Green Your Tween TV: Heartwood USA

Did you know that Bob the Builder is a raging environmentalist? He's the portly handyman with an army of tweaked-out construction vehicles who seemingly run on air, who is constantly saying "Yes, We Can!" (years before Obama), and imploring us to "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!" As a mother of a toddler, I have seen a lot of Bob (too much; when my son wants to watch, sometimes I just want to yell, "No, We Can't!").

Bored as I am with the show, I'm fascinated by one episode in particular, and how it attacks (or doesn't attack is more like it) the issue of (un)sustainable development. Bob competes against the boastful architect (representing The Suit) in a plan to design a new community in Bob's beloved Sunflower Valley, where he frolicked as a boy. The architect has a grand vision for a sort of Atlantic City nightmare (literally a nightmare for Bob) and he presents his design in a completely duplicitous way: the pictures show happy families and thriving sunflowers, but the reality is an earth-destroying mega-city. Then, the writers, as if frightened by their own content, back away from the Architect-as-bad-guy theme: Bob wins with his ingenious, environmentally-sustainable hobbit house development and the architect loses graciously, saying "only wish I had thought of it!"

To me, this kind of passive-aggressive message typifies a lot of environmental themes I see presented to children these days. That's why I've been intrigued by the much more direct approach taken by my friend and former co-worker Shane Keats with his new cartoon, Heartwood USA, that launched on the web today.

Granted, Bob is for toddlers, and Heartwood is aimed at 6-12-year-olds, so Shane, a former TV news producer who created Heartwood over the past year after his day-job ended, is able to assume a greater level of sophistication on the part of his viewers. But even for the age group, Heartwood USA is disarmingly direct about the good guys vs. bad guys in terms of saving the environment. In the pilot, his heroine, Carson Heartwood, goes after the corporate despoiler and cattle mega-farmer in town, Dummkopf Industries. She wins, exposing the ugly truth about the cow farm, and is then pilloried by the owner's son Shamus as an enemy of America, not to mention all delicious milk products:

"[Carson wants] No Chocolate Milk, No Ice Cream, No Cheeseburgers!"

Shane describes this approach as a deliberate provocation for kids, whose intelligence we underestimate. "There are a lot of terrific groups out there encouraging kids to take little steps that collectively can make a big difference. We think they're great. But for every ad from wecansolveit, I see one from the American Petroleum Institute telling us we can drill our way out of the hole we're in. We need a show that says 'enough.'"

Shane gives a shout-out to Web-based programs like "Meet the Greens" and "the Meatrix" . He hopes Carson Heartwood will serve as a reliably Green superhero for kids to emulate. "I can't point to a single regular, consistently green kids show and that's shocking and shameful."

Shane believes kids instinctively get the battle against bullies from their own lives, and in this case the bullies are the forces preserving the status quo in terms of degrading the environment.
"A lot of why I made Heartwood USA is to get back at villains, real villains, the kind you, me and our kids will encounter over the course of our political lives. I wanted to make a show that mixed the serious and the silly. Carson won't win every episode because in real life, the bullies actually win, sometimes quite often. Part of the point of the show is to help kids see that temporary setbacks are just temporary.

To win in the long run, you've got to dust off and start again...if we can influence kids to take climate change seriously and help them laugh a bit in the face of the bad guys, then we've done a good deed".

Heartwood USA can be found here.
The Facebook fan page is here, and the MySpace page is here.