Hey everyone. I thought it was a bit strange that I didn't explicitly source Baudrillard's "Simulation and Simulacra" at the end of this video. I sorta just forgot haha. At any rate, his work informs a lot of the things I talk about here. I'll leave a link to it, in case you're interested: epk.home.xs4all.nl/theory/Simulation/Baudrillard_Simulacra%20and%20Simulations.pdf
Great video. Here's an HTML mirror of that link, might be easier to read for many: web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html
Maybe it's because of the writing style, but I can't seem to get a good grasp of all the ideas in the text (especially when new keywords & case studies are introduced but aren't explained properly) Also, he seems to have a rather pessimistic outlook, which I'm not 100% ready to accept (or maybe he IS right about the bleak state of the world? i dunno) :(( Anyways does anyone have a clearer explanation of Baudrillard's concepts? I'm interested to know more
+Juan Gee. Baudrillard is an extremely complicated philosopher and his work is difficult even for many graduate students. Philosophy is an established academic discipline so expecting to understand the work of late 20th century French post-structuralists without a heavy background in the field is like hoping to get a working understanding of quantum mechanics without ever having taken high school level physics. I know that people like to self-educate but there's this strange phenomenon where people look at philosophy as just some kind of fluff field where you're just reading "thinkers" give "hot takes" on "life and stuff" in a way that does not separate it in anyway from some random person giving an uninformed opinion. So forgive me for coming across as either elitist or gatekeeping (genuinely not trying to do either of those things) but when I see someone randomly try to read Baudrillard and their first reaction is "he seems to have a rather pessimistic outlook, which I'm not 100% ready to accept (or maybe he IS right about the" bleak state of the world? i dunno) :((" then I know they probably haven't even started with basic Intro-to-Philosophy stuff and has no idea where they're even going with the text. When you're dealing with semiotics or language in general, the issue here isn't establishing some definitive statement about whether or not life is worth living--it's to investigate a linguistic phenomenon and take the implications of that understanding as far as they will go, which naturally gets existential eventually but that's not the central goal. If I were you, I'd urge you to get a history of western philosophy book and learn the tradition--the concepts, the words, the thinkers, the past. Because when you're dealing with someone like Baudrillard, he's working with a rich and complex tradition that goes back literally thousands of years. It's the oldest discipline in existence and even predates modern empirical science. So if anyone is reading this and wonders "wow, this thing I'm reading is interesting but I have no idea what's going on" then pause, take a deep breathe, relax, and just find some good resources and slowly work your way into the field. It's not as good as getting the information from an actual school where you're gonna be in a boot-camp-like setting, but at least you won't be just another random uninformed charlatan on the internet. (I hope this didn't come across as too harsh, but it's definitely worth putting out there)
ha yeah I was expecting you to reference baudrillard but I think this works anyway. however it's interesting how this movie is actually much closer to his theory than the matrix (aka. the movie that's directly referencing baudrillard). i'm pretty sure there's no easy escape in his theory and I agree with liar of Lesbos that his analysis of capitalist society is a deeply cynical one which favours the self-destruction of society over any kind of revolutionary potential.
I'm just imagining a board room meeting with a bunch of people whose only experience with trees are as things on the rough parts of their golf courses trying to come up with reasons why trees are good when making this movie.
@@thefutureisnow6882 i haven't watch Stranger Things, but from what i saw from few clips, it has a mistery elements to it, i assume the 'non-existent' main character will plays as a twist or grand reveal or something That's not the same with the Lorax The lorax in this abomination is a literal sidr character. Yes, you do have a conflict between the Oncheller (or however it spelled) with him. But it rushed so fast, just to get the whole "capitalism vs environment" result just so the movie could just throws it in your face, instead of deeply explored the whole theme. What's worse is that the whole movie is actually between the young boy and the Oncheller. The boy wants to impress the girl who looked out for a real trees, so he sets out for the Oncheller thatvlived outside of the city. All while the Lorax himself absent thourghout the whole things.
@@ShatteredGlass916 wait, that little kid isn't just the onceler but younger? I've not seen the movie but they look SO alike aside from some young-looking proportions that I assumed the movie was a story told over a decently long time.
@@kaitlyn__L nope, they are different people. I wouldn't blame you for not noticing. Illumination always have a shitty character design. And one of those factors is how similar and generic looking they are.
“I believe in the zodiac! Yeah, I do, I'm a Leo, I love Titanic This is something morbidly ironic: my grandmother was a cancer, and she was killed by a giant crab This is a song about the idea of irony, so strap in! 🎼My dog's stomach was very upset So we put him in the car And we went to the vet And on our way to the vet I killed a cat I say Isn't that ironic? I adopted a child from overseas To rescue him from child labor factories And on his very first birthday We went to Build-A-Bear workshop Isn't that I-R-O-N-I-C-I-N-O-R-I-R-O-N-I-C Yes And a waterpark is burned to the ground And a tow truck is broken down I always used to cry when I laughed But then I was raped by a clown I was watching Al Gore on CNN He was talking and talking and talking, and then Out of boredom My pet polar bear shot himself I dated an animal rights activist One day she got really pissed Because I was eating veal That was wrapped in PETA bread Get it? Because pita... fuck it I-R-O-N-I-C-I-N-O-R-I-R-O-N-I-C Yeah, I said I'm a stand-up comic But I always sit and slouch And I got my girlfriend pregnant On my sterile uncle's pull out couch I-R-O-N-I-C-I-N-O-R-I-R-O-N-I-C, Ironic Yeah If everyday you play the board game RISK You've probably never taken a risk in your life And Monopoly has far from a stranglehold On the board game market And a little kid died from Suffocation When he choked on a game piece from Operation And I can't grow a beard But that one's not ironic That one's just sad Bob Barker got all of my pets pregnant My grandfather had Alzheimer's And one day we were...
Everybody listen to "Biggering", the song that got replaced by "How Bad Can I Be". It thematically hits the nail on the head and is a Disney Renaissance level villain song.
II doesn't take a genius to figure out why "Biggering" was scrapped. Or why the version of, "Thneedville" that more explicitly condemned consumerism was scrapped. Or why the song in whcih the Onceler sings about destroying nature was scrapped. Illumination didn't want to make itself look bad.
I think it's also thematically better. As Joel said, Oncler views his consumption as natural. But in Biggering, that line comes near the end of the song to signify when he's finally gone to far, rather than at the very beginning when his transformation is just starting.
I suppose there's also a bit of a metanarrative, how The Lorax was hyper-marketed, featured in dozens of commercials promoting other products while simultaneously promoting the movie. This story that was once about the environment and faceless corporations became a shallow husk of a story.
+Fopenplop Sure, hybrids can be marketed as being better for the environment, but are they really? I'm asking a genuine question, since the electricity used for the car likely comes from fossil fuels too.
King Keegster, I think that depends on where in the world you're living. For instance, a lot of Canada's electricity comes from water-based sources, so much so that "hydro" is slang for electricity in some parts of the country. Also, it's possible that the energy generated from burning fossil fuels might be proportionally less than the electricity generated to power the electric/hybrid cars, thus being a win proportionally but still a loss overall. That last statement would need some research, though.
Fopenplop thanks for that! That's what I was going to say These cars are more efficient because they charge themselves as you drive. They usually even have a display panel that shows you I'd you're using energy or storing it
When you said "if someone sells something, then they're ok with some people not being able to buy it", I already kind of knew that but the way you phrased it blew my mind a little lol
I think about this all the time. Like the other day I was given two bags of kid's clothes because a parent didn't want to deal with donating them, and they suggested I sell them to get a little cash for my trouble. I was like no damn way am I charging anyone for toddler clothes I got for free 😭
The Lorax movie is deeply ironic. It's an adaptation of a book all about the purity of nature and how capitalism destroys it, focus-tested into a strange, musical, colorful romp that takes so many creative liberties with the source material that it's barely recognizable. It literally *is* a capitalist distortion of something pure. If the Lorax was a truffula tree, the Lorax movie is a thneed. Themes aside, the film was created by a studio known for paper-thin audience pandering (the Minion movie, people) which is why it's stuffed to the brim with bright colors, vapid characters, and pointless musical numbers. It has zero interest in honoring the source material and exists to cash in on a book that's entire purpose is to critique capitalism. The Lorax movie is a deeply unsettling disgrace, and a sad commentary on modern Hollywood.
I remember the older Lorax cartoon actually had a fair bit ambiguity to it, yeah, the exploitation of nature is bad but the Onceler points out that the exploitation is foundation for a lot of people's livelihood and just shutting it down was going to cause a lot of misery something the Lorax had no rebuttal for. As simple as it was this one bit of dialogue and the ending gave that cartoon way more depth and complexity than the 2012 abomination could ever hope to have.
Except in the very next moment the last truffula tree is felled and all those people end up unemployed anyway. The lorax explains it it takes twenty years to grow a truffula tree. The once-ler could easily have set up an operation where he didn't chop down trees faster than he could replant them.
@Simple Weirdo That may be true for him when he's young but the old onceler certainly thinks on things more than once. He's been considering the word unless for a long time for an example.
I definitely prefer the TV Lorax 1972 then the 2012 movie. Although the plot is pretty straightforward it has subtle details that make it much more interesting then the 2012 movie. In the 1972 Lorax call there is a line where one of the five members says “it rids your home of dismal dust” at the same time the camera zooms in to the factory making the Thneeds as it pumps out smog. Irony
I feel like there's one thing about The Lorax that felt missing in the video: that the notion of politics seems to be completely absent in Thneedville, or anywhere in the film. There is nothing that indicates that the Thneedvillers discuss politics, or have any form of centralized political system with goals or ideology. O'Hare is called the mayor, but in the movie, the State is so removed from anything that happens, that you can't really know if his position is elected, bought or is some kind of feudal title. There certainly isn't any sort of opposition to him, in the shape of organizations or political parties. Everything in Thneedville is based on profit and consumption, like if culture or the public power didn't even exist. You could say it is a criticism of capitalism, but before anything else, it's criticism of a world without politics, without any vision of collective social change.
This is a really good point, especially considering the fact that if O'Hare is the government, then what he does can't exactly be called capitalism, it's just taxes on a substance that needs to be imported. It's very odd.
If this movie was smarter, I'd compare it to a Bioshock-like AnCap dystopia, but in the film, really, the question of whether governments should or even can control the State to protect the environment isn't even asked.
I love the fact that so many interesting questions can come out of this shitty movie that everybody hates and the producers didn't even put any thought into.
Vítor Boldrini I think tho, that this discussion here is all so interesting because it comes so close to a conclusion that someone like Slavoj Zizek would make. That is that the depoliticized nature of the society in The Lorax is in fact showing a major component of the modern dominant ideology in capitalism.
I would consider Thneedville to be a monopolistic fascist state wherein, the government is made up of a single corporation and all companies operating within Thneedville are owned by O'hare's corporation which is also the government.
This was the movie we had to watch at the end of grade 7. I remember hating it because I understood that it was heavily modified from the original Dr. Seuss book, as well as the fact it was produced by the same people who made Despicable Me. I was too open with my concerns, and the teacher yelled at me and I cried in a corner.
Audrey needed, like, any character at all. Make her a nerd, make her super obsessed with trees, make her passionate as hell - hell, give the one singer in the movie who didn't sing at all her own song! Ted needed to have a better motivation than "hot girl want tree" if the movie was going to get anywhere; if Audrey was interesting, and he liked her for her instead of his fantasy about her, maybe we would be invested in their story. but that's just my onion, knee-deep in the fact that i just really like taylor swift and female characters
The fact that I had to double-check that her name is Audrey instead of Ashley is honestly alone pretty telling. From watching this movie once a couple years ago, I remembered every other character's name except hers. She's just so...nothing, even in comparison to other "nothing" love interests in films aimed at children.
I agree with you but uh, Zach Effron is a singer. He's even a singer in a pretty big musical set in a high school, I don't know if you've heard of it ;P
These are some of the most interesting ideas I've heard about this movie (and I was on tumblr in 2012 so I've seen...I've seen a lot of shit about this movie). It's really refreshing that instead of coming at it as just a lesser version of the book or the 1972 cartoon, you approached it as it's own entity. Really great work.
