Lost in Translation - The Japanese Origins of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

If you were a kid in the 1990s and had basic cable, you are probably familiar with the spandex clad, butt-kicking super team known as The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Not quite.

The show begins when Rita Repulsa, an evil alien sorceress who has been sealed away in her planetary prison for the past 10,000 years, is released by two hapless astronauts. I guess plans of world domination must be a popular form of recreation for for those recently sprung from the joint because the first things all evil sorcerers seem to want to do when they are released is take over planet Earth for no apparent reason. The all-knowing, giant floating head, Zordon --

Like so

-- tells his robot assistant Alpha to find him five “overbearing and over-emotional humans,” (i.e. teenagers) to become the defenders of the planet. Because we all know that we like our supernatural crime fighting teams the way we like our pop idols: beautiful, oversexed, and underaged. 

The original 1993 cast of The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.

The rangers assembled are all high school students from Angel Grove, California: Billy (Blue ranger), Jason (Red ranger), Zack (Black ranger), Trini (Yellow ranger), and Kimberly (Pink ranger). 

They gain weapons from Zordon as well as morphers, communicators, and their respective Zords -- giant fighting robots in the shape of their respective dinosaurs. When the villain is too strong for the rangers and their Zords individually, the machines unite to create the Megazord. 

The DinoZords

In each episode they have a personal issue they’re dealing with in school whether it be gymnastics competitions, getting good grades, or trying to get signatures for a petition to save the environment. You know, the stuff actual high-schoolers are too caught up in their facebook drama to care about. The only thing that really puts a damper on their fun are the two school bullies, Bulk and Skull, a Laurel and Hardy team who provide slapstick comedic relief. Remember, this was back in 1993 when bullying was shoving you into lockers, not viciously singling you out to diligently cut away your self-esteem until you’re driven to suicide. This was afternoon programming for children after all.

The wholesome high school shenanigans were usually interrupted by some sort of monster sent down by Rita Repulsa who – having not yet figured out how to hook up her cable – basically had nothing better to do.

Rita Repulsa, probably about to break something. Just cuz.

Based on your level of dorkdom (or a certain level of “I never really gave a crap”), you may or may not be aware that this show was based off of and used footage, props, monsters, and costumes from a popular Japanese Super Sentai series (sentai meaning essentially “task force”) known as Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger which originally aired in Japan in 1992.

In the original series, the creators pull a Dr. Who and create an anachronistic "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey" version of history so that 170 Million years ago, tribes of dinosaurs simultaneously co-existed with beings that descended from dinosaurs (who look an awful lot like humans) literally translated on several websites I found as "Homo Dinosaurs." I would make a joke about that, but I'm not five-years-old. 

I'm four-and-three-quarters, thank you very much.

The dinosaurs and these prehistoric humans lived side-by-side in five tribes that were protected by their individual Beast Guardians (a pterodactyl, triceratops, sabretooth tiger, t-rex, and a mammoth) until the witch Bandora (who flipping hated dinosaurs and children) set out to destroy them all. 

Fortunately, the five Beast Guardians were able to seal her away on Planet Nemesis where she wouldn’t constantly kill things. As a safeguard, one member of nobility was chosen from each clan to be put to sleep and only awoken if Bandora were to somehow escape her prison. These nobles were: Mei, the Risha Tribe's Warrior of Love (The Pteraranger), Dan, the Etoph tribe Warrior of Courage (The Triceraranger), Goushi, the Sharma tribe Warrior of Wisdom (The Mammothranger), Boi the Daim tribe Warrior of Hope (The Tigerranger),  and Geki, the Yamato tribe Warrior of Justice (The Tyrannoranger).

Prince Geki and his merry band.

Predictably, humans – who seem to like to open things just because they can – discovered her secret prison while on a space mission and broke the seal, releasing the witch and her minions. As a means to thank them, she blows the astronauts into space, sending them hurtling weightlessly to their deaths. Apparently she was in a hurry and the Hallmark store was closed.

Barza, a wizard-ish dude who was the basis for Zordon, uses his massive ear to hear the seal being broken from millions of miles away back on earth. 

He then springs into action to wake up the slumbering heroes and thus their journey begins. Along the way, they gain new weapons from the guardians as well as the ability to harness the power of a God who emerges only when the five Beast Guardians unite.  

