Initially rejected by American networks,
Mighty Morphin
Power Rangers has continued growing in popularity beyond comparison to
any other U.S. produced youth action adventure program in history; and the
phenomenon is conquering markets in most European countries as well. This
success is all the more phenomenal in light of the many obstacles placed before
the show. There have been entire campaigns and petitions organized against
it; all failed. Millions of loyal fans refuse to abandon the series. No
mere fad now,
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has introduced an entire
new generation of American youth to the wonders of Japanese live-action
programming.
Power Origins
The roots of Power Rangers lie in the long and rich history of television's
sentai series, from
Goranger to the present. (For a breakdown of
the first twenty-years of the Sentai Series, see Jim Cirronella's
Twenty Years of Super
Sentai) Contrary to practice in America, a successful action
show in Japan is often followed not by more years of the same, but by other
shows with completely different characters and storylines, adhering to the
same formula as the original.
As the Sentai concept evolved under Toei producers Takeyuki Suzuki and Susumu
Yoshikawa, the popularity of Toei's TV version of Marvel Comics' Spiderman
inspired an addition to the format. (This was also about the time that Marvel
introduced Japanese related characters like Godzilla and the Shogun Warriors
to the American public.) Before Spiderman, American superheroes had gained
little purchase in the Japanese market; it is notable that this one succeeded
perhaps mainly to the very Japanese story written (by Saburo Hatte and Shozo
Uehara) for his 1978 TV debut, in which Spiderman gains his spider powers
from an extraterrestrial and has a giant robot sidekick named Leopardon.
Leopardon's popularity led to the first incorporation of a robot into a sentai
series,
Battle Fever J (1979). Thus the sentai series came to be known
as the Super Sentai series, due to the increasingly heavier powers of the
giant robots that would be used against mutant villains who had the ability
to grow into city- destroying giants.
Haim Saban of Saban Entertainment is reported to have been introduced to
the sentai series while on a business trip in Japan. The memory of the show
inspired him to spend the necessary time and years negotiating with Toei
for a coproduction. U.S. audiences had had a glimpse of the sentai
show
Dynaman, courtesy of the USA Network's music video show
Night
Flight. This version dubbed comedic dialogue over everything, ridiculing
everything from the production values to the actors. Fortunately, this offense
was soon cancelled. Also fortunately, making fun of a sentai show was the
last thing on Saban's mind; if anything he was convinced that the uniqueness
of the exciting action sequences could totally captivate young American audiences,
who would have seen literally nothing like it. Saban did feel, however,
that the concept should be reintegrated into a series which would star a young
multi-ethnic cast that would be easier for Western kids to relate to; he
would create a sentai that would work as well for Americans as Japan's did
for Japanese. Toei had no problem with the idea, and the deal was made.
Henshin! From Zyuranger to Power Rangers
The program selected for the experiment was
Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger,
or "Dinosaur Team Beastranger." (An allusion to the word " Jurassic" may also
have been intended, making them "Jurassic Rangers.") Saban and his partner
Shuki Levy created a version in which the Rangers would be played by young
American actors capable of performing authentic martial arts stunts, inspired
by the Japanese actors' work in the original. (The sentai performers have
traditionally been drawn from the disciplined ranks of the Japan Action Club,
founded in 1969 by legendary martial arts star Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba.) Haim
Saban's pre-Rangers career developed from a stint as a concert promoter in
Israel to a career as a manager-producer in the French music industry. He
successfully marketed American TV theme songs in Europe, and went on to produce
music of his own for American TV cartoons such as
Masters of the Universe.
From there he expanded into producing the animated shows themselves, developing
a burgeoning international company.
Saban's vision of the Power Rangers saw them all as teenage superheroes
with a strong moral fiber and dedication to the martial arts. It would be
emphasized that they found a greater degree of self-confidence through their
dedication, yet in many ways they would also be typical high school teenagers,
from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The five are chosen, by an interdimensional
being that calls itself Zordon, to defend their community and the world against
alien invaders. The five may call upon the spirits of ancient prehistoric
creatures and are entrusted with the control of the powerful Dinozords.
