'Turning Red' tackles a familiar balancing act for AANHPI adolescents

Pixar's and Disney's 'Turning Red," features a diverse cast.

 

OPINON

For most people middle school was a traumatic time with our bodies experiencing hormonic changes, that transitional period between adulthood and childhood, and the time when we want to break away from our parents care as we seek to become our own person.

For lack of a role model, I identified with "Beaver" Cleaver, (OK, so I'm dating myself) whose fictional TV sitcom (Leave It to Beaver) family, friends, neighborhood and school looked nothing like my own reality, which explains a lot about my own personal hangups. (But, that's another story)

Oh, how I wish Turning Red, which premiered today (March 11) on Disney+, was around when I was in sixth and seventh grade.

Pixar's newest animated feature centers on Asian Canadian Mei Lee, a 13-year-old girl who is torn between being her mother's obedient daughter and the chaos of her youth. As if that were not enough, when she gets too excited, she turns into a big red panda, a product of a family curse.

(Metaphorically speaking, recall those awkward times in your life when you believe the whole world is staring at you because of your appearance or something you did.)

Like many children of immigrants, Mei navigates the tumultuous teen years while balancing herself between two cultures. She is unabashedly Asian and unapologetic American. Mei is a dork but she is also super confident, loves her racial heritage and an ardent fan of a boy band.

Sandra Oh (Killing Eve, Grey's Anatomy) and newcomer Rosalie Chiang, who give voice to the mother and Mei, respectively, believe Turning Red has the potential to be transformative.

“Hopefully this film ... gives the experience to [people] just like Mei that you are the hero, a 13-year-old Chinese girl is a hero,” Oh, 50, told the Daily News.

“For someone like myself, and my generation, we did not see ourselves in the center of the story, or the hero, and the fact that we have a lot more stories that are diverse, it just includes more people and it also makes storytelling just much more interesting,” says Oh, who grew up in Canada.

Speaking to one critic's review of the film that he couldn't relate to film because it is targeted at a small, specific audience -- Asian Americans, Oh speaks to the universality of the tween experience and the difficulty of "fitting in."

"You go through changes in your life — puberty, needing to individuate from your parents," Oh continues. "That's ultimately what the film is about and it's just another extra layer that we were able to add it from a specific cultural perspective."

Rosalie Chiang, left, and Sandra Oh, stars of 'Turning Red.'

"This is a coming of age film, everyone goes through this change," says Chiang, a teenager herself growing up with immigrant parents in Fremont, Calif. "I think different people of different cultures are going to go through it differently, but at the end of the day, the core messiness and change is something everyone can relate to,” she tells CBC.

"Since I was between 12 and 16 when I was recording for Mei, I could bring a lot of my own experiences into the character," says Chiang.

"I'm sort of growing with the movie, so I think I could bring another layer of authenticity to a 13-year-old girl,"she adds.

“It was important for me from the beginning that this wasn't your typical story of a militant parent who's very strict and forbidding, and a kid who feels oppressed and wants to break free,” explains director and co-writer Domee Shi, who also helmed the Oscar-winning Pixar short Bao. 

“For Mei, and I think for myself and a lot of Asian immigrant kids, we really want to honor our parents, like we love them and the sacrifices that they've made for us. But she also is being pulled in this other direction [towards] her friends and boybands and whatever that represents for anyone else who watches it.”

Despite using Leave It to Beaver as a standard, I survived, somehow. Thank goodness  AANHPI kids growing up today, have shows like Turning Red, Never Have I Ever and Fresh Off the Boat that, at times, reflect their realities to help navigate through those difficult years.

Turning Red can be streamed on Disney+.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, reviews and tips from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.