God.

In the first season of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, most of the fight scenes and in-costume sequences (aside from things taking place in Zordon’s control room) were out of context footage taken from the Zyurangers series. All of the scenes showing the character’s faces were filmed in America and worked with entirely new overarching storylines. Almost any sequence where they are sporting masks and fighting baddies, or any scene with Rita Repulsa or the Zords during season 1 were from Zyurangers. That’s why the witch seemed somewhat unsettling when she spoke; the Rita you see is actually the original actress playing Bandora, the late Machiko Soga, with the voice being dubbed over by an American voice actress.

Bandora the Witch and part-time child predator.

 Ever wonder why even though there are two female rangers, only the pink ranger wears a skirt? That’s because in the Japanese series, she was the only girl and the yellow ranger was a dude…named Boi.  If you ever look back at a Power Ranger fight scene and notice the yellow ranger is pretty flat-chested and has a package that Fed-Ex couldn’t deliver, you’ll know that I speak the truth.

The late Thuy Trang who played Trini had no junk of which to speak...

This guy however, was definitively a dude.

So why were the two shows made to look and feel nothing like each other?

As happens with any translation, some things get lost in the process, if not cut out altogether. In the case of Zyurangers, there were just too many elements that were idiomatic and just wouldn’t translate to an audience of American viewers with limited knowledge of Japanese culture. This is one reason why, if you’re ever unfortunate enough to get trapped in a room with an anime “purist,” most of them would argue that the only real way to enjoy the Japanese media is with subtitles. Although most of them can’t tell you why subs are better, they will simply tell you that “dubs suck.”

More fundamentalist fans will tell you that true dorkdom isn't contained by things like haircuts or pants.

I find this hard to believe considering the fact that dubs outsell the crap out of subs and American voice actors are seen as quasi-gods to gaggles of adoring fans at anime conventions around the nation. Plus, it would kind of hamper my voice-over aspirations if I didn’t appreciate a good dub, now wouldn’t it?

Essentially, the heart of the argument is supposed to be that subtitles allowed you to display notes whenever an unfamiliar word or topic was spoken by the characters, allowing you to get a more accurate translation of the cultural elements so you could experience the story in its intended context. When the voices are dubbed into English, you lose the ability to explain language idioms through visual footnotes in the corner of the screen (although some still use them).

 Additionally, you’re under time constraints because all the dialogue must be condensed to match the mouth movements of the characters. Subsequently, dialogue, key plot points, and even character names are often altered, abridged, or removed from the series to facilitate the viewing experience for Western viewers, thus creating an adaptation rather than a translation. Carl Macek, one of the people who adapted the several anime series into the 1980s show Robotech, sums it up best:

“You can’t just translate a Japanese TV series literally into English if you want the American public to accept it. There are all kinds of little changes you have to make – sort of like creating an American body language – so that the characters will seem more natural to American viewers. For one thing, Japanese cartoons are very slowly paced by American standards. They’re full of long, dramatic pauses while there’s a close-up of somebody’s face registering an emotion, or a slow camera pan across a beautiful background. Americans won’t sit still for that. They’ll turn to another channel.” -- page 310 of the book Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 years of Essays and Reviews.

  
I for one, don’t necessarily see the problem with adapting a story by putting it into a cultural context the audience can understand.

Actually, I’m the biggest hypocrite ever. I see no need why perfectly good Ricky Gervais comedies need to be remade into the same language just because Americans find a British accent too cumbersome to decipher.

Precisely.

One of the most basic cultural differences was that Japan and America have different standards for what’s appropriate for their children. Death of main characters, on-camera or off, is usually a no-no in kid’s entertainment stateside, unless of course that character was a nameless, unsympathetic  creature like the Putties, or they just really, really deserved it. 

The Putties: A face only a roundhouse kick could love.

 Take it away again, Carl:

“I took the recommended TV standards and practices for children’s programming and I read them very carefully…the actual standards don’t say that you cannot show death under any circumstances; you can’t show characters getting hurt. They prohibit evil winning over good; they prohibit violence for violence’s sake. In Robotech, the good guys use only enough violence to defend themselves. Some of the bad guys are shown as honestly mistaken rather than as evil; they have a chance to reform. Some of the good guys make mistakes too, and they suffer for them." 

