I still remember the moment during the Ninja Storm season of Power Rangers, when I looked at my son's face and sensed, in that wispy way that mothers sense things, what it meant for the geeky offsider, Cam Watanabe (pictured), to turn into the Green Samurai.
It was an unexpected arc. My kid had, as usual, gravitated toward the character who resembled him in some way, even if not the strongest or fastest one. It must have blown his mind.
Maybe it is nothing more than vanity: pop culture as mirror. But then imagine what it is like for those who are used to seeing other faces in that mirror, to suddenly recognise their own.
Some of this potency is captured by the maxim, 'you can't be what you don't see'. Perhaps more accurately, it is much harder to imagine what else we can become when what we are is all we know.
This can be heavy stuff, especially when accounting for the sort of jobs that get stratified by class and gender, and the way members of certain families end up in similar jobs through generations.
The drama series LA Law, which was associated with a boom in law school applications in the late 1980s, had an attorney named Victor Sifuentes, played by Jimmy Smits. It goes without saying that a multidimensional Puerto Rican professional was a novelty on American television at the time. For years afterward, Latinx lawyers and politicians would tell Smits that his character had inspired their career.
From memories of my own childhood, and having once been a high school teacher, I know that pop culture provides both a language and a map for figuring out who we are and what we want to be, at a time when limited life experience leaves us inarticulate about such things.
"Girl-power pop culture is good for boys, too, because it configures a mental world where women are fully realised beings, who can think and act on their own."
There are reasons why black American music, specifically rap and hip-hop, is popular among Aboriginal, Maori and Sudanese teenagers. It resonates with their inner and outer worlds: frustration and defiance suddenly materialising in lyric and beat.
Sometimes it is about recognition of value. At pre-release screenings in Samoa for the Disney animated feature Moana, tears were shed at a vision of Pacific culture that spoke for itself. Coco was similarly distinct in its approach to Dia de los