It's wild to have grown up with Captain Planet, FernGully, The Big Help, corny Earth Day specials and Sesame Street telling us to recycle, and to have media corporations today say that environmentalism is too political. What a fucking world this is.
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Do we plug our stuff under successful skeets like we did back on Twitter? Well, hi, I'm Gregiffer, I make videos about media history, mostly television history, mostly children's television history, mostly Nickelodeon history. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63ushetAZ-xoXYf46MkIywbmLq_3qXRw
I watched a Beetlejuice episode where the title character becomes a girl and everyone is cool with it. Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers has them crossdressing in the intro.
None of that would be made today. Hell, BUGS BUNNY CROSSDRESSING would probably be nixed by the current incarnation of Warner Bros.
I have the complete series set that Shout factory released about a decade ago & know exactly the episode you’re talking about. Shame the set doesn’t have any special features
Even before the 90s, you had a series where Yogi Bear fought polluters/litterbugs, or a whole "Peanuts" special about Arbor Day, among other "don't litter/pollute" messages in 70s/80s media...
Reading this suddenly reminded me of an old Archie cartoon where Jughead and Hotdog witnessed pollution and littering everywhere they go. Heck, a radio programming called Chicken Man, was telling people to help keep the earth clean.
There's an ep of Captain Planet where an American arms dealer makes 2 cities fight each other and exhaust all their oil/resources in order to pay the dealer. The fighting and resource exhaustion causes massive damage to both population + environment. I feel like this would never air today
Among others, eps where Dr Blight tries to convince the President that global warming isn't real. Trash collection org dumping trash on an island and polluting the indigenous people's land. Companies claiming to be "green" but actually covering up pollution. All solved with property damage lol
This is what always bothered me about Captain Planet
Me: oh a highly nuanced issue with multiple disagreeing parties!
Captain Planet: It's just Greedly, I'll yank him out by his tie.
Me: Wow a complex organization that could just rebuild the tower!
Captain Planet: Blew the tower up you're welcome.
"So I love what you're doing here. It's all good. It's all GREAT. But. And hear me out here. What if there was a segment with the beaver reminding viewers that microplastics are harmless and that global warming is a natural cycle. Also, the beaver's name has to be Exon Mobil. Otherwise great work!"
We just got a 1994 evangelical book about “the dangers of the Power Rangers” for a future pod. There’s a not inconsiderable portion of the book complaining about the anti-big business slant of many of the episodes (plus “globalism”).
It bums me out to see kids media finally kowtowing to this force…
I think what’s changed is social media. Back then, that was just an evangelical book about one tv show. That’s not traveling very far. Now those same ideas get broadcast and normalized
Plus the ability 4 oodles of people to make $ on that panic. In the 90s Phil Phillips writes this book & MAYBE it shows up in bookstores. Anyone else pitches the same book? Theyre told it already exists. Now? Youd get 80 YouTube channels all dedicated to calling PR woke by the time the first ep ends
@thisfirepod.bsky.social
I’ve heard that the radicalization of children into hate filled ideologies is a major problem and a lot of kids are being indoctrinated by Andrew Tate. Also kids are listening to videos based on how many views it gets. https://youtu.be/CxQA3899QAM?si=e-kdsimCk54a-M5W
It’s 100% true. Esp. among young men. I used to work at a small catholic college (til late 2017), and while Tate wasnt on the scene yet, you could see the slide start. Ben Shapiro talking points making their ways into public speaking assignments, pro-GamerGate speeches, etc. Hatred just percolating.
@thisfirepod.bsky.social oh I meant young kids too like as young as like 8 and 9. Kids who are saying your body my choice to girls at the school playground and bullying other kids in a far worse manner compared to before.
I think a lot about how Joe (sigh....) Rogan endorsed the card-carrying socialist Bernie Sanders back in 2016, the DNC said "nah, Clinton's the safe choice" and here we are 8yrs later, lost & watching a new generation get indoctrinated while twits write "how can The Left get a Rogan?" thinkpieces.
FWIW, I dont think he would have ended up ‘our’ dolt regardless. Joe in 16 was 4 years out from his 100M dollar Spotify deal. And 8 years out from his 250M re-up
We’re in a class war masquerading as a culture war, & anyone given that amount of capital is going to end up toeing the corporate line.
Evangelical books often weren’t tracked by bestseller lists but in some cases did sell in the millions, fwiw. I don’t think that’s the case with this book, but evangelical subculture is bigger and more powerful than a lot of people realize
This particular book was near the tail end of author Phil Phillips’ pet grift of “your kids’ toys are actually demonic”. The shine of this strand of the Satanic panic was waning by 1994. But one of his previous books (Turmoil in the Toybox) was no doubt one of those quiet best-sellers.
