The Inaccuracies of Little Shop of Horrors

 

I would like to talk about Little Shop of Horrors, an iconic movie and musical, and more specifically, Audrey II, the infamous carnivorous plant. I haven't actually seen any version, movie or musical, so forgive me if my information is incorrect. Consider this study of Audrey II a sneak peak for the carnivorous plant dump later in June.

Overview:

- What exactly is Audrey II, or Twoey?

- General plant problems

- Carnivorous plant-specific problems

- Did they get anything right?

There will be spoilers for Little Shop. Speaking of which, have a quick summary:

    A guy who works in a flower shop - Seymour - sees a plant he assumes is a Venus flytrap one day and buys it. He takes as good care of it as he can, but no matter what he does, it's not happy. Eventually he figures out it desires human flesh and then it gets worse from there. The plant is manipulative and eventually takes over the world, theoretically murdering all of humanity.

A Problematic Childhood

    There are two versions of Twoey - movie and musical. I'll cover both in this intro and reference them in later sections. In the movie, Twoey is a hybrid between a Venus flytrap (vft) and butterwort and in the musical, Twoey is an alien. The protagonist, Seymour, bought Twoey from one of those Chinese florist shops and named it after his "lifelong crush," assuming Twoey was just some kind of vft. In the original script, it is described as appearing as a cross between a vft and an avocado, which is quite accurate.

    Regardless of which origin is the 'correct' one, we're assuming Twoey is some kind of plant. Unfortunately, this happens to be an extremely bloodthirsty plant that demands human sacrifices. 

General Problems

Let's get right into this. Twoey is massive by the end, and literally takes over the world in the musical version. Twoey also speaks English and moves a lot, which would be impressive for an animal and even more so for a plant without vocal chords. The movement would be extremely energy intensive and I think y'all can figure out why that all doesn't really work. Twoey is also highly intelligent and manipulative, convincing Seymour to commit murder at least once, definitely at least twice if you count the death of Audrey, the love interest and Twoey's namesake who Seymour reluctantly fed to Twoey at Audrey's dying request. I still think this would be an awesome plant to hang out with but I can understand Twoey being a bit much to wrangle if you are Seymour. I don't like Seymour.

Carnivorous Plant Problems

First: bigger trap = more meat = more energy, right? If that's the case, why aren't vfts already massive? The explanation is simple. Large cultivars often do not work. The traps warp when they try to close and they can't catch anything. Twoey should not be capable of eating humans.

Second: Contrary to popular opinion, carnivorous plants are completely harmless, unless you are small enough to fit inside one. You're much more likely to hurt the plant by breaking it or wasting its energy because you want to see it move. This is the reason that I do not let anybody touch my plants. Also, you have to have a pretty solid amount of plant tissue to trap something big like a human or animal with pointy teeth/horns/anything, which limits flexibility and movement.

Third: Twoey, after murdering a large number of people, including Seymour, is propagated through cuttings. What this means is that someone (or maybe Twoey? Idk) took Twoey's leaves and distributed them apparently all across the US. Now, for vfts and butterworts, and maybe for alien space plants, this is a viable way to propagate. However, it could not be done the way they did because carnivorous plants are speckle sensitive snowflakes. The traps of a vft are actually the leaves, whereas the things that look like leaves are called petioles and they are modified parts of the plant for optimum photosynthesis. To get a truly effective cutting, you want to get part of the root bulb, or rhizome.

Last really picky thing: A butterwort looks like a slimy thin succulent. A cross between a butterwort and vft definitely doesn't look like Twoey. Alien I am unqualified to judge.

There's probably more to criticize, but as I mentioned before, I have not actually seen Little Shop.

Did They Get Anything Right?

Uhh...Twoey's green? Carnivorous means meat-eating and Twoey consumes human flesh so that's okay, I guess. You might have noticed the awkward pronoun avoidance, despite the fact that Audrey is a traditionally female name and Twoey is normally voiced by men, and that is because there is a popular headcanon that Twoey transcends human gender concepts. That's accurate to vfts and many other plants which are known as 'perfect' because they have both male and female parts. I wouldn't normally include this except Twoey's gender/sex is never explicitly specified so this is a valid headcanon.

While I don't approve of Twoey from a biology perspective, I think that Twoey is very cool and I would be into hanging out sometime. Also, maybe converting Twoey to vegetarianism but still, you gotta have guts to murder the entire human race.

Image credits: Little Shop of Horrors wikia.