Captain Planet and the Planeteers

For some reason, magic rings are pretty common cartoon motif. I suppose the appeal is pretty universal: you wear on your hand not only the irrepressible power to do your magic bidding but also your membership card to an exclusive superhero club. Unfortunately there's got to be some sort of superhero hierarchy out there, meaning not all superheroes are created equal. Magic ring or not, it's pretty safe to say that Protector of the Environment doesn't quite rank up there with the coolness factor of Batman or Superman. Hell, even Mighty Mouse may have had something on these guys.

Captain Planet was the animated response to an increasing push for social relevance and educational programming in children's television programming. This brand of thinly-veiled cartoon education, dubbed "edutainment", was pretty forthcoming in its attempts to teach us all sorts of pertinent facts and figures regarding the environment and our role as informed citizens of Earth. Think of it as an animated superhero version of An Inconvenient Truth, but with fewer powerpoint presentations and more mystical Earth spirits.

In the true spirit of the 90s, Captain Planet and the Planeteers were painfully multicultural. As emphasis of the inherent value of diversity grew in the American cultural marketplace, TV producers became more and more eager to appear politically correct in their entertainment undertakings. It was no longer enough to abide by the time-honored principle of tokenness. No, children today needed not just a vaguely ethnic friend here and there but rather a full gang of worldly companions. In an painstaking effort to make it even more realistic, the American one is by far the most ignorant and least informed. Who says cartoons aren't a mirror to society?

It all starts when the spirit embodiment of the Earth, Gaia, wakes up and is pissed to see the horrible squandering of resources and pollutive tendencies of contemporary man. There's pretty much only one thing she can do: conjure up a slew of magic rings, send them to some kids around the world, and hope for the best. Gaia's convenient Planet Vision alerts these youths as to the most devastating pollutants and disasters cropping up around the world, to which they must mobilize and act. Each Planeteer controls an element: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and...Heart?

These kids, while marginally powerful, are not altogether qualified to confront the worlds' mounting environmental crisis. Just as the Mouseketeers could always call on Mickey for reinforcement, so too could the Planeteers summon their more powerful and well-known pal. With the power of their rings combined and and a rousing cheer of "Go Planet!", the meager Planeteers could conjure up their leader, Captain Planet.



If you think I come up with some groan-inducing puns, you should go back and take a gander at some of the god-awful punnery that Captain Planet emits. Perhaps it's smog related, but something is clearly clouding his judgment with these cheesy jokes (Clouding? Smog? Come on, throw me a line here.) Captain Planet is pretty powerful, as far as superheroes go, but he's got his limitations. Just as Superman had Kryptonite, our man CP has pollution. Scary, isn't it?

The Planeteers, while less powerful, had a few tricks up their respective natural-fibered sleeves. In the intro, we find that we too can be Planeteers. As a child, this was so exciting for me I practically tripped over own burgeoning compost heap in a maniacally frantic effort to sort my recycling or purchase a sweatshirt made out of used water bottles. Just imagine, me, a Planeteer! It's almost too much to bear. As my role as a Planeteer was not sufficiently well-documented in the series (I blame my lack of multicultural qualities for this obvious snub for camera time), our more prominent ring-bearing Planeteers got quite a bit of airtime:

Kwame

Played by Lavar Burton, host of Reading Rainbow and star of the Roots miniseries. Talk about socially conscious, Burton was edutaining us from all fronts. Kwame possesses the power of Earth, which allowed him to create earthquakes, mountains, and other not-so-exciting plate-tectonic and topographic landforms. From Africa, Kwame came across his magic ring while planting trees in the Savannah. He acts as sort of an unofficial leader to the group, and always gets to be the one who shouts, "With our powers combined...!" Which when you think about it, was probably one of the best jobs on the show.

Linka


Voiced by Kath Soucie, another 90s voice actor extraordinaire. With voice acting credits like Phil and Lil of Rugrats, Lola Bunny from Space Jam, and Futurama's Cubert Farnsworth, Soucie was a veritable voice chameleon. In this case, she voiced Linka, our communist Soviet Planeteer, later replaced by the vaguer "Eastern European" Planeteer following the USSR's demise. She is incredibly stereotyped to the early-90s mounting fear of Soviet education surpassing that of the US, with superior math and computer hacking skills. Cute, no? Linka has the power of Wind, allowing her to create gusty breezes, tornadoes, and to some extent, offers her the power to levitate.

