the destroyer > cheap papers > Drew Krewer
SOMEWHERE THAT'S GREEN
"I know it's the first day of spring, but don't go sitting on the green. They've been spraying Chem Lawn on it all week," warned Carol, one of my undergraduate English professors (now a close friend). Carol was and still is very attuned to the subtle ways people easily disrupt nature, limit rights, and eclipse viewpoints and histories. The lawn wasn't just a health hazard; it held representations of the American Dream and the extent to which people were willing to go to achieve it (or at least make it appear that way). I really admire this about Carol; she's constantly aware of how even the most minute things can either result in or be symptomatic of forces that, to put it simply, are inhumane.
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I really don't recall when I first saw Little Shop of Horrors. It wasn't Off-Broadway; it was definitely the 1986 movie version, starring Rick Moranis as Seymour. Maybe it was when I was living in Boston, passing out on my laptop night after night, watching Netflix rentals, back when streaming wasn't possible.
It's a pretty grim premise. Seymour is an orphan, living in the basement of the florist who took him in from the streets. Audrey has an abusive dentist boyfriend who regularly gives her black eyes and broken bones. The musical is peppered with the disenfranchised singing in the streets––most notably, the three chorus girls, who imagine themselves out of their street clothes and into Hollywood-grade doo-wop attire. And, to make things even darker, Seymour stumbles upon a talking plant from outer space that promises him fame, fortune, and security––if he feeds it human flesh.
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I am aware there is a 1960 film that the musical was based on. I haven't seen it, and I'm not going to be talking about it.
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The original ending of the film (which pretty much mirrored the ending of the stageplay) was changed after a test audience became frustrated. In this ending, everybody dies, literally. Audrey gets gnawed to death by Audrey II; she ends up dying in Seymour's arms, and he feeds her to the plant, which was her dying wish. Seymour is also swallowed by the plant, perhaps willingly.
The director changed this because he thought the ending didn't translate to film––that audiences may just leave before the movie had finished, since they wouldn't be waiting for the curtain call to see Audrey and Seymour one last time.
In this original ending, after the death of the main characters, corporations take cuttings and market Audrey II's all over the world. The final shots are of cities being completely destroyed by behemoth plants from outer space. Seymour's moral compromises have resulted in something larger than himself.
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I took both "American Drama" and "Contemporary Drama after 1980" with Carol. Taking a class with her is to come away not with the same ideas as Carol, but with the same careful and precise attention Carol brings to the world (and the class) every day. I do think I went a little too far with my first analytical paper for her when I wrote an eight page paper on M Butterfly and Gallimard's states of arousal, coming into her office hours week after week, hypothesizing, essentially, about his boner. But she listened to me, recognized my dedication to this specific textual angle, and gave me the freedom to write what I wanted to write.
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Musicals, in their construction, contain Brechtian elements (a term I first learned in Carol's class). In some plays, we might have a tendency to get lost in the moment, to feel like we're watching something transpire before us that is very real; we forget the author exists. In musicals, we realize the orchestra is present and that no one sings elaborate songs down the street without turning heads. Life doesn't fit neatly into musical numbers.
But not all musicals are Brechtian? I haven't seen Les Miserables, but judging from the promotional materials and that Susan Boyle woman singing "I Dreamed a Dream" on X factor (well, YouTube), I would say it might be easy to get swept along in things, unquestioning, because you're just so busy feeling "moved." When you peel all of that music and dance and glitz away, what is really left? Is it still substantial? (Not that dance and glitz are bad––you can still be just as glitzy and have something to say, too.)
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The film's set is intentionally set-like. Backdrops in the distance are obviously painted. Cameras occasionally pan across the set, similar to the way an eye moves across a Broadway stage.
The cinematography occasionally, however, reaches angles unavailable to the typical audience member. When this occurs, it serves to highlight the performance, which can be seen in the crane shot employed at the end of "Skid Row (Downtown)" and in the shot where we see the three-woman chorus dancing on a roof in red shimmy-dresses to "Some Fun Now." By foregrounding performance, the cinematographers emphasize fabrication.
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Audrey's hair is a blonde helmet, her voice––rather squeaky. She's not a character that would traditionally be a primary love interest. This is not a love story.
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The genre of the musical becomes a Brechtian device.
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For the song "Somewhere That's Green," Audrey has a fantasy, prompted by the images of Better Homes and Gardens. She dreams of being with Seymour where they can have a "matchbox of [their] own." Her fantasy is spun from the heteronormative advertising imagery of the early 60s. She sprays scented room spray and fondles her toaster longingly before waltzing into her kitchen, where a Tupperware party is taking place. The lawn is a fake electric green, and the trees in the background look like they've been painted with the same care given to a middle school musical backdrop.
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I came away from Carol's courses with a deep appreciation for dramatic productions and literature. This appreciation, however, has never really translated over to the realm of musicals for me. I partially blame it on how musical theatre majors used to sing out verses (daily) in the cafeteria with voices as loud as the Roseanne Barr National Anthem voice, though their voices were certainly more trained. But really, most musicals I've encountered don't delve into issues that matter to me, or at least don't delve deeply enough to really warrant the kind of attention I have learned to bring to a text.
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Little Shop of Horrors is a production with something to say. It primarily addresses the topic of income disparity and how the system of capitalism can go terribly wrong, resulting in moral compromises that conveniently create revenue––in short, a message we might see on a sign at an Occupy Wall Street protest. The casting and direction of the film version take what could easily be read as a campy love story and turn it into a piece that is quite political.
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Instead of dying in the commercially released version of the film, Audrey and Seymour end up getting married and finally owning the house that inhabited Audrey's fantasy world, her American Dream. The lawn is expansive and organizes the surrounding space. It was the lawn Carol asked us to question, and perhaps avoid.