Is TURNING RED really "bad" for kids?

“I like loud music! I like gyrating! I'm 13, deal with it!”

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen – or at least heard of- Disney / Pixar’s latest feature TURNING RED, which debuted on the Disney+ streaming service this month after an eleventh-hour change by Disney not to distribute the film theatrically.

TURNING RED is directed by debut filmmaker and long-time Pixar artist Domee Shi, a Canadian-Chinese woman, and co-written with Shi by award-winning playwright Julia Cho. It is a “period piece” in the sense that it is set specifically in 2002 and in the sense that...well. It’s about periods.

In TURNING RED, we meet 13-year-old Meilin “Mei” Lee, a people-pleasing middle school girl who discovers that, due to a generation-spanning curse, she turns into a giant red panda whenever she feels bouts of incredibly strong emotion. With the help of her close friends, she learns to harness her powers in an attempt to raise money to see an NSYNC-like boy band who are coming to her town. Of course, she has to deal with a lot of other things first...like, you know, her gigantic, fluffy, alter-ego.

The film is adorable. It is animated very much like a Japanese anime with expressive faces, colorful and fast editing, and a very unique art-style that sets it apart from most usual Pixar-fair. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as once upon a time Disney distributed (and had a very good relationship with) Studio Ghibli who were behind many classics such as SPIRITED AWAY, HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE, KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, PRINCESS MONONOKE, and recently THE WIND RISES, which was so good Disney buried it in an effort to have it not compete with their own animated Oscar-contender at the time, INSIDE OUT.

The “discourse” around TURNING RED stems from several viral Facebook posts including ones from a page called “The Real Deal of Parenting” and a woman named Kaitlyn Willing.

Both of these posts warn about the dangers of letting kids- specifically young girls- watch this film and that it is supposedly not for innocent Christian eyes, and teachers children awful lessons like disobeying their parents, being attracted to boys, being smart-asses, using words like “crap” and “gyrating”, and twerking.

While I could simply review this film and be done with it, I don’t think that’s an option here as someone who not only loves and respects art and film but also was once, long ago, a 13-year-old.

Anyone who claims this movie is bad for kids or keeps perpetuating that notion is a liar.

Anyone who claims they weren’t hormonal, angry, disobedient little kids at 13 is also a liar.

Anyone who claims Disney movies have never been about “going against your parents and forging your own path” is also, you guessed it, a liar.

The same parents who leave their kids to play on their phones and tablets all day watching bizarre crap on YouTube (most of which is far more perverse and scarring than this) are the same ones who are now pretending that Ariel didn’t sell her soul to Ursula for the chance to fall in love with Prince Eric (defying her father’s wishes to keep her sheltered) or that Pocahontas (historical connotations aside) didn’t defy her father’s arranged marriage and her peoples’ mistrust of the white settlers to fall in love with John Smith.

Even MALEFICENT, Disney’s 2014 film starring Angelina Jolie as the titular “Sleeping Beauty” villain had a very obvious allegory for the loss of virginity with Maleficent, a young faerie, “falling asleep” with a boy she loved and waking up to find her wings clipped (literally) in a somewhat disturbing and emotional scene.

THE INCREDIBLES 2 in 2018 also featured Violet, the invisible-powered daughter, experiencing erratic mood swings which were heavily implied to be from her period.

Two classics I mentioned earlier, INSIDE OUT and KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE are also entirely about dealing with emotions and the pain and joy that comes with growing up. One more literal than the other, naturally.

Disney films have always had clever ways to navigate things like this, and TURNING RED is not the first or the last.

13 year olds don’t need to be sheltered from TURNING RED. They need to see it. They need to see that it’s okay to draw romantic and cringey fan-art, or to “gyrate” with their friends.

They don’t need to be hidden from a film that tells them that it’s okay to have periods, to become women, to argue with their parents, to not be entirely subservient.

We all did it. You did it. You hid things from and talked back to your parents and giggled about boys (or girls) with your friends. You fantasized about things like that.

You went to dances at the Youth Center in hopes of kissing your crush, holding their hand, whatever.

You listened to the scandalous-charged chart-topping songs and giggled at the implications in them.

Mei, in the film, deals with being oppressed by her mother Ming Lee (played by the always-excellent Sandra Oh) who is pressuring her based on how she was raised by her own mom.

We learn that Ming Lee had a disagreement with her mother because of the boy she loved, Mei’s father, not being approved of by her family. We learn that Ming Lee lashed out as her own Red Panda, scarring Mei’s grandmother in the process. Now both women, terrorized by each-other and also tradition, keep such a close hard watch on Mei.

If you want to lie and pretend you never screamed at your parents or that you and your child will never have an altercation, that’s fine, I’ll wait for you to grow up.

By the end of the film, Mei learns to keep and control her Red Panda and tells her mom in a heart-warming moment “My panda, my choice!” an obvious twist on “my body, my choice”.

People have taken that to be a pro-abortion message, when the real meaning couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s learned to embrace who she is, and she is going to live life on her own terms in a healthy way with her mother and father as friends and people who give guidance, as opposed to dictators who force her to hide who she is and what she likes.

TURNING RED is not a film out to turn your children into disobedient hellions.

It is a film inviting parents to have healthy conversations with their children about growing up, about maturing, about being honest with them.

Mei is messy because growing up is messy. She’s erratic. She says “crap” and day-dreams about kissing boys. She goes behind her mother’s back to live her own life until it comes to a dramatic and climactic head where both she and her mother learn more about each-other than they ever dreamed of. Not in-spite of their panda rage, but thanks to it.

It is a film about generational trauma, and learning maybe some cycles (except the obvious menstrual one) can be broken.

If the idea of a PG-rated film that presents menstruation and growing up, the changing of one’s body, is so terrifying and awful for you as a parent, maybe you should watch CARRIE and skip to the scene where Carrie’s mother explains to her that periods are the work of the devil. Then skip to the end and see where that gets Carrie and all the poor souls that decided to bully her at prom.

Then, maybe, you might not think TURNING RED is the worst possible way to let your child find comfort in a film that tells them growing up isn’t a terrifying, sinful, act of defiance.