Early on in the Pixar animated fantasy “Turning Red,” 13-year-old Mei Lee is subjected to a ghastly public humiliation when her mother, Ming (superbly voiced by Sandra Oh), goes leafing through her notebook and finds lusty drawings of Devon, the cute older boy Mei’s been crushing on. Convinced that this “degenerate” must have taken advantage of her daughter in some way, Ming furiously confronts the poor, unsuspecting Devon at the convenience store where he works, demanding, in full view of her mortified daughter and several giggling onlookers: “What have you done to my Mei-Mei?”
Being embarrassed by one’s parents is a rite of passage for nearly every coming-of-age comedy protagonist. And the title of this one warns you that you’re in for a story about chronic shame and embarrassment: “Turning Red” may be a cheeky menstrual reference (an impressive first for a Pixar movie), but it also describes the basic act of blushing. And this particular humiliation cuts deep, especially if you look at Ming and Mei, a Chinese Canadian mother-daughter duo, and discern more than an echo of your own experience as a parent, a child or both.
An echo, it’s worth noting, is not a mirror. Speaking in my Mei-adjacent capacity as the Chinese American son of a Chinese American mom, my ready identification with that particular scene from “Turning Red” comes with its own hesitations and qualifications. Even allowing for the comically exaggerated register in which most family-friendly studio animation operates, surely Ming overreacts to a slightly insane degree. Wouldn’t any mother properly interrogate the hell out of her child before jumping to conclusions? (Or maybe she underreacts: Depending on what she thinks “take advantage” means, wouldn’t it make sense to get the authorities involved?)
