The Blindboy Podcast - Why I want to fuck Captain Planet

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

A critical reappraisal of the Children's cartoon "Captain Planet" and its role in warning us about Climate change. I explore its roots in the Policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. And contrast it with the Work of JG Ballard Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast the two-foot goose with the hooligan shoehorn and cut your hair in a doomsday crew cut you joost up decklands. Short piece of prose there submitted by Jeremy Renner. I can't understand the career of Jeremy Renner. I can't understand why Jeremy Renner is like the lead in so many films it just doesn't make sense. He reminds me a lot of a belly button. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I'm not saying that. Jeremy Renner looks like a belly button.

I'm just saying that. A belly button. Belly buttons are. They're there on your midriff. And they have. Dignity. They don't do anything. They're just there.

And we accept them. And everyone has a belly button. And that's fine. But. You're just there and we accept them. And everyone has a belly button and that's fine. But you're not going to put your belly button in your forehead. And sometimes when I'm watching a movie and Jeremy Renner is the lead actor, it feels a bit like I'm speaking to someone who's had their belly button surgically implanted into their forehead. Jeremy Renner has an app.

There's a Jeremy Renner app. You can get it on the App Store. Jeremy Renner wants your data. This episode is sponsored by the Jeremy Renner app. I don't want to sound like I'm being a cunt about Jeremy Renner. It's just that a lead actor is a very specific thing and I feel that Jeremy Renner gets cast as a lead when he'd be much gets cast as a lead when

he'd be much better served as a supporting actor and there's nothing wrong with that there's incredible supporting actors Tom Hardy Tom Hardy gets cast as a lead but Tom Hardy's best as a supporting actor when he acts as the conflict

to the lead who else have we got Stephen Graham incredible supporting actor amazing so I'm not engaging in Jeremy Renner slender how did Jeremy Renner become like a lead lead actor I think it's because of that film The Heart Locker do you remember The Heart Locker it won like like 19 Oscars. Of course you don't. Of course you don't. The Heart Locker was a film from about 2009. It was an okay film.

Grand. But it won like way too many Oscars. Because America was invading Afghanistan. And everyone needed to feel sorry for the troops. America likes to invade countries and then. And then make films about how sad it makes the soldiers. So it got like a million Oscars because of that. And Jeremy Renner. Was the lead.

The fuck am I doing talking about Jeremy Renner. Do you know why I think I'm talking about Jeremy Renner. So I'm doing. This week's podcast is a slightly different approach I got up at 7am this morning and now I'm recording the podcast

I don't usually do that I usually record the podcast late at night and there's no real reason for me to do that and I kind of don't like doing it. When I first started this podcast, three, four years ago, whatever it was,

I was working a day job and I'd come home from work and I would record this podcast in the evenings. And that's just the way it's been for the entirety of this podcast. I record this podcast at night time and over the pandemic in particular I might start recording at 8pm and then I'm not finished

until 8am the next day so I would, sometimes I record this podcast throughout the entire night now I do like the idea of, like I romantic. The idea of. Like I romanticise the idea of recording this podcast. At night time.

Alone in my studio. While everyone is asleep. I think that's because. When I was a little child. And I might get scared at night time. You know the way you'd be a little child. And all of a sudden. You might have a nightmare. Or you're scared to go to sleep.

So you're awake. Sometimes. When I was like six or seven. I'd turn on the radio. And I wouldn't feel alone. Because it's like. There's nothing to be scared of. There's someone awake.

In a studio. Up in Dublin. And they'll talk like this. And they'll remind you. That we're here all through the night. All through the night we're here. Stay alert if you're driving. Stop in for a coffee. A truck driver getting a tit wank from a pigeon on the M50. It's new music from Chris the Belg. And I internalized that as something soothing. And you're always on the side of the nighttime DJ too because you feel as if they're doing some sort of penance.

Like they're in radio purgatory. They're being punished for not being popular enough in the day time. I mean maybe they're the Jeremy Renner of radio DJs. Maybe they don't need to be in the day time. Having a lead slot. Shouting and screaming. Maybe they're better off. Between the hours of 2am and 6am.

Just being. A supporting actor. So yeah. I'm recording this early in the morning today. After a full night's sleep. And what I've just noticed is that. My morning brain. Tends to fixate on Jeremy Renner.

And how much he reminds me of belly buttons but realistically now there's no need for me to be recording this podcast throughout the night so this week I'm trying to begin a new pattern, I'm trying to re-pattern the neural pathways in my brain

to be honest and say to myself you get up in the morning and you record the podcast throughout the day and then you go to bed and you don't interrupt your sleep cycle because that's ridiculous what's the point this is your full time job now you can make

your own hours so this week's podcast isn't about Jeremy Renner I have this is a hot take podcast this week's episode is a hot take podcast this week's episode is a hot take podcast I don't have a fully formed hot take by which I mean I don't have an answer

but what I'd like to do is explore some themes in a hot take fashion I want to talk about the children's cartoon Captain Planet from the 1990s, which aired from 1990 up until 1996. Now, if you're a first-time listener,

I wouldn't recommend this podcast as being a good place to start. This is for real seasoned breeders. This is quite a niche, specific podcast, hot take, where I explore Captain Planet and contrast it with the 1980s US presidential election and the science fiction of J.G. Ballard. If that doesn't sound like something you'd be into, then this might not be the episode for you. Go back to some earlier episodes. Pick some episodes from the start if you're a new listener. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack and you might enjoy this.

So the cartoon Captain Planet. Unless you're like 15 you probably remember Captain Planet because it ended in like 96, 97 but it definitely would have been shown on channels like Cartoon Network well up into the early 2000s at least. I'll give you a basic synopsis of what Captain Planet was if you weren't familiar with it.

