“Turning Red” is a Pixar film tabout Mei Lee, a 13 yr-old who undergoes the transitions of her teenage years while being obedient to her mother and, of course, balancing the discourse of transformations of being a red panda.
The film digs deeper at generational trauma, identity, and navigation with adulthood.
“I believe that the message was to understand the generational trauma that comes from a family’s history,” said Joseph Salvador, an undecided major. “It takes love and adaptation to deal with the trauma or beliefs that are imposed by parents and traditions.”
The animated film showcases Ming Lee, Mei’s mother, and Mei Lee’s relationship. Ming’s projection of Mei’s perfected life was due to Ming’s strained relationship with her own mom. Although not thoroughly stated, those who grew up with so-called “tiger parents” can acknowledge the struggle of being perfect and seeking parents’ approval.
Ming and her own mother had a strained relationship due to Ming lashing out towards her mom. Throughout the film, it’s evident that Ming never healed from this, and goes through lengths of avoiding her mom.
“The message was very clear to me since I related to it really well, breaking the boundaries of Asian American young adults like me and even younger to fight i guess the “suppression” of who we are supposed to be instead of who we want to be,” said Charisse Dumlao a biology major.
Coming from an Asian American household, one bears the weight and responsibilities to carry the hopes and dreams of what our parents sacrificed.
This film illustrates that concept fairly well, from the idea of Mei embracing her “panda” which is symbolism of breaking out the idea of perfection and to Ming’s panda looking evidently large. The panda displays the idea of how much weight and emotions are held inside them.
“Kids need to be kids and can also have some responsibilities to get them ready for adulthood but they shouldn’t be pushed too hard,” said Rose Perez, a Geology major.
While many young adults are preparing for college, it highlights the fact that the transition from childhood to the high school experience and then off to college feels more like a rush instead of gentle push.
On a lighter note, this film does a great job at portraying the early 2000s and the appreciation for boy bands.
The characters showcased are Mei Lee, the lead, her mother Ming Lee and Mei’s group of friends Priya, Miriam, and Abby.
In the first part of the movie, Mei and Ming’s duties together are maintaining their family’s shrine’s, displaying their close-knit relationship. Mei and her mother display their appreciation for soap-opera shows, acknowledging the appreciation for their ancestors, and doing their best in every category from academics to home-maintenance.
However, at school Mei obsesses over boy-groups and is much more lively with her friends versus at home, where Mei has to hide away her secret obsessions. One of them being all-time favorite boy band 4Town.
“It was a really cute movie! I loved the different characters in Mei’s friend group, they reminded me a lot of my friends when I was younger,” said Shelby Innerst, a media planner. “I feel like it did a great job of capturing that age group.”
It’s a film that invites viewers to be entertained by the light-hearted early cheesy jokes while tackling the serious issues. Many of the issues highlighted to generational trauma aren’t drowned out but rather stylized. The film symbolizes generational trauma as a form of suppressing those emotions in a way that a person can seal it in a physical object.
The resolution is that Mei comes to accept their trauma, their experience is part of the journey of their life. In the film, Ming and her mother came to accept each other, they both acknowledge the past and understand the first hurdle was acceptance of each other’s mistakes.
“My first impression was that it was extremely cute and that I knew it was going to tackle issues as far as maybe parenting/ strictness in the asian community. And how much pressure they may be putting on their children to fit an ideal,” said Angelique Baniaga, a psychology major.