Exploiting The First Amendment

People are always complaining about how trashy television is, but nobody can come up with a good alternative. The last time someone tried to mix cultural, moral, and environmental awareness into a TV show, they came up with Captain Planet. For those not familiar with early 1990’s animated television, the appropriate Wikipedia link can be found here.

It’s a little-known fact that Captain Planet started out as a state-run Soviet public education program titled Commando Motherland.

This program was revised under numerous incarnations of Socialist regime, at different times being called Commandante Watersphere, Brother Sun-orbiter – Bringer of The Light of the Republic, and finally, Comrade Earthworld. During this run, the show was primarily used as a funnel for Party propaganda, and a rationalization of the country’s hyperactive nuclear program. Below is a translated 1983 transcript of the show.

When an American producer named James Goldman found the reels following the destruction of the Berlin wall, he quickly realized he had hit programming gold. Metaphorically speaking. The Russians had put all of the actual gold into weapons-grade nuclear testing devices.

James Goldman had previously been a producer on Saved By The Bell and The Smurfs, which were ultimately perfect stepping stones to the Captain Planet series.

The show had five protagonists, known as Planeteers. Kwame had the power of ‘earth’, and hailed from Africa. His abilities allowed him to grow plants and generate small earthquakes, and made him really annoying to golf with.

Wheeler had the power of ‘fire’ and came from the USA. Although his power was probably the coolest, his real job was to say idiotic message-provoking things to show kids how stupid Americans were ruining the environment.

Kwame: “Oh, no! This baby seal is covered in oil!”
Linka: “What should we do?”
Wheeler: “Maybe I can beat the oil off with this club!”

Also, he might go down in history as the only member of a superhero team that was a minority because he wasn’t a minority, at least by American standards.

Ma-Ti had the power of ‘heart’ and came from South America. His original power was ‘exploding death’, but this was deemed too “graphic” for young audiences by the Children’s Board of Review. And so he was instead given the power of ‘heart’. A power which, at its most intimidating, made a Care Bear look like a Hell’s Angel going on a Meth-induced murder spree. The power was only effectively used once in the episode “Yellow Brick Horde” when the Planeteers came face-to-face with an army of disgruntled Tinmen. As compensation for losing his ability to make polluters spontaneously combust, he was also given a monkey named Suchi.

Linka had the power of ‘wind’ and came from Russia. The ignorant American Wheeler was desperately in love with Linka, although his feelings were never really reciprocated. Years of diplomacy were destroyed when Boris Yeltsin watched an episode of Captain Planet, misinterpreted this dynamic as a metaphor for the seduction of his administration by Western policy, and subsequently shelled his own White House. (more information)

Gi had the power of ‘water’ and came from Asia. Most people assume that she was more specifically from Japan, since otherwise it would have been borderline anti-educational to give the power of ‘water’ to someone from the largest landmass on Earth.

Producers had originally meant to include a Planeteer for each continent, but struggled with completing the group. Writers were never sure what special abilities to give a Planeteer from Australia, although the powers of ‘drunken brawling’, ‘kangaroo’, and ‘needlessly complex slang’ were considered. Okmi, a character from Antarctica, was written into the show, but was dropped when an intern discovered that no actual human beings live on the continent.

As the title character, Captain Planet’s job was to show up when all the Planeteers combined their powers, like the Power Rangers’ Megazord, but with more environmental sensitivity and with Rufio’s shirt. Captain Planet could fly and had dozens of other random powers, but was useless when someone polluted on him, which they often did.

In the end, who knows, maybe one day there will be another kid’s show to rival the unending environmental consciousness that was Captain Planet. But until Lieutenant Nature and EPAvengers gets a time slot, we’ll have the Planeteers.

Tagged: Captain Planet, environment, Planeteer