Children's cartoon and the theme of it was environmentalism, saving the planet. I'll read out the lyrics to the theme tune of Captain Planet because the theme tune gives away really what the thesis of Captain Planet was. The theme tune was Earth, fire, wind, water, heart, go planet. With your powers combined, I am Captain Planet. Captain Planet, he's our hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero. He's our powers magnified

and he's fighting on the planet's side. Captain Planet. He's our hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero. We're the planeteers. You can be one too. Cause saving our planet is the thing to do. Looting and polluting is not the way.

Hear what Captain Planet has to say. The power is yours. It was a well meaning cartoon, huge cartoon and with all due respect it warned us about everything everything that is a genuine issue right

now with the environment with the climate, it warned us about it, in the 90's when we were children I watched Captain Planet as a child was I mad about it? I won't say I was crazy about Captain Planet but

you'd watch it if it was on TV because you didn't have much choice it would have been considered edutainment which means that it was both educational and entertaining. Captain Planet was about the environment. Captain Planet warned us about climate change, warned us about the dangers of overpopulation. Captain Planet criticised the military-industrial complex.

Captain Planet spoke about the HIV crisis. As an adult, I now realise that Captain Planet spoke about the HIV crisis as an adult I now realize that Captain Planet deserves a serious reappraisal and it deserves a huge amount of respect for what it tried to do for the truth that it was managing to deliver millions of children all over the world. When you're analysing children's cartoons from the 90s and the 80s, one thing you have to realise is that children's cartoons in the 80s and 90s, they weren't just entertaining TV shows. What they were was adverts for toys and it really worked. It really, really worked. The equivalent today would be freemium games. You'll get kids today playing a freemium app on their phone.

They think they're playing a video game, but they're not really. What they're doing is they're buying more and more credits or whatever. It's a form of gambling. The equivalent in the 80s and 90s, if you were a kid, was you sat down and you watched the Transformers and you became emotionally invested in watching the Transformers. But really, the Transformers was set up as a TV show to sell you Transformer toys. They were big long giant adverts

that didn't have to be called adverts. They were selling us something. Transformers was owned by Mattel. The TV show was put on by Mattel, a toy maker. My Little Pony. Same thing. It wasn't a TV show. It was lots and lots of adverts

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man the cartoons you grew up with in the 80s and 90s were adverts, they were selling you something now how did that happen? Because that sounds really unethical it's like holy fuck you mean all the cartoons I watched as a kid they weren't really cartoons, they were actually just selling me shit all the time. They were adverts.

How the fuck did that happen? Well, that used to not be allowed. In America, in the 60s and the 70s, there was regulations. There was rules in place about how you advertise to children. Children don't have the capacity to critically think. Children don't have the capacity to critically think. Children don't have emotional maturity. Children can be easily manipulated. So to advertise to a child carries a completely different set of ethics than it is to advertise to an adult who's capable of critical thinking and consent. Well, the reason all the cartoons in the 80s

were advertisement for toys was because of Ronald Reagan, the President of America from 1981 onwards. He was an absolute fucking prick. And he's someone I'm going to mention quite a bit in this podcast and how Reagan and Reagan's policies tie in with Captain Planet.

A lot of what's wrong with the world today was brought about because of people like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Reagan was a huge fan of what's called deregulation. He believed that rules and regulations weren't there to protect people, but they were actually harmful to business and corporate interests. You see, in the 1960s in America, there was an organization called ACT, the Action for Children's Television, and they were basically concerned about how children were being advertised to,

if children were being manipulated. They funded and hired a load of psychologists to do studies, and they came forward with the evidence that children cannot tell the difference between an advert and a cartoon, therefore you must have responsibility with how you advertise and how you make content on television and entertainment for children.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan got rid of all this. Ronald Reagan, one of the first things he did is that he deregulated advertising which meant it opened up the floodgates for advertisers to sell whatever the fuck they wanted the children in whatever way possible so what you saw was this huge explosion of fast food cereals you started to see cartoons on cereal boxes. Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar. And all these toy companies now started to make action figures.

So the cartoons we grew up with were not cartoons, they were adverts. Thanks to Ronald Reagan. And this was America, but America, especially through the 80s and 90s, dictated the culture of the world and everybody else followed. And I speak a lot on this podcast about how millennials, millennials now are people, people over the age of 30 now, let's be honest, from about 28 onwards into your 40s, that's a millennial now. We as a generation are somewhat infantilised compared to previous generations. I've done full podcasts on this where I contrasted Tom Hanks' film Big

with the modern corporate office environment. Very quickly, Tom Hanks' film Big is about a child who gets into an adult's body and it's a film from about 1986. The whole comedy of the film is, oh my god, he's in his thirties and he's playing with toys. He's wearing sneakers to the office. Oh my god, he wants a bouncy castle in the office.

This is crazy. And that was hilarious in 1986, but now that's normal. Google, Facebook, any big tech company, you walk in there, you don't have to wear a suit, it's okay to wear sneakers on your feet and it's perfectly acceptable to have a bouncy castle or a beanbag in the office. In fact, it's normal. So a number of factors have led to our collective infantilization. Consumerism and how we were advertised to as children is one of those reasons, just one of them. The big reason, of course, is the policies that people like reagan and thatcher brought in neoliberalism which means trusting the free market deregulating things that's why there's no houses that's why

there's no job security anymore that's why there's no pensions anymore that's why college is really expensive that's why it's okay for vulture funds to buy up tons of property. That's why people in their 30s live at home with their parents. Corporate interests placed above the needs of people under the banner of deregulation. Regulations hurt business so let's get rid of regulations and let the market roam free like a wild animal. So millennials are a generation that don't have the adult autonomy to pursue the trappings of adulthood and we were also conditioned and brought up in a deregulated advertising environment where we were conditioned to not be able to tell the difference between entertainment and an advertisement and to not even know what an advertisement is when it's there in front of us.

