Seymour X Audrey - Blog Posts

Something that's really funny about Little Shop 1986 is the juxtaposition between the narrative often not taking anything seriously/making fun of itself and the characters and plot to the point that it's meanspirited at times (like Seymour describing the lifelong abuse and neglect he's gone through being framed in a very comedic and flippant way that's clearly making fun of him to the point that there might as well have been a laugh track playing, this happens with Audrey's introduction as well) but at the same time the performances (especially those of Ellen Greene and Rick Moranis) are so sincere.

This is most prominent in the theatrical cut ending where some of the dialogue feels like it was written in that Spongebob sarcasm font ("ThIs Is BeTwEeN mE aNd ThE vEgEtAbLE") (the very mocking tone at parts probably comes from them being pissed off that they had to redo the ending and seeing this new happy ending as stupid and fake and vapid which is fair) but it still feels like the actors are taking it fully seriously. If they were pissed at the audience like the writers clearly were I certainly can't tell. I refuse to look up interview quotes for any of this because most times I've looked at an interview quote for this movie it's been completely antithetical to every single thought I've ever had about it and made me wonder if I've watched the movie that it's talking about but yeah. Also probably no one involved would admit it if they were pissed at the audience but like... the writers probably were based on some of that dialogue/framing. No I don't know who 'the writers' were despite having written the equivalent of two doctoral theses on this movie. Because researching the authorial intent is painful for the reasons I've described.

How did this post get derailed this hard

Anyway tl;dr the juxtaposition between the narrative not taking anything seriously/being very mocking and the performances being very sincere is fun, it really adds to the feeling of Seymour and Audrey trying to survive in a world/society that hates them when the narrative itself is taking the piss out of them half the time.

This idea literally just occurred to me (by that I mean a few hours from when it's being queued, ignore the fact that it was queued for 7 in the morning) but what if Orin was reworked slightly to be Audrey's shitty abusive father and by killing him Seymour achieved the dream of every queer person ever to kill their best friend's shitty parents? I'm imagining that he left to get the milk when she was a kid like she describes in Suddenly Seymour and then took advantage of her kind nature and societally mandated obligation towards him to be able to crash at her apartment after she became an adult and not have to pay rent after his crimes as a dentist finally caught up to him and ruined his career and sent him looking for the solution to the suite of problems he now has at the bottoms of beer bottles. And his abuse towards her still has a sexual component because he sucks. And he 'justifies' it to himself by telling himself and her that her mom probably cheated on him anyway (and therefore she wouldn't be genetically his but is still apparently obligated to let him crash at her apartment and put up with his treatment of her for... reasons?)

Also the parallelism of Seymour killing Audrey's abusive father and his abusive father is nice. It'd be even better if she was the one to kill his abusive father, but I can't think of a way to make that work without significantly restructuring the plot. There could also be some parallelism with Seymour x Twoey considering that there are some jokes based on the premise that Seymour is a father figure of sorts to him (he gets mad at him when he curses and tries to sneak out on him with suitcases like a deadbeat dad and does midnight feedings with blood.) I would probably introduce Audrey's past at The Gutter through her saying (in very different words than the ones I'm using) that her very creation cursed her to be awful and not worthy of a good life (because her mom was a sex worker at The Gutter who Orin solicited the services of), which honestly sounds cooler than her having met him there and plays into the theme of the characters' lack of agency under capitalism that is explored throughout the movie.

Pretty much all of Audrey's coworkers at The Gutter ship her and Seymour after the chorus girls have spent many an hour aggressively peddling the ship between them.

my response is in the replies :)

Orin didn’t actually die from his gas mask just happening to break right at the exact moment that Seymour tried to kill him. What actually happened is that Seymour initially chickened out of killing him, tried to convince him to leave Audrey alone, and got laughed at because Orin was high on nitrous oxide. Orin suddenly lunged at him to get his gun, and he shot him due to an itchy trigger finger, somehow managing to kill the worst person of all time in an incredibly cowardly way. He then blocked out the memory and pretended that he had actually died because his gas mask broke. This isn’t that implausible when you consider that he clearly backed Mr. Mushnik towards the plant on purpose for several seconds and then pretended like he didn’t mean for that to happen (sure, bud.) When this is combined with the extreme convenience (and, let's be honest, lameness) of Orin just happening to die right at that exact moment, the interpretation that he actually did kill Orin seems surprisingly plausible.

Audrey has prosopagnosia (face blindness). Why do I headcanon this? It would explain her not being sure if she thinks Seymour is cute or not, and it would make the leather jacket scene more interesting if Seymour actually looked like Orin to her for a second (parallels between Seymour and Orin as Seymour spirals with guilt and wonders how alike they are we love to see it.) I also like the idea of her primarily associating him with things like the way he carries himself and his characteristic hand gestures in her mind. Like, when she hears his name she thinks about those things instead of his face. She developed prosopagnosia after falling off one of her boyfriend’s motorcycles, and she can compensate for it well enough that she doesn’t realize that she has it, although she sometimes gets a vague sense that something is off with her ability to recognize people.

haha funny plant go nom

do you guys like the funny plant musical