Nasty sexism and ageism debases Dr. Seuss

Yeah, gotta agree with your sentiments. Who was the idiot that approved that trailer? Or even the entire joke in the first place?

I was actually very interested in seeing this movie since I loved the book as a kid. And although the movie deviates quite a bit from the book, I would have still gone to see it. But with corny (and insulting) humor like that, I'm much less inclined to pay $10 to go see it.


Dean: Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake-hole.

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"the worst thing a woman could do in our society was take up too MUCH space. The worst thing a man could do was not take up ENOUGH space.
Sadly, things haven't changed a lot in the past 40 years"

Are you SERIOUS with this statement, I mean really??

I'm tired of women complaining over every little thing a MALE says that they might find offensive and they ignore everything else.

This day and age it's a FEMALE-PRIVILEGE society whereas everything is easier for females than it is for males. There are hundreds of examples to this yet women, of course, don't complain about this. For Example:

In movies/TV shows, etc women are allowed to hit men if they cheat on them, etc. and no one complains. There are loads of movies where the girl kicks the guy out of his own house and he leaves.

Society says MEN should always pay on dates to be a gentleman (with most women's argument is that if we pay than he'll expect us to always pay, oh kind of like what women are doing right?) Women like to say men should pay because it’s what being a man is. Yet you can’t tell a woman what a being a lady is.

Men’s paycheck, should you get a divorce, does not belong to him. If she doesn't work, men have to support her a$$. This is unconstitutional against the equality act (women don’t pay alimony in almost all cases)

The men’s children, should they get a divorce, do not belong to him. If mom drops them off at the babysitter's house, try to pick up your kids without mom's verbal consent to the sitter.

Your half of the fetus, should you get a woman pregnant, does not belong to you. If she wants to abort, it's not your call. Yet if she wants to keep it, you have no choice but to pay child support.

Turn on any news and you’ll see either all female anchors, or females and males but almost never all-males.

This is a little joke that the Lorax miss saw her as a guy, so stop complaining…there are other movies where it belittles men and makes fun of them, most movies the men are the but of the jokes, even commercials and no one is allowed to complain right? I hope a men’s movement happens to change things. The man are always fat and their wife’s are always the smarter ones in TV shows, etc and what does that tell little girls and boys?
In The Lorax the boy goes out of his way to find a tree for the girl he likes because he thinks that’s the only way to get her, I find that offensive (plus in the book the boy didn’t do this for a girl).
I’m not saying everything is fair for women but we always hear their argument and never the men’s side because society tells men they can’t complain. It even teaches boys that to be happy in life, you first have to make the girl happy (why, its ridiculous)

These are just some examples of the double standards. But to go with this argument over this little joke in the movie I'll give you one that happened on a TV show and no one complained because it was directed towards men:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvDhSB7GHk&feature=related

(it's the case where the wife cut off her husband’s penis off, and when talked about on this all-female show, they turned it into a joke even stating that it was good what she did, that every woman wants to do this....if an all-male show laughed about a man mutilating his wife's vagina, they would be fired)

Anyway, annie....the reason I wrote all this because you said nothing has changed in the last 40years for women and I find that a joke. Are you serious? We're living in a society which tells girls that nothing is expected of them yet they can expect things from men. That men have to cater to their needs and if they don't, then just dump them and take everything they got. On Valentine's Day every year I get offended when, on almost every channel, they tell men that they better do something nice for their girl or their girl should dump him, girls are even allowed to say "he better do something nice for me or else"...now imagine men saying that...
I could go on and on but I’m pretty sure you get my point and I’m sure you agree.

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Maybe along with being "rolife" as in "Horton:", the sexism, maybe be due to Dr.Suess's era, not defending it, midn you. As you say, Annie, years aog (40 to be exact) the Lorax was published and you were ten, even with feminism by that time (early 1970s), and things haven't changed much...

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entitled to the same respect, admiration or even simple kindness that a smaller, 'prettier' girl will garner

No one's "entitled" to admiration, the only thing someone you don't know is entitled to is humane respect.

Feminist in general don't understand what they fight for.

A woman will never be equal to a man, and shouldn't be.

After that you should have stopped typing.

Let me explain...

Men are stronger, and have responsibilities that women shouldn't want them to stop doing, such as being held accountable as a provider, manly, courageous, hard-working, courteous, gentlemen-like.

Now YOU'RE making assumption's based on personal beliefs about what a male SHOULD be and for that alone, YOUR WRONG!

Do women want to really be treated the same?

If anything, it would work out for humankind if women were treated the equally, AS IN HUMAN BEINGS!!!

What this should do is make you think how males treat each other, basically your saying males shouldn't treat each with respect, this way of thinking has caused many problems and gotten many killed for many years... this way of thinking has to stop.

Men are supposed to have leadership, but they are also supposed to by nicer, sweeter, more polite, kinder, softer, respectful, and caring towards women.

No one's supposed to have or be anything... again, this is your personal belief... and again, you should be respectful to everyone, unless they've earned your disrespect, why be rude or harsher towards someone who hasn't offended or affected your life?

Women deserve respect...not equal treatment. Because, I don't think they really want to be treated like a guy.

How about treating them like a person...

I mean, would any of you, as a for instance, be able to tell at a glance whether a TREE was female or not? (Trees have genders.)

Taken that way, the 'that's a woman' remark is not only inoffensive, it makes sense.

