Year of the Month
A look at morals in 80's movies through the lens of Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation
By Cori Domschot
Ah the ‘80s, that magical time where we shoved ethics and morality down people’s throats left and right. Honestly, when thinking back on most of the cartoons and television shows I watched in the ‘80s there was almost always a moral at the end of the story. I remember asking, when a teacher was explaining fables, if that meant cartoons were fables. Of course, the answer is, yes, some are. If you’ve seen The Care Bears Movie,1 then you’ll notice some continuity issues with the second film. Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation2 follows the lives of three children on Earth at summer camp, and covers the beginnings of how The Care Bears and The Care Bears Cousins came to be. They are battling the mysterious evil Dark Heart (Hadley Kay). Dark Heart has many magical abilities. Just being in his general presence brings out humans’ baser natures and has them leaning into wrong-doing and mischief-making. At the beginning of the film, we see True Heart Bear (Maxine Miller) and Noble Heart Horse (Pam Hyatt) (not yet given these names) fleeing from Dark Heart. It is clear that they know who Dark Heart is and having an ark full of babies gives the impression they were fleeing for their lives. The Great Wishing Star (Chris Wiggins) and his star and heart buddies rescue them. In the words of the Great Wishing Star, “We have found the two creatures whose love and kindness sets them apart from the rest of the world”. Their mission? “They’ll help others share their feelings and protect everyone from Dark Heart’s evil”.
True Heart and Noble Heart are in charge of watching the caring meter and making sure that if there is a dip in the caring of the people of Earth, they intervene to thwart Dark Heart’s plans. This is how True Heart goes down to Earth and meets the three children at camp, John (Michael Fantini), Dawn (Alyson Court), and Christy (Cree Summer). John, Dawn, and Christy are not as physically able as other kids at the camp and seem to come in last in every competition. This leaves them with the least desirable chores constantly. Having had enough of this, Christy decides she is going to run away. John and Dawn run after her, getting lost. True Heart brings them up to The Kingdom of Caring to help with the cubs while she and Noble Heart try to find Christy. While John and Dawn are earning their babysitting badges, Christy remains lost on Earth, where she runs into Dark Heart. Christy makes a Faustian deal with Dark Heart. She will be camp champ, and he will ask her for a favor at a future date. We then have a time lapse where The Care Bears and The Care Bear Cousins are taken to,
“[t]wo different timeless locations where the little cubs could grow up big and strong in what seemed to be the twinkling of an eye”
It is unclear how long this time lapse is but I get the impression the entire course of the movie happens in one summer.
A beautiful thing they did with transitions in this movie is added fun songs. While the soundtrack isn’t award winning, it did help with the transitions and time lapses that occurred during the movie. Right around the time any adult would be thinking, “There’s got to be something I can clean around here,” a jaunty song starts. My kids (ages 6 and 4), who watched the movie with me this time, really enjoyed “The Fight Song”3. Which has rhythmic clapping throughout.
As one would expect, the devil –I’m sorry, Dark Heart –comes to remind Christy of her promise. He then uses her to start capturing the Care Bears and their Cousins. After one such successful job, Dark Heart gets overly excited while in a canoe, causing him to fall and hit his head, knocking him unconscious and dropping him into the lake. Dark Heart expresses surprise after Christy rescues him where she delivers the line that will later save a soul:
“Good or bad, you’re still a person, or whatever you are.”
Christy to Dark Heart
The Care Bears recruit John and Dawn to help them with Christy while they take care of Dark Heart. This leads to one of those “Wait, what?!” moments for me as even though the cubs have been aged to be much older, John and Dawn immediately recognize them as the cubs they cared for earlier this same summer. John and Dawn find Christy and remind her that their friendship is more important than being camp champ, and that she has always been best at marbles, even before she met Dark Heart.
Christy agrees to go with John and Dawn and they just miss Dark Heart’s scheme being brought to fruition. Christy uses her influence with Dark Heart to stand between everyone else and danger. At one-point, Dark Heart gets frustrated with her, saying “You saved my life, Christy. Now run and save yourself. Go!”. As the final battle rages, Christy gets hurt trying to help, and with what appears to be the last of her strength takes a marble out of her pocket and manages to use her Marble Champ skills to rescue the rest of The Care Bears and Care Cousins . The battle continues until it appears that Dark Heart is going to turn to Christy to gloat and, realizes she has been badly injured. Christy’s previous words echo (“Good or bad, you’re still a person”), and Dark Heart has a moment of clarity about his actions. He turns to The Care Bears for assistance. . The Care Bears explain that they are unable to help Christy, they don’t have the power. Dark Heart has a moment of theodicy where he questions why they have powers at all if they can’t save Christy. Dawn points out that everyone in the room cares; maybe other people do, too! This leads Noble Heart to break the fourth wall and ask the audience for help. Before you can say, “Clap! Don’t let Tink die, Clap!” from Peter Pan4, they use the audiences love and caring to help them save Christy. It is my personal belief that it is actually Dark Heart starting to chant that ultimately brings her back; after all, Noble Heart explains, “Your Evil left you when you admitted how much you really cared”. This could be read as; your magical abilities left when you proved you could care about another, and without those he couldn’t hold the spell on Christy.
There are definite strong overtones of Christianity in this movie5, but at the same time, they are almost being mocked. Yes, we can think of The Great Wishing Star as God, Care-a-lot as Heaven, The Care Bears as angels, and Dark Heart as the Devil as Mike McLane points out in his review of the movie.6 But if you wish to look at the film through this lens, you must also see equating God to a wishing star is demeaning to the Christian faith. Given the redemption of Dark Heart at the end of the film, I also find it hard to equate him to the Devil, and more easily equate him to a lost soul in need of redemption (if we’re keeping the working theory of Christianity as the core of the film). Regardless of personal beliefs, I do think that the Golden Rule of treating others the way you wish to be treated is displayed in this film, and that leaving children with the sense that they can be a force of good in the world is always a good thing.
About the writer
Cori Domschot
Cori is a writer, wife, and mother to two adorable kiddos.
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