"When a society is only able to speak a language of commodities and untethered symbols, there really is no going back." This line got me thinking about the current obsession with tiny houses and minimalism. People who proclaim they wish to "live simply" have commoditized the very idea of minimal ad simple living and turned it into a display of consumerism. From the multi-million dollar industry that is the construction of tiny houses, to the myriad of pinterest boards, blogs, vlogs and TV shows that "sell" the lifestyle, these people who declared a desire to reject society and consumerism have become their own niche society of consumers largely admired by others. An anti-consumer movement became almost and overnight consumer magnet. There really is no going backwards.
I think the world really is more complex than that and that complexity is inescapable. But I did explain this video to someone as like "what if people were going vegan not for animal rights or the environment or anything but just because the idea of being vegan seemed cool and they wanted to procure that coolness for themselves" and went oh yeah, that's a thing that exists
@@caitie226 the thing is, does it matter? Why does it matter why someone wants to go vegan or save the trees, if we can all agree those are good things. The end result is the same. So maybe people are invested in protecting the environment purely out of the selfish desire of not wanting to be toasted to death by climate change, instead of the motivation being that protecting the environment is just the objectively right thing to do
I always saw 'how bad can I be' as the oncerler's attempt to justify his actions to himself. he took advantage of nature to make his thneed to prove himself to his unsupportive family. After he decimates the truffula tree population, he shows remorse. The onceler is a surprisingly complex character; I recommend listening to 'biggering' which is objectively better than how bad can I be, but doesn't have the right tone, I assume, for the so-called light-hearted movie
Biggering had an evil vibe, which was very uncharacteristic in this Onceler’s situation (considering he was insecure and determined rather than some dude that wanted money). It was more of an original Onceler song rather than a 2012 Onceler song. It’s still an awesome song, though. 8/10
I see “How Bad Can I Be” being people who look at climate change, poverty, and other issues from their comfortable position and not see the greviances that others experience, and thus dont consider them big issues. After all, people who are rich dont care about trash on the street, the garbage company collects that, while in some places garbage piles up to extreme amounts.
But bottled air is already a thing. It sells really well in China. It's most a luxury health product targeted at parents worried that their kids arent getting good air because of the smog. No one suffocates outside in China either because there is enough breathable oxygen, even if its contaminated or more scarce because of the smog. I imagine it's similar in The Lorax
A lot of people in china wear face masks. The air gives them pretty bad diseases. This does not seem to be the case in The Lorax. Bottled air isn't an inherently ridiculous idea, it goes unexamined and seemingly unneeded in this film.
Also keep in mind that a more practical way to use bottled air would be the fact that you would have scuba tanks and airlock doors that make a pressurized area that pressurize with a more pure oxygen nitrogen mixture. Something that was probably left out due to the fact that its not nearly as aesthetically pleasing... well you could make it pleasing to the eye just a lot harder to show those details. Oh my gawd sherie look at my cute scuba taaank~ Oh mah gawwwwwwd look at the cute lil trees painted on there. Oh i knowwwwww~ all in a boston accent. Through AM radio walkie talkies in their scuba masks
Lmao "so much for socialism if China can't have free air", that's like saying "so much for capitalism when the US has school shootings". You can take any bad government that treats its citizens like shit and use it as a way to target an ideology that you don't like. And you'd be wrong, because neither of those governments is actually representative of those ideas, and the connection you made is actually irrelevant.
Jane Ross your analogy doesn't make any sense and it is ridiculous funny, "so much for socialism if China can't have free air" it a very ironic sentence. In socialism the goal is to redistribute goods special for surviving and that ownership of something is collective so everyone is entitled for free supplies to survive so if you can't have air a very basic element for survival that's even free in capitalist countries, it's very ironic.
Regarding the line: “We thank the Lord for all we’ve got, including this brand new parking lot...“ I distinctly remember watching the theatrical version of this film when it was first released. This scene featured a group of Catholic nuns in their habits singing this line right before the cut to the parking lot. It was hysterical. In every version I’ve seen since home release, they changed the scene so that the line is sung instead by a group of random people near a pool, still in gospel fashion. Can someone else please confirm this recollection? It’s driving me crazy.
That guy could still totally sell air even with the trees. It's going to take years for a tree to be sexually mature enough to seed. And then it produces only a limited amount of seeds. Plus there's no biodiversity, so if a disease gets one tree, they'll probably all going to die. What he should do is try to get rights to the tree and sell the seeds *and* air. He could either phase out air sales or just market it enough that people continue to associate it as a superior/purer product
This comment reminded me of a really cool book I read about trees. It's 'The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees' by Rob Penn. He goes into a little bit of ~tree history~ and it's mostly about ash trees.
andrew johnstone that was indeed the point, that when all you see in the world around is the need or want it can fulfill, that's all object become: fulfillers. Trees and nature aren't good or deserving of protection because of the value they have to the environment or that their disappearing is "bad", instead the only reason they should exist is because we value them, as providers of oxygen or physical representations of our memories of better times.
Anneliese the Goblin King I am very fun at parties! Thank you! I love making Pink Panty Droppers and playing drinking games and don't mind people doing drugs, so long as they/we smoke a certain distance away so me and my roommates are not incriminated. We also are all STEM majors so we also study hard af and don't let internet commentors shame us out of our fun and studiousness
i actually think they were buying CLEAN air, not just air itself. everything in Thneedville is artificial and polluting, so people would buy clean air yet there would still be air around.
A lot of your videos have underlying themes about intentionality in art. That you come down on the side of just appreciating what something is rather than what it was meant to be, lets you ask much more interesting questions in my opinion. Thank you for existing.
@@fruity4820 Well not really. It's bad in the case of the lorax because it defeats the point of the onceler but just because people love a villain doesn't make the movie bad. The villains are often my favorite characters :)
The “what is the difference between truffula trees and bottled air?” question was an excellent rug pull, it had me reeling. The perfect cap to this video, its beautiful, simple, and revelatory. It completely changed how o thought of the movie.
Between silly memes and brutal criticism, so many people have trashed this movie of value that I’ve never wanted to watch it. But... you’ve found accidental redemption in its messy attempts at “deep themes,” so now I’m curious to watch it myself. I love movies that miss their mark so drastically that they end up hitting another one.
I definately recommend it! Has a very important and huge message that directly reflects today. Also, if you've read the book and are a fan of Dr Seuss, you'll love it!
@@catarinaverduro2966 I think the comparison was supposed to reference the thematic element of each movie that mirrors the other; manufactured reality. In both movies, the majority of people live in a manufactured reality. However, in Thneedville I'd assume people are aware at some level that they're living in a "fake" utopia and accept it. Whereas in the matrix, the population is unaware that they're living in a simulation and therefore are enslaved. The difference is that between light-hearted and darker elements, and both themes serve different purposes in each movie. The theme of manufactured reality drives the plot of the Matrix moreso than the lorax.
I think of 'Wall-E' as a sequel to The Lorax. Where humans have not learned their lesson, and have filled the earth with junk and destroyed plant-life. Their solution has been to take off into space, in a space station. It depicts the problems caused by this. The robot Wall-E is a substitute for the little boy in The Lorax. Both movies have happy endings, with the regrowth of plants. Both show the problems caused by lack of respect for nature.
i actually think the changes made to the truffula trees and the thneeds in the 2012 movie are kind of fascinating. I think they unintentionally reflect a cultural change from the 20th to the 21st century. In the 20th century progress was all about utility; that's why the thneed is defined by its many versatile uses. So Seuss essentially makes an environmentalist argument from aesthetic. Save the trees because they're pretty and the animals who live around them are cute. In the 21st century well-off people in developed countries mostly don't buy products because we need them; we already have everything we actually need. We buy things because they're cool-looking or well-advertised or trendy. Thus the thneed, despite still having many uses, is shown to become a success because it's a curiosity people think will make them cool. The argument for the trees then becomes an argument from utility: save the trees because they give you air and freedom.
I think that people just realised that nature and us aren’t seperated, we’re part of it no matter with how much concrete we surround ourselves, if the trees die WE die
I think both versions of The Lorax are emblematic of their times. The original was during a time where unabashed environmentalism wasn't met as easily with derision or seeming like an enemy to all that which we hold dear. The newer version is in a kind of post-ironic society where we embrace our own signifiers of culture and happiness, as empty or as destructive as they may be. Your comparison to The Matrix is interesting, since the antagonist of The Matrix is something outside of humanity, whereas the antagonist (if there is one) of The Lorax is humanity itself, but it's not really a deep enough story to explore people fighting their own self-interest, in a way that, say, Wall-E attempted.
It concerns me that people think environmentalism is the enemy... It's like humanity got stuck on this idea that maintaining the environment is some kind of altruistic endeavor, when really it's the only way to save our own asses from extinction. I guess that's what can happen when the tendency to separate self from other is taken to an extreme.
Medicine can't change a personality You won't save the Earth by planting trees And cutting millions down will only skin the planet's knees But it'll sure make fossils out of you and me
John Dee It's not that people hate environmentalism in general, they just hate how people use it as a means to an end. Being constantly told we have to give scientists money to stop global warming only to be told it didn't do anything and only got worse is going to raise an eyebrow. Also people mention stats out of context, such as the water evaporation rate. Without mention of the water cycle, people think a lot of water is ceasing to exist. It's good to protect the environment but also to be truthful and not greedy about it.
That we have to give scientists money to stop global warming? No, that money is worth it. We're getting more and more efficient and safe means of production. The issue is government buy-in and getting people to change their habits. All the research in the world won't slow climate change unless we actually act on it. And your comment on "the water cycle" counteracting water scarcity is way oversimplified. Just because water is recycled doesn't mean that it goes to the places it was evaporated from, which can have disasterous impacts on climates. Hurricanes are increasing in intensity. Wildfires and droughts are more common. Plants aren't able to reproduce when rainfall or temperature are not longer stable and predictable, leading to disruption of previously stable food chains. The Sahara Desert used to be a rainforest afterall, so that gives you an idea of how much a climate can change, except now our accelerated rate of change is outpacing organisms' ability to adapt and survive in many cases
J Girl Everyone uses the guilt tripping B.S. of "unless we act on it" but I'm sorry, stop acting like it's an us problem. Joe Blow isn't contributing to global warming or barely is. Everyone always says we all need to change and then they act like nothing happened even if a lot of people do. But my question is why are we told we can stop stuff like cutting down trees? 99% of the population isn't even involved in that. Hurricanes aren't increasing in intensity. The B.S. part of the GW argument is saying that when weather is more extreme than usual that means it's an increased pattern. I'm sorry but hurricanes got really frequent for like one recent summer and our recording tech has gotten better. I mean in terms of size and danger over large masses of land, I haven't seen hurricanes getting worse. Our recording has gotten better so we know how big they get over water/islands more precisely and they're bigger over water... Then they get useless over land.
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I'd like to know where O'Hare is getting this air if there's no plant life left. Does he have an air-purifier somewhere/ Is it outside the city limits since we never see it?
As bad as this movie may be, there is an actual real world parallel to the bottled air: quite simply, bottled water. After all, there's not a civilization in the world where water cannot be found naturally. Yes, there are places where water is practically nonexistent, but if you look at any population map, you'll notice that civilization *follows* water. And yet, companies like Nestlé found a way to bottle and sell water, almost entirely to people with indoor plumbing. To do so, they cut political deals to take fresh water from public lands, and put it in plastic bottles which cause pollution and use up even more water during manufacturing, and then end up in landfills half the time. The screenwriter probably knew about this and found it interesting, but was either a lazy hack or held back by the execs. Thus, it made it into the script, but in a watered-down form (no pun intended), just like the rest of this cash-grab of a movie. That's my armchair theory, at any rate.
I've had the song "How bad can i be" stuck in my head for months when i just heard it in the movie itself. then i listend to it again this year. now it's stuck in my head again.
It seems like they became cool with it for whatever reason. They allowed the video to come back into existence way before the deadline. I'm cautiously optimistic. There's still a chance they dick the video over though, given that they sucked enough to arbitrarily set the entire video aflame rather than just demonetize. My working theory for why they allowed it back is that they determined that it's weirdly positive in its opinion of The Lorax, and, going by what people have been saying about Universal based copyright attacks, that's a pertinent factor in how they respond.
