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every time i try to upload my final project, it directs me to purchase an extended version of padlet. my final submission will be the video above, and i'm pretty happy with it!

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How did you Absorb/Reflect on the word EMERGENCE?

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How did you Absorb/Reflect on the word EMERGENCE?

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initial thoughts on the word:

emerge

grow

phoenix

as a positive connotation

Initial questions:

what am I emerging from?

how can I emerge?

Do I have the right definition of the word?

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the creation of this project was nothing less of a challenge. it was something that i had to sit with for many days, wondering if it was right or wrong. however, with the help of my classmates, and professor nema, i became confident with the work i am submitting.

my explanation is kind of in part IV. but in short, here is the description.

this video starts off with pictures from my early childhood. (cousin and brother in photos) then, there is a quick jump to high school, which i think kind of shows how important that part of that life is to me, and maybe others. i show pictures of my niece, cat, and partner. although i have love for my immediate family, i do not share a lot about my life with them. my niece, a picture of innocence has always made me smile. my cat, there for me at my darkest. and my partner, everything. i showcased many photos of them in my video because i believe them to b some of the sole drivers of how i got to this life i live today. i dedicate my emergence to them, but i acknowledge the growth within myself.

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Images & Inspiration (add additional posts if needed)

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Images & Inspiration (add additional posts if needed)

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the end concept of my project is to make a vision board/collage that can be torn away and reveal emergence through my eyes

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the end concept of my project is to make a vision board/collage that can be torn away and reveal emergence through my eyes

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emergence quite literally and figuratively

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intended audience will be those in this class, and maybe even my family.

the theme of emergence, or any sense of growth/character building is a bit nerve racking to present to my family (especially my parents)

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the audience will be exposed to things that find most asian american daughters have gone through

there may be a disconnect to the audience because there are only 3 or 4 other Asian classmates in this class, however I do think others will understand, and even relate to the things I will present

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my fear is creating something that people don't understand or value

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this project that I am presenting i think is a SHOUT.

this project will be uncomfortable, relatable, and not sugarcoated

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I want to say "hey. here are the things I went through, here are the things that I still go through, and here are the things I do not want to carry on to my kids.

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I come home and take off my shoes. I wash my hands with surgical thoroughness, change into my "inside clothes," and put my "outside clothes" straight into the hamper. Looking around, I wonder if I am okay, if the world will ever cease to feel perilous.

This is not a description of pandemic life but one of my childhood. As the daughter of South Asian immigrants, this was my daily after-school routine.

Last spring, my Asian American friends and I joked that everyone's household was starting to resemble those of our childhood: the strict prohibitions, the obsessive hygiene rituals, the sharp distinction between "outside" and "inside," and an attendant anxiety about the lack of freedom. This latter part is where the joke stopped being funny: when we realized a global pandemic shouldn't recall childhood.

Even when the pandemic is behind us - a prospect less within reach for countries like India, currently in crisis - this anxiety may linger. Part of the tragedy of America is that despite our resources, we cannot create a country where everyone feels safe. Asian American hate crimes and prejudice are only just beginning to register in the national consciousness.

My childhood anxiety is difficult to name. There is no vocabulary for it, which is part of the problem. Growing up during the 1980s in a predominantly white suburb of Long Island, I felt invisible. This was before yoga and turmeric were in vogue, before Alanis Morissette thanked India and Elizabeth Gilbert prayed there. When City of Joy came out in 1992, my family excitedly went to see it, thrilled by the prospect of a film about India. Two hours later, my parents were slouched over in defeat; the story of slums and white saviors had no connection to the India they knew. It was the first and last time we ever went to the movies.

Contrary to glorified notions of the American Dream, my parents experienced life in the States as a demotion.

There were no after-school specials about the dynamics of my family home: the abuse, the oppressive silence, the shoddy coping mechanisms of my immigrant parents. They regarded the world beyond our home with suspicion. They didn't socialize with neighbors, organize birthday parties, or host play dates. Carefree restaurant meals, leisurely vacations, partaking in American society: These were unthinkable. It's not that we never went out, but on the rare occasion we did, the experience proved so miserable that we decided it wasn't worth it. My parents decided we were better off staying at home. It was as though we were living through our own pandemic.