It's unreal to me that the book you posted here so nakedly equates naked greed with their religion. It's like I'm reading some joke Ferengi text from Star Trek.
Right? I’m gonna be honest. It’s kind of shocking. Like, it’s pretty clear to anyone paying attention that in 2024 Evangelical Christianity is a front for corporate greed and unchecked capitalism. But in 1994? This is absolutely something that would have been a “quiet part out loud” moment.
If you're not already familiar with Chrissy Stroop (@www.bugbeardispatch.com) you might check her out. She's exvangelical with a solid grounding in social theory (especially feminist & gender theory, but as a former Russia-scholar she's just generally well-grounded).
And pro incumbent hierarchy. To me, American Evangelicalism exists in its current form to find the whitest guys in power and re-form itself to serve them best.
No doubt. But I feel like rarely communicated this nakedly. “This kids show has episodes where businesses are depicted as polluting!” being one of the big 7 points they list for why it’s morally evil, feels a little on the nose for 1994.
Especially as it pertains to environmental issues. Nixon had established the EPA. Roosevelt was the National Parks guy. There was still a sense that ‘conservatism’ actually meant ‘conservation. At least from a public relations standpoint.
It can’t be overstated how big MMPR was in early 94. An appearance by the actors shut down a freeway in LA, the toys were sold out so thoroughly that stores had to offer IOUs for Xmas.
So it makes perfect sense that it was a target in the dying days of the “toys are evil” era of the Satanic Panic.
I mean I grew up on the og MMPR. They came out sometime after Jurassic Park and dinosaurs were HUGE in the 90s and I do remember that the toys were big that year and for a very long time.
Funny thing: Here in Germany in the mid-90ties there were complains over the violence depicted in "Power Rangers". As a result the channel kicked the "X-Men" cartoon after 26 episodes - and kept the "Power Rangers". 🙄
As a kid who grew up on the og mmpr,this startling feels familiar, considering my mom also got caught up in some Satanic Panic nonsense despite not being an avid church goer. Also interested that the paper talks about how 'united' the kids are against a looming threat like that's a bad thing.
Though I'd note that a lot of evangelical media for kids in the day was mostly catering towards white kids, with at least one or two token minorities who were there to just be there or to endlessly praise white American Christian culture (Elijah Creek series has this).
a world where the rich rule and if you dare to even think about criticizing them you deserve to fucking die in a fire because fuck everything and everyone goddammit i hope disney fucking burns to the ground and gets nuked actually hope all the executives die
I feel like the enviromentalist message was more allowed in the 90's was because even when they blamed the big corpos, the actual message went to the common people: "But if you do your part and recycle, we'll have a better future!"
Well, now we're in that future, we recycle almost everything and even drink through paper straws and pay plastic taxes, but the situation is only ever so slightly less worse than prophetized. We can only blame the corpos now, and god knows they don't want to take the blame for anything
Even when the show wasn't just about the environment, there were still ecology eps of just about everything, Tiny Toon Adventures, Doug, My Little Pony Tales, Rocko's Modern Life did a musical, etc
It feels like we're constantly running in place on this (and gender, and race)
And it couldn’t come at a worse time. Global warming gets worse every year and shows no signs of diminishing. Plus, our government is about to be run by people who want to gut the Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.
The other day I was trying to watch some episode of King of the Hill on a pirate streaming site and for whatever reason the "server 3" option was an episode of raccoons instead of the Y2K episode of KOTH.
Is anyone that surprised? This is the same company that recently tried to weasel their way out of responsibility for a woman's death because of some bullshit in their unrelated TOS on disney+ said they weren't accountable. Its just now the reactionary sheep hold their attention.
if you brand something as political, you brand it as something that can be debated- something you can go against or choose the side of and berate the other side of in the court of "debate"
Ah, the media from 40 years ago that carried the message of "if we don't do anything, in 40 years we'll be in deep trouble"... And here we are, full corporate denialism for larger numbers. Can't throw imaginary money at the planet to get it right.
Obeying "Superfans" In Advance, not just an incoming administration.
The situation with oligarchies refusing to take the blame as pollutants is worse than thought. Case in point, Silicon Valley destroying the environment through useless tech nobody asked for.
And recycling and other messaging of that day were all misdirection campaigns to tie us up in recriminations about individual responsibility to deflect from systemic problems. Maybe we can talk about the systemic problems for real now, lol.
I think a lot about how Captain Planet writers had to make their antagonists insane caricatures because otherwise too many kids watching would go "wait a sec, that's basically my dad"
I mean, given that Captain Planet was a media billionaires' pet project, yeah, can't talk too much smack before someone would've been pulling Ted Turner aside at a party and saying "dude that was me in that episode, WTF?"
Corporations grew more powerful and wanted to take control of the narrative. Suddenly instead of following what was popular and making content for it, media and such are now trying to take whatever they want and make THAT popular.
