So Much Greed

Unless someone like you . . . cares a whole awful lot . . . nothing is going to get better . . . It's not. ~Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Traditionally, I read Dr. Seuss' masterpiece The Lorax to my Pre-K kids on their last day of class. These kids have been with me for 3 years, over half their lives, are now heading away to kindergarten, and I like entrusting them with "the last Truffula seed of them all." I always warn them, "This book makes me cry," and it always does."

I don't recall it as a "new" book, published in 1971. I was nine-years-old, just beyond the core Dr. Seuss years, so I've really only know it as an adult. It carries a powerful message of the environmental dangers of rampant industrialization and the hope that the damage we've already done can be overcome by human stewardship. It's not exactly a happy ending, but rather a plea to children to save us from ourselves.

Whether or not it sticks with the kids, that's the way I like to send them off into the world.

I'm not particularly tuned into the pop culture, so it was only during my recent trip to Southern California that I even became aware that The Lorax had been made into a movie. I pray it's a flop. I noticed it carries a PG rating, so maybe the parents of preschoolers will stay away. Can I hope that? Even if I could, I really can't hope that the kids will somehow avoid the marketing: the plastic crap made in China, the lunch boxes, plushies, fast food promotional items. That's the way rampant "industrialization" works, even when presumedly "selling" a message against itself. Of course, I have absolutely no faith that the movie will deliver anything approximating Dr. Seuss' hard-hitting, yet light-hearted, critique of capitalism gone mad. To really put the knife into this thing, among the 70 or so official corporate "sponsors" of this movie, many with dubious environmental records, is a regular, polluting, fuel-injected SUV. You'd think they could have at least found some sort of electric car or hybrid or bio-diesel or something even vaguely green. But no, they are just too damn greedy for that.

I mean, for crying out loud, they show the Once-Ler's face! They appear to have made this powerful symbol of face-less greed into a happy rube of some sort!

I will be be sobbing this week in class because I'm breaking tradition: this is the last chance I'll ever have of reading this book to children without some of them shouting out, "I saw that movie!" It was bad enough when Hollywood took Shrek! away from us, but this is on a different level.

I won't stop reading The Lorax, of course, and I'll always tell the kids, "This is the real story." If the movie is particularly bad, if it winds up spitting in the face of this great work, I'll do my best to help the children deconstruct its message in the context of what Dr. Seuss was really trying to say. 

I'll still cry when I read it: so much greed. And I'll pass them the last seed and hope.

(If you want to express your own feelings about this, The Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood is collecting signatures on a pledge to boycott the products of sponsors. I've also written to Universal Studios, Mazda, and other sponsors. I don't know what good it will do, but I think it's important to express our opinions.)

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