Power Rangers Critique - Tv Show

lex Nguyen

Damron

UNST

March 9, 2014

Power Rangers Critique

During the 1990's a particular show became extremely popular with children and continues to be very popular to modern times. Although it was catered towards boys to an extent the show also has a good percentage of a female audience. That show was Power Rangers. Before getting into detail, one must understand some background about the show. The premise of the show includes a group of teenagers that are chosen in one way or another to become a group of crime-fighting superheroes of a sort. One more thing to note that this show was not an American -made production. Most action scenes from the show are taken from the original show series called "Super Sentai" of Japan.

This was a good topic to critique because it really gives an insight to what media wants to portray to children. You one may ask that what does a poorly funded children's show have to do with gender and sexualities studies? I ask, why wouldn't it? The term sexualities is an ever changing term that is tweaked little by little by society and popular culture at large. Are today's children not future adults of mainstream culture? What is taught to them in their childhood will be perpetuated when they are adults.

It was already mentioned earlier that the premise of the show was basically teenagers drafted to a higher calling of protecting the earth from whatever evil force was at the time. Be it from a higher being or government agency, they are given manacles and activate their powers/armor by doing a specific

movement and saying a catchphrase. Although the themes of each new season of the show differ, the main premise of the show remains the same throughout. For specific examples, we will look at the very first season of Power Rangers to premiere in the United States: The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Premiering in 1993, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was widely well received. What's interesting to note is all the scenes in the show not only reflect what the producers of the show were thinking, but also the thinking of the Japanese executives making the show also. As said before the fighting scenes were cut from the original Japanese version and put straight into the United States version for convenience. They were able to do this because most of their fight scenes were featured the main characters in the costume thus hiding their identities leaving the United States producers to only have to dub the voices. So by analyzing the fight scenes, we can critique the gender assumptions of the Japanese culture if only by a little. From the parts that the United States version had to produce such as the everyday interaction scenes, we can look into how the US producers portray teenagers to act, or how they are supposed to act.

With all that said, the details of the show truly are worth mentioning. Each member of the team is assigned a color out of red, blue, black, yellow, and pink. Now with the typical sexual binary at that time, it is somewhat obvious that the pink and yellow rangers would be girls while the boys were red, blue, and black. The red ranger is always the leader and to this day there hasn't been a female red ranger/leader in the American adaptation. Although the yellow ranger usually has been female, in the more current years we've seen both male and females bear the color yellow. Also, to note, the pink ranger has always been female. Another thought one should notice is that the weapons of the rangers tell a lot also. Each member is