The Unfortunate Planeteer

The idea behind the creation of planeteer Ma-Ti, the young, waifish South American moreno of questionable sexuality bestowed with the somewhat dubious power of “heart,” was a noble one—one which was, I’m sure, meant to convey that, in order to achieve the ideal in almost any cause or situation, one must have a sense of compassion, an awareness of the inherent good in others, and a respect for one’s surroundings. Laudable, indeed, but feebly executed in the Planeteers series.

Ma-Ti, as legend has it, having been brought up in an undetermined location in South America as the son of a tribal leader, was always an advocate of peace, and vociferously so, but apparently to no avail as he was orphaned in the throes of tribal warfare. Consequentially, he came to live with his grandfather, a “healer” type residing in the rain forests, who taught him the ways of natural medicine (presumably acupuncture, ginseng, Swedish massage, meditation, shit like that). He acquired his planeteer ring one day when he jumped in front of a jaguar who happened to be closing in on a monkey, and with a gesture, shooed the jaguar away. The monkey then bequeathed to him a ring inscribed with the heart symbol as a token of his appreciation.

This bequeathment is where the writers first went wrong (if we’re not counting the implicit fruitlessness of Ma-Ti’s anti-violence protest) in that Ma-Ti was, in saving that monkey, fucking with nature. He was disturbing the food chain and the Darwinian evolutionary process. No one stopped to ask “What about the jaguar?” No one stopped to ask, “What if Ma-Ti were to follow that Jaguar around for the rest of its life, jumping in front of it and shooing it away every time it was about to find its prey?” No one stopped to ask “What if all jaguars were prevented from eating all monkeys by ‘heroes’ like him?” The jaguar would die the agonizing death of starvation, as it has not evolved like the condor as a natural scavenger for carrion, and we’d be overrun by monkeys. The monkey got cornered. The monkey deserved to die.

What was happening here is a phenomenon all too widely spread of associating the “cuter” animals with a nobility that isn’t necessarily present. The monkey, in reality, was just as likely to be evil (which is a lexically ambiguous term as it is) as the jaguar. Personally, I’ve seen people who’ve struck and killed a Labrador pup with their Volkswagen become more upset and emotionally entangled in the event than people who have hit a skunk. The people who hit skunks are more likely to be concerned about the odor of the vehicle’s grill than the skunk’s untimely demise, while the puppy hitters are racked with guilt over killing a puppy. This is all, of course, completely unfounded in a logical sense (the animals are about the same size, both are mammals, etc.), and any true environmentally conscious person can recognize the hypocrisy involved this reaction and in Ma-Ti’s actions regarding the jaguar. He used his personal sense of bio-aesthetics to preserve one animal and let the other animal starve to death. Hitler, for one, shared a similar mindset.

The second shortcoming of the Ma-Ti character is the ambiguity of his power and role. His presence, I’m sure, was the byproduct of an ancient ad-hoc hypothesis. Empedocles, having made the famous pre-Socratic assertion that there were four elements—wind, water, fire, and earth—that made up the universe, also postulated a force called “love” and a force called “strife” to explain how some of the elements were attracted to one another, and some repelled. In the same way Empedocles fills in the blanks, the writers of this series, left with the task of “teaching a good lesson” decided to lazily toss in Heart in spite of his incongruity. His character’s powers range from healing abilities to telepathy and are never quite defined in any clear-cut way. Perhaps the nebulous nature of his powers was just a way to fill in the gaps in plot. Then again, the nebulousness could also be a byproduct of the thing it’s based on: what is Heart, anyway? Well, according to his ring, Heart has little to do with the cardiovascular organ cloistered in each of our ribcages. Instead, the symbol on the ring more closely resembles the graph of polar equation, p(θ) = 2r(1-cos θ). But I don’t think it has much do to with mathematics either.

The “heart” the writers are getting at is a vague, but ubiquitous concept meaning, at the most basic sense, some amalgam of courage, compassion, and righteousness. Harry Potter had “heart.” Rudy had “heart.” Gumby had “heart.”

But their “heart” didn’t radiate from a ring. All the other Planeteers seem to have this “point and fire” mechanism where they point the ring at some shit and say “Water!” or “Earth!” and crazy stuff will happen. Like a mountain grows under a lawn chair or a giant wave crashes on some sap who just dropped a Styrofoam coffee cup in the river. The idea is that, without their rings, they wouldn’t have this power to manipulate. Is this true of Ma-Ti? Heart isn’t something that you point and fire. It’s something that’s continually within. It’s a characteristic, not a power. The cartoon would be more coherent if Ma-Ti could point his ring and say “Heart!” and stuff would start circulating, or maybe he could point his ring and say “Heart!” and just spray blood all over stuff. Personally, I wouldn’t mess with someone who could spray blood all over me. Having a character with “Heart” powers is like having a character with “Brain” powers. Does he have to be wearing the ring to have a good idea? Does the idea only come when he says “Brains!” and points his ring at the local problem?

So considering all of these inconsistencies, one can plainly see the lack of thought that went into the creation of this character. Ma-Ti, or “Heart” or whatever you call him at home is one of the least coherent concepts in all of this century’s television, and he didn’t do much more than get captured all the time anyway. They might have done better with a “gravity” or “magnetism” character. However, the show is now cancelled, so we need not worry about him any longer aside from the example he might set for future screenwriters, or the occasional Halloween costume. I encourage all of you, though, to erase him from your memories, hide him from the children, for we don’t hate our children, and we don’t want them learning to wax Hitlerian, or to jump in front of jaguars.