Ma-Ti


Our South American Planeteer did not boast quite as well-known voice acting credentials, but Scott Menville did play Kimmy Gibbler's boyfriend Duane on Full House which certainly gives him points in my book. Ma-Ti lives in the rainforest with his grandfather, a local Shaman. In case you had yet to notice, the Planeteers' creator took great pains in making the diversity as painstakingly obvious as possible. It was never acceptable for a South American to live in a major city, or an Asian to be scientifically non-inclined. These Planeteers took their embodied stereotypes highly seriously. Ma-Ti had the power of Heart, which was clearly the crappiest element. It wasn't an element at all, if you want to get technical. He could converse with animals, occasionally read minds, and affect others emotionally, but you have to admit that when compared to the other Planetary (Planeteery?) powers this one seemed a bit consolatory.

Wheeler


Voiced by Joey Dedio, who earns my seal of 90s credibility for voicing the over-the-top drug dealer in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue! Wheeler was our American friend, and in typical typecasting fashion he is a salty, short-tempered Brooklynite. He wielded the power of Fire, which was admittedly cooler and more useful than many of the other elements. In retrospect Wheeler's role as an American was a bit insulting to actual Americans, though not altogether untrue. He came across as overly privileged and ignorant, and was forced to serve as comic relief to his smarter, more able global counterpars.

Gi



The Southeast Asian member of the group, Gi was voiced by Janice Kawaye. Proving my American ignorance in a manner not unlike that of my Planeteer pal Wheeler, I must admit I'm pretty clueless about Kawaye's other voice credits, which include such
shows as Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. Gi is an aspiring marine biologist, and hence posesses the power of Water. She can control water to do her bidding, unless of course it is (gasp!) polluted. Gi is also unsurprisingly highly knowledgeable in science, which is not so shocking in this realm of absolute, unerring stereotyping.

With their powers combined, they could summon the reliable Captain Planet, a blue-faced, green-mulleted muscular superhero.



His intentionally hazy powers mean that he can pretty much perform whatever sort of magic necessary to fit the situation. Convenient, indeed. I always sort of thought he had something going on with Gaia, too.

Captain Planet's tagline, "The Power is Yours!" emphasized a worthwhile if cheesy take on personal responsibility to global environmental issues. Things certainly got a little (read: overtly) PSA, and by a little, I mean a lot. Observe, a call against joining gangs, vandalism, graffiti, littering, and pretty much anything else you can think of:



Obviously, the intentions were good but the edutainment factor often came off as more skewed toward the educational than the entertainment. Regardless, it was entertaining, if a bit corny. In his constant reminders that the Power is indeed ours, at least we got to feel marginally powerful, albeit in an environmentally conscious, distinctly unsuperhero type of way. At least we got to hear his never-ending pollution puns. For however ignorant the Planeteers assumed us to be, they worked tirelessly with Captain Planet to clear the air for us on all things environmental.

(insert groan here)



Check it out:
Captain Planet's TV Tropes

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

It's a tale as old as time, at least according to 90s juvenile movie tropes: for some reason or other (usually either some parental oversight or colossal change of plans) leaves one or many children utterly alone to do as they please and wreak havoc on their once-stable environment. While to anyone remotely grounded in reality can easily assess that this situation would inevitably end in starving, general run-amokery, and eventual outing to authorities, in movies it always seems like such a gas. What's that, the kids are completely unsupervised and without money or other necessary resources? Classic!

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead is probably one of the most explanatory and descriptive movie titles to date. While other studios were issuing more subtle, nuanced movie titles, execs at Warner Brothers knew kids and teenagers had a short attention span. "Kids are pretty slow, so let's see if we can explain this entire plot in a single sentence and then assign that as the film's title. Deal?" The title managed to encapsulate the entire plot in six simple words. No ticket purchaser could claim they didn't know what they were getting into. It was right there on the stub.

