La Ron S. Readus
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Turning Red Is My Coming Out Story! (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2022-03-16 20:01:00 +0000 UTCReaders, I’m gonna be honest with you; I was not expecting Disney Pixar’s Turning Red to hit me as hard as it did
Not only was it the umpteenth movie I’ve seen that took place in Toronto Ontario Canada that has ACTIVELY reminded me that I REALLY need to visit Toronto Ontario Canada one of these days...
No, seriously, I’ve NEVER been to the city proper. The closest I’ve ever gotten to it during family trips to Canada was like...Chatham, Ontario back when Wheels Inn existed
/But I think it’s safe to say that thanks to a wild combination of intriguingly unique characters, a wide array of diversity, and a story that tells a very unique perspective of life, culture and upbringing in the era it’s based in that’s also widely relatable to a lot of people, Turning Red has EASILY made its way to my top five list of favorite Coming Of Age films./
I said “Coming of Age,” not “Slice of Life.” There’s a difference between the two.
I’m like a dog when it comes to Slice of Life films; you gotta put the pill in like... a cube of cheese or something in order for me to eat it. It’s not a genre I can just watch by itself.
I personally put it up there because as I was watching the movie, there were key portions of it that just RESONATED with me and my upbringing. And despite me not being the COMPLETE target demographic for it, I found the fact that it was still able to touch me the way that it did to be VERY impressive.
And while the movie is currently being review-bombed by insecure overprivileged white men who need every and anything to either focus on, involve, or have something to do with them in order for it to be deemed worth watching...
I want to use this opportunity to show that despite me not being Chinese, Canadian, or a woman, I found both solidarity and relatability with Mei’s coming of age story in Turning Red within the first 20 minutes of the movie
And how I found it was in how her scenario -- both leading up to her being able to transform into a Red Panda and learning to traverse it -- eerily reflected how I was outed to my parents, and how I came out to my father. Let’s begin.
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Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, this video will in fact contain spoilers for season one of Disney and Pixar’s Turning Red. It’s currently available to stream on Disney Plus, so give it a watch before continuing here if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want me to spoil pivotal points of it for you in this video.
Other than that, if you end up liking what I’m putting down after this video is done, there’s multiple ways you can show some love
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That’s the syllabus. Now onto the lesson.
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We’re not so different, MeiMei and I
No, seriously; I did the math. I’m LITERALLY a year older than her.
Due to it being a movie with a 13 year old protagonist set in 2002, it's pretty much a story that is meant to reflect the childhoods of multiple millennials out there; specifically minority millennials.
Now if you’ve seen my video essay on A Goofy Movie, then this subject matter isn’t really that new.
There’s always going to be a bit of a generational gap when it comes to fictional media that some who are younger both can and can’t relate to, because of either a lack of understanding the POV from the younger generation in question due to how differently they were brought up in comparison...
Or the generation creating said media accidentally isolating the newer one because they want to tell the story they wanted to see when they were growing up.
Turning Red is no exception to the rule here, considering this story is told from the perspective of a tween-to-teen Chinese Canadian millennial during the early 2000’s, and both co-written and directed by Domee (Dou-mee) Shi, who herself is a Chinese Canadian millennial
I was made aware that this disconnect in the movie with Zoomers and younger generations who watched the film was present, thanks to fellow Reader Hopeful Gracidea encountering said individuals and tagging me in a thread they wrote on Twitter about it after watching my Goofy Movie video essay.
And while I’m pretty sure a lot of the stuff regarding the relationship Mei had with her mom isn’t as relevant anymore because those of us who are parents are -- I hope -- actively doing our best to not make our children feel the way that Mei did in the movie...
I’d be lying if I said that what Mei endured with her mom didn’t speak to my soul at ALL, or that I couldn’t find any relatability in what she dealt with whatsoever. Because just like the event that triggered Mei’s transformation and started her on her journey of finding herself...
