B. Jones and I just watched two films about trees and the people who care about them. The first one we saw was the recently Oscar-nominated documentary If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (available on Netflix) and then we watched the newest adaptation of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax in the theater.
We were both left with a new sense of injustice.
In one part, we wondered how it was possible that such similar contexts in the films could have very different outcomes on the screen.
While the story of the ELF was a very good documentary tracing the radicalization of an individual that becomes an arsonist for the sake of the preservation of nature, the latter was a cartoon adapted from the story by a racist children's author, in which a child fights against an evil corporation vying to monopolize the ex-free market of oxygen (just so that he can win himself the heart of a pretty girl next door). In essence, they are the same story: except that the hero of the first gets 7 years in a high security prison for domestic terrorism.
The fact that the Dr. Seuss adaptation has this magical feeling of the happily-ever-after effect is, of course, expected. It is a children's story after all.
This is just the problem, however. How can you teach a child about the importance of the environment without acknowledging the fact that the evil corporation always seems to win in real life?
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