even know what an advertisement is when it's there in front of us so ronald reagan deregulated children's advertising in 1981 we were left with an onslaught of cartoons and whatever setting us shit without us knowing this we didn't know we were being sold to and then when it gets to the late 80s the late 90s now this was a fucking gold rush a lot of people in entertainment and in toys they made billions this was a gold rush and if you of people in entertainment and in toys, they made billions. This was a gold rush. And if you're wondering too how they got away with it, like where were the parents walking into the room going, this Transformers business just seems like a big ad. Well, one thing that was hugely present in a lot of 1980s cartoons was the PSA, the public service announcement, like G.I. Joe which I believe was the

Mattel Corporation. At the end of every single episode of G.I. Joe one of the cartoon characters would speak to camera and would be like kids say no to drugs. That's one thing that's present throughout the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

How did Ronald Reagan get away with being such an absolute bollocks? By creating a narrative of morality. Reagan invented the war against drugs. Just say no to drugs. Reagan played upon American fears of racism, classism. Created an entire criminal class in the minds of America to protect your children, family values, protect your children.

And then these messages were inserted into cartoons so that if you were a parent and you walked into the room, you'd go, yeah, fuck it, okay, they're selling us. All right, they're selling my kid these Transformers, but this episode is also telling them not to do cocaine. So yeah, that's good good so there was a morality all the way throughout these cartoons

as a way to as a way to manufacture the consent of something that was fundamentally unethical but the people doing it in Hollywood they're also kind of aware of this is kind of unethical you know all these

Transformer cartoons and really what we're doing is unfettered advertising of Transformer ties to children this is a little bit unethical so Captain Planet came about in 1990 which was quite late in the game and it was almost a response to how unethical the cartoon industry had been Captain Planet comes about and I know this because the creators are quite open and honest about this Captain Planet comes about and says

right, fuck Transformers fuck He-Man we want to make a new cartoon and this new cartoon what we're setting here is an ideology. If we can sell all these kids, Transformers and My Little Ponies, through cartoons, why don't we also sell them environmentalism? Because these children are going to grow up to be millennial adults

and they're going to have to face the realities of climate change. So why not now, while they're early, let's try and sell them the concept of becoming environmental activists. But are we going to sell them toys as well? Yeah, we're going to sell them toys as well. Yeah, we're going to sell them toys as well, of course.

Yeah, but we're going to sell him toys as well, of course. Yeah, but we're going to make him environmental activists too. And I personally think that failed. I think that failed. I think the environmental activist thing fucking failed because we were too conditioned at that point to buy the toys. Think back to the schoolyard I watched Captain Planet as a child I don't remember coming away from it thinking about the environment I don't remember speaking

to my classmates about fuck it did you see Captain Planet there yesterday when they were talking about overpopulation or did you see that Captain Planet episode where the forest was being cut down I'm really worried about that that's not what we focused on what was focused on

were in a typical episode of Captain Planet there were five cartoon teenagers from all around the world and these five teenagers from different parts of the world were environmental activists and they wanted to save the planet

from pollution, from overuse of resources. They wanted to stop animals going extinct. These five teenagers each had a ring and each of these rings represented natural elements. So one had the earth ring, there was the fire ring there was the fire ring the wind ring the water ring and then the heart ring which was emotion and empathy so each character had all of these rings an individual ring that represented an element and then when they put their rings together they would summon captain planet this superhero who was there to fight for the Earth against the threats to the environment. No one gave a fuck in the schoolyard. No one gave a shit about the environmental issues being raised.

Because what had happened is the way that the toys for Captain Planet, the way that they were marketed, we were too familiar with it the way the toys were marketed via cartoons in the 1980s was you had to collect all of them toys were always presented as a set a collective set and if you had just one it wasn't enough you had to have the entire set in order to feel complete and the cartoons went through great effort to make sure that was the case and that was the case with the five rings of Captain Planet so how they'd sell the toys is you could buy an action figure of each individual teenage environmental activist and each activist it what came with it was a little plastic ring that you yourself could wear and then you had to have Captain Planet as well so owning all the rings or owning the figurines

that became what we as children cared about the power of advertising and manipulation around us owning all the figurines so that we could have all of the rings because if you didn't have all the rings you couldn't summon Captain Planet that was far more powerful than the theme of the rings. Because if you didn't have all the rings, you couldn't summon Captain Planet. That was far more powerful than the theme of the episode

about orangutans going extinct. So the deregulated advertising rules ended up really overshadowing the good intentions of the theme of the Captain Planet episodes. And I say this because I've recently gone back as an adult and looked at some of the theme of the Captain Planet episodes and I say this because I've recently gone back as an adult and looked at some of the episodes and I'm my jaw is dropping I can't believe

the politics that they were giving us at such an early age I mean there's an episode from 1991 called the ultimate pollution and this this ep I looked I look back at this episode as an adult I found it on Vimeo and I can't fucking believe it so this episode, the ultimate pollution it's set in a middle eastern country it's two very

impoverished villages of middle eastern people and it's two communities who are fighting with each other. They don't like each other. Now it doesn't go into religion, but this is implied. And these two poor communities spend all their money

buying weapons from this baddie called Loot and Plunder. And the theme of the episode is the war between these two communities of people in the Middle East is being created by the villain that's selling them weapons and that the war is actually being manufactured by the person profiting from it that's heavy shit that's 1991

that's a direct critique of American foreign policy it's a direct critique of American foreign policy. It's a direct critique of the deregulation of the military industry. It's a direct critique of the military industrial complex. Like under the Reagan administration, this is a separate podcast, under the Reagan administration, the CIA allowed cocaine to be imported, smuggled in from Bolivia and sold in America. Fueling the very crack epidemic that Reagan was fighting against, this war against drugs. The CIA imported cocaine into America from Bolivia and then bought guns from Iran where there was an arms embargo so that they could fund a war

between right-wing and left-wing forces in Bolivia. You would have had all over the Middle East, the Saudis, Afghanistan, whatever, buying huge amounts of weapons from American and British companies, the military-industrial complex. And this Captain Planet episode from 1991. Is directly critiquing that. For children.

