Pixar’s movies always evoke a sense of ownership. They feel like they belong to you. Like they’re somehow telling your story. Sometimes it’s because they come from a deeply personal space. The timeless summer days that Luca director Enrico Casarosa spent just hanging out with his best friend in Genoa easily translates to any childhood, anywhere in the world. Andrew Stanton’s experiences as an overprotective new father, as channeled into Finding Nemo, is completely relatable, to both parents and children alike. These are singular stories, intimate and individual, that tap into a universal human experience, which are brought to life in some of the most visually inventive movies in the history of cinema. (Yes, even Cars 2.)
Turning Red is no exception. With this movie, Domee Shi has given us something joyous and hopeful, bright and beautiful, culturally specific and yet completely accessible. This is Clarissa Explains It All meets Teen Wolf, with a soundtrack by NSYNC, and some Miyazaki whimsy thrown it for good measure. It utterly embraces what it means to be a teenage girl. It is unique. It is special. It is Pixar at its very best.
But Turning Red also felt like it was made just for me. Not because I’m Asian and needed a Hollywood movie to feel validated. I’m not quite so simpleminded. I don’t watch movies to see myself on screen. I watch movies in order to explore new worlds, to empathize with lives outside of my own, and to access experiences and emotions that would otherwise be out of reach. Turning Red allowed me to do that in a way that no other Pixar movie has. But I’ll get to that.
Meilin Explains It All
The premise of Turning Red is simple enough. Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) is a plucky teenager, living in Toronto in the early 2000s, and struggling to find a balance between the culture she was born with and the one she migrated into. She wants to honor her mother and father but she also wants to be her own person. She is as devoted to her duties at the temple as she is to the boy band 4*Town. And she finds just as much joy in her family as she does in her three best friends, Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), Abby (Hyein Park), and Miriam (Ava Morse).
One morning, Meilin wakes up to find herself transformed into a giant red panda. It is a generational curse that is passed down through the female members of her family, and triggered in tense situations, or whenever their emotions run high. Which can be both inconvenient and problematic if you’re 13, hormonal, and trying to make your way through middle school.
There is, however, a solution. Meilin’s tiger mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), tells her that she needs to purge the panda by way of a magic ritual. At first, Meilin agrees, but as she begins to gain control over her own emotions and by extension, the panda, she begins to see her special ability, not as a curse, but rather as a source of freedom and joy.
Here, the giant red panda is a metaphor for the plight of every immigrant. Meilin is torn between two formidable cultures, she wants to fit in, she wants to keep loving the things she loves, while still holding on to her own unique identity and sense of self. She wants to make her mother happy, but is unsure how to do that while still catering to her own desires.
Domee Shi isn’t concerned with the same old clichéd depictions of Chinese filial piety. Here, Meilin’s inner conflict feels real. They hit hard and close to the bone.
The triumph of Turning Red is that it doesn’t make Meilin choose. She isn’t one or the other. She is a child of two worlds, as Chinese as she is Canadian, and able to code switch and traverse both cultures seamlessly. Like Domee Shi’s Bao and Sanjay Patel’s Sanjay’s Super Team, Turning Red is a story that embraces the idea that we, as human beings, contain multitudes. That we can be more than just one thing. That we can hold two, or three, or more, contradictory thoughts in our heads and that none of them need to define who we are as people. It is a potent message and one that is executed with such subtlety that it almost feels understated.
1 True Love
Turning Red is everything we’ve come to expect from a Pixar movie. It is profound. It is quietly devastating. It is a good story that is incredibly well told. But none of that gets to the heart of why the movie spoke to me.
You see, I only met my wife when she was in her mid-20s. I had no idea what she was like growing up. I had no access to that part of who she was and how she came to be. She was already her by the time I showed up. And because we don’t have any children of our own as yet, I haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing a mirrored, younger version of her self. Yes, we often speak about her childhood, but those conversations are steeped in self-reflection, and come with the benefit of hindsight.
Watching Turning Red was like watching my wife’s childhood brought to life. It is so specific and evocative. So faithful and faultless. Meilin’s obsession with boybands, the upholstery on the sofa in their home, the pressure she puts on herself to be the perfect daughter, the pathological need to do well at school, the complex relationship she has with her mother, the Chinese soap operas they watch together, everything, all of it, is absolutely pristine.
Watching Turning Red was like watching an unfiltered (albeit a little stylized) look into what it must have been like for my wife at that age. It gave me greater insight into her inner life. It allowed me to step inside and be a part of her world. It did more than inform me. It created an affinity. Watching Turning Red helped me get to know her just that much better.
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