I remember one theory about the Matrix is that when you escape the matrix, you're actually just on a different layer or level of the matrix. I think this view is particularly apt when viewing it through your interpretation of this Lorax.
This. I absolutely agree. I feel like the events of The Matrix make for a pretty robust (if entertainingly complicated) contingency protocol in the event of a victim becoming aware of the simulation. In the 2012 film, similarly, I think we're not witnessing a return to a more natural past, but rather seeing capitalism (or Thneedville culture) neutralize and even co-opt an ideology that threatens it. The movie's ending seems hopeful, but the Truffula seems to be the only thing of consequence being restored. A tree does not a forest make. The tree is raised in captivity, in isolation, in a world that only knows consumption. The tree becomes, as noted in the video, yet another item to be consumed, a mere vessel for wonder and nostalgia and beauty, stripped of any aspect that threatens capitalism. The tree is an outlet for feelings of a responsibility for environmental stewardship, not a resource for actual stewardship. Zac Efron, like Neo, was brought back into the fold of his artificial society through the illusion of breaking an illusion. On a meta level, I think this film is doing something similar, by nobly (or self-righeously) planting the seed of the original The Lorax in a flashy, modern, mass-media, corporate capitalist context. Maybe it's brilliant and nuanced, maybe it's insidious and confused, either way it's relevant and scary.
That is the equivalent of saying that maybe the Earth is flat but just from an angle we can't see. It is a philosophical conspiracy theory and carries all the weight, soundness and validity in my book. It is just kinda a useless practice unless you've got nothing more fruitful to pass the time. Naturally this is all in my humble opinion.
I don't think the producers even thought as much as you did. They said, hmm, let's get some pops songs and references, cute minion rip offs and a clear cut bad guy and good guy. You're giving them far too much credit.
He's not giving them credit. He does say that most of this is unintentional. There is still value in examining creative works for their themes and messages even if they are unintentional. As a creative person you make a thing with a certain thought but once you put it out there, you can't control the way other people will interpret it.
@@fernvalemusic269 No, but you can cast down their views like a great king upon his throne and banish them from the realms of canon actual and possible.
11:58 I'd say that's wrong. In the movie they do treat saving the environment like his own reward. Audrey is the mcguffin. Ted goes to learn about them so he can impress her, but his character arc is about him learning the importance of nature and choosing to stand up for that. Although the movie could've been better at showing it, when he does that he decides the trees are much more important to him than his crush. They don't treat the Truffula Trees as a way to solve the air pollution problem and that's why we need them, they treat the fact that they might help with the air pollution problem as a reason why the villain DOESN'T want them. But the reason a villain doesn't want the hero to succeed doesn't necessarily mean that is the reason the hero wants to succeed. Everyone in Thneedvile is perfectly fine with paying for filterd air. Even Ted, Audrey and The Once-ler seem to think of it as paying for electricity or cable or water. Audrey does call out O'hare for being against trees because they're bad for his business. But other than that never once do any of the good guys even mention it. Never once does Ted, The Once-ler, The Lorax, Audrey, Grammy Norma, Mrs Wiggins or anybody else say that they'll fix the problem nor do they seem incredibly concerned about it either.
In the original Lorax film the onceler debates himself and wonders if he’s really doing the right thing but always ultimately comes to the conclusion to continue forward without thought Which ironically due to the lack of sustainability in his business model leads to its own destruction For every eucalyptus tree the printer paper industry chops down they plant another in its place. Just thought I’d throw that out there
oil is actually a renewable resource and not a "Fossil Fuel" (see the Abiotic Theory), wells that were capped at the turn of the last century are producing again, peak oil is a myth
@@stargazerspark4499 oil still has negative effects on the enviornment, if oil was infinite it would not solve the issue of climate change at hand. Clean energy can bring humanity energy sources to continue thriving while ensuring the future be less atmosphericaly toxic, again, for later humans. If we continue to burn coal and oil we are only hurting humans, the Earth will bounce back, it has millions even billions of years to do so
@@stargazerspark4499 Yea so renewable, all we have to do is wait for the perfect conditions on earth for its formation to happen again and then after that, wait a just few billion years and BAM! More oil!!!!
i always had a feeling that the original lorax was about finding balance between humanity and nature i remember there is a moment in the lil cartoon where the lorax and the onceler are talking and the oncler asks: ''well what am i suppose to do? fire 100 000 workers?'' and the lorax just awnsers : '' i dont rightly know''. because like evrything else in the world, nature, capitalism, exercise, relaxation, a balance needs to be struck for things to go welland for the world to go forward, both naturally and societly.
I remember watching the original movie as a 1st or 2nd grader and feeling really bad that the last tree was going to get cut down. To me it was all about companies irresponsibly trampling nature to the point of extinction.
That mini-essay on the nature of nature was pretty sharp. Like, wouldn't "bringing back nature" mean giving up our dominance over it? No one wants that. They just want cute animals and sustainable energy - a garden. The play Equus comes to mine.
I'll give the movie this: it's been six years and I still instantly recognised How Bad Can I Be. It's not good, but it's literally the most memorable thing about the movie.
I'll admit it, this was way more interesting than I expected. Mostly because of the way you handle it. It's really refreshing to see someone talk about a movie like this one by its own terms, instead of merely comparing the messages and deciding which one did it best. Also, the fact that you like the stuff you talk about makes it a thousand times more enjoyable. It's just so good to know the things you like and what makes you like them, even if they're not "good things" in the eyes of the majority. what I'm saying is, basically, thanks for the quality entertainment, Big Joel. ^.^
I think one of the most interesting parts was near the end when the villain succeeds in turning the town against the boy. That's the version of The Matrix that can't be "escaped" in any conventional sense: beliefs _about_ reality. Also I was hoping the very end would have people see Onceler's thneed and want them again and make the whole victory pointless. I'm still pretty sure Baudrillard is off his rocker, though.
I was young when this movie came out, and when I did see it, my mother preached to me about the necessity of keeping our environment healthy. While I already had this knowledge, this kind of visualization is much more enticing to the intended audience/s (young children/adolescents) as opposed to documentaries on the subject of deforestation. This is all agreeable, but I feel this critique strays from the movie's intent: deforestation is bad, and this is what will happen if we keep doing it. It kind of reminds me of FernGully in a ton of ways... Being said, there are SO ways to interpret the movie, and it's very interesting to hear your analysis of the film, as I have never seen it through this sort of lens. Thank you for making this video and being awesome!!
Yeah! Like I understood his point about the movie not making a clear/good reason as to why the trees are good in the first place, but I think the reason for that is because the movie assumes we already know that deforestation is bad and why it is, so it finds no need to mention it. So if ur a hard critical thinker, I can see how ignoring unconscious assumptions creates a problem when thinking about the true logic of a movie. Very interesting stuff
Personally, I don't think the rebooted Lorax had much... Narrative I guess? The original Lorax was like a cautionary tale and the reboot is like... Just another kids movie? They're both good movies but the reboot doesn't seem to have much of a message the same way the original does. I almost feel like the reboot goes against the original. Idk.
+Sebastian Sean Crow Yes, you're completely right. The narrative that the people making the rebooted movie intended is bland and against the original. But the unintended narrative that they made is interesting.
@@keegster7167 that's right, though I saw a new message in the movie that wasn't addressed in the original. The privatization of basic-survival-commodities, did you all realize O'Hara literally makes ZILLIONS out of the selling of air? The thing that keeps your body going? I think that this is a more blatant metaphor for the ongoing problem of companies trying to privatize drinking water... I mean the practice of doing so isn't that far fetched... Nestlé has undergone a harsh shitstorm after this went public... And there are even more smaller companies that privatize water for various uses and thus restrict the access to a basic need for humans...
in a way, the 2012 Lorax film can be seen as a representation of government corruption, with citizens being lied to and knowledge being held back (such as the outside world, the process of photosynthesis, etc) in the name of capitalism. In the end, it ended up creating a system that, realistically, was doomed to devolve into overcapitalization (like selling air) and the dumbing down of religion and culture. The air in a bottle ad in the movie was very much the sort of thing you'd see for a junk food commercial, such as Coca-Cola or Lays. (though I'd argue that they do actually just sell you air in a package. Goddamn nitrogen in the chips packet) anyway, you can reach many different conclusions from The Lorax so long as you strip the context of the original away and view it as its own creation (it's different enough to have a new protag, antag and protag goal, so might as well treat it as much)
When I watched The Lorax, which wasn't all that long ago. I felt the screenplay was written by an ardent pro-capitalist person who doesn't really understand economics at all, sees capitalism as the most logical system but doesn't really understand the alternatives. So, they then were asked to write the screenplay for a rather simple anti-capitalist story and the end result was this really schizophrenic monstrosity where the text is anti-"corporatism" but the subtext is pro-capitalism in the "it's just human nature" sense.
Holy shit your comment was retarded. The alternatives to capitalism have not worked (look at Venezuela for example). Capitalism without government intervention and lobby groups encourages innovation which can result in goods made quicker, cheaper, and with less harm to the environment. The problem really comes down to apathy and excess. Society as a whole wants more junk and doesn't really care about much else. They may latch onto a social movement so they can feel good about themselves, but it always ends up being pointless.
+ahatt96 Regardless of your opinion of capitalism and its alternatives, I think that two things about this movie are pretty close to inarguable. First, the film generally wants to take an anti-capitalist or anti-consumerist approach. Within the context of the movie, greed drives The Onceler to act in an unethical and destructive way which dooms the environment. Second, the film is pretty bad at actually taking that approach, to the point that they construct alternatives to commodification as fundamentally commodity oriented. The important thing here, in my opinion, isn't whether the message is itself right or wrong, but instead how the film succeeds or fails at conveying that message.
Responses to your points: Argumentum ad Venezuelum -> ruclips.net/video/le86H7Xfjrc/видео.html Lots + lots of examples where socialism has worked -> ruclips.net/video/zIddCEBCKHQ/видео.html Capitalism drives innovation & other arguments -> ruclips.net/video/u0NlF7LRuNg/видео.html Regardless though, my comment was about the movie, about capitalism as presented within the movie and the lens its looked at through.
IsThatEtchas it's more about sustainable resources and protecting them. Laissez-Faire neo-liberal capitalistic Trickle-down economics doesn't work with this, not only does it ignore limited resources, there's also the honesty in Freakonomics, and the using money makes money of Velocity of money, so redistribution of wealth is an investment in local businesses, instead of them rotting up in some tax-haven trustfund. Now Biomimicry, bots and a Universal Basic Income or a Negative Income Tax might work as alternatives to Flexicurity of the social democrats.
The problem is the government and all the people who rely on it to protect them. As the saying goes "Those who trade freedom for safety deserve and will have neither." Here some videos that more or less sum up my thoughts better than I could with text. ruclips.net/video/YJIl5BPHOEw/видео.html ruclips.net/video/cJyl_9YgBh4/видео.html ruclips.net/video/TP--6KCSXYA/видео.html ruclips.net/video/kvYmoaCd_WY/видео.html
I would just like to say that your profile picture matches your comment all too well! All I see is Gordon Ramsay yelling about Empty O's and their greatness! Thank you for this! 😂👌🏼
I think you missed a big part of How Bad Can I Be. When he says, "I'm just doing what comes naturally," I don't believe he's referring to natural in the sense of physical nature (i.e. the Truffula trees), he's referring to the neoliberal tenet that market capitalism is the "natural' state of the economy. The movie doesn't want us to agree with the Onceler here, that's pretty clear from the imagery. Instead, it wants us to see that social darwinism is a flimsy excuse for the destruction of the environment. It's criticizing the neoliberal view of success in the market as moral success rather than just economic success. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Damn, I actually was surprised by this video being really interesting. And you know what? I think this reflects lots of current ecological movements, the try to use mature as a way to raise themselves morally, not for nature itself
One thing I found confusing about the movie, is that they refer to truffula trees as just trees. So are those the only species of tree that exist? Why are there no oak trees, cedar trees, etc.?
