As a young writer, I’ve thought a lot about that iconic scene in Ratatouille (you know the one) where cutthroat food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) takes a bite of the titular dish and is instantly transported to his own childhood. While it’s become a bit of a cliché, it remains in my mind as one of the easiest visualizations of what “good art” makes me feel. It is also one specific moment in Pixar’s filmography that has encapsulated their entire mission statement: they aim to evoke that humane, emotional authenticity into the souls of their CG animated characters. While there have been a few Pixar films that stand apart from their recent trend of sequels and half-hearted efforts, none have quite affected me as much as Bao director Domee Shi’s feature-length debut, Turning Red, a lovingly crafted tribute to girlhood and second-generation modernity.
Set in Toronto in 2002, Turning Red follows the story of Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a headstrong and high-strung 13-year-old girl who finds herself at the crossroads of forging her own identity versus fulfilling the perfect daughter role her mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), expects from her. One night, after a particularly embarrassing confrontation with her mother, Mei uncovers a secret ancient family curse — when Mei’s at her most anxious, she transforms into a giant red panda. Ming reveals that all the women in their family inherit the panda curse, and in one month’s time she can perform a ritual to help Mei contain it permanently. In the meantime, Mei and her group of zany friends must face eighth grade, the cute boy from the corner store, and snagging concert tickets to their favorite boy band, 4-Town.
In the weeks since its release, Turning Red has been met with some disappointing backlash from a vocal minority of critics and audiences, begrudging that the scope of the film is too limited to a “specific target audience” and doesn’t quite reach the universal emotions Pixar usually taps into. I’m not here to dignify those claims, as many other critics have eloquently written about how unempathetic, therefore anti-cinematic those criticisms are. But I do think it raises an interesting tension between the specific and universal in stories made by people of color that we often find ourselves contending with — this is a line that I believe Shi walked so brilliantly in this film. There’s something in Turning Red for everyone, but there are even more layers for those of us raised in the Asian North-American diaspora. We’ve all been anxious teenagers attempting to navigate the world against the grain of our own parents’ expectations, but some of us especially know the weight of our Asian parents’ sacrifices and the cross we bear as their children inheriting their dreams and ambitions. To most, the red panda is a straightforward symbol for puberty and the awkwardness of growing up, but for me, it’s a layered and evolving metaphor that attempts to celebrate and connect second-gen individuality with the roots of Chinese culture.
Shi’s specificity also shines in the film’s bold departure from Pixar’s usual dedication to photorealism into a vibrant and charming dream of Toronto in the early 2000s. Pulling from period-appropriate anime and Asian pop culture in its iconography, Shi makes Mei’s world feel like a magical girl cartoon. While Pixar’s animation has consistently been gorgeous and high-tech, it’s exciting to see these techniques employed to heighten and exaggerate the story in the way that only animation can. There’s an unapologetically nerdy, candy-colored aesthetic to Turning Red that feels liberating for my inner dorky adolescent self to watch. Visions of pop music videos, boba tea, Sanrio characters, and video games that have defined my own childhood explode into pastel-colored fireworks. Other Pixar projects may have technically mastered the way light bounces off water and ice, but Shi’s bubbly portrayal of city life as an Asian youth is simply the most alive a Pixar movie has recently felt and a big push forward for mainstream Western animation.
Unfortunately, a Pixar effort as good as this one has been tinged with an amount of sadness over its choice of distribution by parent company, Disney. I was lucky enough to be able to see the film in a limited theatrical engagement, but most people will only have Turning Red presented on their TV screens as another option for the Disney+ streaming service. This has been a point of controversy, as many Pixar employees reportedly have expressed disappointment in this being their third feature film to be exclusively released on the service. As Pixar’s first film directed by a Chinese-Canadian woman telling a personal story from her own background, most consumers have been robbed of their choice to individually support this film apart from the rest of the Disney+ brand. Many were confused as to why this film skipped a theatrical release while other Disney tentpoles have been able to thrive during the pandemic, but it became more obvious to me why this was shoveled onto the platform as I watched the film and saw its crushingly honest portrayal of female adolescence and the awkwardness of youthful sexuality. Considering Pixar’s last effort, Luca, a coming-of-age film set on the Italian coast, could easily be read as an allegory for gayness, and many Pixar employees have opened up about Disney’s censorship of topics they deem ‘taboo,’ as well as the Christian-conservative backlash from those audiences who have seen Turning Red, it is clear as day that the choice to dump this film on streaming was one of pure cowardice.
It’s just a shame that one of Disney-Pixar’s strongest films, designed for an audience I belong to, can only be viewed through supporting a service for a company I would deem immoral. Perhaps those are just the limits of representation through mainstream media. Shi ultimately has crafted something so unique and personal that will reach out and touch the imaginations of many young Asians out there (it has certainly touched mine), but to be able to do that on such a wide scale requires the spectatorship of those white audiences and corporate motivations that don’t have our interests in mind. Watching Turning Red feels so good, but thinking about where my money, and even further, the laborious efforts of all these artists will go towards, feels so bad. That’s not to say Hollywood is ever pure, but never before has this dichotomy been so transparent.
At the end of the day, the film speaks for its own rebellious, dorky, and sugary-sweet self outside of the Disney company, and I still find it important to celebrate what has been accomplished here. Shi’s directorial voice in this film is so far unlike any other piece of Western media out there. There are traceable inspirations: the pastels of Sailor Moon, the autobiographical mode of storytelling found in Lady Bird — but Turning Red forges its own identity in a fresh way that only a true, new generation of directors can bring to the table. Shi’s Miyazaki-like obsession with capturing the mouth-watering intricacies of Asian food is fitting, for my viewing of Turning Red felt like a perfectly fatty, crispy, and tender bite of seared pork belly. So good, I could shed tears. A bite that has transported me to a much more vulnerable time in my life, when I would desperately try to hide my report card from my mom. Or when my friends and I geeked over the new Star Wars trailer on the Tumblr timeline. Or when going to my first ever concert with a boy I liked felt as though I was crossing a major threshold into adulthood. I know, once again, how Anton Ego felt biting the ratatouille, and Shi has mastered the recipe in her very first feature film.