The movie itself was yet another manifestation of the ultimate kid fantasy of autonomy based on the false notion that being an adult is carefree, easy, and cheap. We certainly get a sense of this from the preview, when two of the male Crandall children deviously announce, "Dishes are done!" after shooting them in the air clay-pigeon style. No one would alert the authorities on that one, right? Just a couple of kids sniping on a neighbor's roof. Kids will be kids.



Contrary to the happy-go-luckiness of the preview, Don't tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead actually explored some of the potential monetary woes that a group of unruly, unemployed teenagers would potentially encounter. Namely, that they can't afford food. Sure, it's all fun and games when your babysitter dies (or at least so this movie would lead us to believe), but how do you intend to stay under the radar of child services when you don't have the means to keep yourself fed? How, I ask you?

But perhaps we're getting a tad ahead of ourselves here. Let's start at the very beginning (as an incessant childhood viewer of The Sound of Music, I can pretty safely verify that that's a very good place to start). The plot was relatively simple: prior to the start of the movie, Mrs. Crandall announced to her brood of zany and sometimes incorrigible children that she's planning to spend her entire summer in Australia, sans her five lovable little hellions. Naturally the kids are psyched, particularly teenage Sue Ellen (played by Christina Applegate), or at least we're led to believe this on the basis of her being the main character. The older kids are making all sorts of ruckus-rousing plans for the summer, while the younger ones grumble about their mom's abandonment.

What Mrs. Crandall conveniently fails to tell them was that they were not, as assumed, to be staying alone for two months. Right before their mother is set to leave, Sue Ellen answers a knock on the door to find a little old lady who introduces herself as "Mrs. Sturak, the babysitter." Even though all of us with ticket stubs or blurb-splattered VHS cases in our possession know the eventual fate of Mrs. Sturak, Sue Ellen is pissed. When confronted, Mrs. Crandall offers, "She has a lot of experience." Sue Ellen huffs, "Of course she does. She's 200 years old." Burn! Oh, Sue Ellen, you brassy, sassy 90s teen fashion magnate. What will you say next?

Image via moviescreenshots.blogspot.com

Of course, the minute Mrs. Crandall exits stage left, supposedly kindly Mrs. Sturak turns into a terrorizing tyrant. It looks like it's going to be a long, hellish summer. Until the prophecy of the movie title is fulfilled, of course.

As I child, I found Mrs. Sturak's death scene to be pretty dark. I say this mainly because even though I loved this movie and watched it endlessly (literally, until the tape began unraveling) the title seen in which the crazy Mrs. Sturak kicks the bucket always scared the bejeezus out of me. Now, of course, I realize that Sue Ellen's brother's pothead paraphernalia and pseudo-pornographic images giving Mrs. Sturak a heart attack make the scene pretty funny, but at the time I thought he was some sort of satanic worshipper. Ah, the pangs of innocence. I was all riled up because Mrs. Sturak smelled some not-so-fresh bongwater.

Naturally, everything that happens from this point on is intensely and completely ridiculous. For some reason (read: no reason) they can't just call their mother and tell her what happened. No, it would be best to act criminally insane and purge the body. So they do what any logically thinking, level-headed kids would do in this situation: stash the body in a trunk and quietly drop it off at a local morgue. Thankfully, they had the good sense to attach a note: "Nice old lady inside. Died of natural causes." Of course, it's not till after all this body-ditching is over that they realize Mrs. Sturak was in possession in all of the money their mother left for the summer. Very smooth indeed, Crandalls. Very smooth indeed.

While everyone still has high hopes for their summer sans authority, this pennilessness puts a bit of a damper on their plans. As the oldest, Sue Ellen grudgingly accepts an admittedly crappy fast food job. This is clearly an ill-fated plan, and prissy Sue Ellen quits soon thereafter. Luckily for Sue Ellen as the ingenue, she manages to form a relationship with remarkably hot coworker Bryan during her short tenure as a hot dog jockey.