It's pitifully sad to see that a story where the entire point is that nobody is truly evil but they can still impact their environment if they aren't careful was essentially deemed too 'complex' so they had to shove in a pointless bad guy so everyone at the end can go "hurray!"
LittleMissLounge While I wasn't able to recognise his name, "Where the wild things are" is pretty well known. At least far better than Seuss works, I actually haven't ever heard of the Lorax before the movie came out and even the Grinch is only known to some degree because every piece of US media constantly references it (I guess it's insanely popular) but I've never seen or touched any book in real life.
LittleMissLounge Here in Austria? I'd argue the by far most famous evergreens would be literally everything written by Michael Ende (German) and Astrid Lindgren (Swedish). The former should be known in the US for the "Neverending story", although I think "Momo" and "Jim Knopf" are more famous over here, but I may be wrong. Then there are some more recent and local authors who aren't even known in other European countries so I won't even start with that. While they are comics and not books I really have to mention "Asterix" (French) as well. Although the target group may be little bit older (or rather: Adults can enjoy it too).
So in my AP Enviornmental class last year the first thing we did was watch the original Lorax because it contained the majority of main points that form the center of environmentalism, that being consumption of resources, the tragedy of the commons, destruction of habitat, etc. and you kinda covered all the reasons why my teacher hated the newer version and why I, while I don't hate it and still find it amusing, believe it should be held as a completely separate entity to the original book and film, it is part of the problem that the original was pointing out.
I absolutely LOVE that you put so much thought into your videos. It's refreshing to hear your unique perspective on subjects when so many people just repeat the same thing everyone else is saying. I strive to be more like you in that way.
So, Horton Hears a Who was my daughter's FAVORITE MOVIE when she was itty bitty. I'd love to hear your deep dive on it. I find it interesting, because it's so clearly political, but no one agrees about what side it's on.
Apparently it was a commentary avout democracy in a post-world war 2 Japan, where the US in tandem with a new Japanese government was deciding who could or should vote. Dr Seuss belived that everyone should be able to vote, he supported civil rights movements, and naturally wanted to share the message that all people are entitled to the same fair equal treatment as others, especially politically.
11:45 I think this goes to show how different environmentalism looks now than it did when The Lorax was first written. Trees were valuable for internal, emotional reasons: beauty, kindness towards animals, etc. Now environmentalism has become incredibly external, namely, if we don't turn the tide on climate change, humanity is doomed: wars will be fought over water, the ocean will run out of fish, crops won't grow as well which means animals go extinct at alarming rates which means less food, parts of the planet will become so hot they are uninhabitable which means a worldwide refugee crisis which means more war, sea levels will rise displacing those city's inhabitants and creating even more refugees, and extreme weather events like hurricanes and tsunamis increase. This is the environment in which 2012's The Lorax was made, but it's waaaaaay too depressing to comment on all this end of the world stuff.
For what it's worth, purified oxygen (90~96%) has mood elevating effects and can in some cases have positive cognitive effects. O'Hare might be selling purified oxygen as a sort of mood elevating drug (of note, medical grade pure oxygen is considered a drug by the FDA)
I never fully understood what bothered me about he new Lorax, but your insight hit the nail on the head perfectly. thank you for the clarification in my own perspective
Great video, I'm familiar with a couple of things you touched on, if you don't mind I can offer some starting points to look into further. The references to nature in the song are a tongue-in-cheek reference to capitalists explicitly arguing that natural selection is evidence that capitalism is the natural system for governing human society. This has literally been happening since Darwin was still alive. It can be paired with the line that echoes it, "the people with the money make the ever loving world go round"; which is the basic idea behind supply-side economics, which is the theory underpinning policies like Reaganomics. As for the commodification of the trees it could be argued that "it would suck if nature were gone" still relies on humans assigning it value. Knowing this, we can say that it's possible the filmmakers tried to re-frame and flesh out that argument by saying "okay, the trees are valuable as a commodity or other kind of asset, what should we do with them?" The answer to this being that since it has low value when used by private individuals to turn a profit long-term, and high value to the public without labour having to be applied, it should be made part of what's known traditionally as "the commons", or collective property; in the movie represented by planting the tree in the park.
Even though the film is bad, I'm still triggered by Behind the Meme saying the 2012 version of the Lorax is the result of Hollywood "running out of ideas" despite most popular films being based on previous source materials (mostly books).
Very well articulated, interesting reading. Refreshing to hear someone coming at this movie from a perspective other than "Look how empty and vapid and insincere this movie is! Corporate Hollywood ruined one of the greatest stories of all time etc etc". Also, "The Lorax and The Matrix are almost thematically identical" is one of the best things I've ever heard.
i do also really love the line "we thank the lord for all we've got/including this brand new parking lot" thank you for also recognizing it and appreciating it
the message you present as coming unintentionally at the end of the lorax (about thneedville being a society succumbed to commodity fetishism and empty signifiers) actually makes sense on another level to the matrix... being that the matrix is largely based on (or at least is popularly read this way) Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulacrum, then we could take thneedville and its inability to go back to the "real" (being the pre-commodified organic world that still had some intrinsic meaning) to be a parallel to Baudrillards map of the empire that has superseded the empire itself since the map signifies actual locales but in such detail that it becomes indiscernible, so too do the trees in thneedville though perhaps for different reasons. the trees in thneedville aren't 1 to 1 replicas of actual trees, but they don't need to be when we've moved past the need for the 'real', thus those trees become the new real (and replace truffula trees for the purposes of that society who no longer needs them for air, which is graciously provided by their local capitalist overlord) - the signifier has both become the sign of the tree and also completely replaced its function. if we want to read into it this way then there becomes an interesting case for how settling for signifiers (either through necessity OR choice) leads to their deconstruction. in the movie the need for air from truffula trees is totally gone in thneedville because air is provided from a seemingly alternate source as far as the residents are concerned. the inflatable and artificial trees become ENOUGH for their purposes. this could even be a commentary on what we lose when we turn the real into simply signs and makes yet another postmodern case for conservatism i'll leave yall to argue about that last line
Hey everyone. I thought it was a bit strange that I didn't explicitly source Baudrillard's "Simulation and Simulacra" at the end of this video. I sorta just forgot haha. At any rate, his work informs a lot of the things I talk about here. I'll leave a link to it, in case you're interested: epk.home.xs4all.nl/theory/Simulation/Baudrillard_Simulacra%20and%20Simulations.pdf
Great video. Here's an HTML mirror of that link, might be easier to read for many:
web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html
Thank you!
Maybe it's because of the writing style, but I can't seem to get a good grasp of all the ideas in the text (especially when new keywords & case studies are introduced but aren't explained properly)
Also, he seems to have a rather pessimistic outlook, which I'm not 100% ready to accept (or maybe he IS right about the bleak state of the world? i dunno) :((
Anyways does anyone have a clearer explanation of Baudrillard's concepts? I'm interested to know more
+Juan Gee. Baudrillard is an extremely complicated philosopher and his work is difficult even for many graduate students. Philosophy is an established academic discipline so expecting to understand the work of late 20th century French post-structuralists without a heavy background in the field is like hoping to get a working understanding of quantum mechanics without ever having taken high school level physics. I know that people like to self-educate but there's this strange phenomenon where people look at philosophy as just some kind of fluff field where you're just reading "thinkers" give "hot takes" on "life and stuff" in a way that does not separate it in anyway from some random person giving an uninformed opinion. So forgive me for coming across as either elitist or gatekeeping (genuinely not trying to do either of those things) but when I see someone randomly try to read Baudrillard and their first reaction is "he seems to have a rather pessimistic outlook, which I'm not 100% ready to accept (or maybe he IS right about the" bleak state of the world? i dunno) :((" then I know they probably haven't even started with basic Intro-to-Philosophy stuff and has no idea where they're even going with the text. When you're dealing with semiotics or language in general, the issue here isn't establishing some definitive statement about whether or not life is worth living--it's to investigate a linguistic phenomenon and take the implications of that understanding as far as they will go, which naturally gets existential eventually but that's not the central goal. If I were you, I'd urge you to get a history of western philosophy book and learn the tradition--the concepts, the words, the thinkers, the past. Because when you're dealing with someone like Baudrillard, he's working with a rich and complex tradition that goes back literally thousands of years. It's the oldest discipline in existence and even predates modern empirical science. So if anyone is reading this and wonders "wow, this thing I'm reading is interesting but I have no idea what's going on" then pause, take a deep breathe, relax, and just find some good resources and slowly work your way into the field. It's not as good as getting the information from an actual school where you're gonna be in a boot-camp-like setting, but at least you won't be just another random uninformed charlatan on the internet. (I hope this didn't come across as too harsh, but it's definitely worth putting out there)
ha yeah I was expecting you to reference baudrillard but I think this works anyway. however it's interesting how this movie is actually much closer to his theory than the matrix (aka. the movie that's directly referencing baudrillard). i'm pretty sure there's no easy escape in his theory and I agree with liar of Lesbos that his analysis of capitalist society is a deeply cynical one which favours the self-destruction of society over any kind of revolutionary potential.
I'm just imagining a board room meeting with a bunch of people whose only experience with trees are as things on the rough parts of their golf courses trying to come up with reasons why trees are good when making this movie.
stonium LMFAO XD I SEE IT 😂
lmaooo that's probably not too far from the truth
Some guy wrote TREES = GOOD on a whiteboard, circled it and surrounded it with question marks. “What next?”
I don't get this comment. What is your reason why trees are good that is different from the variety of ones presented in the movie?
@@bpansky the thing is it shoudnt need be explained.
he can
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* use their seeds *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
to get
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* the girl he needs *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
and put his seed
marlonyo LOOOOOL
Ted Is 12
Audrey Is About 16
Ladies And Gents We Got Em
*FBI OPEN UP*
(Serously though I died of laughter)
and
✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: put his seeds *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
into
✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: the girl he needs *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
The girl he thneeds
Why is my man Lorax... the title character, such a background character in his own titled film?
The answer:
*CaPiTaLIsM*
stranger things had the main character not appear for 90% of the first season
@@thefutureisnow6882 i haven't watch Stranger Things, but from what i saw from few clips, it has a mistery elements to it, i assume the 'non-existent' main character will plays as a twist or grand reveal or something
That's not the same with the Lorax
The lorax in this abomination is a literal sidr character. Yes, you do have a conflict between the Oncheller (or however it spelled) with him. But it rushed so fast, just to get the whole "capitalism vs environment" result just so the movie could just throws it in your face, instead of deeply explored the whole theme.
What's worse is that the whole movie is actually between the young boy and the Oncheller. The boy wants to impress the girl who looked out for a real trees, so he sets out for the Oncheller thatvlived outside of the city. All while the Lorax himself absent thourghout the whole things.
@@ShatteredGlass916 wait, that little kid isn't just the onceler but younger? I've not seen the movie but they look SO alike aside from some young-looking proportions that I assumed the movie was a story told over a decently long time.
@@kaitlyn__L nope, they are different people.
I wouldn't blame you for not noticing. Illumination always have a shitty character design. And one of those factors is how similar and generic looking they are.
Remember when this pro earth movie partnered with an suv car
They had the lorax drive it. *they put the actual lorax in the car to drive it*
That is literally like running over and killing someone with an ambulance..
“I believe in the zodiac! Yeah, I do, I'm a Leo, I love Titanic
This is something morbidly ironic: my grandmother was a cancer, and she was killed by a giant crab
This is a song about the idea of irony, so strap in!
🎼My dog's stomach was very upset
So we put him in the car
And we went to the vet
And on our way to the vet
I killed a cat
I say
Isn't that ironic?
