“Why is Ming so shocked that her daughter might be interested in boys, when she herself rebelled against Grandma Wu over her love of Jin? Was Ming expecting Mei to stay chaste and asexual until she turned 21?”
lol this is my mom. Both the rebellion and then subsequent hypocrisy. The cycle persists!
“Why is Ming so shocked that her daughter might be interested in boys, when she herself rebelled against Grandma Wu over her love of Jin? Was Ming expecting Mei to stay chaste and asexual until she turned 21?”
lol this is my mom. Both the rebellion and then subsequent hypocrisy. The cycle persists!
Wasn`t it the entire point that the mother was being a hypocrite? She represses her daughter`s emotional growth, but was herself an extremely turbulent teenager and so should be able to empathize better (hence why she has the biggest red panda form). I agree there are stereotypes about oppressive Asian mothers on display, but then again it is the sort of things that Asians themselves constantly joke about, and it feels fairly authentic for the sake of this movie.
My own view of the movie is that it is too much of a retread of Brave. We`ve already done the whole, "mother over-pressuring daughter to conform to social norms and tradition, turns into a bear!" It`s the same relationship dynamic in a different setting. Also, whilst intergenerational strife was also the theme of Encanto, I found that movie a bit more accessible, if only because Red is so very firmly sticking to the grounded perspectives of early 2000s pre-teen girls (which I have no familiarity with whatsoever) versus a more generalized fantasy World setting experienced by an older teenager.
Red clearly wasn`t made for me. Which is fine, considering it is supposed to be a kids movie. It is more of a kids movie than family movie, which is something less common in Disney/Pixar`s recent releases.
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A fun movie overshadowed by a cliched mom
I was really looking forward to Turning Red — more than Luca, more than Encanto, this was the 2021-2022 Disney/Pixar animated film I was eager for. Chalk it up to cultural curiosity, as I wanted to see what an animated movie helmed by an all-female team and a Chinese-Canadian writer could bring to the table.
For the most part, Turning Red delivered what I wanted, as this is a movie that feels like it authentically captures the "tween girl" experience. Mei and her friends feel like real people, and I sympathized with their early discovery of cute boys and young love, rooted for them to succeed and despaired when they fell. Sure, the movie doesn't pull any shocking swerves or surprise twists, but the film doesn't need any such gimmicks to be entertaining.
However, the one thing that keeps Turning Red from true greatness is the unavoidable presence of Mei's mom, Ming. It's one thing to depict a Control Freak Obnoxious Entitled Housewife Abusive Mom, but Ming is Flanderized past the breaking point where she shatters into an unrealistic neurotic Cliché Storm of bad parenting. Worse, the movie depends on this depiction to work at all — much of the film's events wouldn't happen if Ming wasn't juggling the Idiot Ball, Poor Communication Kills, Evil Matriarch, Irrational Hatred, and a dozen other negative tropes at the same time. The movie tries to justify this with a Freudian Excuse about emotionally restrictive moms, but even that doesn't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny (Why is Ming so shocked that her daughter might be interested in boys, when she herself rebelled against Grandma Wu over her love of Jin? Was Ming expecting Mei to stay chaste and asexual until she turned 21?). The end result is that Ming doesn't feel like a character at all, but a walking pile of negative "Asian mom" stereotypes to move the plot forward.
While Turning Red is far from the worst movie ever produced by Pixar, it is a disappointment. I know that Domee Shi drew a lot of the story from her own experiences growing up, so I'd love to sit down with her and talk about just what kind of a childhood she had...