Did I give a fuck? I didn't. No. I didn't. I wanted the rings. I wanted to have all the rings. And all the toys. I didn't really engage with the team.

I didn't. That's not what I took away from it. It was too fantastical it was too shrouded in consumerism fair play for trying but that advertising just the message couldn't ring through you didn't

here's my big critique of Captain Planet for every single episode that tried to tell me that I could be the change in the world for every episode that tried to tell me that I could be the change in the world for every episode that tried to warn me about climate catastrophe when I was going to be an adult the concept and idea of becoming change of doing something about it that didn't seem accessible when they're dangling a tie in front of my face. What becomes accessible is the tie that I can go out and purchase. If I can just own all five rings, then I don't need to be an environmentalist.

Captain Planet sold us the ultimate consumerist form of performative activism. consumerist form of performative activism why try and change anything when you can instead buy this simple symbol of change so that's what I want to explore in this podcast I think I want to appreciate the dichotomy of Captain Planet it's heart definitely was in the right place alright and it deserves respect

but the way that it was trying to execute this plan just wasn't going to happen, not with those lovely shiny toys dangling in front of us. I want to explore the policies and politics in America around climate change in the 1980s, in particular the 1980 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I want to look at some of those policies there and what happened and the negative impact that Ronald Reagan had.

And I also want to contrast Captain Planet with the 1968 short story from J.G. Ballard called Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan. But before we get into that, it's time for the Ocarina Pause. Now the Ocarina Pause is... Where the fuck is my ocarina? Here it is. The Ocarina Pause is I'm going to play a little Spanish clay whistle and when that happens, you're going to hear some advertisements.

I'm going to delineate clearly what is an advertisement and what is not so some advertisements are going to play these are going to be algorithmically generated advertisements which means that they are specifically, they're inserted by ACAST and they're specifically targeted at you depending on what your internet searches are and you're an adult with critical thinking

and you can choose to not listen to the advert if you don't want to you don't have to buy this whatever the fuck you're being sold all right here's the ocarina pause will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together

and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth.

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advertisers to fuck off. Most importantly, no advertiser can come in and say, we're sponsoring your podcast, so we need you to change the content of your podcast in a way that doesn't disagree with our brand. We want your content to align with our brand. No one gets to say that to me. So I get to make the podcast that I want to make and to make sure each episode I'm speaking about something that I'm passionate about and delivering the best quality podcast advertisers dictating content is what destroys television it destroys radio

it's what this podcast is about you know a lot of the children's cartoons we grew up on they were kinda shit they were kinda shit because they weren't about they were about base level entertainment as a way to sell toys they weren't entertainment for the sake of entertainment or creativity for the sake of creativity. Also support all independent podcasts.

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For my never ending video game musical. And follow me on Instagram. BlindBuyBowClub. Dog bless. So back to Captain Planet. What cultural conditions, cultural and political conditions were present that made a children's cartoon like Captain Planet possible? Why all of a sudden did this children's cartoon come out

that was speaking so explicitly about issues of the environment. Captain Planet was a superhero and he was a superhero specifically could only be summoned by these five teenage environmental activists when all of them put their rings together and then all of a sudden Captain Planet arrives to fight pollution, to fight poachers to do whatever Captain Planet arrives when some bad shit is going down that's going to hurt the environment Captain Planet came about because of President

Jimmy Carter now I'm not one for praising US presidents because the US is an imperialist nation, the US is a superpower so I'm no fan I've no problem of course with the people of America, the human beings of America

but America as a concept as a construct, as a political force as an imperialist superpower I don't like American foreign policy okay, so when I speak positively about a US president just know that i have that in my awareness but i'm under the circumstances i'm a fan of president jimmy carter who was

a one-term president in america from the late 1970s to 1981 jimmy carter was an environmentalist. Jimmy Carter in 1977 installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. This is 1977. This is a time when the average person is not thinking about climate change. The average person is not thinking that the petrol that goes into their car might be harming the environment. thinking that the petrol that goes into their car might be harming the environment this is this hasn't really entered public discourse and you've got a u.s president saying hold on a second lads here's these new things here called solar power this means that we can get power from the sun that's really clean and i believe in this so much that i put i'm putting them on the roof of the white House to demonstrate this and in 2021 looking back at that

1977 that's how long ago was that? That's like 45 years ago that's nearly 50 fucking years ago lads. 1977 to see a US President putting solar panels on the fucking roof of the White House

that's really inspiring but it's also White House. That's really inspiring. But it's also incredibly sad. It's also a bit depressing. Because when Jimmy Carter installed those solar panels, he gave a speech. Now, I don't have an exact quote, but I'll paraphrase it fairly accurately. The gist of the speech was, these here solar panels behind me,

that they're going to take the power of the sun to heat the water in the White House. These solar panels here behind me that they're going to take the power of the sun to heat the water in the white house these solar panels here behind me we can do two things with these they can either end up in a museum and represent a road that wasn't traveled or they can be the beginning of a very very exciting future where we find new forms of energy and he presented the two roads approach and sadly the road whereby alternative energy was explored that didn't happen that was shut down very quickly by one person Ronald Reagan Ronald fucking Reagan here's a list of things that Jimmy Carter tried to do for the environment in the 70s.