I adopted a child from overseas
To rescue him from child labor factories
And on his very first birthday
We went to Build-A-Bear workshop
Isn't that I-R-O-N-I-C-I-N-O-R-I-R-O-N-I-C
Yes
And a waterpark is burned to the ground
And a tow truck is broken down
I always used to cry when I laughed
But then I was raped by a clown
I was watching Al Gore on CNN
He was talking and talking and talking, and then
Out of boredom
My pet polar bear shot himself
I dated an animal rights activist
One day she got really pissed
Because I was eating veal
That was wrapped in PETA bread
Get it? Because pita... fuck it
I-R-O-N-I-C-I-N-O-R-I-R-O-N-I-C
Yeah, I said
I'm a stand-up comic
But I always sit and slouch
And I got my girlfriend pregnant
On my sterile uncle's pull out couch
I-R-O-N-I-C-I-N-O-R-I-R-O-N-I-C, Ironic
Yeah
If everyday you play the board game RISK
You've probably never taken a risk in your life
And Monopoly has far from a stranglehold
On the board game market
And a little kid died from
Suffocation
When he choked on a game piece from
Operation
And I can't grow a beard
But that one's not ironic
That one's just sad
Bob Barker got all of my pets pregnant
My grandfather had Alzheimer's
And one day we were...
@@keepquiet8939 Bo is alway a win
1000th like🥳
Everybody listen to "Biggering", the song that got replaced by "How Bad Can I Be". It thematically hits the nail on the head and is a Disney Renaissance level villain song.
II doesn't take a genius to figure out why "Biggering" was scrapped. Or why the version of, "Thneedville" that more explicitly condemned consumerism was scrapped. Or why the song in whcih the Onceler sings about destroying nature was scrapped. Illumination didn't want to make itself look bad.
@catinthehat12 idk what the full hierarchy is, but hellfire from the hunchback of notre dam is definitely #1
Was looking for a comment like that. Now I can die in peace.
I think it's also thematically better. As Joel said, Oncler views his consumption as natural. But in Biggering, that line comes near the end of the song to signify when he's finally gone to far, rather than at the very beginning when his transformation is just starting.
How bad can I be is great, but Biggering is something else entirely
I thought its a video of a picture of Lorax zooming in 20 min. I guess Im wrong.
I thought it too xD
Golden
Lol I thought that too
Memes
Same.
I suppose there's also a bit of a metanarrative, how The Lorax was hyper-marketed, featured in dozens of commercials promoting other products while simultaneously promoting the movie. This story that was once about the environment and faceless corporations became a shallow husk of a story.
the best part was the ad for a car that wasn't even a hybrid. i can't imagine someone signed off on that without noting the irony.
+Fopenplop Sure, hybrids can be marketed as being better for the environment, but are they really? I'm asking a genuine question, since the electricity used for the car likely comes from fossil fuels too.
King Keegster, I think that depends on where in the world you're living. For instance, a lot of Canada's electricity comes from water-based sources, so much so that "hydro" is slang for electricity in some parts of the country. Also, it's possible that the energy generated from burning fossil fuels might be proportionally less than the electricity generated to power the electric/hybrid cars, thus being a win proportionally but still a loss overall. That last statement would need some research, though.
Many hybrid cars don't charge from the grid. They use gas more efficiently by recharging a battery with the kinetic energy lost during braking.
Fopenplop thanks for that! That's what I was going to say These cars are more efficient because they charge themselves as you drive. They usually even have a display panel that shows you I'd you're using energy or storing it
When you said "if someone sells something, then they're ok with some people not being able to buy it", I already kind of knew that but the way you phrased it blew my mind a little lol
huh, ive never seen things like this before. Its a super interesting perspective to view the world through
right
I think about this all the time. Like the other day I was given two bags of kid's clothes because a parent didn't want to deal with donating them, and they suggested I sell them to get a little cash for my trouble. I was like no damn way am I charging anyone for toddler clothes I got for free 😭
The Lorax movie is deeply ironic. It's an adaptation of a book all about the purity of nature and how capitalism destroys it, focus-tested into a strange, musical, colorful romp that takes so many creative liberties with the source material that it's barely recognizable. It literally *is* a capitalist distortion of something pure. If the Lorax was a truffula tree, the Lorax movie is a thneed. Themes aside, the film was created by a studio known for paper-thin audience pandering (the Minion movie, people) which is why it's stuffed to the brim with bright colors, vapid characters, and pointless musical numbers. It has zero interest in honoring the source material and exists to cash in on a book that's entire purpose is to critique capitalism.
The Lorax movie is a deeply unsettling disgrace, and a sad commentary on modern Hollywood.
That's like your opinion, man.
It really is ironic that a company like illumination would try to critizice capitalism.
Lol, I love capitalism 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
its really interesting because this movie kinda has the opposite message and im sure they didnt mean too do that.
Testify!
I remember the older Lorax cartoon actually had a fair bit ambiguity to it, yeah, the exploitation of nature is bad but the Onceler points out that the exploitation is foundation for a lot of people's livelihood and just shutting it down was going to cause a lot of misery something the Lorax had no rebuttal for. As simple as it was this one bit of dialogue and the ending gave that cartoon way more depth and complexity than the 2012 abomination could ever hope to have.
Except in the very next moment the last truffula tree is felled and all those people end up unemployed anyway.
The lorax explains it it takes twenty years to grow a truffula tree. The once-ler could easily have set up an operation where he didn't chop down trees faster than he could replant them.
@Simple Weirdo That may be true for him when he's young but the old onceler certainly thinks on things more than once. He's been considering the word unless for a long time for an example.
@@DaDunge Seriously. They only wanted the leaves. Why chop the tree down at all?
I definitely prefer the TV Lorax 1972 then the 2012 movie. Although the plot is pretty straightforward it has subtle details that make it much more interesting then the 2012 movie. In the 1972 Lorax call there is a line where one of the five members says “it rids your home of dismal dust” at the same time the camera zooms in to the factory making the Thneeds as it pumps out smog. Irony
You don't see an issue of exploitation within capitalism?
I feel like there's one thing about The Lorax that felt missing in the video: that the notion of politics seems to be completely absent in Thneedville, or anywhere in the film. There is nothing that indicates that the Thneedvillers discuss politics, or have any form of centralized political system with goals or ideology. O'Hare is called the mayor, but in the movie, the State is so removed from anything that happens, that you can't really know if his position is elected, bought or is some kind of feudal title. There certainly isn't any sort of opposition to him, in the shape of organizations or political parties.
Everything in Thneedville is based on profit and consumption, like if culture or the public power didn't even exist. You could say it is a criticism of capitalism, but before anything else, it's criticism of a world without politics, without any vision of collective social change.
This is a really good point, especially considering the fact that if O'Hare is the government, then what he does can't exactly be called capitalism, it's just taxes on a substance that needs to be imported. It's very odd.
If this movie was smarter, I'd compare it to a Bioshock-like AnCap dystopia, but in the film, really, the question
of whether governments should or even can control the State to protect the environment isn't even asked.
I love the fact that so many interesting questions can come out of this shitty movie that everybody hates and the producers didn't even put any thought into.
Vítor Boldrini
I think tho, that this discussion here is all so interesting because it comes so close to a conclusion that someone like Slavoj Zizek would make.
That is that the depoliticized nature of the society in The Lorax is in fact showing a major component of the modern dominant ideology in capitalism.
I would consider Thneedville to be a monopolistic fascist state wherein, the government is made up of a single corporation and all companies operating within Thneedville are owned by O'hare's corporation which is also the government.
*Y O U G R E E D Y D I R T B A G*
... want a free daisy?
Since I was a child I thought he said “you greedy dead man” thank you so much for finally telling me the truth I could never hear
Aight bet but y'all can't deny that "How Bad Can I Be" was an absolute banger
Andrew Ramlall I absolutely died when that song started playing because I didn’t agree with him at all but like hooooo that was a bop
Annoying ear diarrhoea
And “Let It Die” is a real slapper
And Onceler is one handsome lad
I just watched a video where a dude is using Gen Z Slang and holy fuck this comment thread just annoyed the hell outta me
No one talks about the soulless but remarkably catchy pop musical soundtrack
Yeah
They’re all bops lets not lie
The biggering being the only exception lets be real. It was cut out for a reason
@@sandshark2 no
@@sandshark2 it wasn't
This was the movie we had to watch at the end of grade 7. I remember hating it because I understood that it was heavily modified from the original Dr. Seuss book, as well as the fact it was produced by the same people who made Despicable Me. I was too open with my concerns, and the teacher yelled at me and I cried in a corner.
and then everybody clapped
@@mr.zimtus5231 have you considered that some stories... are real
@@echowoods7977 Gasp
@@echowoods7977 Real stories on the internet??? cant be true
My favorite Dr. Seuss protagonist is Zac Efron.
Yes yes yes
Audrey needed, like, any character at all. Make her a nerd, make her super obsessed with trees, make her passionate as hell - hell, give the one singer in the movie who didn't sing at all her own song! Ted needed to have a better motivation than "hot girl want tree" if the movie was going to get anywhere; if Audrey was interesting, and he liked her for her instead of his fantasy about her, maybe we would be invested in their story.
but that's just my onion, knee-deep in the fact that i just really like taylor swift and female characters
The fact that I had to double-check that her name is Audrey instead of Ashley is honestly alone pretty telling. From watching this movie once a couple years ago, I remembered every other character's name except hers. She's just so...nothing, even in comparison to other "nothing" love interests in films aimed at children.
I agree with you but uh, Zach Effron is a singer. He's even a singer in a pretty big musical set in a high school, I don't know if you've heard of it ;P
Carys Nevard A) he sang in the lorax B) that wasn't zac efron singing in hsm, he was dubbed (at least for the first one)
"But that's just my onion"
I just love spelling errors. They're hilarious.
Forward and Back no, i wrote onion
These are some of the most interesting ideas I've heard about this movie (and I was on tumblr in 2012 so I've seen...I've seen a lot of shit about this movie). It's really refreshing that instead of coming at it as just a lesser version of the book or the 1972 cartoon, you approached it as it's own entity. Really great work.
"I was on tumblr in 2012, I've seen a lot of shit" is so fucking hilarious yet also relatable.
there should be an investigation video solely dedicated to the 2012 lorax fandom
"When a society is only able to speak a language of commodities and untethered symbols, there really is no going back."
This line got me thinking about the current obsession with tiny houses and minimalism. People who proclaim they wish to "live simply" have commoditized the very idea of minimal ad simple living and turned it into a display of consumerism. From the multi-million dollar industry that is the construction of tiny houses, to the myriad of pinterest boards, blogs, vlogs and TV shows that "sell" the lifestyle, these people who declared a desire to reject society and consumerism have become their own niche society of consumers largely admired by others. An anti-consumer movement became almost and overnight consumer magnet. There really is no going backwards.
I think the world really is more complex than that and that complexity is inescapable. But I did explain this video to someone as like "what if people were going vegan not for animal rights or the environment or anything but just because the idea of being vegan seemed cool and they wanted to procure that coolness for themselves" and went oh yeah, that's a thing that exists
i think they are just too broke for a fullsized house
To be fair, this applies to trailer parks too. Not really anything new.
@@uffstahpgoogle6851 tiny houses are in no way cheap
@@caitie226 the thing is, does it matter? Why does it matter why someone wants to go vegan or save the trees, if we can all agree those are good things. The end result is the same. So maybe people are invested in protecting the environment purely out of the selfish desire of not wanting to be toasted to death by climate change, instead of the motivation being that protecting the environment is just the objectively right thing to do
Why did I laugh so hard when he said "use their seeds to get the girl he needs"
I always saw 'how bad can I be' as the oncerler's attempt to justify his actions to himself. he took advantage of nature to make his thneed to prove himself to his unsupportive family. After he decimates the truffula tree population, he shows remorse. The onceler is a surprisingly complex character; I recommend listening to 'biggering' which is objectively better than how bad can I be, but doesn't have the right tone, I assume, for the so-called light-hearted movie
Exactly!!
Biggering had an evil vibe, which was very uncharacteristic in this Onceler’s situation (considering he was insecure and determined rather than some dude that wanted money). It was more of an original Onceler song rather than a 2012 Onceler song. It’s still an awesome song, though. 8/10
@@redskeletonart238 what about having both of the songs lmfao
I see “How Bad Can I Be” being people who look at climate change, poverty, and other issues from their comfortable position and not see the greviances that others experience, and thus dont consider them big issues. After all, people who are rich dont care about trash on the street, the garbage company collects that, while in some places garbage piles up to extreme amounts.