Whether we’re aware of it or not, our culture has a moral code in almost all of our fictional entertainment. As I addressed in my Halloween Psych series, the just world phenomenon entails that we can only feel stable if we can believe we live in a world where good things happen to good people and bad things only happen to those who did something to deserve it. 

Take that, unbridled chest hair.

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers often depicted moral quandaries that were confronted and resolved through good American values and teamwork. In the season two episode, “Doom Bloom,” Lord Zed plans to cause dissension in the ranks by using a poison plant to turn an already envious Kimberly into a raving piss ant who turns on her friends. In the end, she is returned to normal, but the point is made clear that Kimberly made herself susceptible to his attack because she had already allowed envy to sneak into her heart when she resented Trini’s volleyball club for getting more members than Kim’s gardening club.

In the Japanese version, people straight up die in the first five minutes (remember those lucky astronauts?). You don’t have to be a giant evil plant or Minotaur to get capped (although it certainly helps). 

Bandora used to be a fairy queen but destroyed the dinosaurs and is basically a child murderer because she was actually a grieving mother. She repressed the memory that her own son was killed by a dinosaur so all she remembers is that she’s mad at pretty much everyone and can no longer stand the sight of children. The same as with its anime, Japan likes to display a level of moral ambiguity in both its heroes and its villains because it makes for a more dynamic story. In American kids shows, it seems good and evil always need to be clearly delineated because I guess our children are just simple-minded folk who don’t need to be confused with character motivations and psychoanalysis. They just want to see stuff go boom.

The Michael Bay School for Explosive-Happy Toddlers.

In general, Japanese parents seem to be more lax in the amount of violence, death, and horrific images their children are allowed to see. This is why seeing the Japanese language, subtitled version of a children’s anime is always going to be much less censored and often a lot darker in tone than the dubs meant for distribution on American television. When it came out, parents in the U.S. protested the Power Rangers, decrying it as too violent and a bad influence on their kids. But sticking within the TV standards, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers didn’t use excessive violence, they stuck to the guidelines of using it only enough to defend themselves and the world. That’s admirable right? After having seen the first 6 episodes of the Japanese version, I’m gonna say that the Land of the Rising Sun could teach these parents a thing or two about what real violence is.

For example, when the Putties are vanquished by the Power Rangers, they tend to just get kicked out of the view of the camera or disappear, while the Zyurangers are busy slashing them with swords and running them through with spears 300 style. One of the bad guys, Dora Skeleton, gets his head lopped off and one of the rangers throws it into the fiery pit off hell which just happens to be conveniently located to their left.

Oh, and did I forget to mention Satan? 

Who? You mean Moi?

When Bandora’s son is killed, she vows vengeance and makes a pact with Satan to give her power to destroy the planet. The friggin’ lord of the underworld gets a cameo on Japanese TV yet the U.S. media gets in a tizzy whenever the Big Man Upstairs gets a shout-out in a courtroom?  Whatevs. We live in a country where Snuggies sell millions and Tila Tequila is considered famous enough to get her own TV shows so I guess there are some things I’ll just never understand.

Even when things aren’t necessarily violent or satanic in Zyurangers, they’re downright disturbing on a profound psychological level. Which makes it oh so much fun.

In one episode, the souls of Japanese children are trapped inside of trees in a forest that’s getting cut down to make way for a golf course. You see the children screaming and crying as the developers take chainsaws to their trunks and slice away. If they employed that plot device on Captain Planet, I can almost guarantee you that every Millenial youth would be a devout tree hugger and probably wouldn’t even pick flowers…just to be safe. 

But devil worship, decapitation and deforestation aren’t the only things keeping the Zyurangers from being accepted by U.S. audiences. 

Japan as a nation is really old and steeped with culture, tradition, and mythology to draw from that a n00b like America doesn’t really have in its arsenal. This time discrepancy may or may not be worth noting, but the backstory for the Power Rangers series began with Rita’s imprisonment only 10,000 years ago, whereas the original series found its genesis over 170 million years ago in the age of the dinosaurs where ancient gods and spirits were abundant. When Geki, the Tyrannoranger reads about the epic battle that took place, the images resemble the style of wood block paintings, a traditional form of Japanese art often used to represent scenes from history or mythology.

Oh yeah.

