Ferngully and green activism in kids movies
Posted by Joanna on 01 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: the culture
This is an excellent little article by David Sessions at Culture11 about Bambi and almost seventy years of environmental themes in children’s films. I particularly enjoyed the part about Ferngully, which we totally mocked as kids for being so blatantly political.
That sort of liberal-minded contextual environmentalism [in Bambi] got a makeover in the 1990s, and the invasion-of-nature trope began to get more obnoxious. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) reached unsurpassed heights in green preachiness, telling the story of a community of rainforest fairies about to be annihilated by loggers and a terrifying, symbolic demon that feeds on oil and smoke. The film opens with a cave-drawing-style prologue about how humans once loved the forest, but have since hopelessly lost their way…
FernGully was a lone, green suicide bomber among 90’s animated films (it flopped thunderously), but the endearing creatures spouting environmental catch phrases seemed to start getting a little bolder [with Pocahontas].
Suicide bomber indeed. Like heavy-handed political films for big people, it didn’t hold up as art or entertainment.
I also find the notion of the “Environmental Media Association” really creepy.