But bottled air is already a thing. It sells really well in China. It's most a luxury health product targeted at parents worried that their kids arent getting good air because of the smog. No one suffocates outside in China either because there is enough breathable oxygen, even if its contaminated or more scarce because of the smog. I imagine it's similar in The Lorax
A lot of people in china wear face masks. The air gives them pretty bad diseases. This does not seem to be the case in The Lorax. Bottled air isn't an inherently ridiculous idea, it goes unexamined and seemingly unneeded in this film.
Also keep in mind that a more practical way to use bottled air would be the fact that you would have scuba tanks and airlock doors that make a pressurized area that pressurize with a more pure oxygen nitrogen mixture. Something that was probably left out due to the fact that its not nearly as aesthetically pleasing... well you could make it pleasing to the eye just a lot harder to show those details.
Oh my gawd sherie look at my cute scuba taaank~
Oh mah gawwwwwwd look at the cute lil trees painted on there.
Oh i knowwwwww~
all in a boston accent. Through AM radio walkie talkies in their scuba masks
Wow so much for Socialism if China can't have free air, I wonder if China banned Space Balls
Lmao "so much for socialism if China can't have free air", that's like saying "so much for capitalism when the US has school shootings". You can take any bad government that treats its citizens like shit and use it as a way to target an ideology that you don't like. And you'd be wrong, because neither of those governments is actually representative of those ideas, and the connection you made is actually irrelevant.
Jane Ross your analogy doesn't make any sense and it is ridiculous funny, "so much for socialism if China can't have free air" it a very ironic sentence. In socialism the goal is to redistribute goods special for surviving and that ownership of something is collective so everyone is entitled for free supplies to survive so if you can't have air a very basic element for survival that's even free in capitalist countries, it's very ironic.
The question that has really stuck with me throughout this video is this:
What does butterfly milk smell like?!
Should i go for the nice answer or the fucked up one?
ThatGuyYouKnow probably pretty bad lol. Milk is known to curdle after all.
Screw it.
Ask tinkerbells cooch.
I'm not sure
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
But how ba-a-ad can it be?
ThatGuyYouKnow Real answer: They aimed for Suess's coherent absurdism and failed miserably
Good answer: bitter smelling bug guts
I really like the songs
That's not a joke. They're not as good as grickle grass but they're good
A Choking Fish absolutely agree! Plus the songs that were written for the film but didn’t make it in are pretty darn great too!
I know this is a year late but this song was scrapped from the movie ruclips.net/video/BpgUQYARIsw/видео.html
@@BlueInk1287 that's such a shame it wasn't in the movie. So much better than How Bad can I Be, which is awful
Yes I'm being a hypocrite
Regarding the line: “We thank the Lord for all we’ve got, including this brand new parking lot...“ I distinctly remember watching the theatrical version of this film when it was first released. This scene featured a group of Catholic nuns in their habits singing this line right before the cut to the parking lot. It was hysterical. In every version I’ve seen since home release, they changed the scene so that the line is sung instead by a group of random people near a pool, still in gospel fashion. Can someone else please confirm this recollection? It’s driving me crazy.
Mandela, is that you?
what you have my friend is the mandela effect
when did kim jong un become a dr suess character?
Oh my god 😂 I knew something was bothering me. I always disliked him but there was something special this time
Who?
Excuse me the immortal science of Juche will finally free us from capitalism. Just you wait.
H E W A S A L W A Y S T H E R E
@@Yesyesyesyessss
dun Dun DUNNNNNNN
yeah Big Joel, you're right, the movie is interesting.
dreams can come true
That guy could still totally sell air even with the trees. It's going to take years for a tree to be sexually mature enough to seed. And then it produces only a limited amount of seeds. Plus there's no biodiversity, so if a disease gets one tree, they'll probably all going to die. What he should do is try to get rights to the tree and sell the seeds *and* air. He could either phase out air sales or just market it enough that people continue to associate it as a superior/purer product
This comment reminded me of a really cool book I read about trees. It's 'The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees' by Rob Penn. He goes into a little bit of ~tree history~ and it's mostly about ash trees.
isn't this kind of the whole point of Joel's critique? Like, the tree can also just become a commodity. Something to sell. Just another product.
andrew johnstone that was indeed the point, that when all you see in the world around is the need or want it can fulfill, that's all object become: fulfillers. Trees and nature aren't good or deserving of protection because of the value they have to the environment or that their disappearing is "bad", instead the only reason they should exist is because we value them, as providers of oxygen or physical representations of our memories of better times.
You must be fun at parties
Anneliese the Goblin King I am very fun at parties! Thank you! I love making Pink Panty Droppers and playing drinking games and don't mind people doing drugs, so long as they/we smoke a certain distance away so me and my roommates are not incriminated. We also are all STEM majors so we also study hard af and don't let internet commentors shame us out of our fun and studiousness
i actually think they were buying CLEAN air, not just air itself. everything in Thneedville is artificial and polluting, so people would buy clean air yet there would still be air around.
Just like how water you buy in a bottle is advertised to be better than the water you'd get from the tap, containing minerals and whatever
It's confirmed here, The Lorax 2 is a spinoff of the matrix, where Zach Efron escapes from the world and everyone is harvested from Truffula trees.
"... a lot of analysis that needs untangling"
Don't you mean THNEEDS untangling?
.......I'll stop now
Stop.
No stay that was good XD
Wow. You did it. That was actually, genuinely, fascinating. Great job. This video did not feel its length, either.
A lot of your videos have underlying themes about intentionality in art. That you come down on the side of just appreciating what something is rather than what it was meant to be, lets you ask much more interesting questions in my opinion. Thank you for existing.
I feel the need to say
It’s amazing that you were able to get through this without mentioning the once-ler fandom.
You can tell your movie is a flop when the so-called antagonist of your movie ends up being the most iconic and beloved character in the entire thing
@@fruity4820 Well not really. It's bad in the case of the lorax because it defeats the point of the onceler but just because people love a villain doesn't make the movie bad. The villains are often my favorite characters :)
The “what is the difference between truffula trees and bottled air?” question was an excellent rug pull, it had me reeling. The perfect cap to this video, its beautiful, simple, and revelatory. It completely changed how o thought of the movie.
Between silly memes and brutal criticism, so many people have trashed this movie of value that I’ve never wanted to watch it. But... you’ve found accidental redemption in its messy attempts at “deep themes,” so now I’m curious to watch it myself. I love movies that miss their mark so drastically that they end up hitting another one.
I definately recommend it! Has a very important and huge message that directly reflects today.
Also, if you've read the book and are a fan of Dr Seuss, you'll love it!
When you made the Matrix comparison, the film that popped into my head was The Truman Show.
But, The Matrix works too, I guess.
the matrix focuses more on the outside real world than the truman show.
@@catarinaverduro2966 I think the comparison was supposed to reference the thematic element of each movie that mirrors the other; manufactured reality. In both movies, the majority of people live in a manufactured reality. However, in Thneedville I'd assume people are aware at some level that they're living in a "fake" utopia and accept it. Whereas in the matrix, the population is unaware that they're living in a simulation and therefore are enslaved. The difference is that between light-hearted and darker elements, and both themes serve different purposes in each movie. The theme of manufactured reality drives the plot of the Matrix moreso than the lorax.
I think of 'Wall-E' as a sequel to The Lorax. Where humans have not learned their lesson, and have filled the earth with junk and destroyed plant-life. Their solution has been to take off into space, in a space station. It depicts the problems caused by this. The robot Wall-E is a substitute for the little boy in The Lorax. Both movies have happy endings, with the regrowth of plants. Both show the problems caused by lack of respect for nature.
But Wall-E did it better :D (in my opinion :3)
Different companies though
Wall-E was a horrible movie, it's worse than the fucking lorax.
Little Miss Grace Haha no
@@squeaks5677
Umm yes.
i actually think the changes made to the truffula trees and the thneeds in the 2012 movie are kind of fascinating. I think they unintentionally reflect a cultural change from the 20th to the 21st century. In the 20th century progress was all about utility; that's why the thneed is defined by its many versatile uses. So Seuss essentially makes an environmentalist argument from aesthetic. Save the trees because they're pretty and the animals who live around them are cute. In the 21st century well-off people in developed countries mostly don't buy products because we need them; we already have everything we actually need. We buy things because they're cool-looking or well-advertised or trendy. Thus the thneed, despite still having many uses, is shown to become a success because it's a curiosity people think will make them cool. The argument for the trees then becomes an argument from utility: save the trees because they give you air and freedom.
To the animals that died because their homes and food sources were destroyed, trees were never aesthetic.
I think that people just realised that nature and us aren’t seperated, we’re part of it no matter with how much concrete we surround ourselves, if the trees die WE die
To be fair, you have to have an extremely high IQ to understand the Lorax.
@Diabolical Entity r/wooosh
Big woosh.
Diabolical Entity
r/woooosh
Rick and Morty IQ levels we are reaching here
Darkbowserdofus99 you really don’t
I think both versions of The Lorax are emblematic of their times. The original was during a time where unabashed environmentalism wasn't met as easily with derision or seeming like an enemy to all that which we hold dear. The newer version is in a kind of post-ironic society where we embrace our own signifiers of culture and happiness, as empty or as destructive as they may be.
Your comparison to The Matrix is interesting, since the antagonist of The Matrix is something outside of humanity, whereas the antagonist (if there is one) of The Lorax is humanity itself, but it's not really a deep enough story to explore people fighting their own self-interest, in a way that, say, Wall-E attempted.
It concerns me that people think environmentalism is the enemy... It's like humanity got stuck on this idea that maintaining the environment is some kind of altruistic endeavor, when really it's the only way to save our own asses from extinction. I guess that's what can happen when the tendency to separate self from other is taken to an extreme.
Medicine can't change a personality
You won't save the Earth by planting trees
And cutting millions down will only skin the planet's knees
But it'll sure make fossils out of you and me
John Dee It's not that people hate environmentalism in general, they just hate how people use it as a means to an end. Being constantly told we have to give scientists money to stop global warming only to be told it didn't do anything and only got worse is going to raise an eyebrow. Also people mention stats out of context, such as the water evaporation rate. Without mention of the water cycle, people think a lot of water is ceasing to exist.
It's good to protect the environment but also to be truthful and not greedy about it.
That we have to give scientists money to stop global warming? No, that money is worth it. We're getting more and more efficient and safe means of production. The issue is government buy-in and getting people to change their habits. All the research in the world won't slow climate change unless we actually act on it.
And your comment on "the water cycle" counteracting water scarcity is way oversimplified. Just because water is recycled doesn't mean that it goes to the places it was evaporated from, which can have disasterous impacts on climates. Hurricanes are increasing in intensity. Wildfires and droughts are more common. Plants aren't able to reproduce when rainfall or temperature are not longer stable and predictable, leading to disruption of previously stable food chains. The Sahara Desert used to be a rainforest afterall, so that gives you an idea of how much a climate can change, except now our accelerated rate of change is outpacing organisms' ability to adapt and survive in many cases
J Girl Everyone uses the guilt tripping B.S. of "unless we act on it" but I'm sorry, stop acting like it's an us problem. Joe Blow isn't contributing to global warming or barely is. Everyone always says we all need to change and then they act like nothing happened even if a lot of people do. But my question is why are we told we can stop stuff like cutting down trees? 99% of the population isn't even involved in that. Hurricanes aren't increasing in intensity. The B.S. part of the GW argument is saying that when weather is more extreme than usual that means it's an increased pattern. I'm sorry but hurricanes got really frequent for like one recent summer and our recording tech has gotten better. I mean in terms of size and danger over large masses of land, I haven't seen hurricanes getting worse. Our recording has gotten better so we know how big they get over water/islands more precisely and they're bigger over water... Then they get useless over land.
Illumination's Lorax feels like a classic example of good ideas with bad execution. Its not a bad movie, but it could've been waaaay better.
It's good ideas were just taken from the Lorax book tho.
The things they added could have been good, too, if they explored them instead of treating them like gimmicks and buzz topics
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I'd like to know where O'Hare is getting this air if there's no plant life left.