The threat was America. My parents' anxiety took different forms. On the mildest level, they feared American culture would infect me and my brother in the virulent way culture spreads: invisibly at first, with a seemingly benign pop song or movie, and then causing rapid and full-blown alarm when, for example, I had my first boyfriend. I was forbidden from seeing him and told he would ruin my life. My socializing was confined to one or two preapproved friends: an early form of the pod.

More broadly, my parents feared what America might do to them. They experienced a powerlessness in the States that was wholly new. As Brahmins, they were treated with deference in India. Their upper-caste status gave them ready access to resources and security, privileges that members of other castes did not have. My mother was a physician, my father an engineer. Their degrees accompanied them across the ocean, but their status did not.

Contrary to glorified notions of the American Dream, my parents experienced life in the States as a demotion. They were now at the bottom of the totem pole. That the caste system is reprehensible was not something they discussed. Like most people, they enjoyed having privilege and disliked losing it.

When my mother was mugged in broad daylight in the parking lot of the hospital where she worked, dragged into a van at knifepoint by two white men, I asked her why the security guards hadn't intervened. She snorted. "No one here protects us," she said. "They do not even see us."

I was in the eighth grade at the time. It was the first moment I registered my parents' reality as more fraught than I'd imagined. My mother's paperwork listed her as an "alien," the official term for an immigrant then. She told me she didn't find it offensive. It captured how she felt. The phrase "melting pot" made her laugh. "People here don't want to melt with us," she said.

My parents had immigrated through the H-1-visa program for specialized labor, part of the long American tradition of viewing people of color through a utilitarian lens. Borders open up to Asia when workers are required (for the building of a transnational railroad, for example) but close out of racial prejudice (the Chinese Exclusion Act). In the 1923 ruling United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to revoke the rights of a naturalized American citizen, a Punjabi man who had attended the University of California at Berkeley and served honorably in the U.S. military. None of it mattered. Thind and other South Asians had their rights stripped out of xenophobic fears of "radicals." In the 1990s, in the run-up to Y2K, American tech companies lobbied the U.S. government to allow an enormous influx of South Asian computer programmers. After 9/11, when hate crimes against South Asians skyrocketed, they experienced the same lack of protection my mother felt in that parking lot, the turning of a blind eye.

My parents were not dreamy-eyed fools. Their plan was to work in the States for a few years to help relatives back home. They left my older Indian-born brother in the care of my maternal grandparents so they could focus on their careers. My father, one of thirteen children, had countless nephews and nieces in need of school fees. My mother, an only child, wanted to help her parents.

Their plan depended on visa renewals. As a young girl, I thought the term H-1 referred to a blood test. Why else would relatives look so worried when it was mentioned? Whenever there was good news about an H-1, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. I figured a green card meant one was healthy. For immigrants, paperwork is a lifeline. Children can absorb this message literally.

The reason my parents ended up staying in America was simple: me. I was an unplanned pregnancy. I learned of this only recently. People imagine "anchor babies" as desirable for immigrants. For my parents, it was the opposite.

While I didn't always understand my parents' anxiety, occasionally I experienced a flicker of it. In my suburban elementary school, I was the only South Asian child in my year. My classmates held their noses and complained I smelled. They pantomimed applying a "dot" to their foreheads. I dreaded the appearance of that word in any written material, for I knew it would cause snickering and sidelong glances my way. Teachers didn't offer safety. When my fourth-grade teacher asked me to describe India, she didn't want to hear about my grandparents' lovely flat or the way I was treated like a princess when I visited. She asked in a whisper if I had seen lepers.

My parents had different approaches to the loss of status living in America entailed. My father wanted a place where he still commanded authority. He turned to our household. Like a desperate dictator, he made juvenile grabs at power. He hit my brother so hard that he drew blood.He called me a worthless girl who would amount to nothing. He created elaborate rules so that he could have the satisfaction of seeing them obeyed.

Toxic masculinity is often discussed in the context of the loss of white male privilege: the downtrodden white guy who no longer sees a place for himself in society and retaliates through violence. But this phenomenon has long existed in Asian American households, where displaced men who feel devalued and emasculated try to assert their authority at home.

