and this film isn't the matrix either where that movie shows us an iconoclast who escapes a world of artificiality and accesses the real The Lorax troubles those waters and presents a culture that seems to absorb realness the tree and the concept of nature that it represents is thrust back into the fill and becomes a symbol like any other and it's because the 2012 Lorax is neither of those things that it's able to present an idea that I think is really unique and interesting it suggests that when a society is only able to speak a language of commodities and untethered symbols then there really is no going back on that in the culture of the novel the acts of preservation and restoration are really just alternate forms of consumption and what I think is so cool about this movie is that if a director intentionally decided to express that message it would probably be like super judgy oh no people like buying stuff people like commodities their language consists only of absence signifiers what a nightmare but the Lorax is so thoughtless and it's made to be so easy to watch that this idea can be expressed in a really loving carefree way 'then evil isn't so bad after all it's just sort of what it is love it or leave it oh wait you can't I thought that was a sort of spooky way to end things so that's all I had to say about the Lorax hope you enjoy that I know I did and now it's time for my patreon question of the week sorry about the change in audio by the way I'm recording this very late someone who wants to be known as big fan asks a movie like God's not dead that's to say a movie that is expressly made for a specific audience on first glance might seem to be devoid of philosophical exploration same could be said about the bachelor or the room how do you decide which ideas or movies to explore on the channel and I guess I kind of have a simple ish answer to this one I just love all the things I talk about I know that sounds kind of strange when I make stuff about you know Logan Paul or God's not dead but honestly I just love those things maybe not for how they wanted to be appreciated but nonetheless there's just something in them that makes me feel really happy or interested or whatever I love the Lorax I really really do anyway with that I'll say goodbye like comment and subscribe and I'll see you next time

Channel: Big Joel

Views: 1,239,198

Keywords: lorax, the lorax, onceler, truffula, 2012 lorax, how bad can i be, how bad can i be lorax, lorax video essay, lorax analysis

Id: AC_8vkD1-H8

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/nemoTheKid]

What the hell? Did I just get mind blown by The Lorax?