“We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalising rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.”
―José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of beyond. Somewhere, elsewhere, where the landscape was a question mark and I could be anyone. I could be anyone but me, a person who didn’t seem to fit in the world no matter how many times I moved houses or switched schools. My first favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy was swept over the rainbow. My preteen fantasies involved the Hanson brothers whisking me away in their tour bus, and the dream ended there; it was just the leaving that I wanted. And I spent years in the woods of New Hampshire with my brother and neighbors pretending to be Power Rangers, the colorful, active, chosen “teenagers with attitude” that took 1990s culture by storm.
With decades of hindsight, I can see the appeal Power Rangers had for me as a young queer, neurodivergent person. Found family connects these characters to generations of Rangers stretching across time (and universes), and that made me feel like something outside of a bloodline could hold me. The Rangers fight to save the world (or, more regularly, to just survive) without revealing their identities, and that mirrored my own ineffable desire to live in two worlds: the one where I could blend right in, and the one where I would be understood and treasured. And then there was the simple solidarity of a Ranger team and its androgynous aesthetics: their uniforms and athleticism erased the gender of the characters when they’re in action. These characters were strange and marginalized and special.
In 2017, my brother and I won tickets to an advanced screening of Saban’s Power Rangers—a reboot that updated the 1990s characters and plot for a modern-day audience. We dressed up for a perfect night of sibling nostalgia; him in a red t-shirt, me in a pink leather jacket, both of us glittering with excitement. My expectations were so high that I felt kind of shaky, and so sincerely silly for feeling that way. I was almost thirty years old. So what if it was disappointing? We’d groan, walk back out into the night, and laugh about it. It shouldn’t matter at all.
But it somehow mattered, and when the movie was tacky, campy, uneven, and ridiculous… I was so happy. It was a perfect little escape. We freaking loved it, and thanks to $5 matinees at my local theater, I went to see it five more times by myself—incredibly aggressive even for me, a person who often loves things hard.
I didn’t know why I went back to that theater to sit in the dark alone, again and again, to watch a movie about kids in dinosaur superhero outfits combatting aliens with martial arts. I didn’t stop to question why tears streamed down my cheeks during the scene where all five rangers sit around a campfire and spill their guts. In the scene, they aren’t even able to morph yet, and they have to if they’re going to save the world. They try to bond in case that’s the key to unlocking their powers, and their faces in the firelight are serious and scared. Zack (Ludi Lin) shares that he dropped out of school to take care of his mom, who’s fatally ill (and “the best!” he screams at the sky). Billy (RJ Cyler), who is autistic, shares that he loves country music and is grieving the loss of his father. Kimberly (Naomi Scott) and Jason (Dacre Montgomery) talk—or don’t talk—about how they’re recovering popular kids running away from the toxic world they were beholden to and found themselves perpetuating.
And then there’s Trini (Becky G) who says she’s queer (without saying she’s queer) and is scared to tell her family. She’s afraid of being really known by anyone. Convinced she has no real friends, she believes that once the Rangers save the world from Rita Repulsa, they’ll disband and they won’t mean anything to each other anymore. Her voice in this scene is a weighted whisper that dances around everything she could say, but also can’t. She doesn’t have the words for what she’s going through, or the words for herself. A lot of viewers, especially queer viewers, were frustrated by this moment that doesn’t confirm her queerness, not really. But then…doesn’t it? She can hardly look up from the ground as she talks. She’s sure that she’s uncertain. Different. Questioning. She can’t say more.
And I hadn’t said more either. My queerness at the time was a quiet thing. I’d recently switched my dating apps to women but hadn’t told anyone. I hadn’t even begun to question my gender, and wouldn’t until many years later—but wasn’t I still queer too, even though I didn’t have the words for it then? While out, bold, confident, joyful representation is needed and crucial to LGBTQIA+ survival, isn’t there still value, too, in the wordless subtext, in the downward glances and the uncertain? There was value in it for me, crying in a theater because I was scared of not being queer enough, of what and who I stood to lose, of being alone always, not just in the dark matinees. To some it seems the representation was crumbs. To me it felt like seeds.
That campfire confession moment is right there, and then it’s only embers. The characters share those beats of who they are—what they’re afraid and ashamed of and what they hope for—and then the movie storms on in flashy, action glory. It doesn’t hover on their trauma or identities, or let them be defined by the places they feel broken. They have to get back to morphin’. Their lives, and the lives of everyone they love, depend on it.
Action films don’t let their characters dwell too long on their personal problems or their identity crises. Their plots take these often-reluctant heroes and accelerate growth through high stakes, and catalyze the development of relationships and found family bonding. Superhero movies in particular are full of promises that feel like hope: the good guys will win, and these characters are worthy even if they can’t feel it yet. Each character is chosen and needed for their innate differences; in Power Rangers, there is no Megazord if any of the Rangers are missing. They might be an unlikely group of aching misfits but they’re bound together; they love each other, and no one gets left behind.
I couldn’t imagine it then, what would become of my life. What started as a private thought became a whisper, and over time, something loud. Undeniable. Six years later, I am married to a woman. Most of my friends are queer. I published a YA novel with two young lesbians on the cover, holding hands. I have lost much of what I had then, and gained so much more. If I had one wish now, it would be for teleportation, because my found-family is a constellation of queer people scattered across the world. I wish we could whisper things by bonfire light. I wish we could hang out with dinosaurs and aliens and flip into cool-ass costumes and fight something big together, and win. But for now we see each other when we can. We type our little love notes to each other in the glow of our phones. They tell me I’m loved, even when I voice the worst parts of me. I know I am indispensable. I am needed for who I am. I know I will never be left behind.