My mother's strategy was to tell elaborate stories of India that presented it as vastly superior to America. Her logic was simple: America was the backward place, which was why she was treated unjustly. India had elected a woman as prime minister. "That will never happen here," she declared firmly. In India, public hygiene was poor, but private hygiene was excellent. "Here, they have restrooms, but people do not wash their hands!" she fumed.

"I don't understand," I once said to my mother. "Is it good that I'm American, or is it bad?"

She regarded me for a long moment and then said, "That is a good question."

On the rare occasion that I went to a white American friend's house, I was stunned by the lackadaisical ease. None of the strict rules from my house applied. Kids wore sneakers on couches, watched TV without having to ask permission, ate Oreos and potato chips, danced in the living room. It was dizzying, a nearly bacchanalian display.

What struck me most was the lack of anxiety in my friends' households - not that they didn't have problems, but they could name them. They confided in me about their worries. They had seen them voiced in sitcoms and novels and magazine articles. They were on their home turf.

I didn't know how to describe what I felt. I didn't even know how to tell my friends why they couldn't come over. I only knew that my friends didn't have to follow elaborate rituals or heed strict prohibitions or listen to nationalistic propaganda in a way that meant shedding their identities. Their parents weren't trying to compensate for a hostile environment by establishing alternate republics. They didn't have to perform one way inside and a different way outside. They were free.

Despite being an American by birth and a fortunate member of society, I'm not sure that I have ever known such freedom. A good day in my childhood was when nothing bad happened. This put a low ceiling on happiness. My parents' misery stemmed from feeling invisible. Ironically, this became my coping strategy. I hid from my father, accepted my mother's stories, took up as little space as possible. Childhood strategies are hard to shed.

"Are you glad you stayed here?" I once asked my mother.

"I would have been happier in India," she replied. "But ... perhaps you will be happier here."

I live in that "perhaps," a threshold of possibility, hoping for an America where I can feel at ease, stretching, taking up space, finally at home.

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The Anxiety of Growing Up Asian American

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In this first person essay by Maya Shanbhag Lang, the author examines the way in which her immigrant parents experienced moving to America as a demotion, and how their anxiety impacted her childhood.

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Taken separately, it's not too bad to be the eldest, to be a daughter, or to be Asian. But if you combine the three to form a Holy Trinity of sorts, it is probably more of a curse than a blessing.

Growing up, I performed a variety of roles simply because I was the eldest daughter. I was the family therapist, mediating conflicts between my two parents, as well as between my parents and my younger sister. My mum would bitch about my dad, and vice versa. They'd tell me in hushed, conspiratorial tones not to tell the other parent or my sister, because she was too young to understand. And on the rare occasion where they had a big fight, I was the one who had to pretend everything was fine and comfort my sister.

This worked the other way too - my sister would beg me to keep things from my parents, usually her spontaneous shopping sprees which are heavily frowned upon by our mum, or her risque dates with random men at university. Mum would occasionally suspect something and interrogate me, so I've covered my sister's ass multiple times by feigning ignorance. On the other hand, my parents would tell me to pass on messages to my younger sister, such as 'Work harder!' and 'Do not date yet! You're too young!'. They would sweet-talk me, saying that my sister looked up to me, that these mantras would be far more effective coming from me than them, and that I was the 'mature' one in the family. For a short while, I basked and simpered in this praise, until I realised I was being manipulated into being a third parent.

...we internalise our birth order

I was also the secretary of the family. As my parents are not completely fluent in English, I have been filling in forms and proofreading emails since primary school. I translated the catalogue for my parents' small business, helped them send passive-aggressive emails to whoever they were annoyed with, and even applied for American visas for the entire family, which took days off my summers and years off my life. Even now that I'm all the way across the world in the UK, I would wake up on random mornings to messages from my mum asking me to proofread the most mundane texts, or she would send things to me in Chinese and ask me to translate them into Whatsapp messages to her auntie friends.

