�By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!� was a phrase heard by many young people throughout the nineties. This show, though seemingly innocent, was the tact of left-wing tree-huggers to get kids into �preserving nature�. By critically analyzing the show, it can be seen that there is more to this show than meets the eye, called subliminal messages.
For the Planeteers, a motley crew of culturally diverse teens was picked. Each gifted with a special power, they combined forces to summon Captain Planet, their superhero to finish jobs that were too hard for them to complete. Always taking the time to preserve nature, these goody-goody kids were the key points for this aforementioned subliminal messaging, you just had to look into their characters to find it.
Wheeler was the American teenager of the company. He was portrayed as the spontaneous and impulsive young male that hailed from Brooklyn. He carried the gift of fire. He presented the stereotype of American teenage boys through his appearance, attitude, flirtatiousness, and intellectuality. He proved to know the least about ecologic matters and was too busy running at the mouth with smart remarks to think logically when a problem arose. Flirtatiously, he was stereotyped through his automatic flirting with the first blonde he sees, his female teammate, Linka. When looking closely enough, it also portrayed the idea that all teenage males from Brooklyn were really, in fact, arsonists with strange names.
Linka, our Eastern-European character, provides the team with a firm knowledge in computers and music. She thinks strategically and often lands the group out of trouble. Gifted with wind, Linka occasionally lends a helping hand to nature preservation efforts. She puts down the stereotype of the dumb blonde, but instead takes on the firm belief that foreign girls fall for the American hotshot through her unique attachment to Wheeler.
Next we have Gi, our team member representing the populace of Asians. She can summon the waters and proves to be quite handy from time to time. She represents the stereotype of the overachieving Asian through her vast knowledge of marine biology and ecosystems, she can surf, likes rock and roll, and is an natural linguist. She proves to be highly emotional when it comes to her relationship with animals and nature.
Kwame is the African member in the group. He is gifted with the power over earth and his efforts have helped save the Planeteer�s butts more than a few times. He represents the idea of the African person who has at some point in time, been subjected to the destruction of his homeland. He has a green thumb and tends to act as the leader. Occasionally he demonstrates a type of sense of humor, usually through a perfect deadpan.
Lastly, we have Ma-Ti, the South American boy. He has the gift of heart, probably due to his emphatic nature. As the youngest of the Planeteers, he was raised by a Kayapo Indian shaman, he has a great knowledge of rainforests. He can heal plants and has an emphatic relationship with his spider monkey named Suchi. Ma-Ti represents the idea that South Americans are a wild people who, in their inability to communicate properly with one another, take to befriending wild animals. The creators of the show didn�t deign to give this poor lad an actually element, so they created heart instead, just to make him feel special.
As for Captain Planet, he was a tree-hugging, steroid-taking, spandex-wearing, Smurf who managed to brainwash these five young people into taking over the world in the name of nature preservation. But it wasn�t entirely his fault. Captain Planet was sent out on a recruiting mission by Gaia, spirit of the earth, who feels pain when nature is damaged and who provides a disturbingly stupid moral at the end of every story. She is culturally ambiguous and can only appear to Captain Planet and the Planeteers on her home of Hope Island. With the exception of her touchy-feely words at the end of an episode, she serves no purpose.
As for the villains, Dr. Blight, Hoggish Greedly, Duke Nukem, Looten Plunder, Verminous Skumm, Sly Sludge, and Zarm, they proved to be the stereotypically evil, ugly, and poorly dressed bad guys whose names summed their professions up to a tee. Always up to no good, they were always defeated by Captain Planet and the naturalist versions of �those meddling kids�.
All in all, Captain Planet was a bad show and no one ever should have watched it. It messed with children�s developing brains.
