'Turning Red': How Pixar Film's Misses Hit All The Right Notes

When you are an adult, there are only a few things that make noise as they break you. The ones that fix you, however, bring incongruous music in their wake. 

There is a moment in Pixar’s latest Turning Red, where Mei Lee, the Chinese-Canadian protagonist, confesses to her band of three best friends without any perceptible explanation that she cannot poof up into the giant red panda — a blessing-turned-curse passed down by Mei’s warrior ancestor and that transformed their women into hairy, curvy beasts on experiencing strong emotions — to entertain her peers at a party. The girls have been monetising Mei’s metamorphosis to raise ticket money for a boy band concert they are obsessed with, but Mei has recently learnt that releasing the panda frequently would mean she may never permanently get rid of it.

Miriam, one of the best friends, says: “It’s fine. You don’t have to do it.”  There is a measured assurance in her words, a glaring warmth and understanding. The utterance may sound almost banal to those who may have only a feeble inkling of what being colonised in the frozen tableau of culturally sanctioned femininity means. For the rest, the unflinching kindness and support — so rarely represented in female friendships — is a cornucopia of big and small treasures. It is a well one gets to endlessly draw power from — a power that is addictive and freeing. A single expression has the power to confer on the protagonist a choice, something she, under the tutelage of her protective mother and the society in general, may have been denied.
The conspicuous brilliance and optimism of the scene lies in the fact that the girls are just 13 years old, and on the precipice of womanhood, identity crisis and self-actualisation. They are bristling with hormones. Making it to the concert is an extremely serious business. But their friendship is no gimmick. The moment — perfectly ordinary and reticent on its own — loosened a few knots in my stomach. Something churned and was immediately anchored. The music is the gift of female friendships that took me an excruciating amount of time to completely conceive and cherish. And I am obviously way older than 13.

Later, Miriam confides in Mei that she likes her when she is the panda —unfettered, harmless, fun. It becomes clear in this moment that Mei has already begun to realise she is not obligated to service the concept of expectations that buries one’s individuality. Miriam’s observation is not towering or authoritarian. Nor is it fleeting that it escapes the crutches of Mei’s subconsious. It, in fact, helps her shape a self. Their friendship is a device through which Mei explores the deeper recesses of her female psyche. The warmth of their connection burns bright. These are deep, passionate bonds.

The world of Turning Red is unabashedly women’s. Everything said and done is by them, for them. At the core of it is also the repression that women and young girls face, the emotions they suppress, as well as the silence and obedience that daughters inherit form their mothers. It then makes sense that their penance also lies within and among them. They first bring ruin on themselves; they only stand guard when all hell breaks loose.

Mei’s mother is the mother we all know and have: She wants to govern what Mei does and how she behaves. She is overbearing, but in her own right. Mei is also us, us women and girls: She seeks her mother’s approval, contends to all familial and cultural expectations and does nearly everything that boxes her into the archetypical model of girlhood. Their relationship has plenty of love and joy, but is stymied by a pressure to conform. Until the red panda emerges — an allegory for freedom as much as for puberty. The panda is fluffy and free, and Mei is the most untrammelled when she is her. She twirls and zips and flits in out of the avatar with a convivial animation. She becomes the life of a party. She pins down the bully who speaks ill of her family. She is finally comfortable with herself. But her chagrin comes from her mother, who, we learn towards the end, is caught in the circuit of generational hurt. The mother did everything that her mother asked her to, but wasn’t still enough. She did not know what to do with the suffering, so she passed it on. In one of the most dazzling transitions in the climax, which takes place inside a mystical forest where all women of the family have to let the beast go, the mother is seen as the daughter and the daughter as the mother.

One of the other conflicts in Turning Red is also between the mother and Mei’s girls, although it’s never established covertly. The mother doesn’t like one of Mei’s friends and believes the latter to be a wrong influence on her daughter. When Mei is caught at the party, the mother immediately points finger at her friends for leading her astray, and Mei is a mute spectator to the skirmish. It’s the girls’ warm and intensely supportive presence that helps keep the panda in check, but Mei tells her mother that the family was the grounding force. Mei’s dilemma and anxiety is not unfounded: Giving precedence to friends over family is among the transgressions a ‘good daughter’ is frequently shamed for.

What Turning Red wants for its central characters — all women and girls — is to overthrow the prescribed script of norms that robs women of confidence and self-worth. It may take women-years, decades — if they are lucky — to realise that it’s okay for the world to see the side they wanted to hide, one that is conveniently labelled ‘crass’. That it’s okay to embrace the mess. That being a good daughter should not have to come at the cost of self-diminishment.

And that’s how one of the film’s most comically earnest scenes arrives: Mei owns the beast — which is also her magic — and tells her mother with the most promising temerity a 13-year-old could have: “I like boys. I like loud music. I like to gyrate. I am 13 years old, accept it.” Panda Mei then goes on to gyrate in Panda mother’s gigantic face — even if it is to distract her for the sake of performing the ritual on her. Mei’s authority latches to the viewer like a second skin. It’s honest and beautiful and moving.

Turning Red is a distillation of a series of acts of acceptance and breaking free. It’s about learning to let each other go. And letting go can be messy. One of Pixar’s most commendable feats is how it never deems it necessary to explain anything. None of the characters are in actual opposition to the other. All the little acts — none of which are neatly resolved — are rendered toothless in the face of the final act. The end, in fact, comes together like a patchwork quilt. The sum is greater than the parts.
Nothing explains the bravery of Turning Red better than those who made it: For the first time in Pixar’s history has a movie been made and led by an all-women team. Turning Red thrives on its compassion. But it’s also savage. That women turn into mammoth creatures could as well be a deliberate act. Who understands it better than women that it’s time to take up space — physically, emotionally. 

Anshika Ravi is a Delhi-based writer