I am retaking an English course to strive for a higher grade for application to the radiology program at Southern Crescent Technical College. The following contains my weekly journal after watching the movie Ferngully for my ENGL 1101 class.

 

The movie Ferngully teaches about the evils of deforestation like this hillside deforestation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo Source: Wikipedia, License: CC0 1.0 Public Domain

Ferngully has some good representations, especially for a children’s movie. My favorite character is Hexxus. He looks black and grimy in contrast to the beautiful forest. He represents pollution and humans’ greed for continuing to live the way we do despite what it is doing to the earth. We are really greedy and want to keep all our comforts. We want to drive our cars, and it is easy to not recycle or recycle enough. Zak shows how people are ignorant of their environment but also how they can change. Zak does not realize what creatures live in trees or how to interact with nature. He shows just how much he ignores it. Shutting out nature is easy to do while wearing headphones. Zak learns a lot about nature from Crysta. By learning and becoming small like a fairy, he becomes more empathetic and more aware of what people are doing. He must go and teach other people and warn them about the dangers of deforestation. We need to teach others about global warming and become more aware of our own habits even if we think they are good enough already.

The characters from Ferngully lived in a rainforest similar to this beech forest in Hopetoun Falls near Great Otway National Park, Victoria. Photo by: David Iliff, Photo Source: Wikipedia, License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Batty depicts a world where humans do more than cut down forests. They also conduct animal testing. Batty represents any animal that has been harmed by testing products on animals. He is affected psychologically and emotionally as well as physically. He also depicts environmentalists warning about the evils of human ways. These environmentalists look crazy to people who do not believe in global warming. Since the movie is limited in duration and made for children, it simplifies the global warming situation and focuses mostly on deforestation. While other elements are represented like animal testing, the focus is on the trees where the fairies live. The oceans are not represented. Temperature change and extreme weather changes are not shown. Humans affect the world in so many ways other than cutting down trees. They overfish the seas. They poach animals and fin sharks. They pollute not just with gas, oil and carbon emissions the way Hexxus demonstrates, but also with trash, plastic and other nonbiodegradable materials.

 

Featured Image: Stock Photo, Photo Source: Unsplash, License

 

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