What Does It Mean To Morph? LIFE’S A MASQUERADE

“But Keeper, we’re too scared.”
“Bones took only a symbol of your bravery, but not your bravery itself.  Is there any battle you would not fight to save your friends?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you see, everyone has fears, but true courage is finding the strength to fight even when you are afraid.”
~Dino Charge, “Knight After Knights”

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Morphing is very special to the Power Rangers fandom: the act of taking a person and giving them the ability to transform into a superhero is one of a kind for network television in the US.  For me in particular, it was what always set the show apart from other shows and stories about heroes and always had a way of transplanting that perceived heroism from the screen into my heart, and here today, right now, we’re going to talk about why it makes us/me pay attention.  I’ve been wanting to write this up for some time, so buckle up, baby, because I ain’t pulling no punches here.

Let’s start where we usually start, which is with some definitions and groundwork.  So, unless you stumbled onto this page by accident after emerging from a Cold War bunker and are still engaged, let me tell you all about ‘morphing’: in the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers premiere episode Day Of The Dumpster, Zordon tells his selected teenagers with attitude that he is passing ‘power morphers’ to them, which Billy clarifies as a shortened version of the word ‘metamorphosis’, or ‘to change’.  My pal Jimmy Wales says that metamorphosis is, “…a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.” (Remember that.)  Though not entirely clear initially, when the young teens activate their morphers, they transform into a superhuman fighting force, complete with a unique battle suit, weapons, helmet, an extensive arsenal, and even Zords, meant to do battle with the enemies of good and decency in the universe.  Reasons for selection are far and wide, but what matters here is that the morpher is, by intent expressed in the show, meant to change the user so that they can combat bad guys.

This is nothing new in fiction.  The farther back we go in tokusatsu, long before MMPR ever came ashore in North America, young heroes had been transforming on television in this format since 1973’s Kamen Rider and 1975’s Himitsu Sentai Goranger.  Farther back, you could possibly count 1966’s Ultraman as the true progenitor to the contemporary henshin sequence, with the main character merging his life force with that of a dying celestial Ultraman and allowing himself able to switch between the two identities at will.

The idea of using special equipment to change one’s nature is not inherently Japanese, however, but a very human one: ancient Greek myth tells us that during the Trojan War, the great warrior Achilles was revered among the Greek army besieging Troy for his inability to be killed, giving rise to the myth that his mother dipped him in the river Styx as a baby making him an unkillable man.  His presence in combat roused the rest of the men to a very uncertain victory against a well-entrenched enemy: when Achilles was afield, they knew they couldn’t lose, because in their eyes, he was something more than a man.

So when Achilles stopped fighting over a squabble about a woman with Greek chief commander Agamemnon, the soldiers lost hope.  Their losses became more staggering, morale dropped, and the war effort was beginning to be lost.  After months of setbacks, the Greeks seemed defeated as the Trojans began a series of attacks against their beachhead and threatened to destroy their ships.  When all seemed lost, a man was seen wearing Achilles’ armor and spurring his tough-as-nails Myrmidons to fight, using the symbol of Achilles and his return to arms as a way to boost the Greeks back to fighting spirit and save the day.  However, when Prince Hector of Troy kills the man they think to be Achilles, they find the man under the helmet to be none other than Achilles’ fuckboy Patroclus, upset at Achilles’ lack of conviction over a menial dispute with Agamemnon, and decided that the Greek army NEEDED Achilles back in the ranks, even if it wasn’t Achilles.

The Greeks made a hero of an ordinary man who had taken up some very meaningful armor under extraordinary circumstances, which is also how I often define the genre of tokusatsu.  When you compare the tokusatsu hero to other well-known superheroes, like Captain America, we can count their differences based on how their powers originate: Captain America is given his power biologically as the subject of a super soldier experiment, and he is changed forever.  He is no longer Steve Rogers, Some Dude From Brooklyn: he is Captain America, super soldier strongman, also sometimes known as Steve Rogers if you know him.

