Red or the red panda that we all have inside

Red is Pixar’s lush new audiovisual fantasy. It is true that several decades have passed since such unforgettable creations as Toy Story either Finding Nemo. However, the great factory continues to win over children and adults with its exceptional mastery of emotions, and addressing themes in which it is very easy to identify.

This latest production has landed directly on the Disney platform and its success has been overwhelming. It is not for less. It is a hilarious, intelligent and honest film. It addresses topics that until now had not been touched on in the animation industry, such as menstruation.. This time, we don’t have a protagonist with insecurities or frustrated dreams. She doesn’t suffer either. bullying at school.

Our protagonist is Meilin Lee, a Chinese girl in the middle of puberty who lives in Toronto., who has a wonderful circle of friends and who enjoys his favorite musical groups. This teenager’s main problem is her mother, a traditional and hyperprotective woman who has more than one unresolved problem in her life.

Red is an invitation to reflect for both children and adults.

Network or the weight of family expectations

Meilin is a second-generation Chinese-Canadian girl coping with two experiences. The first is the awakening to adolescence and that effervescent chaos of intense emotions. Another factor that the protagonist deals with is the weight of a traditional family that is deeply rooted in its culture.

His mother is a figure that constantly hovers around him, conditioning every part of his life. The expectations placed on Meilin are so high and oppressive that His emotional state is torn between despair, shame and rage.

The complicated mother-child relationships, added to her transition to adolescence, make up an explosive cocktail that, at a given moment, gives way to a wonderful supernatural element…

Beyond the central theme, the aesthetics of Grid. reminds us of My neighbor Totoro, for those immense and rounded figures that generate so much affinity and placidity at the same time. Likewise, this multicultural urban environment also hypnotizes the viewer, with delicate pastel tones and an accelerated, festive and happy visual rhythm.

The red panda bear, the Hulk of oriental culture

Grid It contains a secret, an unexpected revelation. All the female ancestors of Meilin’s family turned into red pandas when they reached adolescence.. In that period of rebellion, typical of puberty and raging hormones, that immense, hairy, red creature emerges that makes an appearance every time they are trapped by emotions of negative valence.

Meilin quickly learns to control her emotions. In fact, her friends, that enriching and solid circle of emotional figures, are her best support for the girl. They are that refuge of calm that, curiously, her family and specifically her mother does not offer her. It is precisely that maternal figure who awakens anger and frustration in her, in true Hulk style.

The fear of disapproval and the weight of family expectations

This production is somewhat reminiscent of Charm. In the latter, the members of the magical Madrigal family were pressured by the expectations of their formidable and domineering matriarch, the grandmother. In Grid We once again have a controlling female figure, also the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and very conditioned about how she should educate her daughter.

Meilin continually hides her tastes and passions for fear of disapproval and criticism.. When he dares at some point to ask for something (go to a concert), he is denied. The shadow of traditions and that vetoing and overprotective education constantly awakens that great red panda that lives in it.

Red shows an overprotective mother who pressures her daughter over past hurts.

Grid and the mother’s wounds

It is not easy to follow the weight of family mandates. It is not easy to adapt to another culture carrying the burden of traditions that veto freedoms and that force us to be as expected and not as desired. In Grid The gaze is placed beyond the teenager to cause the adult to also investigate the red panda that sleeps in it.

In this film a reality is revealed to us that is not talked about much. That of immigrant mothers in Western countries who tend to be authoritarian and critical of their children, for a very specific desire: for them to succeed. So that they succeed in that country and prosper. This, as we can well imagine, causes high psychological pressure on the younger generations.

That wound is what Meilin herself suffers, but it is also what her mother suffered in the past. Therefore, at a given moment, a gigantic red panda of the latter comes out of her, a product of her buried anxieties, her generational frustrations and traumas.

The mother’s wounds come to light and must be healed by those other female figures in the family, including Meilin herself.. That’s when harmony comes, when the pandas go back to sleep and everyone has the opportunity to feel life in fullness and freedom. Seeking your own self-realization.

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