Our theme for the month of February is “plants.”
I woke up one day last week to one of the most beautiful texts there is: “2/2/2022 School Closure.” This meant one thing with great certainty: It was time to roll out of bed and start a 6:45 AM musical movie marathon.
It had recently come to my attention that I wasn’t familiar with the musical staple that is Little Shop of Horrors. This was upsetting to me because Jeremy Jordan starred in a recent revival of the show, and I have a slightly unhealthy interest in listening to that man sing anything.
If you are unfamiliar with the plot of this show, it follows the classic nerdy/invisible hero who works at an unsuccessful plant shop in a grungy area of a city. He acquires a venus fly-trap style plant that makes the shop famous and successful, with the trade-off that it feeds on human blood in order to survive.
While basking in the 1980s glory of this film (everyone knows that 80s movies are simply the best), I began to succumb to my English teacher’s impulses. What is the symbolic significance of this show? I thought to myself.
Interesting how the plot turns the usual plant trope on its head. You know, caring for plants as a symbol of self-care and personal growth. Mary brings the secret garden back to life alongside the love of her cousin and uncle for each other. A tree manages to grow in the inhospitable tenements of Brooklyn just like Francie manages to live and create beautiful stories despite the abject poverty she is trapped in. Plants grow. People grow. Plants are practically screaming for the opportunity to be used as symbolism.
So why did the creator choose to use a plant as a destructive force instead? The more the main character, Seymour, feeds the plant the more the plant begs for more (literally, as seen in the song titled “Feed Me”). Seymour just wants to escape the city, and the prestige and money brought on by this plant seems like his only avenue of escape.
Why is it that so much of culture and media supports the idea that success necessitates destruction? To succeed in school you need to be in the honors classes and the gifted program at the expense of the other kids left behind in the “normal” classes. To succeed as a politician you have to get the most people insulting your political competition for obscure things like the style of their suit. To succeed as the corporation you may have heard of, Amazon, you need to treat your lowest employees like dirt.
I’ve been listening to the book In Search of the Color Purple, which follows the creation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Color Purple. As a book that intentionally speaks for a variety of minority communities, the severity of backlash it received is astounding. For example, while the book champions the speech and lives of Black Americans, many Black men have denounced the book for its portrayal of abusive Black husbands.
Why do communities fragment and criticize works of media that could collectively raise up the whole community? Why do people view books like The Color Purple as meaningful only to a small niche of the female Black community rather than meaningful to anyone who identifies with the culture and trauma it seeks to explore?
Perhaps this destructive view of success is what Little Shop of Horrors seeks to criticize. Maybe we need to rethink the way our culture asks us to systematically cut down those around us in order to carve a path of success for ourselves.
One of my favorite books I’ve read recently is Alix Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches. I don’t want to spoil anything because it’s perfect and you should go read it right this moment. But I can say that it emphasizes the strength found by a group of estranged sisters working together after overcoming the trauma of their abusive father turning them against each other in childhood.
Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to feed our enemies to carnivorous plants in order to make a way for ourselves in the world. Or we need to imagine a world where it’s not the default.
Susannah currently lives in New Jersey and works as a 7th grade ELA teacher in East Harlem. When she is not teaching or writing, she can be found exploring independent bookstores, going backpacking, and trying to roller-skate on all the cool trails in the city. She is also recently experienced in the art of citrus skunk repellent (I know you’re impressed).
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who wakes up on a snow day and thinks “ahh yes it is time to bask myself in the glories of 80’s gardening musicals”? you do. YOU DO.