For a moment, imagine the typical movie or show set in middle or high school. In your mind, you’re probably imagining twenty and thirty somethings playing teenagers with perfect hair, skin, and fashion sense. There’s probably a group of popular kids and a group of outcasts that are nerdy, but in a way that’s usually not quite accurate. There’s probably a plot where said nerds dream of being popular and try hard to climb the ranks of the school food chain, and it creates conflict within their friend group. And even more likely, there’s zero communication between the friends that prevents them from drifting apart.
Now, throw all of that away. Because this article is aboutTurning Red, a film that both deviates from these tropes and turns them upside down.
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Turning Redis the most recent release from Pixar and follows Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a thirteen-year-old girl who is smart, silly, loves her friends, and does everything she can to live up to her mother, Ming’s (Sandra Oh), expectations. When her mother embarrasses her after finding her notebook full of drawings, Meilin wakes up the next morning asa giant red panda. She must learn to keep the panda under control until it can be sealed away forever, just as it has been for all the women in their family. But is that what Meilin really wants? Or is it what Ming wants? The general plot of the movie is something you might have seen before. Girl feels oppressed by her mother, her mother is only overbearing because her own mother was so demanding, girl finds herself and learns to embrace her identity. However,Turning Redis anything but your typical narrative, and it’s due to two very important things: the characters, and the friendship between Meilin and her friends, Abby, Priya, and Miriam (Hyein Park,Maitreyi Ramakrishnan,andAva Morse).
This movie really embraces the cringiness of middle schoolers, and that’s a compliment. When we’re young, we’re all very weird, and even though we like to imagine that goes away as we grow up…it doesn’t. We just bury it, and we look back at our younger selves and feel overwhelmed with embarrassment.Turning Reddoesn’t want you to view these girls as cringe in a bad way; it showcases it in a way that reminds us that these girls are having fun. They’re being true to themselves and they’re comfortable being giddy and hyper with each other. Each of these girls is full of quirky energy, but it feels entirely authentic.
This isn’t something we often see in movies and TV. Usually, these “quirky” girls are the butt of every joke, or they’re considered to be characters that are incredibly try-hard and annoying. This is because unlike Meilin and her friends, those characters feel unrelatable and inauthentic. It’s easy to see yourself in these characters, especially if you were a teenager in the 2000s. It’s easy to remember the way you squealed over boy bands, fawned over vampire and werewolf novels, and dressed in ways that you just loved and felt comfortable in without caring about anyone else’s opinion.
And more to the point, it’s easy to find your own friendships in the dynamic between Meilin, Abby, Priya, and Miriam. Friendship is one of the strongest themes inTurning Red, and it’s apparent when you see all of the care that was put into making the girls’ relationship realistic. It never feels like a forced friendship, like it might in other movies; the girls have the same interests and find joy in gushing about them. They have silly handshakes and make up dances to their favorite songs. They uplift each other and respect each other’s differences, and even when they fight, they apologize. It makes sense that Meilin finds peace in her friends and that they’re able to ground her; most people at that age feel that their friends are the only people in the world that truly understand them.Turning Redmakes it a point to show the audience why that is, and the film achieves that by writing them as normal, unapologetically awkward teenage girls.
This is ultimately what setsTurning Redapart from most modern television shows and movies. There is no attempt to make the girls seem older than they are, or more mature than they are. There’s no push to make them “cool”. There is, however,everyattempt to make them real, tangible characters and give them accurate relationships with one another, which not only makes them more relatable to the audience, but creates a far better, more grounded story to get invested in, even if it makes you cringe a little. And really, there’s no reason to cringe at all; we were all young at one point, and if there’s one thing to take away from the friendships ofTurning Red, it’s that no matter how old you are, you’ll always be a little weird, especially with the people you love.
