It's no secret I grew up loving everything under the sun that came out of the tokusatsu genre. I was born in a tiny golden niche of television with Spectreman reruns still on the air and Dynaman parody dubs running on Nickelodeon and the USA Network. Then, one day, it all sort of faded away for nearly a full decade. Godzilla movies still ran on a weekend afternoon every so often, but most of the time they aired past my bedtime. It was a definite void that running across a Spectreman VHS tape at a local video store could fill only a little bit.
Then culture shifted again in my favor. I was already in high school and pushing the age of sixteen when the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers made its debut. I was in the marching band, and I recall one afternoon when the band had to be in class to prepare for some trip. I forget what the trip was for, but I remember that the we were excused from all classes to be there for preparations. There was a television set in the main band room that day, and someone turned it to a local channel. The Power Rangers were on, and I hadn't really seen any of the show yet because I was still in school when it aired. I was hypnotized. Within a fraction of a second, I knew what this show was and where it came from. I knew that style, those costumes, those imaginative monster designs. I knew this all came from the same source as Dynaman even though I didn't know at the time that the franchise had its own name: Super Sentai. It was a proud moment for me... or at least it should have been.
Bulk and Skull were innocuous bullies compared to the kids I knew in school. I hated high school with a passion for a number of reasons, and one of those reasons was that transferring states early in my high school years put me into several senior-year classes as a freshman because they matched the curriculum I was studying at the time my family moved. This introduced me to a special group of redneck assholes who took great pleasure in targeting me for being a couple years behind them in age, only to prove time and again that they themselves were years behind me in maturity. We're talking about guys who would chew tobacco in class and spit it in the carpet when the teacher wasn't looking. This actually happened, and I had to sit behind these idiots. I'll never forget that rancid smell. One time, one of them slapped a post-it note on my back during class, but it didn't say, "Kick me." No, instead, it said, "I like fat black women" because these idiots were of course stereotypical southern white racists, too.
Not that I wasn't already a quiet kid who kept to myself, but I had to keep a lot of my personal joys to myself. It was a catch-22. I was bullied for being quiet, but I was also bullied for opening my mouth. If I wore a Spider-Man t-shirt to school, I could count on the two class clowns in the back of my Geometry class pelting me with wadded paper balls for an entire hour. This happened frequently, and the teacher never did anything about it. There were almost always piles of wadded notebook paper on the floor behind my desk every day by the end of class. I honestly don't know who cleaned up the paper balls or the chewing tobacco stains, but it obviously wasn't anyone responsible for it.
The Power Rangers were instantly one of my personal joys, and one of the main reasons they were a personal joy was Tommy Oliver. Tommy was a symbol of the Power Rangers franchise, its most familiar face spanning nearly 30 years, and the guy behind that character was Jason David Frank. When that day finally came for me to see the show in its glory on that band class television set, I was, indeed, hypnotized, but I was quickly snapped back into reality by a deluge of infantile and homophobic slurs from my peers. Anyone who watched Power Rangers, according to them, was either a baby or something that started with an F, ended with a G, and wasn't something you ate on a Newton. It didn't matter a bit to any of them that Jason David Frank was a local boy from my hometown area of Houston, Texas, and only a few years older than all of us at the time. The fact he dressed up in spandex on a kids' show made him no better in the eyes of my toothless warrior peers than the member of some effeminate boy band. It was made abundantly clear that most of the people I was forced to associate with most in school at the time were scum, and high school was like a prison sentence waiting to end its course before I could finally escape. I would have welcomed Bulk and Skull with open arms to be my high school bullies. Fortunately, most of my high school peers were a couple of grades ahead of me due to those reversed-curriculum transfer classes and graduated before I did, so my senior year was relatively smooth and quiet (which helped a lot because the abuse I suffered at home had increased that much more, but I've already told that story in an earlier blog post).
I buried myself in these personal joys, privately when necessary, and took from them the things I needed. At that age, I was into superheroes more than anything and felt so much that the world around me needed some. I wanted to be one myself so badly it hurt, and I already carried regrets in my soul for times in the recent past that I was too afraid to stand up and fight. The Power Rangers, preachy and western-washed as it could be compared to the original ZyuRanger or Super Sentai in general, offered me a little bit of extra internal strength. It nudged me into speaking up against some of my bullies in high school, making me feel a little better about myself even though it never really put an end to their behavior. On the whole, I loved Power Rangers for what it was at the time: an action spectacle that actually gave me an opportunity to see Japanese tokusatsu on my local television screen, even if it was stock footage woven around new material. I was grateful to have it, and I slowly gravitated toward an appreciation for the new material as a youth-driven soap opera.
That soap opera story would make me a longtime fan when one specific story came along: the prophecy of the Green Ranger. The Green Ranger saga began shortly after I got my first recording VCR so that I could tape shows while I was still at school. I came home from school with baited breath to follow the story of Tommy Oliver, brainwashed by Rita Repulsa to become the evil Green Ranger until the spell was finally broken and he became a permanent member of the team. I kept following the series as it tried to keep up with the available stock footage of the show and the transition of the Japanese franchise, watching Tommy eventually lose his Green Ranger powers and be reborn as the White Tiger Ranger. I went to see the movie in theater. I was very much a fan.