And let's not talk about the double standards for you and your younger sibling(s). I had to beg my parents to let me stay out later than midnight - at the same age, my sister saunters back at 2 am, evidently tipsy (she has bad Asian flush) after nights out. When I had my first boyfriend, my parents expressed their disapproval in the strongest terms; when my sister got her first boyfriend, they barely batted an eyelid. There are countless other examples of me painstakingly convincing my parents to let me do something, then watching with gritted teeth my sister being allowed to do the same things and more.

I am not alone in such experiences; many of my friends have suffered and lamented their similar plights. Why is it so particularly bad to be the eldest Asian daughter? Being the eldest child means that you carry the weight of your family's expectations, especially if you're the oldest among your cousins. Your entire extended family will be constantly monitoring (and gossiping about) how you're doing. Your uncles and aunts will instruct their kids to either emulate you, or stay far away from that cousin who's the 'bad egg in the family'. Occupying the unfortunate position of a firstborn thus comes with the expectation of being a role model.

As the eldest, one is also expected to take care of younger siblings - this is where the double whammy of being the eldest daughter comes in. Girls are supposed to be nurturing and display a 'maternal instinct', even as a child. For example, they are far more likely to be given dolls as toys and to treat taking care of them as 'fun'. Membership of both thus doubles the 'caretaker' responsibility.

I was the one who had to pretend everything was fine...

Being Asian also comes with a whole set of additional expectations - I can only speak to the Chinese experience, but the academic and extra-curricular pressures are intense. Once a child is born, most parents immediately engage in a rat race to send their kids to the best playgroups, the best nurseries, the best primary schools, and so on, so that they can be well-prepared for the highest-ranked universities and occupations. Children are sent to tons of after-school tutorial classes and interest groups every week, ranging from Olympiad maths to the most obscure instrument possible to maximise their chances of getting into an orchestra. The expectations on the eldest born are thus compounded by being Asian.

One last thing about being Chinese is the language used. At home, we speak Cantonese, where I'm called 家姐 (elder sister), while my sister is called 細妹 (younger sister) - we are almost never referred to by name. It's just a hunch, but I think being referred to in this way linguistically means that we internalise our birth order and the associated roles far more than cultures and languages which don't do this.

What are the impacts of this triple threat? The trope of the overachiever kid who is now crippled by the fear of failure and hence reluctant to try anything new definitely applies to me. I shy away from things that might show that I'm not good enough. For example, I was so deterred by a string of spring week rejections in my first year that I simply didn't apply for anything until quite a bit later. I also filled my schedule with so many things to manufacture a plausible excuse for not doing well in Prelims - I just didn't try. In the context of romantic relationships, I am a bit of a control freak and a compulsive caretaker, while also being afraid to show vulnerability, which is not the most enticing combination. I don't chart this entirely, or even mostly, down to my gender and birth order, but it did have an impact on my personality.

Maybe being the eldest Asian daughter is a blessing - I definitely would not have turned out the way I did if I had an older sibling, or if I were a boy. But I would wager that I would be a bit more emotionally stable and a bit less insufferably try-hard had I not been the eldest Asian daughter.
Image credit: Charlein Gracia Image description: three young girls sitting on some grass

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The curse of the eldest (Asian) daughter - The Oxford Student

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Sharon Chau discusses her experience growing up as the eldest daughter in an Asian family. "Taken separately, it's not too bad to be the..."

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In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Michelle Yeoh plays my mother. Well, not technically-Yeoh's character, Evelyn, is a Chinese-American immigrant with a teenage daughter; my mother is Chinese-Australian, and I like to think my teenage years are far behind me. But these are superficial differences. In every other way, Yeoh is my mother's mirror image: the sharp focus she applies to the task at hand, which in the best of times is formidable, and in the worst of times, myopic. The strength she wears in her posture, which in moments of respite, flickers. There's a heaviness on her shoulders that weighs more than she lets on.

If you haven't already watched A24's newest film, the brainchild of directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, please do so at your earliest convenience before you continue reading. It is the best movie I have ever watched. I understand this is quite the claim, but Everything Everywhere All At Onceis a cinematic behemoth. In the space of two and a half hours, what begins as a quiet study of Evelyn's tax troubles broadens into a full-blown, sci-fi epic that sees Evelyn mind-travelling (or 'verse-jumping', as the movie calls it) into alternate selves from other universes. Genre is a plaything for the two Daniels heading the project. The story volleys between comedy and melodrama, and makes references to everything from Ratatouille to wuxia to Wong Kar-wai's In The Mood For Love. Above all, it juggles with modern nihilism, and rolls philosophy's hardest question around on its tongue:

Why should we believe in anything, when nothing really matters?