The record-breaking ratings for
Power Rangers, shown every day except
Sundays in most American markets, created a demand for still more episodes.
Saban promptly commissioned Toei for new footage with new monsters. One aspect
of the U.S. version is that it has been very successful at reproducing the
overall frenetic tone of the Sentai series. The monsters retain their insane
characteristics which juxtapose the most bizarre bad- taste personalities
with awesomely powerful, brutal abilities.
Where else could you find a snorting pig monster wearing an oversized Roman
warrior's helmet, using a knife and fork as his weapons of choice while
threatening to conquer humanity through starvation by devouring all the
world's food supply in days? Or how about a pumpkin-headed "rapper" that
raps all of his dialogue in delirious rhymes as he prepares to fry the Rangers
with blasts of electrocuting energy? The monsters aren't quite as lethal
as they were in the Japanese productions though, since depictions of their
slaughter are edited out over here, as are any indications of death tolls
racked up in the destruction of unevacuated buildings. (In the originals,
the monsters are not above laughing, singing or dancing as they do this.)
The American version also retains some of the myth-like qualities of
the original shows, whose stories often have roots in ancient Asian myths
and legends, as well as ancient Western fairy tales, from the Greeks up to
the Brothers Grimm. Where
Power Rangers has fallen shortest of the
original sentai, aside from the obvious continuity dilemmas presented by
a show that uses American location shots in one scene and Japanese ones in
the next, is in the overall drama.
The Japanese writers are not afraid of taking a premise as ridiculous as
a giant possessed teddy bear, or an evil tomato king, and still including
a fairly well-constructed subplot, perhaps involving a child who lost its
parents during the villains' rampage. Subjects from self-sacrifice and suicide
to child abuse have been addressed in the sentai shows; main characters have
been killed, and it is not unusual for even the youngest of heroes to emerge
from battles with bleeding injuries. The total absence of any of this from
Power Rangers tends to make the battles seem easier, sometimes too
easy, for the characters; it means the show's high-camp level gets more attention
than it deserves. The American stunts cannot compare with the JAC's
work, but have been consistently improving, and easily surpass much of what
is being paraded across the screen in many big-budget Hollywood movies. The
Rangers' battles have integrated such diverse styles as karate, tae kwon do,
judo, and jujitsu, also incorporated with gymnastics, acrobatics and even
hip-hop dance steps.
One of the show's stunt doubles, Richard Branden, is a nationally ranked
tournament forms competitor and wu shu stylist, as well as a black belt hall
of fame member and the 1992 Kung Fu Artist of the Year. Doubling for the Black
Ranger and Goldar, Branden broke his leg during the shooting of one episode,
tearing the membrane from the heel up to his calf. This happened while doing
a back tuck, which required suspension from two wires attached to a pole
above his head; a wire snapped on his third rotation. Even with such specific
restrictions as absolutely- no-head-strikes,
Power Rangers stunt work
is definitely only for the very well trained.
Toei ships to the production all the monster and villain suits necessary
for extra shooting with the American actors. Building of matching props,
when necessary, is the job of prop director Mark Richards and his assistant
Hunter Cressall. Among the outdoor locations used are the Vasquez Rocks,
where the original
Star Trek sometimes shot, and Bronson Caverns,
which doubled as Batman's 1960s Batcave, as well as a location for many 1950's
science fiction films.
New special effects are assigned to Modem Videofilm of Burbank, California,
under the direction of Brian Longbotham, a veteran of over 22 years' special
effects experience in both TV and features. He assembled a team of creative
animators with little or no previous experience in professional effects production,
wanting to create a unique and fresh look for the series, as well as guaranteeing
a young and dedicated staff willing to adhere to a schedule as hectic as
6 PM to 3 AM, seven days a week! The staff also includes visual effects
coordinator Mickie Reuster and artists Rick Cortes, Trent Shumway and Rick
Shick. On the average, a single episode of
Power Rangers incorporates
16mm footage with almost three minutes worth of computer-generated and live
action effects; usually some 70 effects shots per show that must be produced
in a matter of hours.