Does he have an air-purifier somewhere/ Is it outside the city limits since we never see it?
More importantly, if that's the case do we NEED trees or do we need the air purifier?
From the ocean, bet you never had that notion! It sets things much into motion.
Ooof you're right
It's canned in Druidia!
As bad as this movie may be, there is an actual real world parallel to the bottled air: quite simply, bottled water.
After all, there's not a civilization in the world where water cannot be found naturally. Yes, there are places where water is practically nonexistent, but if you look at any population map, you'll notice that civilization *follows* water. And yet, companies like Nestlé found a way to bottle and sell water, almost entirely to people with indoor plumbing.
To do so, they cut political deals to take fresh water from public lands, and put it in plastic bottles which cause pollution and use up even more water during manufacturing, and then end up in landfills half the time.
The screenwriter probably knew about this and found it interesting, but was either a lazy hack or held back by the execs. Thus, it made it into the script, but in a watered-down form (no pun intended), just like the rest of this cash-grab of a movie.
That's my armchair theory, at any rate.
I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees
The tree say “ O 0 F”
*roblox death sound*
I've had the song "How bad can i be" stuck in my head for months when i just heard it in the movie itself.
then i listend to it again this year. now it's stuck in my head again.
Quick, gotta finish the video before Universal shuts it down again
lol, beat me to it
It seems like they became cool with it for whatever reason. They allowed the video to come back into existence way before the deadline. I'm cautiously optimistic. There's still a chance they dick the video over though, given that they sucked enough to arbitrarily set the entire video aflame rather than just demonetize. My working theory for why they allowed it back is that they determined that it's weirdly positive in its opinion of The Lorax, and, going by what people have been saying about Universal based copyright attacks, that's a pertinent factor in how they respond.
nice ur first
Somehow, some way, you make bland, forgettable movies thematically fascinating.
Troy Schulz
Not really forgettable
@@deliciousdelightsbydenise4672AMEN I LOVE LORAX
I don't think the lorax was bland or forgettable
How is the lorax an unforgettable movie it had a good message and it was pretty interesting
@@gotworc Yeah, maybe the 1970s animated version. But the 2012 one? Nobody really remembers or cares about it.
I remember one theory about the Matrix is that when you escape the matrix, you're actually just on a different layer or level of the matrix. I think this view is particularly apt when viewing it through your interpretation of this Lorax.
This. I absolutely agree. I feel like the events of The Matrix make for a pretty robust (if entertainingly complicated) contingency protocol in the event of a victim becoming aware of the simulation. In the 2012 film, similarly, I think we're not witnessing a return to a more natural past, but rather seeing capitalism (or Thneedville culture) neutralize and even co-opt an ideology that threatens it. The movie's ending seems hopeful, but the Truffula seems to be the only thing of consequence being restored. A tree does not a forest make. The tree is raised in captivity, in isolation, in a world that only knows consumption. The tree becomes, as noted in the video, yet another item to be consumed, a mere vessel for wonder and nostalgia and beauty, stripped of any aspect that threatens capitalism. The tree is an outlet for feelings of a responsibility for environmental stewardship, not a resource for actual stewardship. Zac Efron, like Neo, was brought back into the fold of his artificial society through the illusion of breaking an illusion. On a meta level, I think this film is doing something similar, by nobly (or self-righeously) planting the seed of the original The Lorax in a flashy, modern, mass-media, corporate capitalist context. Maybe it's brilliant and nuanced, maybe it's insidious and confused, either way it's relevant and scary.
Your in a simulation inside a simulation, inside another simulation, Rick!
That is the equivalent of saying that maybe the Earth is flat but just from an angle we can't see. It is a philosophical conspiracy theory and carries all the weight, soundness and validity in my book. It is just kinda a useless practice unless you've got nothing more fruitful to pass the time. Naturally this is all in my humble opinion.
To be honest "How Bad Can I Be?" is a bop
Can't believe the 2012 lorax film was a ted kaczynski fever dream
Looooooool
I wasn't really listening to any of this but your voice is calming
agreeable
dude lays already makes bagged air
*_haha tasteless joke_*
A thing they have in common ^^
xXxA_Doge_LoverxXx haha and tasteless chips
Tasteless like the air
Just like Lays
A bag of air with some chips inside.
I don't think the producers even thought as much as you did. They said, hmm, let's get some pops songs and references, cute minion rip offs and a clear cut bad guy and good guy. You're giving them far too much credit.
He's not giving them credit. He does say that most of this is unintentional. There is still value in examining creative works for their themes and messages even if they are unintentional. As a creative person you make a thing with a certain thought but once you put it out there, you can't control the way other people will interpret it.
@@fernvalemusic269 No, but you can cast down their views like a great king upon his throne and banish them from the realms of canon actual and possible.
I’m the Lorax, I speak for the trees...
And the trees are speaking... Vietnamese
Lorax: "i don't think these people wants trees"
*as the vietnamese soldier brought Lorax into their camps alongside allies in 1965
Zac Lego Attack Wai-
This comment actually made me laugh!
"A new protagonist... Zac Effron."
Okay, that made me laugh.
11:58 I'd say that's wrong. In the movie they do treat saving the environment like his own reward. Audrey is the mcguffin. Ted goes to learn about them so he can impress her, but his character arc is about him learning the importance of nature and choosing to stand up for that. Although the movie could've been better at showing it, when he does that he decides the trees are much more important to him than his crush.
They don't treat the Truffula Trees as a way to solve the air pollution problem and that's why we need them, they treat the fact that they might help with the air pollution problem as a reason why the villain DOESN'T want them. But the reason a villain doesn't want the hero to succeed doesn't necessarily mean that is the reason the hero wants to succeed.
Everyone in Thneedvile is perfectly fine with paying for filterd air. Even Ted, Audrey and The Once-ler seem to think of it as paying for electricity or cable or water. Audrey does call out O'hare for being against trees because they're bad for his business. But other than that never once do any of the good guys even mention it. Never once does Ted, The Once-ler, The Lorax, Audrey, Grammy Norma, Mrs Wiggins or anybody else say that they'll fix the problem nor do they seem incredibly concerned about it either.
In the original Lorax film the onceler debates himself and wonders if he’s really doing the right thing but always ultimately comes to the conclusion to continue forward without thought
Which ironically due to the lack of sustainability in his business model leads to its own destruction
For every eucalyptus tree the printer paper industry chops down they plant another in its place. Just thought I’d throw that out there
They also cut different sets of trees to give time for the others to grow.
oil is actually a renewable resource and not a "Fossil Fuel" (see the Abiotic Theory), wells that were capped at the turn of the last century are producing again, peak oil is a myth
@@stargazerspark4499 oil still has negative effects on the enviornment, if oil was infinite it would not solve the issue of climate change at hand. Clean energy can bring humanity energy sources to continue thriving while ensuring the future be less atmosphericaly toxic, again, for later humans. If we continue to burn coal and oil we are only hurting humans, the Earth will bounce back, it has millions even billions of years to do so
@@stargazerspark4499 climate change isn't though
@@stargazerspark4499 Yea so renewable, all we have to do is wait for the perfect conditions on earth for its formation to happen again and then after that, wait a just few billion years and BAM! More oil!!!!
i always had a feeling that the original lorax was about finding balance between humanity and nature
i remember there is a moment in the lil cartoon where the lorax and the onceler are talking and the oncler asks: ''well what am i suppose to do? fire 100 000 workers?'' and the lorax just awnsers : '' i dont rightly know''.
because like evrything else in the world, nature, capitalism, exercise, relaxation, a balance needs to be struck for things to go welland for the world to go forward, both naturally and societly.
Exactly the 100 000 workers gets fired anyway because the once-ler's greed was't sustainable.
My question is..
Does everyone on the world live in thneedvile? Or are there other thneedvile's?
I remember watching the original movie as a 1st or 2nd grader and feeling really bad that the last tree was going to get cut down. To me it was all about companies irresponsibly trampling nature to the point of extinction.
That mini-essay on the nature of nature was pretty sharp. Like, wouldn't "bringing back nature" mean giving up our dominance over it? No one wants that. They just want cute animals and sustainable energy - a garden. The play Equus comes to mine.
I'll give the movie this: it's been six years and I still instantly recognised How Bad Can I Be. It's not good, but it's literally the most memorable thing about the movie.
Your opinion, m8.
I wasn't planning on thinking about the Lorax today, but here I am. Great video. Very spooky ending I actually died
rip
A new protagonist
z a c c e f f r o n
Y'know Theedville kinda reminds me of The Community from a book called The GIVER.
@@xxeroes Calm down, no need to riot!
yoooooo thats pretty good
I’ve read the Giver for an English essay, really good one.
@@Enceladus2106 Same, I spent a term studying the book at school, was quite interesting really.
"Use the seeds..... to get the girl he needs....."
HEEELLLLLL YEEEEAAAHHH 😎😎😎😎
Sex
Jenifer Joseph HEEEEELLLL YEEEEAAAHHHHH
You make life worth living
thanks
Jenifer Joseph :D
I'll admit it, this was way more interesting than I expected. Mostly because of the way you handle it. It's really refreshing to see someone talk about a movie like this one by its own terms, instead of merely comparing the messages and deciding which one did it best.
Also, the fact that you like the stuff you talk about makes it a thousand times more enjoyable. It's just so good to know the things you like and what makes you like them, even if they're not "good things" in the eyes of the majority.
what I'm saying is, basically, thanks for the quality entertainment, Big Joel. ^.^
The only thing I remembered about the movie was Danny Devito
bear boi wait, my Daddy Devito was in this??? Who was he?!
@@notyourdaughter666 he was the lorax
Wait what!?!? DANNY DEVITO OMG BEST MOVIE EVER.
I think one of the most interesting parts was near the end when the villain succeeds in turning the town against the boy. That's the version of The Matrix that can't be "escaped" in any conventional sense: beliefs _about_ reality.
Also I was hoping the very end would have people see Onceler's thneed and want them again and make the whole victory pointless.
I'm still pretty sure Baudrillard is off his rocker, though.
I was young when this movie came out, and when I did see it, my mother preached to me about the necessity of keeping our environment healthy. While I already had this knowledge, this kind of visualization is much more enticing to the intended audience/s (young children/adolescents) as opposed to documentaries on the subject of deforestation. This is all agreeable, but I feel this critique strays from the movie's intent: deforestation is bad, and this is what will happen if we keep doing it. It kind of reminds me of FernGully in a ton of ways... Being said, there are SO ways to interpret the movie, and it's very interesting to hear your analysis of the film, as I have never seen it through this sort of lens. Thank you for making this video and being awesome!!
Yeah! Like I understood his point about the movie not making a clear/good reason as to why the trees are good in the first place, but I think the reason for that is because the movie assumes we already know that deforestation is bad and why it is, so it finds no need to mention it. So if ur a hard critical thinker, I can see how ignoring unconscious assumptions creates a problem when thinking about the true logic of a movie. Very interesting stuff
Personally, I don't think the rebooted Lorax had much... Narrative I guess? The original Lorax was like a cautionary tale and the reboot is like... Just another kids movie? They're both good movies but the reboot doesn't seem to have much of a message the same way the original does. I almost feel like the reboot goes against the original. Idk.
+Sebastian Sean Crow Yes, you're completely right. The narrative that the people making the rebooted movie intended is bland and against the original. But the unintended narrative that they made is interesting.
@@keegster7167 that's right, though I saw a new message in the movie that wasn't addressed in the original. The privatization of basic-survival-commodities, did you all realize O'Hara literally makes ZILLIONS out of the selling of air? The thing that keeps your body going? I think that this is a more blatant metaphor for the ongoing problem of companies trying to privatize drinking water... I mean the practice of doing so isn't that far fetched... Nestlé has undergone a harsh shitstorm after this went public... And there are even more smaller companies that privatize water for various uses and thus restrict the access to a basic need for humans...
in a way, the 2012 Lorax film can be seen as a representation of government corruption, with citizens being lied to and knowledge being held back (such as the outside world, the process of photosynthesis, etc) in the name of capitalism.