To zoom in so closely on the film's mother-daughter relationship, then, might seem too narrow, but the tension between Yeoh's Evelyn, and her only child Joy (played by Stephanie Hsu)-along with her marriage to sweet husband Waymond (the marvellous Ke Huy Quan)-is the driving emotional force. I single their dynamic out because I've never seen a film which portrays my own experience so deftly. I saw as much of myself in Joy as I did my mother in Yeoh. Joy is lost. She's young and angry. The only thing she wants is for her mother to understand her, but their cultural distance causes them both immense pain. There's a scene early on, when Joy is attempting to introduce her girlfriend Becky to her grandfather (James Hong), and reverts to broken Cantonese. She fumbles around in the dark for the correct words, before Evelyn cuts in. "She's a good friend," Evelyn says placatingly, much to Joy's chagrin. It reminds me of many times when I have misinterpreted my mother's words and vice versa, the assumptions that were made and the tears that often followed. One of the hardest sacrifices a parent can make for a child is their own mother tongue.

Joy's narrative is a familiar one, as far as diasporic metaphors go. Her hurt and rage devolve into total disillusionment, and in an initial twist, position her as the multiverse's villain, hunting down her mother's various alternate selves across realities under the alias Jobu Tobaki. She straddles the schism between her wants and her mother's expectations, the East and the West; it's a tale Hollywood has recently become comfortable exploring with Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and Pixar's Turning Red, which have paved the way for Asian-led projects like this one.

But what sets Everything Everywhere All At Onceapart is that it tells the story from the mother's perspective. Even in films where cultural anxiety is the centrepiece, the Asian mother-ever-worrying and helicoptering around her Westernised daughter-diverges little from stereotype. Everything Everywhere All At Once, on the other hand, devotes overwhelming complexity to Evelyn. Evelyn is the hero, bristling with hubris and torment. She withers under the glower of her disapproving father, who disowned her for moving to America with her husband. She wonders what her life would be like if she hadn't left with Waymond-if she would be doing 'more' than owning a laundromat and doing taxes. The film makes it clear that the pain Evelyn inflicts on Joy, both knowingly and unknowingly, has a source. She's in pain herself, cut on the pieces of a reality she feels was stolen from her. It feeds her daughter's confusion, and infects her marriage with Waymond. Evelyn only practises the trauma that bleeds through her family tree.

Most significantly, Everything Everywhere All At Once doesn't absolve Evelyn of accountability. She has hardened herself, and as a result, is often blind to the hurt she causes; in the film, the impact of this hurt manifests itself in a maelstrom of interdimensional chaos. Instead, Everything Everywhere All At Once bridges a gap in understanding between the many Evelyns and the many Joys that make up this universe alone. Without spoiling too much, Evelyn ends the film redeemed. Not fully at peace, but at peace with the important things. The first thing I wanted to do when the credits began rolling was to hug my mother and tell her I loved her.

As I do after watching any film, I combed through reviews from critics immediately afterwards-not looking for anything in particular, just seeing the sights. (I read one that implied the film was bathetic-which ironically, is exactly the brand of cynicism the film cautions against.) Of all the essays, it was R.F. Kuang's on Tor that stuck with me the most. Kuang calls the film a "non-diaspora diaspora film"-a story where Asian identity doesn't prima facie constitute the plot, but is integral regardless. Why Everything Everywhere All At Once is so refreshing, Kuang argues, is that it goes beyond traditional questions of belonging and non-belonging.

"What if we instead leaned hard into hybridity?", Kuang asks. "What if we dispensed with all the hand-wringing about cultural authenticity and representation and loyalty and over-explaining ourselves to a white audience who might not get where we're coming from and just... stuck some googly eyes on rocks?"