Longbotham's team is responsible for such effects as Zordon's interdimensional
appearance, which is achieved through a multichannel kaleidoscope composite.
The disintegration of the Putties and other monsters is done in Claymation;
the ever-abundant lightning effects are both hand-drawn and computer-generated.
From Rejection to Historical Success
When Haim Saban first tried to introduce his Rangers concept to network
execs, all that he found was one rejection after another. There is a strong
consensus among these decision-makers as to what will work for American children
and what won't.
Power Rangers, they felt, was best not even considered
for broadcast, had no chance of survival in the current era of glamorous high-tech
multibillion-dollar special effects. Such reasoning became the greatest
stumbling block for Saban, forming a mountain that seemed insurmountable.
Only after approaching Margaret Loesch of the Fox Children's Network did things
begin to change.
"Everybody," Loesch said, "including my boss, has said the same thing:
what a piece of junk. It may have lousy production values, but it has fantastically
imagined characters." (Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children's Television,
added "It's a shame that such conceptually interesting creativity is put
to the service of such a rotten program.")
Founded with the idea that kids enjoy diversity in programming as much
as their parents do, the Fox Children's Network made an effort to introduce
different and unique kinds of commercial programming for young audiences,
shows that ranged from the superhero action of
The X-Men and
Batman:
The Animated Series to the comedic misadventures of
Tiny Toons
or
Animaniacs.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was unique
in the world of American TV for kids in that it was a live-action adventure,
not another cartoon. Almost all live-action shows for kids had been gone
from American TV for years; early morning TV was drowning in news, talk shows
and cartoons. Margaret Loesch was already aware of the comparative wealth
of Japanese kids' live-action TV and had wanted to find or create something
comparable herself.
So the decision was made, and the series exploded almost overnight into
one of the hottest phenomena ever to hit American television. In its first
week of syndication,
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers made ratings history
.The Saturday broadcast (October 30, 1993) captured an unprecedented 11.5
rating/40 share with children of 2-11 years, and an extraordinary 13.6 rating/45
share for those aged 6 to 11. In the history of the network, no series in
those key demographic groups had ever scored so high, outdoing all the competition
combined as well. From the first airing,
Power Rangers was well on
its way to becoming the most popular children's show ever to air on American
television!
Ratings throughout the 90s found the show collecting anywhere from a 30
share to a 60 - that's sixty percent of the viewing audience. The show was
off the charts even compared to much adult programming; some surveys estimate
that over half of all TV-watching children in the U.S. were fans. In
two other important areas, the show broke more ground. It confounded usual
network thinking about action shows being traditionally viewed only by young
boys. As much as 40% of the audience for
Power Rangers was female.
And as well, though the show was marketed toward children, a surprising percentage
of teenagers and even young men in their twenties identify themselves as
fans of the show, almost unheard of for programming tagged with the 'kiddie"
label.
Mighty Controversial Characters
When Saban originally envisioned the
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,
could he or anyone else have imagined that they would become the subjects
of such controversy in the English-language press? They have been called literally
everything from the best current live-action role models for kids to the
absolute worst heroes that children of any age could have, blamed for inciting
not just violence in young viewers but outright murders as well. Some
American Sentai fans have thrown accusations of racism at Saban for the removal
of the original Japanese casts; yet some Japanese fans welcome their addition
and voice disappointment that the American Rangers are not broadcast in
their country. Perhaps the main factor preventing Toei from having created
just such a multi-racial Sentai in the past may have lain in the obvious
difficulties inherent in finding non-Japanese (or non-Asian ) talent capable
of being able to execute the martial arts training and speak fluent Japanese
at the same time.