OTOH, I'm not pleased that a touching (and grim) story about the environment has somehow been turned into a teenaged love story...

I like finding the logical posts in thread like these, let's me know im not the only one alive with common sense...

I don't get people that complain about how they are over weight. If you are fat stop eating. Over 99% of the time a person is fat because they over eat. Only once in awhile it is actually genetic.

... and then there are idiots like this... you think people overeating is the main cause of obesity? wow go watch a documentary, it certainly isn't 99% and there are more reasons to add to the list than genetics, for one, it's people like you, those who don't think before they talk(type)

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This is my baby's favorite movie, so I've seen it a lot. I understand your consternation, because we don't all look like Taylor Swift. It's odd that of all the funny moments in this movie, they'd choose that for a trailer, especially separating it from what makes it work. The woman in question takes one step out of her fancy-shmancy RV, surveys an absolutely breathtaking landscape, then says, "What a dump!" In the movie, the line plays more like, "That's a human?" even though it does follow a threat to cause her physical harm, and the comment, "You wouldn't hit a woman, would you?" That's the thing about Onceler. His family is barely human. They're cruel to him, cruel to the animals, cruel to the environment, and then, after they talked Onceler into cutting down the trees again, and he eventually destroys them ALL, his mother tells him that he has let her down and turns to a brother saying, "Bret, you are now my favorite child." You certainly understand that they completely abandon them and he never sees them again. It isn't the fact that Aunt Griselda is a plus-sized woman that makes you question her humanity. It is that she's got no redeeming personality characteristics whatsoever.

Granny is also plus-sized She is portrayed as an incredible person and very loveable. For her there is the line, "How cool is your Grandma?" because she snowboards down a slope like she's an olympic athlete, then waddles back to Ted's bike.

Yes, taken completely out of context the line is very sexist and cruel. And I don't think that's a line that Dr. Seuss would ever have written -- well maybe when he was still very young. He wrote the Lorax because he wasn't proud of some things he had done as a youngster (including supporting Japanese concentration camps publicly) and he wanted to mark the rest of his life with positive messages. I'm also not sure he would have approved of O'Hare, the main bad guy. Like so many cartoon bad guys, he's very short. This height also gets made fun of -- "Crazy baby man", and is played on in the way that he travels, etc. Of course, the Lorax is also short -- too short to reach the door handle. Truth is we humans tend to haul out insults about appearance when someone gets us really angry. We may not naturally have a prejudice against someone short or who is not model-material, but we're always aware of what is likely to hurt the most, and we use that when we're hurling words. It isn't nice. It isn't pretty. But it is true to life.

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[deleted]

As I asked in the first place, where is Dr. Seuss in this piece of dialogue? I know his works quite well, and there is no place in them where someone is jeered at for her or his gender identity (with the possible exception of Horton when he is sitting on the egg).

The Lorax speaks for the trees. The trees are not interested in whether any character meets anybody's definition of male or female. I am sorry that the sad, thought-provoking fable of the Lorax had to be messed with to meet Hollywood's low, low standards of humor and intelligence. (How about the obligatory poop and fart jokes - did they just not make it into the trailer?)

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I don't get people that complain about how they are over weight. If you are fat stop eating. Over 99% of the time a person is fat because they over eat. Only once in awhile it is actually genetic. I lost 135 pounds by diet and exercise. It is not hard to stay healthy if you have will power. So instead of wining about it, how about you put down that piece of cake and workout for an hour. People shouldn't say they do not have the time because I work 70 hours a week at two jobs and still have the time to stay in shape.

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What's really sad is that Alps was the first person to bother correcting the original poster. The line is indeed, "That's a woman?!" and there's a big difference between that and "You call that a woman?!"

You might as well be complaining about Roz's oddly pendulous breasts in Monsters Inc, or the fact that a man actually voiced both her and Edna Mode from The Incredibles.

I am a plus-sized woman, one who was born with crazy broad shoulders no less. Even in the trailer I never once assumed this joke had anything to do with the size or look of the "woman" in question. She's an overly stern and very caustic looking character - that they would make a gender-confusion joke about her is not remotely about the fact that she's big or bulky. And there's an even bigger difference between the Lorax questioning whether she should be called a woman and him genuinely not realizing she is one...

Just as there's a big difference between sexism and finding humor in stereotypes and misapprehensions.



The less a man makes declarative statements the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect.

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That line is stupid but not in the way the OP thought it was.

Why is it not okay to hit a woman like you would hit a man? Feminists have to stop nagging about gender inequality on one front and then playing delicate and feminine when it suits them. Both genders suffer from inequality, I mean, when a wife beats her husband it is mostly laughed at, while the other way around would merit all sorts of lawsuits.

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[deleted]

Is "The Lorax" a funny book? Does it need to be a funny movie?

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i agree. Suck it up. If you get offended from a dr. seuss movie, you probably shouldnt watch movies anymore.

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[deleted]

[deleted]

Since the Lorax is not a human, and doesn't really resemble one, it's safe to assume he might not know what a human 'woman' looks like.

I mean, would any of you, as a for instance, be able to tell at a glance whether a TREE was female or not? (Trees have genders.)

Taken that way, the 'that's a woman' remark is not only inoffensive, it makes sense.

OTOH, I'm not pleased that a touching (and grim) story about the environment has somehow been turned into a teenaged love story...

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