Character Talks
So, I’ve gotten back into Power Rangers over the past year & a half and am still slowly making my way through the seasons, and I want to talk in the void about some of my favorite characters and stories that I’ve watched so far just for fun!
For this first post I want to start off with Tanya Sloan from Power Rangers Zeo
Overview of Tanya’s character from the Power Rangers wiki for anyone who is unfamiliar, “Tanya Sloan is Zeo Ranger II Yellow of the Zeo Rangers and formerly the first Yellow Turbo Ranger of the Turbo Rangers as well as a main character in Power Rangers Zeo and Power Rangers Turbo. She replaced Aisha Campbell after Aisha chose to stay in Africa to help take care of the animals.”
I think that conceptual Tanya is a really interesting character, Tanya’s whole deal is basically she's a young “african” girl from the past who gets transported to America in the future. Now its pretty clear to see some parallel the history of African american’s & the Slave trade in this.And it’s not just there are many aspects of Tanya’s character that make her feel like she’s was made a metaphor for American American women.
See Aisha is the one who makes the decision to give Tanya her crystal to stay in Africa and help cure the plague but from the beginning Tanya is pretty resistant to wanting to go and is constantly repeated stating how nervous she is. On top of that she's a prepubescent child realistically if even if Tanya were to fully agree to be sent to the future she’s not really in a state to make these kinds of big decisions. While it doesn't necessarily happen ‘against her will’ Tanya is still a child being made to leave the people, continent, time period, the whole life she had in a split moment and be brought into the ‘New world’.
Soon after she shows up to future “due to magical crystal shenanigans” Tanya is aged up from a prepubescent child to vaguely 17-18 year old high school girl. And this choice is the thing that really gets to me when thinking about Tanya, because not only is she essentially ripped from home but then she essentially gets her childhood ripped away from her as well. She goes from a small child to a teen and develops young women in a literal instant. This choice strikes a chord with me because it feels almost representative of the adultification of black girls throughout history.
We now have Tanya, a young black girl taken directly from Africa( the past) is sent to the U.S.(in the future) is aged up against her will and on top of all of that she’s now expected to take on being a teen(child) soldier. So on top of being a child forced into an “adult” body is now expected to use it for basically hard labor. When laid out like this it’s not hard to see the parallels between Tanya story & and the historical experience of African American women.
At the start of Power Rangers: Zeo Tanya is now the newest ranger as the ‘new girl’ is both the most inexperienced and the fish out of water. And while this is something that pretty much every other Zeo ranger experienced at one point it’s how the writers choose to go about writing for Tanya that really sets her apart for me.
Tanya’s main plotline for the season focuses on the relation between her and a boy from angel grove named Shaun(who is also black) Shaun & Tanya’s relationship is interesting because at first when Tanya meets Shawn when she really doesn’t have any friends( besides the other rangers who she doesn’t know too well at this point) & expressed early in the episode how rough it is for her being the ‘new kid’ she clearly in a vulnerable state & it would equality be eager to form relationships with anyone willing to reach out to her in anyway. Shawn asks Tanya if she would be free to study with him and clearly the integration is also meant to have romantic implications. To sum up the episode plot, Shawn wants to cheat on a test Tanya tells him that’s bad the argue & fight Shaun realizes he was wrong the two of them become boyfriend & girlfriend yada yada.
Now this is just standard kids tv romance plots, nothing special at first but over the course of the season Shawn's reveals that he is well, let's just say, a terrible person. Over the course of Zeo Shaun treats Tanya like crap, repeatedly berates and undermines her, he is rude, nasty and spiteful towards her & takes every opportunity to tear her down. All of this behavior comes to a head in the Episode 'Rangers in the Outfield’ when Shawn is so angry over Tanya joining the baseball team and being better than her. Eventually Tanya is pushed to her breaking point & breaks up with Shawn. Shawn & Tanya’s relationship is so sad because Tanya being alone seeks out the first other black person to show her a hint of kindness & instead of Shawn uplifting her, he constantly goes out of his way to break her down & dehumanize her. Their relationships is a repression of the type of misogynoir that black women have to experience from black men( a lot of Shawn's dehumanizations of Tanya often take the form of him masculinizing her referencing how much real world anti-black rhetoric towards black women and girls tends to hyper-masculinize us.) And even after everything he puts her Tanya after Tanya tells him off she feels BAD likes she's' the one in the wrong for standing up for herself and it's only when Adam(another ranger) feels more confident in her actions.
While I don’t think the writers intended for Tanya to be a commentary on the experiences of African American women, her story still manages to really resonate with me with just how much it metaphorically represents the historical & modern experiences of black women in America. I just thought it was interesting & something I’ve really been waiting to talk about. Honestly there’s still so much more to say about Tanya’s character but I think I’ll leave those takes for another post!
If you made it this far thank you for reading. I hope I’ll be able to talk your ear off about more Power Rangers in the future!