Mighty Morphin Keeping Secrets
This is a guest post from my terrific husband, Matt. While watching Power Rangers, we come up with commentary and theories that don’t appear in the show. I asked him to write about one of these theories.
When Zordon recruited the Power Rangers, he laid out three simple rules:
1. Never use your powers for personal gain
2. Never escalate a battle unless Rita forces you to
3. Never reveal your secret identity
Rule 3 seems pretty tough to maintain when your elite soldiers are high school students. When monsters arrive, the Rangers need to stop it — even if it means leaving class in the middle of a test. The unmistakable beep of the communicator means there is an emergency and lives hang in the balance. Nothing else matters. Get permission to use the restroom and teleport to the command center.
It always seemed weird to me that there were no repercussions when the Rangers bailed on their classes. If I missed school, I needed a note from my mom that explained my absence otherwise it was marked as “unexcused” and could potentially affect my grades. Why weren’t the Rangers forced to serve detentions, repeat grades, or wash their teachers’ cars for extra credit?
Simple: The teachers know who they are.
All of the adults know who they are.
Ernie. The Rangers spend a lot of time at Ernie’s juice bar. When Zordon pages them, they conspicuously head to the entrance, shout the names of their beasts, and within ten minutes the Megazord is battling the Pumpkin Rapper in the abandoned warehouse district. Ernie talks to them regularly, enough that he trusts them to keep an eye on the juice bar if he needs to step out for a bit. How has he never noticed their odd behavior? How can he be unaware of who they really are? The only explanation is that Ernie has known from the beginning and knows to keep quiet about what he knows. Maybe Zordon notified key adults, such as parents, teachers, and Ernie; perhaps Ernie was once a Power Ranger himself and knows that Zordon only entrusts Ranger powers to people with integrity.
Mr. Kaplan. I recently watched an episode ofTurbo where Cassie was trying to postpone taking a test because she had been busy with “outside interests.” Mr. Kaplan, the principal of Angel Grove High, doesn’t ask her what outside interests are more important than her classes, he simply says, “Perhaps you should take an interest in school.” Kind of odd, right? In my experience, educators always seemed a bit territorial, always wanting to know what could possibly be more important than the class they teach, or education in general. If something is allegedly more important, teachers will ask what that thing is… unless they already know. Mr. Kaplan knows that Cassie is a Power Ranger. Maybe he was able to successfully juggle his Ranger duties and his education, and thinks that all Rangers should be as capable. Maybe he wasn’t a Ranger, but is bitter that Ernie was chosen over him.
The Parents (!). Put on your imagination hat for a minute and walk through this with me: The siren at the end of the street begins to howl. A heartbeat later, the plates in the kitchen rattle as giant footsteps shake the earth. You know the drill, but when you look out the window and see the enormous beast, your body goes rigid and you can’t look away, much less seek shelter. At this moment, you have but one thought: “Oh my God, where is my son?”
This happens with every monster attack. Could Zordon be that cruel? To order a bunch of teenagers to scare their parents with such frequency? I don’t think so, which is why I must believe that the parents all know what their children do.
As Sarah and I have been making our way through the series, I’ve been making cracks about the parents being okay because they all used to serve as Power Rangers, so they know their kids are going to be fine. Toward the end of Power Rangers Zeo, there is a Christmas episode where an elderly Tommy is telling his grandson about one of the Rangers’ adventures. At the end of the episode, the kid’s older brother arrives to pick him up. While he is talking to Tommy, we hear the signature communicator beep and the older brother says, “uh, I have to take care of something.” The younger one gets mopey and says, “Healways has to take care of something,” to which old Tommy says, “It must run in the family.”
The parents aren’t worried when their kids are missing during a monster attack. They know that their kids are their best hope for survival. I imagine some of them get together to sit on the roof and drink beer while waxing nostalgic about “the good ol days” when they were the ones battling the forces of evil.
If the adults all know what is going on, why does Zordon insist on secrecy? Simple: The Power Rangers are high school students. Smart kids are taunted for being smart. Artistic kids are insulted for being artistic. Gay kids are mocked for being gay. It’s not that big of a stretch to imagine Power Rangers being berated for being Power Rangers. Everyone would want to see them use their powers. Harmless kids would be asking them to jump onto the roof to retrieve lost frisbees, while the more violent types would constantly be ganging up on them to try and prove their own toughness. The Rangers would either have to fight back unmorphed and risk sustaining serious injuries, or morph and risk seriously injuring the bullies, rocketing themselves to the top of the social order and making themselves targets for every bully in the school. Either way, they wouldn’t be operating at maximum efficiency, which would put the earth in great danger.
The secrecy is also a good way to teach them humility. Being unable to publicly identify themselves as the people in the suits, they never lose sight of the fact that a Power Ranger is an average person with massive force multipliers. It’s a pretty clever tactic on Zordon’s part, actually, as I can’t think of a single episode where a Ranger started thinking, “Hey, I’m awesome!” and causing problems for the team (you know, at least not without some sort of mind-control spell being involved). The Rangers seem to struggle with insecurity far more than ego, such as when Zack got depressed when he thought everyone forgot his birthday, or the time Rocky took on a monster by himself because he felt like Jason had replaced him. Ego never seems to be a problem, and that can’t be entirely accidental.
Who else do you think might need to know the Rangers’ true identities?
Tags: conspiracy, power rangers