Fern Gully: Analyzing the Undertones of a Children's Movie

When I was a child I saw cute animated movie about a magical rain forest were fairies and animals were living in harmony until, a giant machine with the help of these humanized smog cloud came and started destroying the place they live. So that the combined efforts of fairies, animals, and a magical shrunken human they set out to save their habitat. That is the movie “Fern Gully: the Last Rain Forest” and it is a campaign for the save the rain forests and the animals wrapped up and presented as a cute happy, slightly dramatic, children's animated movie.

In the trailer posted, you hear a generic movie voice man giving the narration to the images of rain you believe in the night sky. His slightly out of monotone soothing voice piques our interest into what we are being shown. He mellow tone tells us about nice song filled world without humans that is until now. The dialogue of the introduction is giving off the feel that you're peeking into world that exists all around you.

            The trailer then goes on to introduce the main characters of the story to forge a bond with the audience to its leads, Krista and Zach. After reading the story’s Romeo and Juliet they are greeted to a friendly animal companion voice by the unmistakable superstar of the 90s Robin Williams, America's favorite comedian. Then introduces the conflict of the machine and villainous smog, but only for moment. Because the audience has to know that everything is going to be all right good does prevail, I mean it is a children's movie.

            This movie trailer does a great job of hiding its intended to children. It never directly tell the audience that the humans are to blame it gives them the honest human eyes pollution to fear and distracts them from reading too deep songs and magic. It gets the “save the rain forest” campaign across about even saying it. We need to save Fern Gully; wait isn't Fern Gully in the rain forest. I can't say this movie doesn't work. It is a very good job of slipping in green thinking to children. I know I saw the movie as a child and was devastated by what was happening to the fairies and in turn making me more environmentally conscious. It wasn't till I was older and re-watched the movie that I picked up on the subtleties.

Lorax Approved?

When I read the article “ ‘The Lorax’: in Thneed of Some Marketing Help”,by Kate Sheppard, I thought it was a very tasteful article about how Hollywood for advertisers and promoted that might necessarily fit the movie image and what the movie is trying to promote. I wrote in a way that was not laced with anger and demeaning comments that can be a little off-putting when reading about a movie aimed at children. Very calm way presenting the facts and addressing her opinion in a tone that convinced me to continue to read and hear what she was trying to get across to the audience. The whole time I was reading it never felt what she was pressing an agenda that made it feel like I could reason with what she was saying income to the conclusion that I felt the same way. I enjoyed how she said she liked “The Lorax” but she was confused about the kind who partnerships universal chose to make. Like with Mazda who offered incentives to schools in which the school would receive $25 for every child that ask their parents to test drive. I also like how she made parallels to real life situations and situations in the movie to show how hypocritical a movie studio can be. When in the movie the Lorax was used to sell the very product that was ruining his home and in real life the Lorax was being used to sell “green” household cleaning products. Also, she ended her paper with a humorous and uplifting quote about a child being able to see through the marketing by saying “the Lorax doesn't even drive a car.”