Student #1 Academic Essay Final Research Essay ! 4/2/10 12 ...

Student #1 Academic Essay Final Research Essay Power Rangers During an autumn, Wednesday morning, I turned over to my roommate and asked him, "hey, do you think the Power Rangers are bad for kids?" Not providing a premise for my question justified the puzzled expression on his face, but nevertheless he decided to indulge me with an answer. "No, not at all, dude," he said. "People just blame shows like the Power Rangers because they can't control their kids when they get out of control," he finished, a hint of expertise in his tone. Ross' statement deserved some credit. The majority of people who watched the show during their younger years don't walk around today morphing into color uniformed super humans. I don't recall the last time I walked down Thayer Street and saw people fighting alien monsters and their leagues of minions, and less so giant robotic transformers bearing striking resemblances to prehistoric animals. No, it seems as if most of the children who watched the show outgrew their fetish of fantasy world fighting and adopted interests that were more appropriate for their particular age. In the short run(What do you mean by in the short run? Whose short run?, however, one can argue that the Power Rangers hold what seems like a more permanent (im confused here about how something in the short run is permanent? effect. Even more disputable is whether that effect is beneficial or detrimental. Parents and teachers nationwide have long articulated their concerns about increases in violent behavior among children who watch the show. The children engage in fighting during playtime, creating a situation in which some children could be hurt. In contrast, some scholars believe that there are advantages in allowing children a medium through which to explore

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violence safely. They assert that the show shifts a child's mode of focus from the individual to the group, and claim that cutting children off from the series entirely could have negative ramifications on reading what is often regarded an important cultural narrative.? This past sentence could use some revisions in order to increase clarity about the perceived positive effects of the show. Regardless of which of these sides one takes, most believe that the effects the Power Rangers have towards children are profound, especially in the child's formative years.

And yet, the debates about the Power Rangers seem to always revolve around their effects on children, excluding the audiences who must handle and raise the crazed MMPR children. Most notable among these audiences is, of course, the parents of these children. These parents are, after all, the ones responsible for regulating their children and keeping them from violent behavior. They must also allow their child to develop through experiences with society--even popular culture. Parents must constantly find a delicate balance to the dilemma of violence and popular culture that the show represents.

The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (1995) grapples with these very issues, In this rendition of the show, the Power Rangers have to face an evil lord named Ivan Ooze who has been reawakened from 2,000 years of imprisonment within a purple egg. Ivan Ooze has the ability to produce a kind of ooze (for which he is obviously famed) that allows him to brainwash adults. He dresses up as a clown and distributes this ooze to kids and teenagers all across Angel Grove, California (where the movie takes place). In the movie, there is one scene where a young boy named Fred leaves his ooze on the counter in his house, only to have it discovered by his father who becomes intoxicated by the jelly. We assume that the same happened in all the other households since parents

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come out in droves, crowding the streets of Angel Grove soullessly. Once they arrive at a random construction site, they began to build a giant ditch, into which they would hurl themselves, meeting their doom as their bodies meet the floor bottom.

How do the Power Rangers fit into this? They don't use shiny robots and stunning martial arts to whip the parents back into reality. As it turns out, the Power Rangers lose their ability to morph and fight evil (as a result of Ivan Ooze destroying the command center, the source of all their rangerly powers). They instead devote a good portion of the film trying to find new powers on a distant planet to replace the ones they have lost. With the Power Rangers nowhere in sight, the children are the ones who are left to save the day (at least in this scene). Before the parents reach the edge of what is at this point a large ditch, Fred, who is on the other side, sprays the zombie parents with a hose to help propel them away from their deaths (other kids had been helping as well, mostly by using their strength to push their parents away from the cliff). The children end up being successful and the parents don't die.

What's significant about this particular segment of the movie is how much it mirrors the dilemma that parents face with their kids and their consumption of popular culture through the consumption of the ooze. Like the kids, the parents never asked for ooze or Power Rangers--it was given to them by an evil lord named Ivan Ooze, a lord who is symbolic of the Power Rangers Corporation and their products. The children took the ooze and brought it home; the ooze didn't affect them, rather they remained normal and oblivious to the jelly's effects. In this way, the movie forces the viewers to focus on the effects of children's media on parents, rather than children..

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In the end, the parents are not saved by the Power Rangers. Being saved by their kids allows one to infer that only the children can cut their consumption of ooze and popular culture. You can expand on this reading of the children's heroism--why can only the children cut their consumption? Does this mirror the process of growing up? And, before any stop to the harmful effects of ooze can be put in place, the parents must literally be driven to the edge of the ditch in the form of last minute movie tickets, action figures, and television shows. Id like to see more explanation of this ditch reading---its very interesting. Why are the parents hurt by this consumption of popular culture? What exactly is it about this "ditch" that is painful for parents? Why are they the ones digging it?? You need to explain this further. I'd also like to see at least one more paragraph in here analyzing a specific moment in the scene and close reading it to support your argument. Then, you will have three paragraphs of close reading, which would really support your claims. Coupling the matter with an absent Power Rangers squad also suggests that anything in popular culture that is an obsession of kids can be hurtful to parents. Indeed, the parents feel the pains of their children and their viewing of popular culture. Make this last sentence its own paragraph. This should serve as the "conclusion" to your close reading before you move back to the personal experience.

I remember my experience with the Power Rangers quite vividly. In retrospect, it was silly of me to expect that I would be the only kid fully dressed in a Power Rangers costume while waiting in line for tickets to the MMPR Movie. "There can only be one Red Ranger, dad," I cried. I didn't realize it then, but the reaction in his face was a worried one; it was a look that was concerned about the obsession that I had developed

over the Teen fighting super hero squad. There was a period of time where I nagged my mother to take me to McDonald's so that I could control the full set of action figures and the Zord Transformers that accompanied them. I was so happy when I finally acquired highly coveted, final collectible: the White Ranger, as he was branded. I took for granted my parent's willingness to indulge me in something I'm sure they thought was at times disadvantageous to my growth and development as a child. In any event, I stood there in line with my father, waiting to watch the Power Rangers kick evil's butt, even if that meant my parents' butts were getting kicked as well. Good ending! If you develop the idea of the parents being controlled by pop culture more in the essay, the ending will be perfect.

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