A Really Important Scene from a Really Silly Movie
The Lorax (2012)
You already remember. It’s 2012. Season 2 of Dance Moms is underway. People only know Jack Antonoff for “We Are Young”. Obama’s second campaign hasn’t yet begun.
You see the trailers. Danny DeVito. Zach Efron. Ed Helms. Taylor Swift??? The little orange guy is louder onscreen than he is in your memories. March…it comes out in March.
They took a picture book from 1972—from our parents’ childhoods—and turned it into an Illumination-animated romp through environmentalism and marshmallows. It’s pretty bad, but the songs are weirdly catchy, and it's certainly memorable, even if your mom thought it was dumb. It’s The Lorax, and THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME TODAY TO SAY EVERYTHING THAT NEEDS TO BE SAID ABOUT THIS MOVIE.
But there’s just enough time to cover this one scene:
Where do we begin? In an unnamed land of Truffula trees, observing a vibrant, rainbow-filled landscape. We’re strolling with the Once-ler through his own frosty-edged memories.
In the opening chorus of the number, the animals are dancing and so are we! The guitar is too ZZ Top to raise any alarms…we hear the Once-ler say “destiny” and “naturally,” and it’s a silly pun for the shoe that keeps dropping. What even is bad anyways? He’s got this great idea, for a thing that everyone loves—this is invention…this is innovation!
All of a sudden, a mean aunt is brushing the bar-ba-loots off the road, and the Once-ler is wearing green. All of a sudden, the Once-ler’s guitar is shinier, bigger, and redder, and his top hat makes the Lorax look even smaller in comparison.
This tall, showy man seems untrustworthy, but he’s being presented to us as something of a magician: making things from nothing while teaching us Darwin.
And then…we hear marching. Axes are falling out of the sky! What the fuck is going on?!
There are politics here, and a labor force that resembles the military. This isn’t peaceful expansion…there’s no such thing! Now would be a good time to stop, you think, but that’s not how songs work. It’s only the second chorus, and this storybook is getting scary.
The man in green isn’t explaining science anymore—he’s presenting business theory at us. All the instrumentals sound more mechanized. The heartbeat of the song hisses and clanks. Thneeds are no longer garments knit with love and care; they are products being mass-produced for sale.
Gears are churning, steel is falling, and we’re surrounded by the exponential growth of the Once-ler’s financial success in an increasingly dark, metal world.
The animals that—moments ago—were dancing to this boppy beat are now starving, choking, and filthy. So much has changed. How did we get here, you think, looking for a way out.
Is this just where we are now? Is this what things will look like forever? The song’s almost over but the marshmallows haven’t returned…all the rainbows are gone, and you can’t picture them in your head anymore.
“Complain all you want, it’s never ever ever ever gonna stop!”
The Once-ler does the fucking Glambot while donating to a fake charity.
Now we’re being thrown into a haunted montage of the Thneed’s violent success. The vocals didn’t always sound this sinister, did they?
“All the customers are buying. And the money’s multiplying! And the PR people are lying! And he lawyers are denying! Who cares if a few trees are dying? This is all so gratifying!”
Someone should DO something about this, you think helplessly to yourself.
The Once-ler wipes out the remaining Truffula trees with his speakers. He has so much power now. One chord from his guitar can decimate an entire population. An electric axe slices across our eyes, and the song is finally over—our view has been cut down with the rest of the world. Somewhere, a universe away, you think that Ed Helms did a great job voicing this song. Thank God it’s just fiction.
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The song is very creative and powerful. He is like God.