In contrast, when we meet Tommy Oliver, he’s just the new guy in town, minding his own business and doing what he’s supposed to do.  He’s selected by Rita to become her evil Green Ranger, which backfires and creates a place for him on the Mighty Morphin’ team, and after it’s all said and done, Tommy is still Tommy.  Physically, he has not been altered or changed in any way, and he doesn’t have to make any attempts to conceal who he really is, because at the end of Power Rangers, he will still just be Tommy Oliver, normal guy.  Take a look at this monologue from Kill Bill (plenty of Billy to go around, folks) to better understand what I mean:

Many classical superheroes have their powers inside of them, physically/biologically ingrained in them, and thus, they can only ever be special in some way and must decide whether or not they are going to be a hero or a villain, because they’ll never NOT be a freak.  In the world of Power Rangers (or, at least, many variations of it), we take completely normal people, modern peasantry, and present them with an extraordinary threat to their home and their way of life.  By themselves, they are unable to fight back, but with the availability of special weapons and equipment that are equally extraordinary, they have a chance to save themselves and their way of life.  But in order to do that, they have to become something more than they are, something bigger than they or anyone else can understand is possible to become.  Therefore, the character of the Power Ranger is not just a secret identity, but a war identity necessary to present to both the people being defended, the enemy, and the people utilizing the tools of the Power Ranger.  It is a noble thing in the show to see a non-uniformed civilian make a stand against an evil space alien, but more often than not, the civilian is unable to conquer the foe.

Consider this: Billy Cranston by himself and unequipped is not enough to stop one of Rita’s major goons.  However, by transforming his identity into that of a Ranger, wearing their uniform, wearing their ‘face’, using their weapons, Billy is able to transcend being JUST nerdy Billy Cranston: he becomes a warrior with a skill set and a colossal assault vehicle ready to respond to any threat to his home.  The helmets could be functional and plain, but they are designed in such a way that they bring out faces and designs and forms that are meant to inject fear into the heart of the enemy.  Again, by himself, wearing his glasses and his bowl-cut hair, Billy Cranston wouldn’t do much to show himself as formidable to the likes of Goldar, but wearing a ‘face’ depicting a ferocious dinosaur evens the odds.  Even if it works the other way and Billy is afraid to death of what he sees when Goldar appears, the helmet covers that face up: when he is most afraid, if he cries or bleeds or even dies, the only thing the enemy will ever see is the stone cold gaze of the Blue Ranger.

And that’s what the morphing sequence is for: remember the definition?  “…a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.”  Through the use of a power morpher, people like Billy are voluntarily deciding to change themselves physically and mentally into something completely different than themselves so they can save their planet.  It’s all right there in the very first episode: Power Rangers go from average nobody to super somebody and don’t look back, and the transformation into a Power Ranger is so polarizingly different that the Rangers behave differently.  They have martial arts styles and moves that distinguish them from their teammates, they are more expressive when they talk to each other, they can even sound differently from their civilian counterparts.  They are so unique and committed to scaring the enemy that, in Sentai, they announce who they are upon their arrival in the famous role call.  The morph into a Power Ranger is all-encompassing and a total conversion, even if they still refer to their pre-hero names when in the middle of a fight.

But the morph is most important BECAUSE of the way it converts anyone into a hero.  The elements that lead up to and that occur during the morph sequence are more than preparatory jerking off and filling in screen time: first, the heroes have to recognize that their home or planet or way of life is under attack, threatened by something bigger than anything their kind have ever known.  They must recognize it and acknowledge the risks that come with being a defender of their home, because if they find they don’t have the guts, the absolute worst time would be during the fight itself.  Zordon’s original laying out of how things were was pretty blunt for a reason: he wanted his candidates for Rangerhood to know what they were getting into, and held nothing back from them, and lo and behold, the five fated teenagers with attitude were initially skeptical with the offer.

However, when pressed into combat by Putty Patrollers, the teens decide to morph.  At that time, at every time after that, shouting the name of the dinosaur that held their powers was not just some kind of safety mechanism or a summoning of the powers within, but a voluntary act that says, “I will fight, and by aggressively activating these powers, I show my conviction to do war with the intergalactic enemy.”  As a kid, this was what I always saw when they shouted ‘Its Morphin Time’: the civilian did not become a hero when the suit and the helmet were phased onto their bodies, it is a MENTAL transition as much as a physical one.  If Billy Cranston was still mentally fully Billy Cranston when he wears his battle suit, that wouldn’t do much good, would it?  It is when the Rangers show resolve to resist the enemy’s advances that they become the multi-colored heroes, and for a brief moment during those morphing sequences, we see the hero unmasked and bare before he disappears under the face he bears to the enemy.