 The Zyurangers draw from ancient archetypes of brave, stoic warriors in ceremonial garb, well-versed in swordplay and martial arts, who cast off material and personal pleasures for the cause of the greater good. The Japanese are much more intrinsically spiritual and pantheistic than Western culture. In Shinto mythology, animals, trees, even inanimate objects like swords often have spirits of some kind. In the Power Rangers, the Beast Guardians were just referred to as Zords, machinery that that rangers could pilot and unite to form Megazord. In the original, the Beast Guardians were actual spirits that guarded their individual tribes in the age of the dinosaurs, and now help the Zyurangers along their path, often granting them power, visions, and sentient weapons. If the spirit is displeased with something, it will tell them so with words or gestures and will even eject the rangers from the cockpit if they tick them off enough.  The “Megazord” that we all know and love, was not just an awesome machine, but an actual god with thoughts and feelings of its own.

"I feel like all we ever do is fight, guys. Can't we just sit around and, idunno, share how our days went?"

The United States of America is only a couple hundred years old, and nobody really wants to create a show based on our “epic” history by creating a super task force consisting of historical figures like Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Susan B. Anthony.
Or don't they...

I invented bifocals, electricity, and awesomeness.

That’s why I think the American adaptation of the series dropped the historical, spirit guide component and shifted the focus onto modern youth and technological advances such as the addition of Alpha the robot, Zordon’s command center, high-tech communicator devices, and the simplified revisioning of the Zords as merely giant robots that kicked butt. Besides the hang up that our own history is boring and lacks dynasties, samurai, and those uncomfortable-looking Japanese sandals, even if the show were to draw cultural influences from America’s past, who’s past and which culture would it be representing?

This guy's hat surely doesn't know.

The Japanese are a very homogenized people with mostly everyone having similar genetic features and origin. America, with its colorful history and multicultural make up, would not be served well by a show that only featured the ancestry of a smaller percentage of the country’s demographic. This is why, even though the original was more epic and magical, it was a smart move for the American adapters to drop the cultural and historical elements and recast the show with a more diverse ensemble. It’s proven that people are more likely to watch a show if their demographic has a strong presence on it. Therefore they whitened up a couple of the kids to represent the ethnic majority, and then added an African-American, an Asian-American, and secured a stronger female demographic by adding a second girl to the squad.

I’m sure there are other reasons behind the changes and maybe I’m just dedicating a lot of analysis into what could have been completely arbitrary decisions by the Power Rangers staff. Either way, I definitely recommend looking up a few of the super sentai series on youtube or something, because you may even find that you like that version better or it could just provide you with a good laugh or WTF moment. Hopefully, seeing the foreign origin of what we thought of as iconic American television as children, will help us better realize that our cultural experiences have been somewhat tailored for us so to minimize the discomfort that comes from cross-cultural interaction. You may never get the chance to visit a foreign country or even leave your state, but it will be eye-opening to step outside of your myopic experience of the world and get a taste of another country through its music, literature, film, or even it’s weird screaming men with bowler hats:

Not sure how that article turned into a public service announcement for foreign exchange and cross-cultural understanding, but I hope you found the contrasts and comparisons between The Power Rangers and the series it was based on, at least somewhat entertaining.

Do you have any comments you’d want to share of cross-cultural experiences where things seemed completely new, intriguing, or bizarre to you? It could be something you learned while traveling in a different country, or even noticed about a foreign TV show while sitting in the comfort of your own room. 

I love comments. I love them almost as much as I love kettle corn. Comments open up a possibility for conversation, and (if you haven’t noticed) I’m quite the talker.

10 Reasons Why The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest Was Ballin' Television

      The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest was the quintessential show that defined my childhood (and believe me, I watched  A LOT of TV). It made me want to become a voice-actor as well as solidified my love for the medium of animation and for all things pretty much awesome. The show ran from August of 1996 to April of 1997 airing 52 episodes before being cancelled due to money issues and low viewership (but high critical praise). Fans went 12 years without an official release of the series until February 2009, when the first 13 episodes were released on DVD. Unfortunately, the WB has no plans to release any more eps, nor revive the series because sales didn't do as well as anticipated.

     So, I decided to make a list of the top 10 reasons why this show made for ballin' television so that if you weren't in love with it before, you will be by the end.  And if you were already a fan, it'll be a good refresher for you. Every week I'll post another reason (or 2) for why this show was awesome until Christmas time (by which time, I'm sure there will be dozens of JQ DVDs in stockings over fireplaces everywhere, right?)