So Jimmy Carter had been a nuclear engineer when he was working in the Navy so he understood scientific literature and when he was president in the late 70s, president of America, he was reading the emerging scientific literature that was warning about climate change. So Carter, because he understood it, took it very seriously. So while he was president, he signed in 14 major pieces of environmental legislation. He funded the first ever proper research into alternative energy. He gave a big budget to the Department of Energy to research and develop solar power, wind power

things that we now are aware of. Jimmy Carter was the one that said this is where we need to go. This solar power shit because fossil fuels this isn't going to work for longer. Jimmy Carter brought in like the first

federally funded toxic waste clean up. He brought in the first fuel economy standards and he brought in laws to you know for flight, air, water all these new

legislation to prevent pollution in these respects. He brought in a bill to protect the redwood forests in California and 100 million acres in Alaska because he understood the importance of you have to protect forests. Trees are the lungs of the planet. So that's just some of the shit that Jimmy Carter did while he was president as well as putting those solar panels on just some of the shit that Jimmy Carter did while he was president, as well as putting those solar panels on the roof of the White

House and introducing the idea of solar panels to the public lexicon and to the public imagination. But the one big thing that Carter didn't get a chance to confront was carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Like I said, because he'd been a nuclear engineer, he understood scientific literature. And Carter, going as far back as the early 70s, had been reading about what scientists were saying about what they referred to as carbon dioxide pollution at the time, which was a new concept, a new idea. But basically the scientists saying, there's a fuck ton of carbon dioxide being produced

and this carbon dioxide is going to make the world hotter and when you get to the millennium and beyond it's going to create real problems with weather, with climate, the whole shebang what we call climate change and Jimmy Carter was the first global leader to recognize that climate change was an emerging problem. So in 1977, he said,

fuck, okay, what am I going to do? He commissioned what was called the Global 2000 Report to the President of the United States. He commissioned loads of scientists to get together and do a bunch of research and come back with a report and to look into this carbon pollution business. And what they came back with in the

report, 1977, they said the world needs to take immediate action around fossil fuels to avoid serious problems down the line. We need to move the fuck away from fossil fuels. avoid serious problems down the line. We need to move the fuck away from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are bad news.

We need solar, we need wind, we need to reduce carbon or the world is going to get so hot that bad things will happen. So Jimmy Carter was all set to bring in regulations and legislation that was focused towards not creating more co2 reducing the co2 in the atmosphere regulations that made it difficult for industries to be solely reliant upon fucking fossil fuels and Jimmy Carter wanted to do in 1980 what only what governments only now want to do because they have to regarding the climate. And unfortunately Ronald Reagan was elected. Jimmy Carter did not win the 1980 presidential election.

He failed quite poorly because America had been in a recession and Ronald Reagan came about with the promise of a new ideology. Ronald Reagan used the term make America great again. Trump wasn't the first person to use that. Ronald Reagan was.

Reagan was like, you're all unemployed. You don't have jobs. I'm going to create jobs. I'm going to make America great again. Petrol is not the enemy, oil is how we become rich, our foreign policy must pursue oil. Reagan brought all this shit in. When he became president, he removed Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the White House roof. He removed Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the White House roof.

At another point, when Reagan was asked about the environment, asked about climate change, Reagan tried to claim that trees, trees were actually producing harmful chemicals that were heating the planet.

Ronald Reagan didn't do anything to regulate industry so that it would produce less carbon dioxide and rely less on fossil fuels because Reagan didn't believe in regulation of any kind. He believed in letting the fossil fuel industry do whatever the fuck it wanted to maximize profits regardless of ethics because that was his ideology. So I don't think people talk enough about the importance of the 1980 US presidential election and what it means for the planet and our lives today.

We're now seeing the extreme weather in the news that we were being warned about. We're seeing temperatures rising. We're seeing ice caps melting. We were warned about it. Jimmy Carter commissioned it, 1977. So the world was given two choices. And it took the bad choice.

We could be living, if Jimmy Carter had gotten a second term, we could be living in a world right now where we're not talking about climate change, where we're not relying upon fossil fuels and 1977 like so if if solar and wind and everything had been properly invested in back then imagine the world we'd be living in right now a cleaner

greener more biodiverse planet and possibly one where climate change isn't politicised. The 1980 presidential election politicised climate change. Climate change isn't something that should be politicised because it affects everybody, it affects humanity. Everyone should believe that climate change is happening and everyone should want to stop it. But the 1980 presidential election made it political.

Climate change shouldn't be political. It affects everybody. But that election made it political. In particular, when Reagan started saying that he believes trees are causing pollution. It became something that you pick sides on. And Reagan went, climate change regulations are bad for business. I don and Reagan went climate change regulations are

bad for business I don't believe in climate change if I believe in climate change that means I have to start telling industry to be mindful of how much carbon it produces or to be mindful of what fuel it uses I can't do that

that's regulation I must deregulate the market and leave all the industry do whatever the fuck it needs to make money. So how does Captain Planet tie in with this? Well Captain Planet was literally born

of the two opposing ideologies of Reagan and Carter. Simple as that. I mentioned previously Ronald Reagan deregulated everything. He deregulated the advertising industry. So once

Reagan deregulated advertising there was no more ethics in advertising so cartoons now could just become giant advertisements to sell toys to kids and that's what happened. So on the one hand you have Captain Planet being created by the huge company

Hanna-Barbera to sell toys but then on the other hand you have Captain Planet directly influenced by the policies of Jimmy Carter to try and create environmentalists and this isn't a hot take

this is fact so the two people who created the cartoon Captain Planet to try and create environmentalists. And this isn't a hot take, this is fact. So the two people who created the cartoon Captain Planet were Ted Turner and Barbara Pyle. Barbara Pyle was an environmental activist and a TV producer. Ted Turner was the founder of CNN. And both of them explicitly say that they read Jimmy Carter's report that he had commissioned in 1980.