This, by the way, is precisely what happens in the rock-verse of Everything Everywhere All At Once, my personal favourite universe of the many we glimpse in the film. There, Evelyn and Joy are just two rocks, overlooking a valley of rocks from atop a rocky cliff. The film is silent for this scene, the dialogue, printed in text across the sky. After an hour of kaleidoscopic noise and colour, the film takes a breath. It sheds its skin. These are its bare bones: a mother, and her daughter, existing together. Nothing else matters.

This story was originally published on Vogue Australia.

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What 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' gets right about the Asian mother-daughter bond

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A Vogue editor reviews A24's 'Everything Everywhere All At Once', a cinematic behemoth that never loses sight of its emotional core.

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there are emotional challenges to this project; I do not want to hurt my parents feelings, but I also want my full story and emotions to be understood

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I'm learning a lot about myself throughout this process.

Art is not specifically celebrated in asian cultures; it is freeing to work on a project that basically shows my own self emergence.

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Disney and Pixar's latest film "Turning Red" follows 13-year-old Meilin Lee and her newfound tendency to transform into a giant, red panda when faced with intense emotions. The film explores Chinese heritage, generational trauma and coming of age, but its portrayal of young teenage girl experiences has some critics up in arms.

Somehow, a story about the chaos of youth has now become Pixar's "most controversial film." Upset by the film's mention of menstruation, romantic crushes and autonomy, critics - particularly - claim that "Turning Red" depicts teenagers unrealistically and is inappropriate for child audiences.

It is no secret that Lee is unapologetically crazy about boys: she routinely gawks at boys in the school hallway, doodles in her notebook about her crushes and has an obsession with the boy band 4*Town. And as a result, reviewers shamed Lee for being " too cringey " and " ."

But at the age of 13, who wasn't?

Reviewers deemed Lee's harmless pining as an portrayal of sexuality. But adolescent sexuality is normal and "Turning Red" explores it without actually sexualizing children. Usually, fictional adolescents are either oversexualized or express no sexuality at all. For instance, Betty Cooper, a 16 or 17 year-old character from "Riverdale" played by 25-year-old actress Lili Reinhart was shown strip teasing and pole dancing in front of a crowd of adults. On the other hand, the concept of sexuality is entirely nonexistent in most Disney movies with teenage characters.

Without including any mentions of sex or anything inherently sexual, "Turning Red" accurately depicts the often relatable, awkward and weird feelings that come with teen sexuality and coming of age.

While many films in the media industry tend to the interests of teen girls, "Turning Red" fully embraces Lee's interests. Hollywood has a history of devaluing the interests of teen girls, like the color pink or shopping, by reducing them to a negative narrative of passivity and vacuity .

When Lee first transformed into a red panda, she frantically hid in the bathroom. Assuming that Lee was experiencing her first period, Lee's mother presented her with a box of menstrual pads.

condemned the film for its inclusion of "adult topics like puberty and menstruation."

But puberty is a universal stage of life that every child goes through. Girls most commonly experience puberty around ages 10 to 14 and most get their first period around 12 years old . Despite this, teen-exclusive experiences are considered mature topics that are only appropriate for adult audiences.

Society upholds an unhealthy stigma against menstrual cycles. Although it is a significant part of life for half the world's population, periods have remained a subject and are hardly mentioned in movies and TV shows. And when they are actually mentioned, mainstream media has looked upon the natural process with shame and disgust .

Condemning Lee for her disobedience largely ignores the fact that Lee was rejecting the idea of sealing her authentic self away completely. Lee was both developing and accepting her sense of self while critics seemed to forget a handful of disobedient characters like Nemo from "Finding Nemo" and most Disney princesses like Ariel from "The Little Mermaid."

Until recently, Disney has always featured predominantly white characters while people of color remained severely underrepresented. While Asian viewers identified with Lee for cultural reasons, others related to Lee's teenage cringe-worthiness and dynamics. Although O'Connell apologized for his review after intense , it is clear he centered white perspectives as the universally relatable narrative.

"Turning Red" and its criticisms teach filmmakers and audiences a very important lesson: The experiences of young teen girls should be normalized both on-screen and in-person. It is time to put an end to the media's inaccurate and harmful depictions of teenage girls and open conversation to unreasonably stigmatized topics. As young girls navigate through new thoughts, feelings, interests and bodily changes, it is important for these stories to be told without shame.