     I'll probably be preaching to a large choir, but if I can muster up a few converts, I can die happy (without the dying part). So, without further ado... 

Reason #1: The Opening Credits

      The original 1960's Jonny Quest and the 1996 version both featured music and animation that were considered edgy and action-packed for their day. TRAJQ used the original theme as a basis and then proceeded to pimp it out with a full orchestra and a Mission Impossible fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants intensity to it.

The original:

     If you watched the show back when it originally aired or in its reruns on Toonami, I don't have to tell you how hearing the opening music would get your 11-year-old sugar-riddled mind friggin’ pumped for the episode about to follow. It was like cramming a full-length adventure into a can of condensed Awesome Noodle Soup (Because Jonny Quest ain’t no chicken). I don’t really need to say more about this element of it because just watching the intro will speak for itself. 

So, speak away bad-ass opening theme song:

 



Reason #2: Questworld

   This is one of the more debated issues regarding this series. Some loved the use of virtual reality in the reboot of the Quest franchise; some thought it was cheesy and superfluous. For those of you unfamiliar with TRAJQ, Questworld was an on-line virtual reality computer system created by Dr. Quest to help him do sciensy genius stuff. But mostly, it became a really cool place for the kids to get their game on. At least one person (usually Hadji) had to remain in the real world to operate and monitor the system while the user donned a snazzy green visor made out of lazers. Here’s a quicky video, often aired at the end of episodes called a "QuestByte," using a lot of what I’m pretty sure are made up words to explain the genesis and features of Questworld (Ignore the little robot voices, somebody added those on youtube and I'm not sure why):

Sure, at times it did seem like the creators of the show were just utilizing it to showcase the abilities of this new three-dimensional technology and emphasize “this isn’t your momma’s Jonny Quest, you better recognize.”  It was only 1996 and 3D animation was still getting its sea legs, which explains why the virtual reality sequences were choppy, stilted, and lacked all the most intimate detailing of the character’s sweat glands that we’ve become so accustomed to in modern gaming. Because this novel method of producing animation was so new and computers weren’t as powerful as those of 2010, it was mucho expensivo to pay a team of highly-skilled animators to put in hundreds of man hours working on your project. Unless you had Pixar’s budget, you were going to run into problems somewhere down the line. 

Somebody paid their rent by animating this guy's acne scars and 5 o' clock shadow. Just consider that for a moment.

There was a marked improvement in the animation quality by season 2 when Hannah Barbara switched from Buzz F/X to a different virtual animation house, Blur Studios. In an e-mail that can be found on the awesome Questfan.com, Francis Lord, a CGI animator at Buzz F/X explained the disparities between the two Questworlds:

“The reason why the first shows were ugly is that we never had time for pre-production, the technology wasn't strong enough, and the lack of talent... or should I say budget. Mainframe Entertainment (who is doing Reboot) had two years of preproduction, a bunch of Onyx to render and a team of animators from the Sheradon College. If you look at the newest episodes like Digital Doublecross, you must know that Blur Studio had twice as time as we did and twice as money. And they had team already implemented instead of building a team from scratch.”

       

Season 1

Season 2

Aside from the quality of the visual aspects of Questworld, I really dug the way it was often integrated into the episodes to move the plot along and not just a spectacle for tech nerds to dork out over (although that factor can’t be discounted either). On multiple occasions, Questworld is used to bring a comatose or otherwise unconscious person back from the beyond. When was the last time your 360 did that? Thought so.

One of my favorite Questworld-centric episodes was “Digital Doublecross” where Jonny and Jessie are enjoying a little friendly VR competition when their game is hijacked by your friendly neighborhood quadriplegic mastermind, Dr. Jeremiah Surd. Surd rigs the system so that manually aborting the game or pulling the plug only causes a world of hurt for the players, thus effectively trapping them in the game until they either beat the system (not likely) or die of exhaustion. Throw in some murderous CG clones of J & J, add a sprinkle of confusion as to who’s real and who’s the pixelated sociopath and you have a recipe for a pretty exciting episode which unfortunately culminates with a cliché “No, shoot him! I'm the real [insert any sci-fi character name here]."

Come to think of it, Dr. Quest designed Questworld as a harmless program used for gaming, archiving information, and random internet shenanigans. You would think that since he had precious top-secret documents in the system as well as, you know, children playing on it, he would have set up an effective firewall to keep out internet predators who are bored and have nothing better to do.  It baffled me time and again how someone like Surd, who was so incapacitated that he had to have someone feed him applesauce through a straw and change his diapers, could somehow consistently cyber pwn the Quest Team considering his only help were two henchmen so useless he could only have found them on Craigslist.

"Paralyzed super villain seeks henchmen to aid in trash-talking 10-year-old girls on XBox Live. Some light housekeeping may be required as well. No experience necessary.

Aside from lacking an active subscription to Norton Anti-Virus, Questworld was still awesome even if just in theory. The concept of Questworld and virtual reality was and still is way ahead of its time and if the show was picked up again, this element would fare much better now than it did over a decade ago. Questworld allowed users to wage warfare using virtual reality in the subconscious mind THREE YEARS BEFORE the Wachowski Brothers popularized it in The Matrix. We’re beginning also to see the progression towards its likeness in interactive gaming platforms like the Nintendo Wii but reaching a point where it’s as fully immersive as Questworld may be a long way away.

Being able to see psychically into the future. Yet another reason why this show was brilliant television.

Quest Team: 1. Technological Innovation: 0.

 And just for fun, so that you can compare the striking similarities of Questworld technology to  that of the Matrix franchise, here's a spoof trailer I made a while ago using Jonny Quest footage to the audio from the Matrix Reloaded trailer.



Stay tuned in the coming weeks for the next Reason Why The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest Was Ballin' Television.


NOTE TO ALL TRUE BLUE JQ FANS:

When I wrote this on November 6th, the Season 1: Volume 1 DVD of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest was ranked at a pitiful  #30,663 on amazon.com's Movies & TV sales ranking. The He-Man Masters of the Universe box set is holding steady at a very comfortable #496. Not even the original He-Man but the doofy 2002 reboot of the 80's series.

Really, people? Let's try and close the gap a little shall we?

The closer the sales ranking gets to the top 100, the more likely they will consider releasing the remaining 39 episodes of JQ on DVD, as well as potentially putting a 3rd season in the works.

I bought my copy last March, but I'm throwing down the gauntlet to those of you that claim you truly loved this show. In order to improve sales rankings and secure the future of this show, you must: 

1. Buy a new copy from any reputable online vendor (NOT used. Unfortunately, when you buy used copies, 0% of those profits go back to the creators and the company who would actually be able to bring the show back so it's wasted money for the cause).
2. If you're super awesome, you'll buy a copy for a friend or sibling for Christmas.

There. You have your challenge: 100 copies of the Season 1, Volume 1 DVD sold by Christmas. I'm sure there are definitely more than 100 of you that haven't bought your copy yet so I think this is totally doable and would be sending a big message to the distributors that JQ is still in demand and we want more. 

Remember: friends don't let friends watch He-Man murder Jonny Quest.

"Jonny Quest, consider yourself pwned"

...Do it for the kids.

Halloween Psych 101: Lesson I - "Monsters, Toddlers, and Psychopaths: A Love Story"

Seeing as today is Halloween, I decided I'd kick off my blog with a hint of relevancy. (Notice, I only said a hint). I figured I'd put the 3/4 of my unfinished Psych degree to good use and discuss the psychology of fear in relation to horror movies to figure out why exactly we find them scary and why different ones speak to people in different ways. I've actually been writing for a few days now and have compiled so much information I didn't know where to start so I kind of started in the middle and am posting them in whatever order I feel like. How 'bout them apples?

At some point or another, we all worried about the monster that was taking up residence in that eternally rent-controlled housing unit known as the space our bed. Unlike good neighbors who welcome you to the neighborhood with Bundt cakes, and water your plants while you’re away, monsters threaten to yank you under the bed and eat you as you get up to go pee in the middle of the night. Monsters are scary because not only do they fall under the “fear of the unknown” category, they represent something less than human but more than beast and that scares us.

 Terrifying

Humans have the capacity to reason, to rationalize, to make moral decisions, and to feel compassion, empathy, and love. Monsters do not. Monsters are jerks.