So the two creators read this report, got the shit scared out of him, said, oh fuck, all these scientists are predicting a bleak future. So they said, we need to make a children's cartoon show that takes directly from Jimmy Carter's Global 2000 report and we need to warn the children about what's going to happen if they don't become environmental activists. And that there is literally how Captain Planet was born.

Ted Turner and Barbara Pyle had read Jimmy Carter's report. I'm going to read some quotes now from Barbara Pyle, one of the creators of Captain Planet. She says we lifted the characters and locations from environmental documentaries that I had made. The Planeteers and many of the characters were based on real people.

She'd based them on environmental activists that she'd worked with. She said in 2019, The show became a global phenomenon. People recognised their countries and their neighbours. The merchandising was hard for me to stomach. But business does what business does. Captain Planet's image was prohibited on single-use plastics.

The action figures were made from plastic scrap. Only recycled paper was used. Our goal was to arm a generation with the knowledge to find more sustainable ways of living on the planet and I personally don't think Captain Planet succeeded in that goal

as I mentioned earlier I think the consumerism trumped it all I really didn't come away from Captain Planet as a child feeling that I could do anything. I felt as if, if I just buy enough magic rings, Captain Planet will show up and maybe he will save the planet. But I never felt that I could do it. It never felt realistic. It felt like something that was far off in the future

and that's that's where Captain Planet failed it managed to package the solution as something you could purchase, a feeling an emotion, you could wear your activism, you could purchase your activism as a commodity

it didn't empower us tried its fucking best really tried its best but once you dangle those lovely shiny ties in front of a kid the tie becomes the solution

so that's my hot take critique of Captain Planet Captain Planet is something I deeply respect. It's something that I returned to as an adult with sadness. Because what they were telling us was so fucking important. So on the ball. So many different episodes. And I can't believe that I sat down and watched this every day as a kid.

And not a huge amount of it sunk in, because it was born out of two completely opposing positions. From the 1980 presidential election, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. It was born from the deregulation of children's advertising brought in by Reagan, the unfettered, greedy capitalism of that. And then the Global 2000 report by Jimmy Carter

which is a report based on compassion the Carter report was I don't give a fuck about money we need to make less money so that the world can be safe and then the Reagan policy is let's just fuck children's heads up

and sell them a bunch of shit because business is really important you can't have those two extreme positions coexist together harmoniously and that's what fucked up Captain Planet here's a bunch of shit about the world that I'd like to warn you about it's really important while you're young

would you like to be the change in the world yes I would well how about instead of being the change in the world I sell you some trinkets that make you feel as if you're the change in the world and appear as if you're the change in the world consumerism

that's Captain Planet in the world and appear as if you're the change in the world. Consumerism. That's Captain Planet in a nutshell. And while Captain Planet was mostly on the ball, in particular there's a chilling episode called Two Futures which portrays the world in 2025. And it's a world of rising seas, extreme weather and food shortages, which is quite accurate. You know, it's got a lot of accurate cutting episodes that I wish I understood when I was younger but there's one episode of Captain Planet that stands out

and I never saw this until I was an adult because they didn't play it in Ireland there's a really really fucking batshit mad episode of Captain Planet where they visit Belfast and try to tackle sectarianism. And fuck me, did they get it wrong. I'll play you a little sample here to see,

so you can hear how fucking ridiculous this is. This is a Protestant and a Catholic arguing over who gets to press the button on the nuclear bomb. Tell me how this works or you'll be lacking more than a job. Burn one of our homes and I'll wipe out the Protestant side of Belfast. I heard it was the Catholic side would be destroyed. Go ahead, push it. What have I got left to live for anyway? This is nuts! So in that episode, Captain Planet and the Planet Heirs go to Belfast

because the Loyalists and the Nationalists have gotten to Belfast because the loyalists and the nationalists have gotten their hands on a nuclear bomb and they intend to blow up all of Belfast so Captain Planet and the Planeteers manage to get them to realise that if they put off the nuclear bomb it just kills everybody

so the Catholics and Protestants put their differences aside and then Captain Planet helps them to open up a cooperative bakery and I never saw that episode when I was a child

because it was banned it was banned in Ireland and Britain banned by the well the RTE didn't show it in Ireland and the Brits never showed it on BBC. I think everyone collectively agreed that it wasn't going to help anyone. And I also mentioned that I wanted to contrast Captain Planet briefly with a piece of work called Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan. Now, Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan is Now, Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan

is a short story written in 1968 by J.G. Ballard. It's possibly... possibly my favourite short story of all time. It's not a particularly enjoyable thing to read. It's just so overwhelmingly creative and ahead of its time. It knocks me down every time I fucking read it so J.G. Battered was

you could call him a science fiction writer he was a British science fiction writer he was also a satirist years ahead of his time he's a writer that I admire J.G. Battered was interested in climate change in 1962

now this is 62 is a long J.G. Ballard was interested in climate change in 1962. Now this is, 62 is a long time ago lads. In 1962 J.G. Ballard wrote a novel called The Drowned World. And it was an apocalyptic vision of the future in 2045. Where global warming had made the earth uninhabitable and the sea had rised so J.G. Battered was writing that in 1962 J.G. Battered

was so on the ball that he was going this is what's going to happen in the future and I'm going to write about it and it's going to be terrifying and in 1968 J.G. Battered tried to warn the world about Ronald Reagan via fiction

so in 1968 J.G. Battered published a short story called Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and it's written as a fake scientific document it's like a fake scientific report

about Ronald Reagan. And it's about Americans being sexually aroused by the face of Ronald Reagan. But sexually aroused by the face of Ronald Reagan and that this sexual arousal was triggered by the

violent spectacle of President Kennedy's assassination this is far out experimental literature, this is mad shit, really fucking mad shit Ballard delves deep into Freudian psychoanalysis the roots of human sexual fucking mad shit battered deep into

Freudian psychoanalysis the roots of human sexual desire the connection between sex and violence

the themes of eros and thanatus which are the death and sex instincts it's heavy stuff

it's not easy to read but it's a work of outstanding genius and it's a work of outstanding genius. And it's also fucking hilarious. So here's the thing about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a film star.