At first glance, the
Power Rangers may seem like a group born out
of the ideas of American political correctness. Interestingly, even as the
very notion of political correctness has come under considerable question
in recent years, the Rangers have still been criticized for being not politically
correct enough. Articles have appeared in TV Guide and certain newspapers
accusing the Rangers of perpetuating negative stereotypes. Some of these opinions
are obviously based on single viewings of not more than one, or a random
handful of episodes. For instance the Jason character, the original
Red Ranger, is attacked for glorifying the image of the All-American dumb
hunk; never mind that he maintains a straight "A" average. And his level of
"patriotism" would certainly be challenged by certain people due to his embrace
of the "non-Christian" martial arts, which is shown to be far more of a way
of life for him than just a hobby. More intriguing yet is that Jason debunks
the common American stereotype of the sex-crazed girl-chasing jock; in fact
he is the only one of the original characters never to have a love interest.
The character of Zack, the original Black Ranger, has been targeted as
recalling a negative African-Arnerican stereotype because he has a passion
for dance, he sings, and thinks of himself as a guy who can defuse situations
of conflict with smooth talk and cleverness. He tries to win over his dream
girl Angela with sometimes outrageous displays (though she is not easily
impressed and often leaves poor Zack standing alone in the dust). Zack's
love of music and dance is very genuine, as is his talent, and thus are true
elements of his character rather than just superficial devices thrown in
for distraction. Insinuations that this represents a specific view of all
African-Arnericans are without substance. This is made perfectly clear when
Zack's cousin Curtis is introduced; they mention that talents in music and
dance are prevalent and encouraged in their family, not as an attribute of
race. (In several of Toei's Super Sentais, the black-costumed heroes have
been characters with mystic interests, sometimes ninjutsu, within dications
of a family tree that may include ninjas among his ancestors. This is especially
interesting in light of Zack's fondness for magic.
Even charges of sexism have been thrown at the Rangers, usually centering
on Kimberly's Valley Girl vernacular and her love of shopping at the mall.
But these are minor attributes compared to the depth of her confidence,
strength and independent thought. Kimberly, the original Pink Ranger and
Tripi, the original Yellow Ranger, have contributed more than their share
of solutions to a variety of dilemmas, and are believed to be a major reason
the show has so many female fans. (Others hold that they are watching it
for the cute guys.)
The character of the Blue Ranger, Billy, has shown perhaps the most growth.
Introduced as the token nerd, the kid who could never get his karate quite
right, still he showed a determination never to give up. He developed from
the shy, insecure brain of the group to an impressive and confident Ranger
learning to improve his martial arts skills. David Yost, who plays him,
observes: "The fans that look up to me are the ones who feel left out."
Many such children have run up to him at personal appearances, hugging him
repeatedly while thanking him just for being there for them. All of
the Rangers adhere to a code of behavior which prevents them from using their
martial arts against other humans to solve personal conflicts. It was rather
different in the Japanese sentai shows, which had more violent confrontations
and fewer chances of peaceful resolution.
As well, they take a strong anti-drug stand (while Japanese characters are
sometimes seen smoking and drinking). The American D.A.R.E. program (Drug
Abuse Resistance Education) was inspired to declare the Rangers as its official
National Teen Ambassadors in 1994. This hardly sat well with the critics who
think the show promotes violence as a means of solving problems, but that
didn't stop over 35,000 fans from showing up at a personal appearance the
Ranger actors made for D.A.R.E. at Universal Studios in California. The resulting
midmorning traffic jam backed the Hollywood Freeway up for miles; the ramps
leading to Universal had to be blocked off because the parking lots had all
filled up. The attendance was an all-time record.
The Anti-Power Rangers Movement
One wonders how insane the Asian entertainment industries might consider
the bizarre paranoia with which
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has
been met in this country. The show as broadcast here is far less violent
than any Toei sentai show, and those have been widely recommended to youths
because of what some see as the important social lessons in the stories.
But the Toei shows have come under fire in Japan as well; some social
critics raised petitions against TV Asahi and Toei for the violence of the
shows, with the pressure increasing throughout the eighties. The result
was a downsizing of the martial arts action, forcing the JAC to diversify
into other areas of entertainment just to keep above water. Ironically,
depite an often highly violent popular culture and a degree of urban crowding
that is unthinkable in most of America, Japan's rate of violent crime is
drastically lower, and their gun control laws notoriously strict.
