Turning Red and Turning Demographics into Genres
Last week, a review of Disney’s latest Pixar film “Turning Red” got pulled from the CinemaBlend website after the reviewer said that the film was “limiting in its scope” because it was “root(ed)…very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto.” He also tweeted that it was “exhausting” to watch. The author was rightly called out for his racism, but that hasn’t stopped a not-small number of audience reviews to echo the sentiment. It was not relatable because it was too Asian and too female. After all, what boy wants to hear about a girl getting her period? What white person wants to know about Asian ancestors?
From everything I had seen in the trailers, “Turning Red” looked like a pretty straightforward coming of age movie, something we have seen time and time again, though less frequently with tween characters. So I wanted to compare it to one of my favorite tween coming of age movies, “The Sandlot.” I watched the two movies back to back so I could get a good read on their differences and similarities.
I have watched “The Sandlot” more times than I can say. It was one that my entire family (me, my sisters, my dad, and my mom) loved. And despite the fact that only my dad had grown up as a boy in the 1950’s, none of us had any trouble relating to the characters and the story. Because even though it is rooted very firmly in summer pickup baseball games of 1950’s suburbia, the basic idea is still deeply relatable, because it’s ultimately about the friendships you have when you’re in middle school.
And that’s the same thing that “Turning Red” is about.
In both “The Sandlot” and “Turning Red” we see budding teen sexuality. In both movies we see a closeness to a friend group that outweighs familial relationships. In both movies we see the kids rebel against their parents. In both movies we see the kids make decisions to embrace the chaos of childhood while also stepping their toes into adulthood. Both are coming of age movies with a healthy dose of heart and humor.
So why is one considered relatable and the other not?
I think a lot of this comes down to how we talk about the way we are seeing more diversity in film.
When “Captain Marvel” came out, it was called a female superhero movie. When “Get Out” came out, it was called a Black horror movie. When “Love, Simon” came out, it was called a gay romance. None of these are film genres. Film genres are superhero movies or horror movies or romantic movies. All of the modifiers here are demographics.
When I first watched “The Sandlot,” it wasn’t called a boy coming of age movie. It wasn’t called a straight sports movie. It wasn’t a white comedy. It didn’t use modifiers because it was understood that it would be male, straight, and (primarily) white.
I love the diversification of movies. I love that we are seeing more women writing and directing movies. I love that we see more people of color being given big budgets to make films that thrill and terrify. I love that more queer folks are being cast and more of their stories are being told. We still have a way to go with disabled people playing their own stories, but things are moving in an overall positive direction for bringing more diverse stories to the big screen. Representation on screen and behind the scenes makes the storytelling richer and helps us understand one another better.
But when we start calling a movie like “Turning Red” an Asian comedy or a female coming of age movie, there is a sense that it is primarily made for those audiences, rather than by or including those characters, and when we don’t think something is for us, we don’t go see it. The most immediate downside is that movies that aren’t well-attended don’t have movies like them made in the future. But beyond that, any time we skip a movie that was made by or includes a demographic to which we don’t belong, we lose the opportunity to relate not just to the movies, but to the people they represent in the real world. When we turn a demographic into a genre, we limit our ability to relate, and we all suffer for it.