He was a movie star in the 1950s. He wasn't a politician. He was a fucking movie star. And then he became the governor of california in the 60s and this was kind of mad that a movie star like now it's normal we've had donald trump donald trump was president he was a reality tv star you've had arnold schwarzenegger became governor of california but the one who started this shit this specifically American phenomenon was Ronald Reagan he was a movie star who became

a politician and then became a president this was nuts so J.G. Ballard said about Reagan and about why he wrote the short story why I want to fuck Ronald Reagan Ballard says in his commercials Reagan used the smooth teleprompter perfect tones of the TV auto salesman

to project a political message that was absolutely the reverse of bland and reassuring. A complete discontinuity existed between Reagan's manner and body language, on the one hand, and his scarily simplistic far-right message on the other. on the one hand, and his scarily simplistic far-right message on the other. Above all, it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his

mouth so what ballard is saying there in the 1960s is this fucking ronald reagan fella he's not a politician he's an advertiser he's not selling you this isn't politics this is advertising this is a far-right message sold to you through the friendly language of advertising and you're not going to be able to tell the difference just like in the 1980s because Ronald Reagan deregulated the children's

advertising rules whereby kids were watching cartoons but in fact were being sold toys Ballard in the 1960s was saying, this is what Ronald Reagan is doing. He's not a politician. These are adverts.

This looks and sounds like he's selling you pancakes. He's selling you right-wing fascism. And you can't tell the difference because you're so conditioned to the messages of Hollywood and advertising. And it's almost impossible for us to fathom this today. Because we have 24 hour news networks. This is simply how politics is now. Politics takes place now.

Especially American politics. British politics. Political messages now take place using the language of entertainment and news takes place using the visual and aural language of entertainment like Sky News uses, when Sky News has

breaking news, it has a whooshing sound like I'm watching fucking a sci-fi film this is now totally normal. But in the 1960s, this was absurd. This was brand new and J.G. Ballard was frightened by it. So he wrote, Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, as a warning.

I'll read you a tiny excerpt from the short story because it is heavy going and this is written to sound like a very technical report. So it opens with, during these assassination fantasies, Ronald Reagan and the conceptual auto disaster, numerous studies have been conducted upon patients in terminal

pariasis, placing Reagan in a series of simulated auto crashes, e.g. multiple pile-ups, head-on collisions, motorcade attacks. Fantasies of presidential assassinations remained a continuing preoccupation. Subjects showed a marked polymorphic fixation on windshields and rear trunk assemblies. Powerful erotic fantasies of an anal sadistic character surrounded the image

of the presidential contender. So the entire, the entire piece is, it's like a psychological report that says that A, the American public experienced the assassination of President Kennedy so President Kennedy was assassinated in 62

and it was quite public images of him being shot into the head in the motorcade were all over the media and Battered was investigating the plausible concept that when you present images of violence in the media of the presidential assassination, of Kennedy getting killed but then at the same time in the same newspaper

you've got like beautiful Hollywood starlets you've got sex and death in the media alongside each other with no boundary in between. That unconsciously. People then become sexually aroused. By the assassination of President Kennedy. And because they're sexually aroused by the violence of that. When Ronald Reagan comes along as Governor of California.

With his Hollywood voice. And how clean cut he looks Ballard is saying that people are getting their anuses widened with sexual desire and getting erections at the thought of wanting to fuck Ronald Reagan in this strange, deep, unconscious continual dance between sex and death.

Like, this is extreme stuff. It's deeply clever, extreme stuff. And it's satire. And it's a hot take. It's a hot take that's plausible. It's very plausible. We're human beings. We consume information.

And the 1960s was a time when humanity was confronted with quite a lot of sex and violence in the media in a way that humanity had not been confronted with before because television wasn't where it was at. Now we have a different situation today. The world that Ballard was afraid of has now fully materialised with the internet. You crack open your Facebook and people can't tell what's real and what's not. And you've got horrendous videos of violence.

You've got hardcore sex. You've got racism. A social media timeline is a bombardment of many extreme conflicting images and emotions. And then you have to ask, how do we tell the difference between them all? And people don't know now if their news is real or fake. People can't tell anymore. And Battered believed that Reagan was the beginning of that. Is he a politician or is he a movie that. Is he a politician or is

he a movie star? Is he a politician or is he a movie star? I know him from the movies. He talks perfectly. He's good looking. He's a movie star. But the politics he's talking about are right wing. I can't tell the difference. And that conflict

taking it back to Captain Planet is also what caused Captain Planet to fail does this want me to be an environmentalist or does it want to sell me ties I can't tell the difference is it selling me the tie instead of being an environmentalist I don't know

is this an advert I can't tell so that's my little detour into J.G. Ballard because that's something I wanted to speak about. If you're interested in reading that story, it's in a collection of short stories called The Atrocity Exhibition. Not very heavy stuff, very fucked up, highly experimental. Not necessarily an enjoyable read but fascinating when Ballard published Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan

the person who published it was arrested and successfully prosecuted for obscenity it was considered a really dangerous piece of work it was banned check out the work of J.G. Ballard in general incredibly exciting science fiction writer so that was this week's podcast

