In 1992, an animated film about a fairy civilization in an Australian rainforest threatened by the logging industry and an ancient evil, was released into theaters and later that year onto VHS. Ferngully was the first voice acting role for Robin Williams, before Aladdin. Other highlights include Christian Slater as a shirtless fairy-man, Tim Curry as an evil pile of sludge, and Tone-Loc as a lizard singing a song written by Jimmy Buffet. (None of the mentioned voice work has an Australian accent, which I guess we’ll forgive since it’s a movie about fairies and talking animals.)
Environmentalism was having its first big moment in the early to mid 1990’s, and there was a huge push for children’s programming that positioned caring about the earth, plants, and animals as an objective good and moral imperative. Captain Planet started airing early in the decade. There was Rocko’s Modern Life’s Earth Day musical, Zanzibar. And the wholly depressing finale of Dinosaurs when Earl comes to terms with his company having brought on a climate apocalypse that ends all dinosaur life on Earth.
R-E-C-Y-C-L-E recycle
C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E conserve
Don’t you P-O-L-L-U-T-E
Pollute the river, sky, or sea
Or else you’re gonna get what you deserve
Rocko’s Modern Life, Zanzabar, Spelling/Recycle Song
I was on board. Most (under 10 years old) were. Yeah! Let’s save the environment! Sounds great. Yes, some of it was the silly notion that turning off the tap was an effective way to combat water waste while companies were stealing and bottling it up this whole time, or poisoning it, or whatever else. But a good percentage of it was pointing out capitalism and corporatism’s role in the destruction of the planet, and much of the media that eschewed this perspective holds up on a re-watch now.
The problem was, we were children in the 1990’s. And having been flooded with messages about how important it was to save the Earth, and those messages having come from adults, I think many of us assumed the adults were, you know, on it. Why else would you be pouring millions upon millions of dollars into cartoon activism aimed at prepubescents – the least powerful demographic on the planet unless you already did the more immediate fixes? Maybe in 30 years we’d be in a position to help out, but by then we would surely have made some sort of change to the system to combat this? Right? RIGHT? If you can pay Elton John to write a song for your animated movie about saving the environment, then surely you have some cash, clout, or other power that could go directly towards, you know, saving the environment?
Lisa in The Simpsons film 
Greta Thunberg, environmental activist
But then the 90’s passed, environmentalism became a niche and even marketable thing that capitalism learned to temper, and the moment passed. Now we have a generation turning into adults that weren’t even alive when these shows and films were aired having to yell at people that could have fixed this before they were born.
Ferngully was a lovely film. I still sing “Raining Like Magic” whenever it rains. But when you get to the end of the film and realize the generations the film was dedicated to are more fucked than ever, inheriting a planet chaotic with destruction that the film’s creator’s generation failed to reckon with and hoarded all the wealth while they did it.
So maybe Ferngully didn’t lie to me, per say. But it heavily implied that adults knew what was up, and my childhood naivete lead me to believe that adults were going to do a lot more than make cartoon films with catchy soundtracks.