In all of its complex, weird, hormonal and heart-wrenching glory, "Turning Red" embraces what it's like to be a teenage girl simply as it is: normal.

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Column: 'Turning Red' criticized for themes of growing up

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Disney and Pixar's latest film "Turning Red" follows 13-year-old Meilin Lee and her newfound tendency to transform into a giant, red panda when faced with intense emotions. The film explores Chinese heritage, generational trauma and coming of age, but its portrayal of young teenage girl experiences has some critics up in arms. Somehow, a quirky...

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Mother-daughter relationships are one of the less explored dynamics in children's films. Plenty of films highlight the relationship between dads and their kids, whether that be in classics like Finding Nemo or recent hits like The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Dads have a plethora of films exploring their trials and tribulations through film, but moms have taken a bit of a backseat as ongoing jokes about dead moms for Disney princesses continue to persist. But Pixar's film not only takes the mother-daughter dynamic to center stage, it makes it shine.

Turning Red follows Meilin Lee (portrayed by Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old girl who discovers that she can turn into a giant red panda. After freaking out and rampaging across Toronto, Mei's mother, Ming (portrayed by Sandra Oh) explains that the curse of the red panda has been passed down through the women in their family for generations. The curse can be sealed away in an amulet during a ritual performed on the night of a red moon and Mei would be able to resume her normal life as all of her female relatives up until this point have done. Mei is quick to agree to this but over the course of the film, with the support of her friends, Mei begins to question if sealing the panda away is the right choice. This decision, along with her secretly using her powers with her friends, causes a rift to form between Mei and her mother. A rift that's resolved in a heartwarming but realistic way at the climax of the film.

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the film, Turning Red.

To call the relationship between Mei and Ming the heart of Turning Red would not be an overstatement. Where the film could have gone with the simple overbearing mother trope we've seen a hundred times and called it a day, they instead decided to showcase a mother-daughter relationship that feels dynamic and true.

From the start of the film, it's clear that Mei loves her mother very much and that Ming cares for her daughter just as deeply. When Mei has to leave her friends early at the start of the film to help her mother run the temple, she's not at all resentful. She tells her friends that she likes helping, and we see through montage how Mei and Ming work in harmony to lead tours and take care of the temple. And beyond that we see Mei and her mother bond watching a period drama together, making catty remarks about the characters with each other and having a genuinely nice time together. This is only interrupted when an ad for 4*Town, a boy band Mei and her friends love, comes on the television and Ming expresses distaste for both the boys and Mei's friends.

RELATED: 10 Best Mother-Daughter Movies To Watch After 'Turning Red'

This careful work at the start of the film is the solid foundation that makes their relationship work so well throughout the film. Before the audience is shown where the cracks will inevitably form between them, we see how strong their bond is and how much they care for each other. It makes everything that comes after more bearable because even as we see Ming act in hilariously and embarrassingly overbearing ways, we understand it comes from a place of care rather than a sense of control.

The relationship between Mei and Ming, like between any mother and daughter, is complicated and over the course of the film it becomes fraught. Mei feels the heavy weight of her mother's expectations for her, expectations she'd been happy to meet for the longest time. Getting good grades, hanging out with people her mother approved of, and not keeping secrets, were all things both Mei and her mother took for granted. But with this new power, Mei is for the first time torn in two directions. On the one side, her mother and the comfort of everything she knows. The safety that comes from doing what is expected of her. On the other, her friends and the boundless support they show for her coming into her own. The choice to become someone new.

At first, Mei is looking forward to the ritual to banish the red panda, but after her friends discover 4*Town is coming to Toronto (and that people at their school really like Panda Mei) they start a secret business selling red panda merch to raise funds for tickets. This allows Mei to get more used to her powers and see how they don't only have to be a source of fear for her or anyone else. But to keep using her power Mei must go against her mother's wishes and this begins a pattern of Mei lying to her mother. Through these actions again we see how dynamic the relationship between mother and daughter is portrayed. We see the struggle Mei holds as she sees her mother is genuinely trying to look out for her in her own way, yet still understands how stifled Mei must feel by it.