It All Started With A Boy
Mei’s second-handed embarrassment she suffered when her mom found her notebook and decided to tell off the 17 year old boy “corrupting her daughter” was VERY similar to when MY mom stumbled upon some...very erotic downloaded files I forgot to delete off the family computer after transferring them to my floppy disks when I was a freshman in High School.
She reacted very much along the lines of Mei’s mom, thinking that these impure “abominable” thoughts could NEVER have come from me and me alone
Because not only did she not raise me this way, but she knew this was “unacceptable behavior as a child of God” and would never seek it out on my own. It had to have been planted in me by someone else. Someone at school, maybe.
When in actuality, despite actively being attracted to girls since consciousness, thoughts about boys were lingering in me since third grade and only then started to turn into attraction.
So once again, if you’ve seen my Goofy Movie video essay, then you kinda already know how my mom reacted now that you know how much of a devoted Christian she was.
Repentance was involved -- both to God AND my mom. More on that later...
BELTS were involved, because of COURSE...
And me being gaslit to make it seem that I showed enough weakness to allow the devil a bit of wiggle room in my otherwise divinely ordained life was involved.
/So when I saw how Mei handled the aftermath of the corner store incident, I saw myself. How I reacted when my mother discovered my “weakness.” How I beat myself up about it with her rhetoric to stay on the path, even though my mom did plenty of that beforehand. How she took it was like looking directly into a mirror, and it hit me hard./
And I know what you’re thinking. If Mei’s mom was like your mom, does that mean Mei’s dad was like YOUR dad? Yes, actually.
/He wasn’t as “Yes, Honey” as Mei’s dad was in the movie; he definitely stood his ground and challenged my mom on a lot of things going on in the household growing up. But according to him from our previous conversations, it was extremely hard for him to actually try and talk to me and parent me without my mom intervening. So, like Mei’s dad, he had to find ways to do it where he wouldn’t be interrupted. And, also like Mei’s dad, he encouraged me to follow my heart first and foremost./
My mom made sure he was present when she found the “evidence” on the computer. That was how he first learned that I was into guys after questioning some of my retrospectively genuine innocent behavior in the past during middle school.
The situation was that I bought my best friend the Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro video game for Christmas at full price when I was 13 in 8th grade.
Instead, he told me to either return it or keep it for myself, because that’s something his parents should buy him, not a friend, and that it’ll give off the wrong impression if I gave it to him. Fast-Forward 20 years later, and I discover that one of the love languages I regularly distribute is gift-giving. Who knew?
But yeah, when my mom called my dad in to see what was on the family computer, she basically used him as an example of how men should and shouldn’t experiment with.
She showed him what I downloaded, and asked him “Did YOU ever experiment with stuff like this when you were his age?” as if to show me that what I decided to do wasn’t normal for a teenage boy to do.
Because he was mostly straight, he genuinely answered no, and my mom proceeded to “discipline” me.
But once she was done, and I had some time to myself, came to my room and suggested I go to the store with him.
During that ride, we talked, and I felt comfortable enough to tell him that I kinda feel the same way about boys as I do about girls.
He apologized to me because he said some things in the past that were a bit homophobic and didn’t realize what I was going through, and he let me know that he would always be in my corner and just wanted me to be happy.
/As you can imagine, when Mei’s dad had that moment to talk with her without her mom intervening and gave her solid advice regarding doing what makes her happy, that took me back to not only THAT heart-to-heart I had with my dad, but every other time we had a chance to talk between the two of us afterwards until he passed in 2012 of prostate cancer. It reminded me of every time I didn’t feel comfortable telling my mom anything because of stuff like religion and familial expectations, but knowing that my dad would have judgment-free advice and experience to give me, loved me regardless of my decisions, and didn’t make me feel ashamed of who I am./
I both hate and love that this happened in order for me to gain this type of relationship with my father. The feelings are very complicated
Because in one hand, yes; the butterfly effect. If these chain of events didn’t happen, then I wouldn’t have grown as close with my father as I did. Or, at least, things would’ve happened a lot later when I had less time to do so
But on the other hand, I’m a firm believer that NO ONE SHOULD EVER HAVE TO ENDURE THAT TYPE OF EXPERIENCE FROM THEIR MOTHER.
