You know some shows were made to be your PSA show , like the whole show. So that brings us to something that has been talked about by other people before, but hey we are talking about it.
Our Show : Captain Planet
What are they trying to tell the audience: There's too many People on Earth in 1991.
Also fun fact : Captain Planet has two episodes about Population control! (why did we put an exclamation mark there?)
We are looking at season 1 episode called "Population Bomb"
The episode starts with the Planeteers or Kwame to me exact complaining that a city is crowded. (Which is like complaining that water is wet.) Now a building is collapsing and they combine their powers to call Captain Planet. He makes bad puns and sticks the broken building piece back in. So they have a theory on what caused this building to start breaking, there are too many people. (Forget building codes not being followed or not being checked, there are too many people instead.) The spirit of the Earth also hammers in that yes there too many people on Earth. Linka says that everyone should have fewer children. Gi, says that some countries "recommend" having no more than two children. Yes , recommend. (That's a weird way to spell force) Wheeler says no one can tell him how many children he can have! ( Because of course )
In fact, I'll start fight now! (Copyright Time Warner)
There was strange awkward pause too. Wheeler is now wind surfing and Gi tells him to watch out for a storm and he goes eh I do what I want to do. The storm gets bad and he ends up getting pushed into Island and gets hit in the head with his wind board.( Guess that's the term) He says a city and the Island is filled with rat people , who are rat sized. They knock him out and his magic ring doesn't work because plot needs it not to work. He meets a doctor named Piebald who stop the machine that was going to make Wheeler in to rat people chow. Oh sorry they are mice-people, why are they mice because of Nuclear stuff. The island is called Miceland. (less decpetive than Greenland) Back to our PSA message part of the show. Doctor Piebald tells him that they were simple happy folks and the island was full of food then the mice reproduced like ummm mice.
Apparently, the mice people built cities and cars and things got worse and all the non mice animals were eaten or drove unto the sea. (What?) They also tried to fish in the sea while also dumping their garbage in the sea. The mice people keep reproducing anyway. He once tried to tell the people that they can't keep having babies. ( Woah) The mouse government didn't like this so he was taken away and forced to work where he is now not seeing his wife and child.
Stop having children! Vote for me! / Copyright Time Warner
The mouse general finds out that there are other humans out there. Skipping unnecessary stuff. The mouse general takes a giant net and captures Linka and Kwame. How do the mice have a a human sized net? (Nobody knows) They want the humans to feed the mice people. The doctor frees Wheeler. Who does what can be done, grabs one of the army mice and threatens him. (I am giant human, fear me!) Again though, couldn't he just step on the mice army. The other two are woken up in their new spot. Here's something , they wanted the humans for food I thought, then why are they saying slaves? The mice are confused, don't they need food and the humans could be ground up as food , so why make them slaves, instead of just chopping them up and getting on with grabbing more humans? When one of the mice introduces Wheeler to their people he does mention that this would be their door to food, land, and slaves. I guess that answers none of questions.
Out of context shot/ copyright Time Warner
The reason why Wheeler doesn't go crazy and just step on the mice all Godzilla style? Well that's because he's trying to help Piebald. The mice plan is to take over the Island the planeteers have. Wheeler decides to just take Piebald run off with him while the people go crazy and riot. Wheeler finds Piebald's wife and kid and leaves him there with them, then goes all King Kong on buildings. Skipping stuff again. Wheeler's ring works again because plot and he saves Kwame and Linka, and they unite their powers for Captain Planet. (lazy)
C.P takes out the mice army very easily. (duh) More bad puns. Wheeler gets shot by a giant beam and this causes an earthquake, and Wheeler goes to save Piebald and his family. Piebald says to Wheeler don't let this happen to you (don't let the government cause an earthquake and wipe out it's own people in the quest for hairless creatures?) don't let there more people than their world can hold. Oh what? This was a dream? That renders the whole episode moot.
So episodes end with this Planeteer alert PSA thing, and it asks do you know there 5 Billion people on Earth. (hmm so this episode is a little old.) I could count that against this episode, but that's unfair. Their message to their audience is when you have a family : keep it small.
Ummm, hey 8 year olds watching our show, yeah you! There's too many people so don't have alot of children.
Jimmy about 25 years later: Sorry honey, but we can't have a third child.
Jimmy's wife: Why not?
Jimmy: Because of something I saw 25 years ago.
Let's rewind to that part where Gi says the 2 child "recommendation" that some governments have.
3rd child watching the show starts crying.
Parents walk in the room: What's wrong?
3rd child : I'm a drain on society, I'm talking all the resources.
Parents: Who told you that?
3rd : Captain Planet.
Parents: Curse you Ted Turner! (Wave fists in their air in anger)
Alright , Jan, Peter, Marcia, and Bobby , you are cut from the bunch, can only have 2 children.
Eight is too dang much...
My silly point is that this is a children's show where children are the target audience so woah you are making this kind of awkward. Now this show had different information on things than we do now , so I am not going to fault it for being worried about there being more people before even more people appeared on Earth. That'd be like attacking a show from 1955 for not thinking people will get to be on the moon. Again, back to that recommendation line that was a stupid thing to say episode and you should be ashamed of that. One country (you know) used to have a policy where they told people are only allowed one child (which I am glad that they didn't say 1 child , that would make more the children watching feel bad. ) and their birth rate already was falling so when you have more older people and less younger people umm oops. And these "recommendations" weren't done because they cared about the Earth.
Did it do it's PSA message clearly? Sigh* Yes, it gave it's message clearly with some entertainment value trying to hammer in it's message that there are too many people on Earth and this causes a fight for resources. Either that, or this episode actually worked and we are living in the world post this episode that had an affect.
Was it a good PSA? No, like anything it has to know it's audience and the audience of this show was primarily children and it's not even the whole telling children not have so many children when they grow up thing, it's more a hey if you are in a big family or a family with more than 2 kids, you are hurting the Earth and are bad people. Again, possibly unintentional but they should have thought that over a little. Factually, families in the western/developed countries have less kids than those who aren't so the message kind of loses it there. Between 1960 to now, the average amount of kids an American family would have is three. Yes some have more, some have enough for TLC and UP network reality series, but they aren't the average. (If it was TLC would have had a show with that strange family with only 4 kids) (Joke: Why is Ted Turner telling people to have less kids, wouldn't he want people to have more so they can grow up watching Ted Turner's TV channels, with more watching TNT than ever before?)
Strangely, of the two episodes in this series about over population, (what the?) this one is the better of the two. That's a strange statement to say.
