Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Kids, Environmental Crisis, and Competing Narratives of the New World Order

Abstract

The environmental crisis is presented as a contested cultural discourse with conflicting social and political narratives pervasively targeted at children. Textual analysis of an environmental cartoon, and interviews with the cartoon's producers and child viewers, are used to deconstruct popular themes being transmitted to children in the name of “saving the planet”. The cartoon is critiqued as representing and promoting a liberal environmental paradox espousing: a simultaneous call for children to both conserve and consume; a diffusion of responsibility that supports the notion of environmental crisis as everybody's fault; simplistic, individualistic solutions to complex corporate and bureaucratic problems. Narratives of nature as a social actor are proposed as rhetorical and epistemological alternatives for the recreation of children's social, political, and environmental awareness.

The Culture of Nature and the Rise of Modern Environmentalism: The View Through General Audience Magazines, 1945–1980

“…Clearly, research is also needed that focuses on ''the field'' of magazine and other sorts of cultural production and if and how struggle and power on these fields impacts the representation of nature and society's place in it. That explicit coverage of environmental issues might be impacted by power is of course to be expected, and is an argument made elsewhere (see King 1994;Ungar 1998), but the contention here is that commonsense meanings deserve special attention.…”

“…James Shanahan and Katherine McComas (1999), for example, find nature ''symbolically annihilated,'' that is, ignored and marginalized, on commercial television. Similarly, Shelly Ungar (1998) and Donna Lee King (1994) see evidence in their media analyses of ''greenwashing,'' essentially the ''misuse'' and marginalization of environmentalist thought in mass media (see also Delli-Carpini and Williams 1994;Papson 1992;Daniels 1996). An analysis of film also reveals antienvironmental tendencies.…”

The Nature of Future Myths: Environmental Discourse in Science Fiction Film, 1950-1999

“…Shanahan and McComas (1999) nd that overall, television's latent narrative supports a non-or anti-environmental cultural stance. King (1994), in her study of the cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers, found what she calls the ''liberal environmental paradox'' in which environmental problems are acknowledged, but the causes and solutions are couched solely in individual terms that de ect attention away from corporate responsibility for the situation (see also Delli-Carpini and Williams 1994). Likewise, Ungar's (1998) research reveals only greenwashed forms of environmental discourse prevalent in mainstream media and that more critical forms of environmental discourse are really only tolerated in specialized publications that do not reach a large audience.…”

“…Looking into what exactly is behind this antienvironmental tendency would be an important start. This would involve more examination of production practices and of political and economic interests key to media rms, as suggested by King's (1994) work. This would help to resolve whether or not these tendencies are the product of greenwashing, the persistence in culture of discourses in opposition to environmentalist concerns, or…”

How Do People Think About the Science They Encounter in Fiction? Undergraduates investigate responses to science inThe Simpsons

“…In interviews about the 1990s' environmentally themed television cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers, King (1994) found that children often think critically about the fiction they are exposed to, including questioning the ideological value of an unrealistically powerful environmental hero. School students studied by Dhingra (2003) considered science knowledge claims in television science fiction drama The X-Files to be open to question precisely because they were presented through a fiction medium, even though some students identified with the main scientist character and saw her as a positive role model.…”