June 24, 2022
A few weeks ago I watched another Pixar movie called Turning Red. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is a must. I saw the trailer and the billboards and posters advertising the film around the city, but I didn’t really care at the time. Then my friend recommended it and we watched it together and it was better than I expected. Even though I couldn’t exactly relate to Mei’s life, I could relate a lot to her struggle to achieve and please others.
The movie takes place in Canada in 2002, and Meilin “Mei” Lee is a thirteen-year-old young woman who seems to have it all together. She aces all of her exams, she is number one in her school’s band, and she wins at pretty much all competitions, and she has a group of friends who love her company. She brings home report cards with all A’s to show her mom and dad because she wants them to be proud of her, and she also helps her parents with the Buddhist temple they run. She lives by the principle of filial piety, and everything seems to be going smoothly. But Meilin is a young woman growing into her sexuality and puberty, and her friends and her are huge fans of this boy band called 4-Town and can’t stop dreaming about them for days. Moreover, there is a cute boy at the local store that Meilin likes and she is struggling to navigate her romantic feelings for this boy, drawing in her private journal sketches of her falling in love with the boy. Her mother thinks that Meilin needs to focus on her academics and work at the temple, and anything that has nothing to do with that is not a priority. When she finds Meilin’s journal she is appalled and thinks that the boy did something wrong to Meilin, marching up to the store where the boy works and threatening him if he touches her daughter. Meilin tries to hide her embarrassment but she is furious, and she ends up turning into a red panda. Not surprisingly, she is freaked out and tries to hide from her parents so they don’t see her, but then they find out and her mom isn’t surprised at all because there is a family history of the ancestors turning into red pandas. Meilin goes back to being a human being but any time she feels a strong emotion like anger or fear she becomes a panda again. Her friends come over to her house and they see her as a panda and at first they freak out, but then they tell her they are going to support her no matter what and they figure out how to get to 4-Town’s upcoming concert. They get the idea of fundraising for the concert tickets, and at first the students are freaked out when Mei becomes a red panda after her mom comes up to the school to look for her, but then they come to see her as the cool kid and only end up liking her when she is a red panda. They raise money for the concert but it ends up not being enough, and moreover the concert is the same night as the ceremony where the ancestors gets rid of Mei’s panda form so she can be fully human. Mei is invited to a party by a kid who doesn’t like her for who she is, but only wants her to come if she promises to turn into a red panda. But then Mei’s grandmother and aunts come in preparation for the ceremony and tell Mei that she is forbidden from turning into a panda and needs to control it from now on. Mei goes to the party dressed in a papier-mache sort of panda costume but then the kids think her costume is lousy and she finally gives in to peer pressure and turns into a red panda. At first she is happy she is getting more attention from the popular kids and people like her, but then things take a turn when her mom comes up to the party and finds Mei turned into a red panda and disobeyed her family’s warnings. She scolds the kid who threw the party and also Mei’s friends for making her sneak out and disobey her parents. Mei’s friends turn on her, feeling betrayed.
The night of the ceremony, Mei is hesitant about giving up her red panda form but she tries to stay calm as the family members make their preparations for the ceremony. Mei’s dad finds Mei’s old camera and sees videos of her goofing off with her friends as the red panda and he finds it funny. Mei is at first embarrassed and freaks out when he finds them, but then he tells her they are hilarious and that she is having fun, and encourages her to make the best decision for her, and if she wants to keep being a panda that is up to her. During the ceremony, they try to get rid of Mei’s panda but with little luck. Mei ends up escaping to the 4-Town concert and finds her friends there so she can rekindle their friendship (she even finds out the guy who invited her to his party is a fan of 4-Town). Mei’s mom is furious that she ran off to the 4-Town concert without her permission and transforms into an even larger Godzilla-sized version of the red panda. She busts the concert and wrecks the auditorium and scares the concertgoers, and goes at Mei for sneaking out to the concert. Mei fights back at her and tells her stay out of her life and that she is too controlling, and she ends up knocking back her mom, causing her to fall unconscious. Mei realizes what she did and regrets it, and the aunts (who have transformed into red pandas, too, and her try to get her in the middle of the auditorium so they can change her back into a human. The aunts chant a mantra but Mei keeps struggling and doesn’t chant, but she soon does it because time is running out. Her friends and the 4-Town singers provide some acapella singing to back up Mei in her efforts to save her mom. They end up getting her mom in the circle and the chant ends up working, and Mei finds herself in this forest where she finds her mom as a 13 year old red-haired version of herself crying and saying how her mom wants her to be perfect all the time. Mei realizes that her mom treated her the way she did because her mom also treated her that way, and the two of them walk through the forest, Mei’s mom transforming from a teenager into the grown version of herself at the beginning of the film and they are at the point where they need to decide if they want to give up their inner panda or not. The aunts go through the portal, giving up their inner red pandas, and Mei’s mom decides to give up her panda, too, but Mei hesitates and explains that she doesn’t want to give up her panda because it’s part of who she is. At first, Mei’s mom struggles to agree with her daughter, but then understands and lets her keep her panda identity. Mei’s family ends up embracing her for her true self and the temple actually gets more business because everyone loves Mei as a red panda. She also makes things up with her friends and now they’re tight again.
This movie kind of reminded me of Encanto a bit because the theme of both movies is what to do when you don’t fit the expectations of others. In Encanto, Mirabel is the only one in her family who doesn’t have a magical gift and she makes a lot of mistakes, which infuriates her abuela. Her abuela is the one who holds the family together and covers up any imperfections that might tarnish its reputation, but Mirabel tries to alert everyone that there are cracks in the foundation of the house and everything they hold dear isn’t perfect and is falling apart, but people don’t want to listen to her because they’ve spent so long trying to put on this image of perfection. But Mirabel ends up actually saving the family even if she didn’t meet their expectations at first because she knew that there were things in the family that needed to be fixed. Mirabel’s struggle with self-confidence kinds of resonates with Mei’s struggle with self-confidence because despite being a high achiever and perfectionist, Mei is like any other human being and teenager. She likes boys, she likes pop music, but she also loves her family. It’s not until she goes through her own struggle with her emotions that she finally realizes her true self, because before that every time she felt strong emotions her inner critic would kick in and she would berate herself and tell herself that she needed to stop feeling certain ways because she didn’t want to disappoint her mom by not meeting her expectations. I definitely could resonate to some extent because I often at times would get self-conscious or self-critical whenever I felt strong emotions. Of course, I’m working on not letting those strong emotions negatively affect my relationships with people but it was only when I got in touch with myself and my emotions that I learned that I’m a human and I, well, feel things. I would often try to hide my emotions under more work, more smiles, more “I’m good” and “No it’s fine” but after a while as I chanted I started to see my emotions as they were, good or bad, and realized that I needed to get professional help to deal with those emotions because I was feeling anxious and depressed and would beat myself up for feeling those things, like they were things I needed to magically wish away. But after seeking help, I learned to understand my humanity and that I can manage my emotions without pushing them under the rug or the other extreme, lashing out at others.
Turning Red. 2022. 1 hr 40 min. Rated PG for thematic material, suggestive content and language
The Arts Are Life 