So Disney will continue to have little to no meaningful message in their upcoming movie (yes made by Pixar but Disney calls the shots). Man I remember when Disney gave messages for the kiddos in their movies loud and clear.
If one's system requires continual growth, one needs a new system.
(Unfortunately pretty much any workable system that didn't require continual growth would afford radically fewer opportunities for a few to get obscenely rich, so here we are.)
Hey kids, there’s something important you should know! Some big corporations and CEOs care more about pleasing politicians and investors than doing the right thing. Sometimes, they even pressure their content creators to change their work just to avoid upsetting powerful people. That’s not cool!
I truly believe that Pixar actually has true concerns & lessons to speak on through their animated stories (as they were allowed to before) but Disney is the big corporation who owns them and restricts anything they want to say these days because, money
Plastic recycling could['ve] work[ed], too, but we'd have to rethink the whole production chain & the end result would be less oil sold.
Oil companies could've gotten into the business of running that production chain, but that would've meant lower margins.
Something that kills me about oil production is oil companies have always known they were exploiting a finite resource. It was part of their operations model! Always having to go farther out to find more oil! Then having to fight other oilcos for it!
They just selectively...forgot.
Plastic absorbs hazardous materials like a sponge and stuff made with recycled plastic can contain those materials tenfold
If you're using recycled plastic for baby toys, for example, there's often no way of knowing whether this bottle you're going to melt down used to have drain cleaner in it
Meanwhile environmentalism is also a central theme of the highest grossing film series of all time. That they also own and are continuing to produce installments in.
Gee I fucking wonder why these filmmakers keep wanting to talk about such messages if THIS is how you've grown to view the topic.
Themes of Environmentalism is about the only reason I was interested in this movie. That's one less ticket sold lol. I'll catch it on streaming, I guess
I draw the line with the occasional environmental episode in shows I like, but I’m all for movies that do it because at least I know where I’d stand with it.
That said politics is a dumb excuse for them to use.
Sesame street may be the most political children's show ever since it educated children on how racism is bad and introduced a character on the autism spectrum
Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Magna Carta was put together by the wokest of the barons. Due process? Jury of peers? Not denying or deferring to any man either justice or right?
TBF they weren't talking about JUST any man being denied/deferred. One had to be part of their patronage system. I'm sure it would endlessly vex those woke barons how far we've extended those rights.
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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63ushetAZ-xoXYf46MkIywbmLq_3qXRw
sometimes you just need them to know nickelodeon was just the spot to go if you were trying to watch some children’s anime in the 1980s
Buy'n'Large would have saved the world through consumerism, that's all.
None of that would be made today. Hell, BUGS BUNNY CROSSDRESSING would probably be nixed by the current incarnation of Warner Bros.
Me: oh a highly nuanced issue with multiple disagreeing parties!
Captain Planet: It's just Greedly, I'll yank him out by his tie.
Me: Wow a complex organization that could just rebuild the tower!
Captain Planet: Blew the tower up you're welcome.
It bums me out to see kids media finally kowtowing to this force…
I’ve heard that the radicalization of children into hate filled ideologies is a major problem and a lot of kids are being indoctrinated by Andrew Tate. Also kids are listening to videos based on how many views it gets. https://youtu.be/CxQA3899QAM?si=e-kdsimCk54a-M5W
We’re in a class war masquerading as a culture war, & anyone given that amount of capital is going to end up toeing the corporate line.
Drives me nuts.
YMMV with these communities but I wasn’t even in the most extreme
So it makes perfect sense that it was a target in the dying days of the “toys are evil” era of the Satanic Panic.
And boy is that paper full of bullshit.
It feels like we're constantly running in place on this (and gender, and race)
https://youtube.com/@theofficialraccoons
"Messages" aren't directly keeping people from movies. But very online people will craft a narrative around that and Disney keeps falling for it.
if you brand something as political, you brand it as something that can be debated- something you can go against or choose the side of and berate the other side of in the court of "debate"
The situation with oligarchies refusing to take the blame as pollutants is worse than thought. Case in point, Silicon Valley destroying the environment through useless tech nobody asked for.
Ah whatever, you don’t freaking care. SMH.
(Unfortunately pretty much any workable system that didn't require continual growth would afford radically fewer opportunities for a few to get obscenely rich, so here we are.)
Oil companies could've gotten into the business of running that production chain, but that would've meant lower margins.
They just selectively...forgot.
If you're using recycled plastic for baby toys, for example, there's often no way of knowing whether this bottle you're going to melt down used to have drain cleaner in it
Gee I fucking wonder why these filmmakers keep wanting to talk about such messages if THIS is how you've grown to view the topic.
That said politics is a dumb excuse for them to use.