Seeking cushier employment, Sue Ellen applies for a receptionist position at a local fashion firm. Though in retrospect Sue Ellen's wardrobe choices are highly suspect, at the time she was quite the fashion plate and this seemed like a logical fit. Of course, Sue Ellen is a mere high school grad, so she lifts some buzzwords from a resume-tip book and forges the resume of an accomplished 28-year old. In a whirlwind of increasingly unlikely events, Sue Ellen's resume garners so much positive attention that the Senior VP offers her the Executive Administrative Assistant job she'd promised to her old receptionist (who is conveniently Sue Ellen's new boyfriend's sister. Obviously). I smell some inner workplace tension brewing.



Of course, Sue Ellen doesn't know how to do anything except steal from the petty cash supply. In fact, that's pretty much all she does. Her brood is getting hungry, so she pilfers some petty cash for groceries. Unfortunately, her increasingly selfish siblings each squander the salary in some silly sense. They've still got not money, and Sue Ellen is on the verge of being in huge trouble for totally depleting the petty cash fund.

Meanwhile the company is hovering on bankruptcy. The clothes are hideous and in turn, no one wants to purchase them. Her problems compounded by trouble in romantic paradise, Sue Ellen is feeling pretty SOL. What happens next is pure cheesy 90s movie moments at its best. Our girl SE has an epiphany, and singlehandedly undertakes the task of redesigning the fashions to save the company:

Sue Ellen saves us all!

All the Crandall kids clean up the house and agree to pitch in to throw a huge fashion show launch at their house. Everything is going swimmingly, until of course in typical 90s movie fashion incredibly obvious things go awry. SE's heartthrob Bryan shows up. Mrs. Crandall is home from Australia. Sue Ellen's forced to own up to the fact that she's a huge liar, and thief, and oh yeah, only 17. While in real life, all sorts of horrifying pending legal action would ensue, everything here works out perfectly. The fashion company is pleased, Mrs. Crandell calms down and is impressed by Sue Ellen's hard work, Bryan and Sue Ellen have a romantic reunion. Sue Ellen's boss even offers her a real full-time job, but Sue Ellen maturely decides to (wait for it...wait for it...) go to college instead. All together now: awwww.



Cut to the last scene, where the guys from the morgue are chilling at Mrs. Sturak's tombstone, musing over how sweet it was for her to leave them all that cash. See how everything worked out for everyone and no one was ever angry or suspicious in the countless situations that warranted it? That's the beauty of 90s movie idealism. Anything can, and inevitably will, happen.

Image via moviescreenshots.blogspot.com

Sure it's glossy and unrealistic, but it was actually a fun movie. Everyone even managed to learn a lesson, so movie-going parents didn't mind so much all of the rest of the initial conflicting bad messages their impressionable kids were being exposed to. The magic of these types of 90s movies was the convenient, simplified ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. Sure, it's not realistic, but it is entertaining. After all, no one wants to see Sue Ellen's ass dragged to court or the kids convicted for disposing of poor old Mrs. Sturak's body. No, no, all's well that ends well, and that's just the end.

Check it out:

Watch the whole movie on YouTube! (in 10 parts)

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Regardless of how soul-savingly wonderful or retina-burstingly abhorrent you find the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series to be, we can all agree on one thing: Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were probably laughing all the way to the bank in the face of the 140 publishers who initially refused the manuscript. 16 years and 100+ books later, people are eager as ever to lap up every last drop of sentimentality with a spoon. These feel-good heart-tugging tales were meant to induce feelings and inspire, though for some the only feelings inspired was an unrelenting nausea.

The 90s had a surprisingly high market quotient for touchy-feeliness, considering all the angsty cynicism (a la Nirvana) and vapid materialism (a la Clueless) people attribute to 90s culture. Perhaps there was some mysterious point of contact which allowed the angsty to express their wealth of feelings and the superficial to pat themselves on the back for their insincere sentimentalism. Whatever the reason, there was a pretty serious market for all things high-faloutin' and pseudo-spiritual.

