Cinema Canada (Aug 1976)

The fearless Captain Nemo and his ship Captain Nemo, then, was conceived as very much a commercial product. ‘‘What we saw Saturday mornings was so awful...,”” Al says. “It had no substance that we could determine and it didn’t even look that good. We thought we could do better.’ Their experience with a children’s TV workshop in New York which was utilizing super-hero comic characters for educational purposes helped to mold the series concept. Capt. Nemo is a rock-jawed muscleman, a sort of ecological hero who hands out tidbits of scientifically accurate information about ocean life (a panel of five international oceanographers checks the script) within an action/adventure format. I ask Al whether his products reflect anything distinctively Canadian in our culture. He replies somewhat pessimistically that we’re all pretty much Americanized anyway. The issue, however, turns out not to be that simple for him. It seems that while the CBC has been very enthusiastic about the series and given it all-out support the producers are experiencing some difficulties selling it in the US. Not enough violence to suit American distributors. Jean grows incensed on the subject of distributors, whom she sees for the most part as parasites, interested only in large profits and in seeing what has worked before repeated ad nauseam. “Their objectives have absolutely nothing to do with the public welfare — they have no morals.”’ She recalls one of the men in Hollywood who turned thumbs down on the series because of its lack of violence: “‘He came out of an office all pink and gold, like Lana Turner’s bedroom — a horrible crummy fat man with a cigar, the whole bit — and this is the guy who’s going to decide what my kids are going to watch on TV!” Al and Jean have received a more favorable response from the various station groups in New York, and will peddle it themselves, station by station, if necessary. I watch the series pilot and am struck by the amalgam of influences, the compromise of styles and attitudes it represents. It looks like all the American children’s shows — as it is designed to do in order to attract an audience. A booming voice over the titles announces the death-defying adventures to come. But the story itself is a surprise. The nuclear submarine in which Capt. Nemo and his young sidekicks Chris and Robby (girl and boy) are travelling is adopted by a young blue whale as its mother. The action centres on finding the real mother before the baby, in its enthusiastic affection, does fatal damage to the craft. Along the way, pertinent details about the species, including the crucial fact that it is endangered, are supplied by our underwater hero. A shark appears — and so do the big guns of the sub. But instead of blasting the creature, Capt. Nemo tries to lay low in the hope they will not be seen. The message that comes across is this: they are prepared to shoot if they absolutely have to, but they’d rather not have to. The shark is eventually disposed of by the mother whale, not in a violent, blood-and-guts battle, but through the brief single impact of her ponderous bulk. The sub, meanwhile, hurries away. The episode is apparently typical of the rest of the series in the stance it assumes towards the natural world. Though the pace has been quickened in later programs, the producers have stood fast in their refusal to incorporate unnecessary violence into the series. In addition, many of the worst excesses of Disney-style wildlife depiction have been avoided. The ocean’s inhabitants are relatively unanthropomorphized, and the natural situation generally left to resolve itself. Instead of an assertive human presence, the protagonists’ activity is purposely kept as unobtrusive as possible, extending only to credible involvement with the ocean world, such as setting a stranded whale free. And even then, as Jean points out, “It doesn’t come back and warble thankyou in a Nelson Eddy voice.”” Such an approach, Al admits, holds something distinctively Canadian about it, something reminiscent of our strong documentary tradition and of our accustomed role as “‘observers”’. The series seems to have won the approval of the ecologyminded Greenpeace Foundation who have taken the pilot back to Ottawa to show to schoolchildren. Rainbow is donating drawings for the organization’s fund-raising auction next month. At the moment 52 programs are planned, with the possibility of a further 13. Three are finished. Animation is an extremely time-consuming business -— each five-minute segment takes about seven weeks to pass through the assembly-line talents of 12 people. A wide variety of oceanrelated topics will be covered — pollution, archaeology, mining, farming, in addition to the ongoing interest in marine life. The series will be shown on the CBC as part of a children’s program, Peanuts and Popcorn, Saturdays 10:30 to 12:00, modelled along the lines of an old-fashioned Saturday matinee (cartoon, serial, feature) and starting in October. Al Guest doesn’t see himself in any vanguard as far as the animation medium goes. Although he can talk intelligently about the latitude it offers for handling abstractions or the challenges inherent in animated features, he sees Rainbow geared mainly towards the television market. “We're primarily entertainers,” he says, “trying to keep our own principles in mind.” oO August 1976/33