Returning to my younger longings, questions, and obsessions was a gift. In that dark theater, I learned to pay attention to the things I love no matter how silly, campy, or lighthearted. Maybe it mattered to me that the 2017 movie was good because I was protective of the childhood version of myself who was drawn to this world. Maybe it mattered because I still was that kid, on the edge of coming out, still dreaming of somewhere I could be myself, a question-mark-of-a-landscape where I could be anyone. Maybe I still am, only now I know I was always hopeful, creative, and worthy.
There was so much freedom in the question marks, in the wordless waiting.
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If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come
Lambda Literary Fellow Jen St. Jude grew up in New Hampshire apple orchards and now lives in Chicago with her wife, daughter, and dog. Their debut YA novel, If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come, was published by Bloomsbury Children’s (US) and Penguin Random House (UK) in 2023
Not sure Saban deserves credit for any queerness in PR, given how David Yost was harassed for being gay during his original tenure on the show (he’s returning in the new season this month), and given the allegations of toxic behavior at Saban Productions. It wasn’t until recently, after Hasbro acquired the franchise from Saban (who’d bought it back from Disney some 8 years earlier, about 8 years or so after Disney bought it from Saban), that we got our first openly queer Ranger – whose girlfriend will herself become a Ranger in the upcoming season.
@1 With Haim Saban’s insistence, often at the threat of litigation, that he be remembered as the guy who started Power Rangers, I am perfectly fine with the queerness of current Power Rangers being the thing attached to his legacy. If he wants to be remembered, it can be done so through the lens of the queerness he so hated. It’s fitting.
This was a really great article! Jen is really great at telling us about the things that queer people hold onto in order to form their identities. With this in mind, everyone else that likes that likes that sort of thing should read their book, which is also fantastic.
@2/Perene: I appreciate the sentiment, but I just wanted to make it clear that it hasn’t been “Saban’s Power Rangers” since Hasbro acquired it in 2018, nor was it from 2002-2011 when Disney owned it.
Indeed, while the later years of the first decade under Saban produced some of the franchise’s best seasons (Power Rangers in Space, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, and especially Time Force, which was mostly an extremely faithful adaptation of Yasuko Kobayashi’s superb Mirai Sentai Timeranger but actually improved on it by creating a more complex main villain), I think it’s generally agreed that the “Neo-Saban” era from 2011-18 was much, much weaker than the Disney and Hasbro eras bracketing it. (The first Neo-Saban series, Power Rangers Samurai, was also a near-verbatim adaptation of a superb Yasuko Kobayashi-written Sentai season, yet paradoxically was immensely worse because of its inferior writing, acting, and production, as well as the bizarre incongruity of plugging American characters and settings into a near-verbatim adaptation of a profoundly Japanese storyline.)
Am I overtired and overworked right now? Yes
But I think I’d be overly emotional about this anyways. As a 30-something queer who loves the OG yellow ranger to bits. And loves Power Rangers for all its campy silliness, it’s just pure fun and empowerment.
Thankyou for this article, now I HAVE to read your novel, and I also have to re-watch all the power rangers things. I haven’t watched the new-ish anniversary special but I know David Yost put a lot of love into it so I can’t wait to watch it.
I didn’t realize being queer and being obsessed with Power Rangers was a thing, but I guess it is! I think this article covers a lot of the reasons why I loved it, too. I will never forget the absolute drama of Ryan, the white Ranger getting cursed with the Cobra tattoo in the Lightspeed Ranger.
I think a lot of the mecha fiction appeals to the queer community through the idea of connection and understanding. When the Rangers are connected, they understand each other on a level that generally isn’t explored in the piece of media. I think Pacific Rim did it well, which is why it’s such a cult classic, especially amongst the queer community. I’d love an adult scifi novel that has this aspect that focuses on that connection rather than the flashy robot battles (although those are cool, too)
“And then there was the simple solidarity of a Ranger team and its androgynous aesthetics: their uniforms and athleticism erased the gender of the characters when they’re in action.”
Going back to this, I’m not sure that’s really the case, since female Sentai/Ranger uniforms are usually miniskirted. The reason Kimberly had a skirt and Trini didn’t was because the Yellow Ranger’s counterpart in the Zyuranger stock footage was male (and was literally named Boi). Several Power Rangers seasons have added a second woman to teams that only had one in the original by gender-flipping one of the male characters — MMPR, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, Wild Force, and the recent Dino Fury. In DF, they explained the costume discrepancy in-story by giving Izzy a skirt in her first morph and having her rip it off because it’s not her style (foreshadowing that she’s the first openly queer Ranger, who later wears a tuxedo to her prom date with her frilly-dressed girlfriend).
Also, traditionally, only female Sentai members or Rangers have been pink, although last year’s Avataro Sentai Donbrothers gave us the first male Pink Ranger, KijiBrother. Which is interesting, because the upcoming Power Rangers Cosmic Fury is giving us the first series-regular female Red Ranger. (A few previous series in both franchises have had female team leaders of other colors, but the male Red Rangers were still treated as the main characters.)