To contrast again to superheroes who have their powers as a part of themselves, they have no choice, like I said.  Power Rangers get the choice to fight or opt out: heroes likened to the Avengers or the X-Men or the Justice League are bound by the fact they are forced to get involved, because usually if they don’t, trouble finds them anyway.  Take Peter Parker for example: one of the biggest story arcs of the original Spider-Man comics was when Peter Parker refused to be Spider-Man anymore, but found he was unable to let it go.  The story was used as the basis for the second Sam Raimi movie, where Peter’s powers were fading and he was able to happily give up superhero-ing to have a normal life, but found that because he could never truly be rid of the identity itself, he could never truly be simply Peter Parker ever again.  To simply contrast for us who know the material well, the Power Rangers are somewhat able to master balancing their civilian lives and their monster-stomping lives, even if it requires some occasional trials, but they are able to pick up and drop being a Ranger whenever they like: some of the biggest moments in early Ranger history were the power transfers in Mighty Morphin’ and Turbo.  One of the most emotional moments for me as an original viewer was seeing Justin watch the NASADA shuttle leave at the end of Turbo, knowing he was putting down the cause for good and didn’t have it in him to go into space to pursue evil; just as he voluntarily stood up when Rocky couldn’t do the job, he stepped back down when he decided leaving Earth was not something he was willing to do.

So, what does this mean?  Again, comic characters are bound by what’s in their blood to become either heroes or villains and it’s generally an inescapable narrative.  The attitude and the courage are what binds a Ranger to his suit, but they are symbiotic: the suit cannot act on its own (unless it’s an Ranger clone plot, usually bad guys, always proven ineffective in actual combat application to live bodies), and there is no Blue Ranger independent from Billy Cranston.  While Billy must morph his being into the Ranger, he also retains a part of himself that powers the powers, in a sense.  That power is courage.  We’ve talked about how the Rangers choose to suit up despite all odds, but we’ve glossed over the fact that courage is the most important component of a Power Ranger’s arsenal.

I believe Power Rangers require an element of derring-do to truly be warriors, to be able to face the terrible odds stacked against them and not give up.  It’s the mental requirement for the volunteer in them, the thing that either springs up or does not for the candidate to decide whether or not they will fight, and if they decide to, it is what drives them more than anything else to secure the victory.  This is what has made Power Rangers more relatable than many other forms of superhero fiction: not everyone can be strong or shoot spider webs or grow into an invincible behemoth and stomp around, but in all of our lives, we have had moments of intense, overriding fear, something that affected us so powerfully that we had to decide what we were going to do about it.  Sometimes we decide to do nothing, but when we are threatened internally, when our safety is at risk, we have to put on a mask and resist.

Masks are interesting: they serve to transplant someone into something else, even though we know it’s fake and underneath is someone trying to hide who they are.  But we use masks every day and have different roles to fill wherever we go: at work, we transform into the accountant or the cook.  At the grocery store, we transform into a customer that needs stuff and is subservient to the rules of the property.  At home, we are sometimes not our true selves to save face or to avoid conflict or to affect the lives of our families in a way that doesn’t worry them.  Even all alone, sometimes we don’t take off that mask and don’t want to confront the fact that underneath we feel weak and unable to confront whoever the enemy is by ourselves.  That’s why I have always appreciated Saban showing the Power Rangers without helmets through the years (or even better, BATTLE DAMAGED helmets), because their mask is suddenly gone; they can’t hide behind a black visor and a smooth design, they have to grit their teeth and prove visually that they’ve still got fight left in them.

But courage is the great equalizer because it arms even the most unable and average of us to combat extraordinary odds that appear.  When Patroclus appeared at the Greek ships as Achilles, he wasn’t just arming himself as an invincible person, he was arming his comrades with the will to succeed and fight back the Trojans.  When the Power Rangers arm themselves year after year after year, humans as mean and ill-mannered as Bulk and Skull find themselves also willing to step up to a great foe like Astronema and do battle with a slew of alien grunts.  Human will is powerful, and to be able to harness it to do good is the most noble thing anyone can do.  What really makes the Rangers Rangers is what they do in their off time: the personality of the warrior bleeds through to their civilian lives, and they are seen working to get rid of litter and promoting recycling and teaching kids to try their hardest playing soccer and contributing to school functions and finishing their homework and working toward moral good in their community.  While their identities as a civilian and as a Ranger are separate, they are also symbiotic while the mantle of Ranger is taken up and wind up feeding off of one another: though the civilian can live without the Ranger, the Ranger cannot live without the good heart of the civilian and lives only to ensure goodness prevails, which causes the civilian to work harder toward creating and preserving it.

And that closes another chapter of the Knight’s Gospel.  This is one of the biggest reasons why Power Rangers has resonated with me for so long: warrior identity and the process of morphing as a verbal contract saying you agree to fight until you die and powering it with courageous will to defend what’s yours is a universal concept.  We are, all of us, average in some way, but that doesn’t mean we don’t lack the tools to be extraordinary.

I’d like to thank YOU, the reader, for reading and/or pretending to read and comprehend the trash I’ve just been talking, and also my assistant Billy for having done such a wonderful job providing insight and commentary.

Until next time, be courageous and press on regardless.