While some Japanese parents are vocally worried about the effects of violent
shows like Toei's, as yet they have made no equivalent to a study done at
the California State University in Fullerton. There, researchers watched
52 day care students, half of whom were shown
Power Rangers that day,
half of whom weren't. Sure enough, the Ranger-watchers tried to imitate their
heroes on the playground, including the martial-arts movements. This led
to the dread pronouncement that the Ranger-watchers exhibited seven times
as much aggressive behavior as the non-watchers, and further outcries for
governmental regulation over all TV broadcasts. What sort of committee would
decide on what kind of standards, is the question. The study failed
to properly indicate whether the Ranger-watchers were actually trying to
hurt one another, or just play-acting, as children will do. ABC- TV's news
show
20/20 was moved to do a segment on it anyway, reported by John
Stossel, who obviously hated the show and was clearly ignorant of the whole
tradition behind the sentai series. Stossel did make the interesting point
that many traditional fairy tales are based on violent acts, and that some
psychologists maintain that such stories can help kids deal with their anger
and feelings of powerlessness in an adult-run world. Indeed, it was reported
that kids as young as five seemed to understand that the show isn't real,
and that was a factor in their enjoyment of the fantasy.
Even Adam West, TV's first Batman, got into the act. "(All I see) is a
story that sets up the violence. The MTV-style cuts and the sound all heighten
the impact and make it seem exciting. [On Batman] the fighting was incidental,
not gratuitous." And LeVar Burton,
Star Trek: The Next Generation's
Geordi LaForge, called the show "bad role modeling...and irresponsible
programming." "It's not so much the violence that kids like about Power
Rangers," added Peggy Charren. "It's that the show starts out with real teenagers
that they can relate to. It also draws in girls who think that Jason is cute.
But when the
Ninja Turtles were popular, kids were hitting each other
over the head with toy ninja swords. Now we're going to see more of these
types of playground incidents."
The media hysteria reached such a height that the
Power Rangers
were even tied to slave and child labor - not directly, of course: it was
accused that some of the factories contracted by Bandai to produce Ranger
toys used such labor. A tragic fire at one of these factories in Thailand
claimed an estimated 189 lives, and it was believed that the factory locked
the exits to prevent workers from stealing the toys. It transpired that the
toys were actually Bart Simpson dolls, and the incident did not in fact reach
the light until Kater Industries won another contract to produce Ranger toys
in China, TV's
American Journal checked out the factory, sending reporters
in the guise of businessmen, who saw similar terrible conditions.
Slave labor is somewhat a different issue than those surrounding
Power
Rangers; it is especially delicate in the face of America's struggling
with the issue of approaching China's immense and burgeoning markets. It must
be pointed out that if the Rangers should be boycotted, then so should all
the other U.S. toy companies who use the same factories. It was as if the
Power Rangers were being singled out as some great foreign evil that
would smash American society if not somehow stopped. One issue that
repeatedly surfaces in discussing the show involves the changing definition
of what constitutes violence on Western television. There is no visible bloodshed
on
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, no grisly gunbattles or shootings;
no humans are murdered at all. The extreme reation seems to be to the martial
arts sequences, which many Westerners seemingly cannot under00stand.
Apparently the ones not listening to the public service announcements the
show broadcasts are adults, who also seem to be the ones who need them the
most, if these extreme cases (and there are shockingly many more) are any
indication. Before the first show was ever aired, the FCC was already
against it: too violent for the kids. To avoid cutting too many scenes,
everyone reached an agreement: to create the public service announcements
that followed the episodes, and now precede some as well. Critics, unfortunately,
thought the messages were, variously, mixed and contradictory to condescending
and patronizing. However, the implication that young viewers are so impressionable
that they cannot tell the difference between real violence and fantasy,
is more insulting than anything ever portrayed on
Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers.
