By BEN DAUBER
Movie Reviewer
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Simplicity is a quality far undervalued. No artsy drama or big budget blockbuster can shed as much insight on the way things are like a good kid’s movie can. Pollution and greed have never been confronted in such a charming way.
Dr. Suess is known for his delightful ability to turn morals and lessons into colorful adventures that promote a vision of the way things ought to be. The Lorax is no different, and the message it sends is one that we all need to hear.
Centered in the materialistic and cloyingly commercial Thneedville (a town eerily similar to Meadville in its name), the story centers around a boy’s quest to discover what has happened to all the trees.
It raises the powerful question I hope we never truly have to ask: what has happened to all the trees? What have we done?
Getting rich, getting ahead, that’s what we are here at Allegheny to do, right? Just keep your head down and do whatever it takes to come out on the other side a winner.
There is no place for lofty idealism, gators. This is the real world.
The Lorax, however, sees things differently. Representing symbol of conscience, and the true guardian of the forest, the Lorax fears a coming future that many of us choose to brush off.
Once all the Truffula Trees have been cut down, and the once-vibrant landscape has been covered in the smog that belched out of the Thneed factory, the Lorax ascends upward from whence he came. Greed has stained the land and it is time for him to go.
The Lorax leaves behind a stone that says only one word: “unless.” Later it is unraveled to mean: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
If you haven’t already noticed, this edition of The Campus has a theme: money. Though it may sound odd, I feel that is why most of us are here. We have money, want to make money, or were given money to come here. And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just the way of the world.
