The Relatable Charm of Pixar’s “Turning Red”
This post contains spoilers for the film Turning Red.
Pixar has done the impossible: make me miss middle school.
Directed by Domee Shi, the new animated film which dropped on Disney+ this past Friday follows Meilin “Mei” Lee, an awkward, dorky, Asian-Canadian 13-year-old growing up in Toronto’s Chinatown in 2002. She’s a straight-A student, an obedient daughter, a huge fan of the boy band “4*Town”, and… she turns into a huge red panda when she experiences intense emotions thanks to an ancestral blessing (or curse, rather) passed down to her.
Super relatable, right?
But seriously, you might have seen that viral (now removed) review that called this premise “exhausting” and the audience who would enjoy such a story “relatively small”.
Which, firstly… has this author ever watched a movie in his life?! You could argue that the audience for any piece of media is “relatively small” if you subscribe to a deep belief in the author’s intention. I haven’t been bitten by a radioactive spider, but I can still find things to relate to within the character of Peter Parker in the MCU’s Spider-Man trilogy.
More importantly, though, in the case of Turning Red, I just don’t think the idea that it’s “exhausting” and “limiting” is true. Obviously, there are quite a few aspects between Mei and myself that we don’t share — I’m white, was born and raised in the U.S., and I was literally two years old in 2002 — but Domee Shi has crafted a story that almost anyone can connect to in their own way.
For me, and I think most women and young girls of all races who view this movie, I felt most seen by Shi’s depiction of puberty, the struggle of wanting to conform to your overprotective parents’ expectations of you and yet wanting to be your own person, and typical middle school life and friendships.
Many have already pointed out the upfront discussion of female puberty and menstruation in the movie, when Mei first becomes her panda self and her mother, Ming, mistakes it as her getting her period for the first time. Eagerly yet cautiously presenting her daughter with all kinds of pads, pain killers, and other period essentials, this genuine moment between Ming and Mei is not played for laughs — rather the fact that it’s not Mei’s period and instead her panda-fication is the joke.
We can extend the period metaphor even further if we consider Mei’s red panda transformation as a symbol representing PMS symptoms, with Mei gradually learning to control and navigate life with her “panda” through time, experience, and support. Of course, there’s the significance of the red panda as well. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory.
Regardless of its symbolism, if this movie had been around when I had gotten my period for the first time at 11 — much younger than people who don’t experience female puberty might think — it would’ve been such a comfort.
That’s not to say Turning Red isn’t comforting to me as an adult, either.
At the end of the film, when Mei chooses to keep her “panda” as a part of her as well as continuing to don her more mature look consisting of a tattoo choker and star-shaped stud earrings as she finds her way into womanhood — a bittersweet reality for her mother— it was like looking in a mirror that reflected my own relationship with my mother and my desperate need for self-expression in my teenage years.
Even if you weren’t subject to “helicopter parenting” growing up, we all have that deep internal desire to rebel. It’s hard to confront that 1) rebellion is something we want in the first place and 2) that “disobeying” traditions and familial expectations can be a big opportunity for growth, despite the connotations breaking away from the norm can have.
It’s nice to have a reminder of how important preserving your individuality and personality is as an adult, when so often we get bogged down in what others think of us and how we appear on the outside to people who, really, aren’t all that relevant in our lives.
Something else I found refreshingly personal in Turning Red was its portrayal of female friendships. It was so easy to see myself and my own rag-tag group of middle school friends within Mei and her friends. Like her, Miriam, Priya, and Abby, my friend group, too, wore incredibly dorky outfits that made us all stand out among our peers. Each of us had our own unique styles and little quirks that only 13-year-old girls can possess and find confidence in — and we loved each other for it.
We, too, had interests quite stereotypical to middle school girls — akin to Mei’s own boy band obsession: One Direction, Disney Channel cartoons we were a little too old to be watching, tacky YA romance book series that were clear Twilight rip-offs, random boys in our school we would tease each other about liking: all things many would now call “cringey” or superficial. This may be true to some extent, in hindsight. But what Turning Red does beautifully is that it gives value to the cringe and the superficial in the moment.
Just because we may move on from our adolescent interests and recoil in horror at the thought of the things we said, did, drew, wrote, filmed, created, etc. at Mei’s age doesn’t mean they didn’t have (and sometimes still do have) value and meaning to us and the relationships we associate with said interests.
There really is something so wholesome and affirming in watching these four diverse, unique girls unapologetically sing and dance along to the cheesy, campy lyrics of 4*Town and their early 2000s pop vibe in “Nobody Like U”: “You’re never not on my mind, oh my, oh my! / I’m never not by your side, your side, your side”.
It makes me so nostalgic for an era in my life that I unequivocally hated, as I’m sure everyone who’s survived public middle school would also agree is their view. The fact that Turning Red can make me look back at that time in my life which I’ve always seen as embarrassing and shameful as something that is, in fact, completely natural and something to be celebrated is amazing. Sometimes, it really is that simple. Who knew kids just being kids was never anything more than that?
Growing up is hard — even if you don’t spontaneously turn into a giant, adorable red panda thanks to an ancient familial connection — and the interests and friends we have during that time in our lives help shape us and contribute to our growth, even if we don’t realize it at the time. Having a film that showcases all the awkwardness and simultaneous whimsy of adolescence, particularly through an Asian lens, is hugely impactful for the future of representation in both children’s and animated media.
Just because it’s “for kids”, however, doesn’t mean we can’t all relate in some way or another, whether that way is significant to our many intersecting identities or not.
The red panda part may just be a Mei Lee problem, though.
