The saving grace is that The Mouth of the South a/k/a Ted Turner was so bad at it. Captain Planet and the Planeteers was the lamest cartoon imaginable.
Just Enough of Me; Far Too Much of You
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
By the time this cartoon appeared I had outgrown them, and so had my younger brothers. We never watched it but coming from Ted Turner, it had to be garbage.
Being the X-ennial I am, I was among the target audience for Captain Planet and can still remember all the catch phrases and many of the villains. Also helps that my family is a collection of raging leftists.
I showed a part of an episode to my moral/social issues classes this past year and they were repulsed by how unsubtle it all was. But 16-17 year olds are a little more discerning than 7-10 year olds about this kind of stuff.
You’ve had Looney Toons (courtesy Warner Bros), the occasional Hanna Barbera offering (e.g. The Flintstones), and Disney offerings now and again (e.g. Fantasia), and Bullwinkle and associated offerings (which were produced by a couple of small stand-alone firms). That’s the good stuff. You’ve had some amusing material produced in the last 35 years (by Matt Groening, Parker and Stone, Seth Macfarlane) about which one might be ambivalent.
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And then there’s this:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs0FLtnNTQ0
I watched this as a kid, mostly because I watched all the Saturday Morning cartoons at that time. I don’t remember this line or most of the show, because even as undiscerning kids we knew the whole thing was lame, mostly because of the “Heart!” kid, who probably had the lamest power ever. I never appreciated the attempted propagandistic element of it (at least not consciously); all I knew was it was lame and largely uninteresting. I think I mostly sat through it just waiting for Garfield and Friends or something like that to come on.
I also didn’t realize that Pinky and the Brain (brilliant, although my wife hates it, and I of course can still sing the entire theme song, which she for some unknown reason also cannot stand…) was subtly preparing me for the conspiracy-theory-come-true world we now inhabit. I think I might almost feel better if it was a genetically altered mouse trying to take over the world; it would probably be less stupid than what we have experienced. Chia Earth forever.
Cartoons seemed to go bad and boring when the adults left the audience after the early 1960s. Chuck Jones, “Bullwinkle” and “Fractured Fairy Tales”, even the early “Charlie Brown” specials offered humor to both kids and grown-ups (and sometimes commentary the latter got without feeling insulted).
It’s all pagan environmentalism. Leftists worship nature just like the ancient Canaanites and Egyptians. Dumb ignorant idiots, the lot of them.
Captain Planet was literally paganism; they regularly took orders from the pagan goddess, Gaia.
Pinky and the Brain
My favorite cartoon show that my kids watched. I loved the Orson Welles voice for the Brain!
One of my earliest reactions to the diversity mindset…I remember thinking how funny it would have been if the kids had been from the US, England, Russia, South Africa, and Australia.
“What are we going to do tonight Brain?”
“The same thing we do every night Pinky: try to take over the world!”
The Peanuts specials were generally engaging.
“Mouth of the South”. A national disgrace, not confined to any region. Thanks to everyone (almost) on this website for their assurance through their comments that sanity has not been totally disappeared from the national discourse.
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IIRC Ted Turner also once said that “Christianity is for losers”. And I believe he was right, but NOT in the sense that he thought. Christ Himself said that “the last would be first and the first would be last” and frequently reminded His listeners that the “losers” of His time might well enter the Kingdom before the “winners” such as the rich, powerful, and most prominent.
and I of course can still sing the entire theme song, which she for some unknown reason also cannot stand…
“They’re Pinky and the Brain,
They’re Pinky and the Brain,
One is a genius, the other’s insane
To prove their mousy worth
They’ll overthrow the Earth,
They’re Pinky, they’re Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain….”
Now I will have that going around in my head all day Elaine!
Turner gives overweening pride a bad name.