This impulse for inspiration manifested itself in several forms: Touched by an Angel, the rise of televangelism, Lurlene McDaniel young adult novels. Perhaps the most lucrative exploitative franchise capitalizing on this trend was The Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The series' name implies that we are somehow naturally sick, and the only soothing remedy is to buy this book. That's a sound marketing strategy if I ever heard one (Get it? Sound? Heard? Okay, think I'm alone on this one). I'm going to come out with a new line of books next year entitled, "Buy this book or you will inevitably get an incurable mutation of swine flu ." It seems pretty straightforward, and I bet I could make a bundle on it.

Sarcasm aside (briefly), the books arguably had some inherent merit beneath their drecky facade. The stories were indeed positive and uplifting and made good on the title's promise of a soothing read. However, it was less about the value of the stories themselves than the ensuing warm fuzzy feeling many of us got from reading this book. See, the book had that sort of incredibly-easy-read-to-make-you-feel-good-about-yourself quality to it. By feeling touched by the stories, we could all personally feel as if we were good, moral, spiritual people who were eager to be inspired and called to action in a quest for positivity. Despite the passivity of our actions (sitting and reading an overrated bestseller) we could all breathe a sigh of relief that we were indeed, as we had always suspected, good people.

The Chicken Soup for the Soul Condolence Sympathy Basket from www.recover-from-grief.com. Yes, this exists.

Before you go on the offensive and defend these books (or would that be the defensive?), let me be the first to admit that I ate these up as a kid. I absolutely could not get enough. For some reason, I was unwaveringly certain that these books possessed the tidbits of timeless wisdom that were the secrets to unlocking a life of happiness. When I turned 12, someone gave me a copy of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul as a gift. I remember earmarking chapters I thought to be particularly poignant, such as "Things Girls Love about Boys" and stories about kids with (insert life obstacle here) overcoming adversity.

After devouring volume after volume, I had that wonderful unearned feeling of being a better person without ever having to leave my room. Why, in the span of two hours, I had been empathetic, altruistic, sympathetic, and accepting. The tears in my eyes were evidence that I was indeed a living, feeling person who cared about others deeply. Right?


Maybe. One of the strongest selling points of these books was that inspiration is an incredibly vague term. I doubt most readers immediately mobilized and began rescuing helpless sick puppies or volunteering at the local soup kitchen (for the stomach, that is, not soul) directly after reading any of these books. The best part was that it allowed you to be completely undeservedly self-congratulatory. Bravo, me. Bravo!

Of course, I'm clearly devilishly advocating the situation. The original book was overwhelmingly well-received by readers and critics. Most people were willing and able to look past the corniness and feel truly touched by these moving (albeit cliched) stories. There was something comforting in the predictable heartwarming-ness of each story. Sure, we knew it was sappy and possibly some of these miracles were a tad on the contrived side, but our willingness to briefly suspend our disbelief could allow us to embrace a story's happy ending.

Hansen and Canfield were brilliantly entrepreneurial in their approach and saw the potential in the not-yet fully tapped market of sappy sentimentalism. Lucky for them, all they had to do was think up countless topics and corresponding subtitles (including but not limited to Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul, Chicken Soup for the Fisherman's Soul, and even Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them.) The editors obviously subscribed to a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ideology. Using basically the same essential formula, they managed to crank out book after book in the style of the original but catered to specifically market to a particular demographic.

Then came the kookier side. Books weren't enough. No, we needed Chicken Soup for the Soul calendars, Chicken Soup for the Soul Pet food, and Chicken Soup for the Soul vitamin supplements. There's nothing quite like manipulating your audience into buying a bunch of worthless crap to send a positive message of spirituality and inspiration.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Trimworks Supplements. Please note the package featuring a woman hugging a scale. It's likely she has OD'ed on the lovey-dovey feel-goodness of CSftS

Over time, the initial bowl of soup has evolved into a fully functional factory churning out can and can of the same product. This model was fitting as this was exactly what Hansen and Canfield were peddling: canned spirituality. Love it or hate it, the Chicken Soup Series was a formidable franchise from 1993 stretching through the better part of this decade. Ultimately, whether you're a firefighter, doctor, or French-African widowed quadriplegic philosopher with a taste for five-alarm chili, there is inevitably a Chicken Soup for the Soul book made just for you. Go forth and be soothed.


Some newer, odder incarnations: