Transcultural hybridaptation and queerness in Power Rangers RPM

This article explores the Power Rangers franchise, focusing on its unique production method of hybridaptation, which involves combining pre-existing footage with newly filmed scenes. The article argues that this method is inherently queer, creating a polysemiotic text through its destabilization and crossing of boundaries. The article specifically examines Power Rangers RPM (2009), the final season produced under Disney’s ownership. For transculturally knowledgeable fans of Power Rangers, RPM moved the franchise closer to its Japanese origins and to the norms and styles of Boys Love media, depicting emotionally intense relationships between male characters. RPM ’s horror-inflected post-apocalyptic setting and found family dynamics offer rich material for queer readings. The article argues that RPM ’s initial embrace of these queering elements was later overwritten by Disney’s intervention, which led to the disavowal of implicitly queer relationships with explicit heteronormative plot points. By analysing RPM , the article provides historical context to Disney’s ongoing negotiations with queer audiences and the complexities of glocalqueering. RPM is presented as an example of what was both possible and impossible for a Disney text at its specific historical moment. The article concludes by discussing the implications of Disney’s experiments with hybridaptation for ongoing issues of transcultural media production, consumption and representation.