In the end, it ended up creating a system that, realistically, was doomed to devolve into overcapitalization (like selling air) and the dumbing down of religion and culture. The air in a bottle ad in the movie was very much the sort of thing you'd see for a junk food commercial, such as Coca-Cola or Lays. (though I'd argue that they do actually just sell you air in a package. Goddamn nitrogen in the chips packet)
anyway, you can reach many different conclusions from The Lorax so long as you strip the context of the original away and view it as its own creation (it's different enough to have a new protag, antag and protag goal, so might as well treat it as much)
When I watched The Lorax, which wasn't all that long ago. I felt the screenplay was written by an ardent pro-capitalist person who doesn't really understand economics at all, sees capitalism as the most logical system but doesn't really understand the alternatives. So, they then were asked to write the screenplay for a rather simple anti-capitalist story and the end result was this really schizophrenic monstrosity where the text is anti-"corporatism" but the subtext is pro-capitalism in the "it's just human nature" sense.
Holy shit your comment was retarded. The alternatives to capitalism have not worked (look at Venezuela for example). Capitalism without government intervention and lobby groups encourages innovation which can result in goods made quicker, cheaper, and with less harm to the environment. The problem really comes down to apathy and excess. Society as a whole wants more junk and doesn't really care about much else. They may latch onto a social movement so they can feel good about themselves, but it always ends up being pointless.
+ahatt96 Regardless of your opinion of capitalism and its alternatives, I think that two things about this movie are pretty close to inarguable. First, the film generally wants to take an anti-capitalist or anti-consumerist approach. Within the context of the movie, greed drives The Onceler to act in an unethical and destructive way which dooms the environment. Second, the film is pretty bad at actually taking that approach, to the point that they construct alternatives to commodification as fundamentally commodity oriented. The important thing here, in my opinion, isn't whether the message is itself right or wrong, but instead how the film succeeds or fails at conveying that message.
Responses to your points:
Argumentum ad Venezuelum -> ruclips.net/video/le86H7Xfjrc/видео.html
Lots + lots of examples where socialism has worked -> ruclips.net/video/zIddCEBCKHQ/видео.html
Capitalism drives innovation & other arguments -> ruclips.net/video/u0NlF7LRuNg/видео.html
Regardless though, my comment was about the movie, about capitalism as presented within the movie and the lens its looked at through.
IsThatEtchas it's more about sustainable resources and protecting them.
Laissez-Faire neo-liberal capitalistic Trickle-down economics doesn't work with this, not only does it ignore limited resources, there's also the honesty in Freakonomics, and the using money makes money of Velocity of money, so redistribution of wealth is an investment in local businesses, instead of them rotting up in some tax-haven trustfund.
Now Biomimicry, bots and a Universal Basic Income or a Negative Income Tax might work as alternatives to Flexicurity of the social democrats.
The problem is the government and all the people who rely on it to protect them. As the saying goes "Those who trade freedom for safety deserve and will have neither." Here some videos that more or less sum up my thoughts better than I could with text.
ruclips.net/video/YJIl5BPHOEw/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/cJyl_9YgBh4/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/TP--6KCSXYA/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/kvYmoaCd_WY/видео.html
6:58 EMPTY O’S MY FAVORITE
I would just like to say that your profile picture matches your comment all too well! All I see is Gordon Ramsay yelling about Empty O's and their greatness! Thank you for this! 😂👌🏼
I think you missed a big part of How Bad Can I Be. When he says, "I'm just doing what comes naturally," I don't believe he's referring to natural in the sense of physical nature (i.e. the Truffula trees), he's referring to the neoliberal tenet that market capitalism is the "natural' state of the economy. The movie doesn't want us to agree with the Onceler here, that's pretty clear from the imagery. Instead, it wants us to see that social darwinism is a flimsy excuse for the destruction of the environment. It's criticizing the neoliberal view of success in the market as moral success rather than just economic success. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
I thought we were going to have a serious discussion about one specific thing to come from The Lorax movie:
Oncelercest
onceler is just too hawt
We all wantceler the onceler
NO YOU WILL NOT DRAG ME BACK INTO THAT HELLSCAPE
7u7
*vomits*
You say "new protagonist" but Ted existed in the book and the original movie, he just wasn't important. He was an audience surrogate.
jeff jefferson that was all dr Seuss books
jeff jefferson I don’t know who Ted is, but on an unrelated note, it’s amazing how Dr. Seuss predicted the birth of Zack Effron, amirite?
@@helioskitty9328 dr suess is a wizard dont ya know?
Cat in the hat isn't going into the public domain until 2052... Nothing to really do with the movie, just a fun fact.
“in the culture of thneedville, the acts of preservation and restoration are just alternate forms of consumption”
holy shit. haunting
Idk why but I just keep re watching every big and lil Joel vids
Damn, I actually was surprised by this video being really interesting.
And you know what? I think this reflects lots of current ecological movements, the try to use mature as a way to raise themselves morally, not for nature itself
Oh, yes, that works pretty nicely actually.
One thing I found confusing about the movie, is that they refer to truffula trees as just trees. So are those the only species of tree that exist? Why are there no oak trees, cedar trees, etc.?
It's pitifully sad to see that a story where the entire point is that nobody is truly evil but they can still impact their environment if they aren't careful was essentially deemed too 'complex' so they had to shove in a pointless bad guy so everyone at the end can go "hurray!"
One of my favorite vids from Joel. Probably not his most concise, but I come back to this one every couple months. It's a lot to think about
Dr. Seuss is one of the very few authors who are apparently very well known in the states but extremely obscure here in Europe.
Alias Anybody Huh. I figured if any of our children's authors made it internationally it would be Dr. Seuss. Maybe Maurice Sendak as well.
LittleMissLounge
While I wasn't able to recognise his name, "Where the wild things are" is pretty well known. At least far better than Seuss works, I actually haven't ever heard of the Lorax before the movie came out and even the Grinch is only known to some degree because every piece of US media constantly references it (I guess it's insanely popular) but I've never seen or touched any book in real life.
Alias Anybody That’s really interesting. What’s a really popular kid’s author/book in your country?
LittleMissLounge
Here in Austria? I'd argue the by far most famous evergreens would be literally everything written by Michael Ende (German) and Astrid Lindgren (Swedish). The former should be known in the US for the "Neverending story", although I think "Momo" and "Jim Knopf" are more famous over here, but I may be wrong. Then there are some more recent and local authors who aren't even known in other European countries so I won't even start with that. While they are comics and not books I really have to mention "Asterix" (French) as well. Although the target group may be little bit older (or rather: Adults can enjoy it too).
Isn't "adults can enjoy it too" also true for Ende?
So in my AP Enviornmental class last year the first thing we did was watch the original Lorax because it contained the majority of main points that form the center of environmentalism, that being consumption of resources, the tragedy of the commons, destruction of habitat, etc. and you kinda covered all the reasons why my teacher hated the newer version and why I, while I don't hate it and still find it amusing, believe it should be held as a completely separate entity to the original book and film, it is part of the problem that the original was pointing out.
I absolutely LOVE that you put so much thought into your videos. It's refreshing to hear your unique perspective on subjects when so many people just repeat the same thing everyone else is saying. I strive to be more like you in that way.
I know that alot of people don't like this movie, but granny norma single handily saves the movie
So, Horton Hears a Who was my daughter's FAVORITE MOVIE when she was itty bitty.
I'd love to hear your deep dive on it. I find it interesting, because it's so clearly political, but no one agrees about what side it's on.
Apparently it was a commentary avout democracy in a post-world war 2 Japan, where the US in tandem with a new Japanese government was deciding who could or should vote. Dr Seuss belived that everyone should be able to vote, he supported civil rights movements, and naturally wanted to share the message that all people are entitled to the same fair equal treatment as others, especially politically.
The lorax (2012) is an incredibly cinical product and i can't help but feel that all it's depth is accidental
The neat thing is that even accidental depth is still depth!
@@TekRobo Why do people associate "depth" with "quality"?
9:11 Yeah, but the matrix doesn’t have Danny Devito in it. I don’t see where you’re going there.
Bush did 9/11
@@SenorMeinKrafter What does that have to do with anything?
@@SenorMeinKrafter Bush did not do 9/11
@@mitchfletcher2386 Read the time stamp, the numbers.
11:45 I think this goes to show how different environmentalism looks now than it did when The Lorax was first written. Trees were valuable for internal, emotional reasons: beauty, kindness towards animals, etc. Now environmentalism has become incredibly external, namely, if we don't turn the tide on climate change, humanity is doomed: wars will be fought over water, the ocean will run out of fish, crops won't grow as well which means animals go extinct at alarming rates which means less food, parts of the planet will become so hot they are uninhabitable which means a worldwide refugee crisis which means more war, sea levels will rise displacing those city's inhabitants and creating even more refugees, and extreme weather events like hurricanes and tsunamis increase. This is the environment in which 2012's The Lorax was made, but it's waaaaaay too depressing to comment on all this end of the world stuff.
For what it's worth, purified oxygen (90~96%) has mood elevating effects and can in some cases have positive cognitive effects. O'Hare might be selling purified oxygen as a sort of mood elevating drug (of note, medical grade pure oxygen is considered a drug by the FDA)
I never fully understood what bothered me about he new Lorax, but your insight hit the nail on the head perfectly. thank you for the clarification in my own perspective
Great video, I'm familiar with a couple of things you touched on, if you don't mind I can offer some starting points to look into further.
The references to nature in the song are a tongue-in-cheek reference to capitalists explicitly arguing that natural selection is evidence that capitalism is the natural system for governing human society. This has literally been happening since Darwin was still alive. It can be paired with the line that echoes it, "the people with the money make the ever loving world go round"; which is the basic idea behind supply-side economics, which is the theory underpinning policies like Reaganomics.
As for the commodification of the trees it could be argued that "it would suck if nature were gone" still relies on humans assigning it value. Knowing this, we can say that it's possible the filmmakers tried to re-frame and flesh out that argument by saying "okay, the trees are valuable as a commodity or other kind of asset, what should we do with them?" The answer to this being that since it has low value when used by private individuals to turn a profit long-term, and high value to the public without labour having to be applied, it should be made part of what's known traditionally as "the commons", or collective property; in the movie represented by planting the tree in the park.
Even though the film is bad, I'm still triggered by Behind the Meme saying the 2012 version of the Lorax is the result of Hollywood "running out of ideas" despite most popular films being based on previous source materials (mostly books).
Raphael Marquez that doesn't mean they're not running out of ideas though. It just means people are eating the unoriginal stuff up.
Very well articulated, interesting reading. Refreshing to hear someone coming at this movie from a perspective other than "Look how empty and vapid and insincere this movie is! Corporate Hollywood ruined one of the greatest stories of all time etc etc". Also, "The Lorax and The Matrix are almost thematically identical" is one of the best things I've ever heard.
i do also really love the line "we thank the lord for all we've got/including this brand new parking lot" thank you for also recognizing it and appreciating it
the message you present as coming unintentionally at the end of the lorax (about thneedville being a society succumbed to commodity fetishism and empty signifiers) actually makes sense on another level to the matrix... being that the matrix is largely based on (or at least is popularly read this way) Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulacrum, then we could take thneedville and its inability to go back to the "real" (being the pre-commodified organic world that still had some intrinsic meaning) to be a parallel to Baudrillards map of the empire that has superseded the empire itself
since the map signifies actual locales but in such detail that it becomes indiscernible, so too do the trees in thneedville though perhaps for different reasons. the trees in thneedville aren't 1 to 1 replicas of actual trees, but they don't need to be when we've moved past the need for the 'real', thus those trees become the new real (and replace truffula trees for the purposes of that society who no longer needs them for air, which is graciously provided by their local capitalist overlord) - the signifier has both become the sign of the tree and also completely replaced its function. if we want to read into it this way then there becomes an interesting case for how settling for signifiers (either through necessity OR choice) leads to their deconstruction. in the movie the need for air from truffula trees is totally gone in thneedville because air is provided from a seemingly alternate source as far as the residents are concerned. the inflatable and artificial trees become ENOUGH for their purposes. this could even be a commentary on what we lose when we turn the real into simply signs and makes yet another postmodern case for conservatism
i'll leave yall to argue about that last line