FernGully: The Last Rainforest

Innocent fun or Communist Propaganda?

Screen Time: (6)- lotsa quotability in this one.
Woundage: (2)- well, his machine gets taken over by talking smog, and he is cooped up in that little space with a fat guy for a long time.

Aesthetics: (1)- mark my words, Cartoon Geoffrey is no Fred from Scooby Doo.

I am of an age where I was just a little too old to see FernGully: The Last Rainforest in the theater when it came out, but not old enough to not want to watch it. I caught parts of it once when I was babysitting, and thought it looked OK. Well, as I wrap up my second decade of life, I find myself at an age where I am old enough to not want to watch it but not old enough to be forced to watch it because I have kids who want to. The only force powerful enough to sit me down in front of a TV and make me watch this film all the way through is a force named Geoffrey Blake, who does the voice of a cartoon character named Ralph.

To briefly summarize, the film speculates that the rainforest is populated with fairies. A young logger named Zak is shrunk down to fairy size and learns about the magic of the rainforest and fairy life. When Zak's fellow loggers come to clear the area in which the fairies live, they inadvertently release a malevolent spirit named Hexxus, whose materialization is eerily similar to the evil guy's in "Hellraiser." Zak and his fairy friends (not that there's anything wrong with having fairy friends) must fight to stop Hexxus's path of destruction and end his evil reign of toxic sludge.

Geoffrey's role is that of a logger who runs a tree-chopping machine called "The Leveler." The cartoon character is not very good-looking, though the voice is unmistakably Blakeish. I thought he might have been an evil character after finding mention of him on a fan page for the film, but it turns out that he's just out to make a buck. At the end it's suggested that he's going to stop caring about money, and two years later we will spot him on a Greenpeace boat bombing whaling ships in the Northern Pacific.

Which brings me to an interesting point about FernGully. On one side of the FernGully debacle, you have the fairies. The little guys. They all work side by side in peace and harmony, and nobody wants for anything. On the other side you have Hexxus, and Ralph and Tony. Ralph mentions several times that he's only in the rainforest to make an honest living. So does Tony. They're fine examples of true American bourgeoisie capitalism. And then you have Hexxus, who can only be seen as symbolizing an insidious, looming American corporation. (The name and spelling of Hexxus sounds an awful lot like Exxon. Coincidence? I think not.)

Now let's look at the plot. The evil corporation (that would be Hexxus) comes in with its superior technology and corporate cogs (that would be the progress-oriented Ralph and Tony) to dominate the peaceful commune of proletarian fairies. The power of the working class rises up to dominate the capitalist scum and preserves the small community of equal workers. Could this movie really be touting the virtues of Communism? Well, the main female character is wearing a red dress. Need I say any more?

This movie only goes to prove that the Cold War never really ended. But it does leave out one interesting factoid, and that is that the USSR did more to destroy its environment than any other country from the end of World War II to its collapse in the late 80s. To me, FernGully has just a ton of conflicting messages, though it's been my experience that most propaganda does. I'm just going to leave you with one thought: Chernobyl. The next time your kid begs to see this seemingly innocuous fantasy flick, I want you to think about Chernobyl and lead your child toward something that perpetuates the American dream.