Captain Planet And The Planeteers premiered on TBS on September 10, 1990. Later re-titled The New Adventures of Captain Planet, the show delivered four seasons of eco-friendly entertainment. © 2001 Captain Planet Foundation, Inc.

The World
I am normally the first to applaud any effort, however hackneyed, that offers praise and glory to the Brotherhood of Man. No, wait...the Great Diverse Salad Bowl of Multicultural Appreciation: Three cheers for the betterment of each gender, race, religion, and all myriad proliferation thereof. Still, before I burst into an alto rendition of "I'd Like To Give The World A Home," I do want to make one exception. I'm just a little tired of seeing animated series that push the much-belated point. The origins of animated diversity stretch back to at least the early 1960s but the shows were so much more innocuous then. The first minority characters who were not stereotypical buffoons provided a realistic balance to cartoons; their inclusion came across as more natural than forced.

Insistence on full-blown diversity arrived in animation during the 1980s, and by the end of the next decade there were no casts of any predominant gender or racial group in any given series. Educators, psychologists and sundry experts anointed this process and meticulous balances were seemingly agreed upon before a show hit the air. If integration had gone as well in the actual world as in the animated one, what a world we would see! There would be no genocide in Africa; Palestinians would not be exploding in unexpected places while Israeli tanks put shells into their villages; women would not be sold as sex slaves in shady corners of the Third World, and...well, there really wouldn't be a Third World, would there? We would all cooperate just like the multiracial, multi-gendered cast of Captain Planet (The power is YOURS!) and do great things. Black hand in brown hand in yellow hand in white hand performing in harmony, bringing into reality the New Jerusalem (equitably shared by all, I might add).

French series Jacques Cousteau's Ocean Tales, follows the famous captain in exciting marine adventures. © 2002 Dargaud-Marina.

Or maybe not. If the widely quoted research is correct and watching violent cartoons predisposes children to violence, why hasn't the steady flow of politically correct, cooperative-minded cartoons incited children to peace? Why does racism remain such a pervasive problem? Is it saddening that the term "ethnic cleansing" gained widespread use during a time when animated series were straining hardest to please the minions of PC? I am not against the representation of all genders and races in our animated fare; what I tire of is the painfully obvious attempts to convince us that such seamless and perfect integration exists at all times in all circumstances while ignoring reality in the most Panglossian terms. In the past eleven months the World Trade Center has been reduced to a neatly groomed patch of bare earth while America's avengers draw up maps to Saddam's heavily reinforced doorstep. The hope that children are actually absorbing lessons about acceptance and cooperation from animated cartoons seems fainter than a far-distant gunshot echoing in the hills of Bosnia; they are not blind to the rest of this world.

The latest example is Jacques Cousteau's Ocean Tales, a recent product of the distinguished French animation studio Dargaud-Marina. Jacques Cousteau, as you may recall, was a notable scientist/sailor who roamed the seas in his high-tech rig Calypso exploring the wonders of the deep. Cousteau perfected both the aqualung and the riveting TV special, his kindly, weather-beaten face familiar to millions. The Calypso sank off Singapore in 1996 and Cousteau passed away the following year, but both have been restored to animated life for this new series. More's the pity; Captain Planet -- er, Cousteau -- has been appointed as maritime baby-sitter for a team of racially diverse, gender-balanced young'uns gathered from each of the world's continents.