This is why we fear wild animals we encounter in the woods (or rather you would encounter, since I have no particular fondness for camping or the outdoors in general and therefore would never find myself in such an absurd scenario). It’s why we fear dogs that bark and jump at you or cats that hiss and extend their claws. You cannot reason with animals the way you would with humans because animals don’t feel empathy, or guilt, or compassion for you when you tell them not to rip off your arm. They just do it.

By nature, humans are social creatures. We learn, grow, and thrive from interaction with others and model our behavior, ideology, and expectations after those who have experienced more life than we have -- our parents, teachers, friends, siblings, celebrities we have never even met, etc.

Since we only have one life to live, we can never personally experience everything this world has to offer so we live many lives vicariously through others. It explains the eternal need for books, movies, television, tabloids, and other forms of entertainment to take us to different worlds. It explains the need for sideline parents and pageant moms.

Just kidding. There is no need for pageant moms.

This is one reason why so many enduring movie franchises feature sociopathic serial killers a la Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream, Hostel, and Saw 1 through 38. Now bear with me, I’m not saying that we are all secret serial killers or desire to be (although I hope to avoid offending any aspiring Dexter Morgans that might be reading this, so to avoid seeming discriminatory, I will adamantly maintain that it’s a lifestyle choice that you are completely free to make and I hope it works out for you).

 You're welcome.

I think it’s not so much that we want to murder people but that we want to temporarily envision what it’s like to be completely ignorant of how the world perceives us, how our actions affect other people, and what the world expects us to be and do. At one point, every single one of us, lived that experience, we just weren’t old enough to remember.

The late developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, delineated the stages of children’s social development ranging from flaming baby narcissism to more socially aware creatures that try to pretend they’re not still narcissists. He breaks development into 4 phases: the Sensoriomotor, Pre-Operational, the Concrete, and the Formal Operations stage. 

• The Sensoriomotor and Pre-Operational stages both indicate that for our formative years, we are entirely self-centered creatures and if you’ve ever seen 4-year-olds fight over a toy, you’d agree. Epitomizing the term “Egocentrism,” babies and toddlers are pooping, eating, crying machines that don’t realize there is a world outside of themselves, and take and take and take without being able to empathize with others. They just do what they know best: look out for number one. Not that babies are sociopaths, but they have no concept of human life so they are not burdened with the task of valuing it. There you go, one thing babies and Freddie Kruger have in common -- aside from a tendency of looking absolutely adorable in stripes.
• By the age of 7, Piaget claims they are less Egocentric (this is debatable), and start to develop an understanding of life outside of oneself and the consequences their actions have on others. 
• By the Formal Operations stage starting around age 11 -- which Piaget points out that many people never reach – the child grows into a fully functional, socially and morally aware citizen of planet earth. Again, Piaget said many people never reach this stage. Piaget was a smart man.

And kind of a baller.

When we fear the darkness within us -- our most primal, visceral, basic instincts -- we basically fear devolution from an advanced state we spent our whole lives fighting to attain. We spend our whole lives fighting to become “human.”

The darker side of society fascinates us so because it terrifies us that we all possess it to some degree but cover it up with more socially acceptable traits (either due to a conscious decision to be a decent person or merely a lack of both opportunity and a working chainsaw). If you’ve ever suppressed the urge to beat the living crap out of someone, to tell off your boss with a list of words so offensive Lady Ga Ga decided to steal it from you and wear it to the Grammys, or if it ever crossed your mind to not hit the brakes next time a bicyclist darts out in front of you, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We don’t like this part of ourselves, and we don’t like other people to see us in this light either so we do our best to keep it under wraps.

  Except Troy. He's a little out of control.

But like most instincts, when we are under pressure, frustrated, stressed, tired, scared, etc., it’s so easy for us to revert back to our bad habits and default behaviors. Biting nails, smoking, eating our feelings. It seems nearly impossible to be 100% good all the time. By confronting our dormant shadows in the safety of a dark movie theater, we can temporarily exorcise our demons in an entertaining, cathartic way without hurting anyone in real life. These cinema and TV villains unleash the caged animal for us so that we don’t have to.  

(Here’s the million dollar question: Was I talking about Freddy vs. Jason, or Toddlers and Tiaras there?)

Check out Halloween Psych 101 - Lesson II: Casper Wasn't a D-Bag, or Why Ghosts are Pretty Much BAMFs