And believe me when I say that this was only the tip of the iceberg with her, I’m not exaggerating at all.
Because while things got good with my dad and I, my mom was unrelenting. And it took watching ANOTHER scene in Turning Red that reminded me of when shit really hit the fan between us. Specifically toward the end of the movie
That’s right Readers. Just like Mei with her mom...
I, Too, Had A Red Panda Fight
I know EXACTLY which fight I had with my mom that resembled the one Mei had with hers at the stadium.
It was the year before I moved out on my own. My parents had been divorced a bit over a year. I began shattering the hold Christianity had on me and started both accepting and embracing my sexuality, having come out to close friends but not afraid to come out to family if the situation occurred.
My mom however, didn’t really appreciate that she couldn’t gaslight me anymore, and that’s when the microaggressions and the doubling down on guilt began.
She even slapped me in the face a couple of times for disrespect that I never displayed.
And while I did everything I could to be calm and respectful since I was still under her roof, because I was finally able to see what she was doing to me all those years and how all of that trauma just compounded, /There was part of me that just wanted to bite back every time./
Then one night she started an argument, bringing up all the aforementioned things. That I wasn’t going to church anymore, that this isn’t how I raised you, that my friends were causing me to lose my way, that I disrespected her household by staying up late, knowing good and well that the job I had at the time was a night shift.
And this one was the kicker; my actions being a reflection of HER, implying that everything I do should be done in order to properly represent not myself, but HER. And THAT was when I started putting things together. Not just about myself either, but how she handled her relationships with other people as well.
That was when I snapped. That was when I yelled right back at her with all the fury she yelled at me with.
And she did what you’d expect a black mother to do, and played the “Don’t you talk back to me in that tone of voice” card. But I ripped it in half right in front of her face; I was done.
I called her out on EVERYTHING. Just as loud, just as passionate, just as furious, and it felt GOOD.
And she kicked me out. Only for a night, though. Because she didn’t want to lose me.
So I spent the night at my dad’s place after letting him know I needed a place to stay for the night. And when I arrived, all he did was give me a look, I gave a nod, and he gave me that “I’m proud of you” nod as he patted me on the back.
She never apologized, because why would she?
Instead, she just doubled down by saying “The Devil is trying to drive us apart, and I won’t let him.” And once I heard that, I realized that this wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
The sooner I was able to separate myself from her and live MY life for ME, the better. And I’ve been able to do so ever since I moved out on my own
I NEVER would’ve thought I’d see a scene in an animated movie -- a PIXAR movie no less -- that would remind me of my first big shout fight with my mom, until I saw Turning Red.
/Seeing Mei tell off her mom the way she did, and return the anger, fury and frustration she felt while dealing with everything the movie showed us she had to deal with even YEARS before the premise happened was relieving, cathartic, and SUPER relatable./ (I’m 13! Deal with it!)
Conclusion
Now as MY experiences have proven testament to, not everyone’s relationship with a parent like Mei’s is gonna work out instantly like in the end of the movie.
Some people are gonna be able to talk and reconcile the trauma. Others are gonna be like me and need space, establish boundaries, and take them in microdoses.
But I would be doing this movie an absolute disservice if I didn’t use my platform to show you all how impactful Turning Red is for people who aren’t even its target demographic by sharing with y’all all the feels this film made me feel
/The good, the bad, and the furry/
Oh, let’s be real here; you KNEW I was gonna find a way to fit that in.
Anyway, Readers, your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of Disney Pixar’s Turning Red if you’ve seen it
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, if there was any portion of the film in particular that made you recall a moment in your childhood that’s impacted you as much as it did me.
Whichever you decide to answer, I'd love to know your thoughts.
/A HUGE shoutout to my Patrons both big and small for helping make this channel possible.
Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to see if you want to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.
But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./
