Little Shop of Miracles

My folks and I saw Little Shop of Horrors last Saturday - at my 17 year old nephew’s high school production. The school mascot is a purple kangaroo, the pink elephant of Oz. Frank Oz directed the film version in 1986, so that made perfect sync sense.

I haven’t been back to high school in... ages. Going back in time like that sort of puts me in a different place, where symbols live and syncs flow. As we found our seats and waited for the lights to go down, music played softly through the loudspeakers, and the first song up was Stairway to Heaven (yea, I know). It seems like every high school dance I ever attended always ritually ended with Stairway to Heaven - the most undanceable song ever written. God I hated that song. I hated the dances too, but they were ‘required’.

So I’m back in high school, except the last song I heard is now the first. Taking up where I left off?

Little Shop of Horrors was a 1982 off-Broadway alien invasion musical by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, based upon the 1960 B-movie of the same name. The invader takes the form of a Venus flytrap like plant that appears suddenly during a total solar eclipse. The plant is found by (chooses) Seymour Krelboyne (Rick Moranis), amateur horticulturalist and inept employee of penny pinching Jewish/Indian Gravis Mushnick (Vincent Gardenia) - proprietor of a down and out florist shop (Eden) on skid row. Seymour is an orphan who was taken in by Mushnick as a child. Parents unknown, though his last name is a clue.

This plant has the power to make all your dreams come true as long as you keep it well fed, the downside being that it eats only fresh meat - human blood sacrifice. Seymour names the plant Audrey II, after the sweet but dotty Audrey Fulquard (Ellen Greene): the other employee at the florist shop, and Seymour’s secret love interest.

Audrey Tautou (Tau Cross + King Tou, the sender of golden cups as tribute to King David) played Sophie Neveu (New Wisdom) in 'The Da Vinci Code', and along with the Venus sync, the plant resonates the divine feminine (devouring black hole), but oddly it has a deep masculine voice, obviously a male personality. Male and female.

Is it just me, or does this little pistil look like a stamen?

The florist’s shop has a few regular customers, one being Mrs. Siddie Shiva, who has a very large family and comes in almost daily for flower arrangements for her many relative’s funerals. “Sitting Shiva” is the Jewish custom of a week long period of grief and mourning for relatives. I saw shiva on my funeral visit to NYC.

Shiva is also a principle Hindu deity.

“Hinduism identifies Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva as each representing one of the three primary aspects of the divine in Hinduism, known collectively as the Trimurti. In the Trimurti system, Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the maintainer or preserver, and Shiva is the destroyer or TRANSFORMER.”

Shiva’s weapon is the trident (We have the Trident Nuclear Subase on Hood Canal, which has been called the "deadliest weapon ever"). Shiva is also known as Ardhanarishvara, “the lord who is half woman” (which is not the same as "half-man, half-woman", says Ellen Goldberg).

Jesus calls himself “the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star” in Rev 22:16 (4x4), signifying Venus, who is also the divine feminine. Both Jesus and Shiva are to return at the end of the Age.

Anyway, back in the florist’s shop: Seymour accidentally pricks his finger on a rose (another divine feminine symbol) and ritually castrates himself (According to Christopher Knowles.) The plant opens wide when it smells blood, and Seymour feeds it, singing “grow for me”. Almost at once, wealth, fame and love come into Seymour’s life, which shows the plant to have Godlike power - the ability to grant wishes, or alter reality. It is also the power of the Cosmic Cube.

Seymour protects his power plant.

As the plant grows, the financial success of the flower shop keeps pace. Mr. Mushnick is thrilled with the miracle, but he overhears the wicked dentist whisper temptation into Seymour’s ear: Take the plant and leave this dump on skid row for a better neighborhood. Mushnick is struck with fear at the prospect of his “golden goose” flying the coop, so he proposes a clever ball and chain: to make Seymour his legal son - Mushnick & Son.

Mushnick is a Jewish Indian, representing both the Abrahamic religions and the religions of the East (the two Shivas). Once the power of Seymour and the plant are shown, both East AND West want a piece of him, and claim him as their own. But in truth, neither East or West are Seymour’s true father, because he’s a foundling. So where’s he from?

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." --John 18:36

As the plant grows it continues demanding more and more blood. Seymour can’t keep up, and is forced to take advantage of “accidental” deaths in order to feed the plant. First Audrey’s sadistic dentist boyfriend, then Mr. Mushnick, and eventually even Audrey the first.

Size (Mass) does matter.

Finally, Seymour realizes the plant’s cunning plan: to have cuttings taken and then be distributed all over the country! He tries shooting, cutting and poisoning the plant, but its hide is too tough. He then runs into its open jaws with a machete - planning to kill it from within.

Of course, Shiva/Jesus isn’t so easy to kill anymore, and Seymour is the one who is eaten, the plant spitting out the machete. The following day, the plant’s four new buds open, each bud showing the living face of a victim - born again.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. --John 15:5

As we left the auditorium and walked to the parking lot, I noticed a bright bumblebee yellow and black striped Ford Mustang in the parking lot, hiding in plain sight, and when I got back home from the show, I tossed our ticket stubs out on the kitchen table, and noticed that one of them was number 666. Sheesh!

Feed Me!

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NOTES:

Seymour’s leap into the maw of the plant reminds me of Agent K’s (Tommy Lee Jones) leap into the gullet of the giant Bug in Men In Black. This bug was also an alien invader, intent on consuming a world. Perhaps the same entity? “Destroying from within” might represent the takeover of the church, media and government by people who are not what they seem.

Skid Row is an original Seattle word:

A skid row or skid road is a run-down or dilapidated urban area with a large population of impoverished abusers of alcohol and, often, other drugs. In a related expression, someone who is down and out is said to be "on the skids". The term originally referred literally to a path along which loggers skidded logs; that literal meaning is now obsolete. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest. --wikipedia