I looked up to Tommy. I wanted to meet him in person someday and do nothing more than shake his hand and thank him for being a positive part of my late childhood. I didn't want an autograph or to fawn over him for the character he played. I just wanted to let him know I appreciated his work, and it's the same feeling I've tried to maintain for my desire to meet any of my childhood heroes or inspirational celebrities. Despite him living so close to me, I only got close to that chance twice and missed it both times. Well, I thought it was twice. The second time I had to drive family out of town for a funeral when he did a local event with some people in Gokaiger outfits before the Power Rangers adaptation of that was even confirmed. The first time was when the Power Rangers were doing their live stage tour in the 90s and were coming to Houston. This was around my seventeenth birthday, and my family led me to believe they had gotten tickets to surprise me. It really felt like some sick joke when that didn't pan out, but I thought there was a silver lining in all of it. A martial arts studio had just opened up next to the movie theater, and they had posters all over the place announcing that "Tommy, the White Ranger" was going to make a public appearance at this place. My little brother was nine years old at the time and not a Power Rangers fan, but he was more than willing to come along so that I could meet one of my icons without the awkwardness of being the only kid in my late teens there amongst a bunch of moms and elementary school kids to meet the White Ranger. My brother was one of my personal heroes in those situations, and I carry plenty of regrets for not being the older brother to him that I ought to have been. But that's a story for another time. This was my chance. I just wanted to shake Jason David Frank's hand and say thank you, but instead of shaking hands with "Tommy, the White Ranger," I shook hands with a man in a motorcycle helmet painted to look like the White Ranger helmet. It was apparently the guy who owned the dojo, and the whole thing was a publicity stunt. The muffled voice under the helmet sure didn't match. For the sake of the little kids, no one spoke up about it. The little kids were just as taken with this makeshift Tommy as they would have been with someone in a Spongebob outfit. He was playing a character, and that was enough. What stuck with me, however, was the pause this man behind the helmet took before shaking my hand. In that moment, I was willing to suspend disbelief that Jason David Frank was behind that mask and just fulfill the positive mission I was there for, to offer my hand in appreciation for the impact of this character. I wasn't going to be the villain of this story in front of little kids and taint the experience that I felt had been stolen from me. I just wanted to shake his hand, what I had set out to do from the start. But "Tommy" paused. It lasted about three seconds but felt like an eternity. For at least three long and silent seconds, the whole line froze and he just stood there. He looked up at me like he did not want to shake my hand or that he wondered why I would want to shake his, and with his face concealed, it all came down to obvious and hesitant body language. He seemed taken aback that he actually had to lift his head up, that I was the only person there matching his height that wanted to shake his hand. Maybe he thought I was going to be the "villain" and try to expose him, but that thought didn't occur to me until years later. Eventually he put out his hand and we shook, and that was that. I walked out of the place with my brother as a bunch of little kids fawned around "Tommy" and had him break boards with his fists and then autograph them, listening to the quiet whispers of some mothers clearly upset about the situation but also not willing to spoil the illusion for their children. Some part of me still wants to believe Jason David Frank was behind the mask that day. Even if he wasn't, keeping up the illusion for those kids and not being a dick about it is a little bit of that goodness Tommy strengthened in me at the time. The way my life was going at the time, I honestly felt like I was losing myself, but I did not walk out of that dojo a bitter person. It gave me a weirdly good feeling inside as if I really had met the real man after all.
When I heard the word going around last night that he had committed suicide, I did not want to believe it. It took nearly a full day for anything resembling a trustworthy news source to confirm it. It seemed like it was probably a hoax. I still don't want to believe it, and this is coming only a few years after my other favorite Green Ranger, DaiRanger's Tatsuya Nomi, took his own life as well. I've tried to detail how I feel about these types of situations, but I still don't know if I can really put those feelings into proper words. I fear that some of my feelings might come off as unsupportive or make the pain worse for some who read it. I wasn't able to tackle this conversation openly when Robin Williams left us, and I don't know if it will come out right this time, either. The wound of losing my mother is still too fragile in my heart as well with the unprovable suspicion that her passing might have been suicide. I was as oblivious to Jason David Frank's personal life as those little kids were that day about whose face was really behind that motorcycle helmet covered in paint and colored duct tape, and maybe that was for the best. I never followed the reality shows he did, his social media, or anything like that. The mask may be the best metaphor to apply to this tragic situation as it faces us right now. The people who perform, wear masks, and portray characters that bring us joy and entertainment? They are all ultimately human just like us. They're all susceptible to fear and pain and loneliness and personal demons. They have a "secret identity" that goes through life with many if not all of the same hurdles any of us face daily, putting on a smile for the public to keep up appearances. Sometimes they make a choice that sends a harsh ripple out into the lives of those around them. Sometimes we have to live through that ripple, and we're never allowed to fully understand the reason or the motivation. We're never allowed any real closure. We're just left with a void in our hearts to remind us that even our heroes are mortal.
I thought of Jason David Frank as a man. I knew he played a character on TV, and I never wanted anything more than to thank him for the joy and positive outlook his character gave me and countless others despite whatever was going on in his life behind the mask. I know that many, many people got that opportunity over the years, but at the end of the day, he still had a fight within his own heart that only he could face. I can only hope that his soul finds some sort of peace, and I hope that those he left behind can find some peace as well. I know the hurt never goes away, but we're all still here right now with the potential to make something good out of all of it. I never let go of the desire to see what good the next day might bring, no matter how hard it is to get out of bed to see it. That's one thing that keeps me going. It's all the more reason to pay as much attention as we can to the loved ones around us, to let them know we care and that we want to listen and help as much as we can, even though we are all only human and just as vulnerable. Life's burdens get very heavy when some of us feel as though we have to do it all alone. None of us can do it all alone, and you are never truly alone no matter how desperately you might feel it. I really don't know what else to say other than that. Rest in peace, Jason David Frank. You offered me something good and positive at some crucial moments in my life, and even your tragic passing cannot erase the inner strength those moments afforded me. Thank you.