I hope my voice has gone a bit croaky lads my voice has gone a bit croaky because I was doing a little gig in Vicar Street and shouting into microphones so apologies for my hoarse voice

for some of this podcast but that was my little hot take I hope it wasn't too selfish I hope it wasn't this is a very niche specific episode where I'm contrasting JG Ballard with Captain Planet and I'm aware

how niche that is and how that might not be accessible or relatable but my rule for this podcast is I want each week to speak about something that I'm genuinely passionate about or care about so that that

passion then translates to you as a farmer of entertainment I mean I don't want to be talking about shit I don't give a fuck about, I've been obsessing about this all week thinking about Captain Planet and consumerism and JG Ballard so I hope you enjoyed that

I'm going to end the podcast now play a little advert and then afterwards I'm going to come back with my new segment on the podcast where I speak about and play ye

a piece of music from my live stream from my live Twitch stream but if you're not interested in music or any of that shit you can just turn off

the podcast now you don't have to listen to it so that'll be after the end ad for the rest of ye God bless and good luck. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league,

bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack

right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. So, if you're here for this bit, that means you have an interest in my online live stream that I do on Twitch once a week

so on Twitch what I've been doing is making a form of participatory art, over the pandemic I've been trying to write and make songs in a way that is literally a new way to write and make songs. Because I go on twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast,

where I play a video game. It's a digital environment set in 19th century America, Red Dead Redemption 2. So I wander a digital wilderness. But while I'm doing this live I also have musical instruments with me and recording equipment and I basically write songs to the events of a video game

as it happens in real time so the hyper real world of the video game informs what inspires me to write songs in the moment and I make songs up in the moment depending on whatever is happening in the game so I call this hyper real song writing because

real song writing you're writing something based on reality but this isn't reality this is a pandemic induced hyper real reality the This is a pandemic induced. Hyper real reality. The reality of a video game. So the songs themselves now become hyper real. And.

It's also participatory. Because. People are watching me doing this online. And sometimes people make suggestions or comments. Which will find themselves into the songs that I'm writing. I do it for about an hour. I write about. Four songs that I'm writing. I do it for about an hour. I write about four songs in the moment. I make them up on the

spot based on what's happening in the video game. I make about four or five songs an hour. A lot of them are shit. Out of every hour there's always one that I quite enjoy. There's one where I achieve creative flow and I create something that I'm happy with.

It's also a process-based way to make art. When I write songs on my Twitch stream, it's not necessarily about the end result. It's about the experience of being part of the process. So I'm going to play you a song that I would have written on Twitch a few months back. And this song is called Garda Síocháin. And. So basically. I was in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Wandering around an area near a docks. So it was like. It was a docks where there was a bunch of ships. In the outskirts of this Victorian city. And I was wandering around there. And I saw a policeman policeman and the policeman was leaning against a railing but he was leaning in such a way that he could be very easily pushed into the water. So when this happened in the game I felt inspired by that and I decided

to call that Garda, Garda Sheehan. And the lyrics are. Garda Sheehan I see you standing leaning. Against the railing beside the river. Because that's what he was doing. The Garda in the video game. Was leaning. Against the railing beside the river.

And I wanted to push him in. I wanted to push the policeman. Into the river. So. This is all happening in the digital environment so I decide let's write a song I take out my guitar did a very simple riff and I built a melody from there with some claps

I have some gospel style double time clapping and then I got some nice little guitar tones out of my slide. So I created a song. All of this is made up in the moment. I don't know what the next lyric is. I don't know what the next note is. I made it all up in the moment. Recorded it with a looping pedal.

And then was finished going, fuck it, that's quite a nice song. That's a nice song about pushing a guard into the river. And of course at the end, I didn't successfully push the guard into the river. In the digital environment, it didn't work. I actually ended up falling into the river myself. Into the digital river. But that was beautiful. That's what happens.

This is process based art. It's improvised music making. It's improvised hyper real song writing. I don't know what's going to happen. I leave it all up to the faith of the digital gods. The algorithm. The algorithm of the game. The algorithm that causes events to unfold within the game.

So I appreciate that all of this is a bit highfalutin. So that's why I throw it at the end of the podcast, because it's quite a selfish project of mine, and I can't assume that everybody is interested in it. So I play the songs, and again, what I love, the reason I like to play these songs on this podcast is this was written to a video game, so there's a visual involved. But when I play it on this podcast

I've stripped the visual away so now the lyrics every time I do this the lyrics now take on a new meaning because the visual world is removed and you're just left with the audio of it and I like that recontextualization so here's the song

it's called Garda Síochain I see you standing leaning against the railing beside the river I'll catch you next week So here's the song. It's called Garda Síochainn, I See You Standing Leaning Against the Railing Beside the River. I'll catch you next week. God, the she and the sea are standing leaning against the railing beside the river God, the she and the sea are standing leaning against the railing beside the river God, the she and the sea are standing leaning against the railing beside the river Against the railing beside the river God, the she and the sea are standing Leaning against the railing beside the river

God, the she and the sea are standing Leaning against the railing beside the river God, the she and the sea are standing Leaning against the railing beside the river God, the she in the sea, standing leaning against the Red Angles, I hear the river. God, is she in the sea, standing leaning against the Red Angles, I hear the river. There's a woman over there, her name is Mrs. O'Carroll, will you tell on me if I push? God, is she in the sea, standing leaning against the feelings that's how he don't give a fuck Do you feel lucky? Do you feel really lucky tonight, girl?

She and she and you're going to the water, girl She and she and you're going to the water Oh, no! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! No! No!

No! No! That's not what was supposed to happen at all.