The film's climax throws Mei and Ming's dynamic into a deluge of chaos. Ming has turned into a red panda kaiju storming the 4*Town concert to confront Mei. And Mei, amidst her mother's destruction, finally snaps and starts unraveling the lies she's been giving her family the whole film. Both Mei and Ming are embroiled in their anger and unable to think clearly, which leads to Ming getting knocked out. Mei becomes distraught but with the help of her friends, her family, and 4*Town, they're able to finish the ritual as needed and help her mother seal away the red panda again. This whole sequence is a wonderful contrast to the love shown in the opening, expressing how difficult mother-daughter relationships can be. They lash out in anger when they feel they've been betrayed; Ming through Mei's lies and Mei through Ming's refusal to let her make her own choices. It's a culmination of mutual wounds finally being addressed.

And through the storm, understanding. During the ritual, in the spirit realm, Mei finds a younger version of her mother, scared and crying. Ming had hurt her mother with her powers when she was young and so her overbearing nature was shown to come from a place of fear. Mei takes her hand and leads her to the portal that will take them back to the real world and strip away the red panda spirit. And here they finally reach an understanding. Mei decides to keep the red panda and her mother finally accepts it. It's not perfect and both of them hold fear and hurt, but the film shows how strong their love is for each other and, crucially, that they understand it's their own choice to make. The relationship is not fully healed, but they've reached a place of mutual understanding. What Turning Red nails is the understanding that mother-daughter relationships can be uniquely messy. Growing up can sometimes feel like a betrayal to one's parents, and yet it is something we all must do.

In the end, Mei still helps her mother run the temple, but it isn't her whole life anymore. She leaves with her friends to go make her own way. It's not a perfect end and there's a new sense of distance between them, but you still see the care they have for each other. We see this care expressed physically through the Tamagotchi Ming's red panda spirit now resides in, reflecting a shift from tradition to something new. The relationship is not gone, just evolved. The mother and daughter are not inseparable nor are they estranged; it feels very true to real life. The relationship has not been ruined only changed just as Mei herself is changing.

No matter how fantastical Turning Red may get, the heart of it is in something very mundane and a bit melancholy. The mother-daughter relationship cannot stay the same forever and as hard as it can be, part of growing up is understanding that those changes, good or bad, are inevitable. The film articulates the fear associated with that as well. Mei and Ming love each other so much that they are afraid of change because they don't want it to cause distance between them. And the film doesn't give us a nice answer for that distance rather shows it as another somewhat sad but necessary part of growing up. The mother-daughter relationship works so well in this film because it captures the good and the bad of their relationship. They love each other and hurt each other and do so in hundreds of tiny ways but at the end of the day while their bond may change it will always be there. A mother and daughter will both inevitably change over time, sometimes in ways that bring them closer together and other times in ways that draw them apart, but they will always be united as a family so long as they are willing to work together.

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How 'Turning Red' Nailed the Mother-Daughter Dynamic

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Growing up is hard. It's even harder when you turn into a red panda.

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the final version of this project might be a digital collage made into a video, peeling away through hardships to reveal something i think t be beautiful

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the final version of this project might also be a physical vision board, which I prefer

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i feel as though so much more could be said if i had the resources right now to buy matierals. ive had to go a different route because of lack of funding. i dont know if what i have is good enough

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my theme has shifted

in this new powerpoint i have created, i show various people and one animal in my life that have helped me grow into the person i am today

the emphasis on my partner towards the end showcases the person who i spend the most time with, as well as the person who has helped me throughout my educational journey

the videos shown at the end are futures that i want to have

the end slide is question marks displayed for the longest duration of the slides, showing that i do not know what i want to do STILL, foreshadowing that emergence is never ending

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the question of being good enough always comes into my mind.

i have challenges with being confident in the work i create.

i think i just need reassurance that i am going in the right direction

i dont know if i should try another version of this project through different media.

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As I was reflecting with my classmates, and Professor Nema, I really understood the journey that I was supposed to take when doing this assignment. When I started this project, I was so worked up over my grade, or what the final version of this project was "supposed" to be. Now that I am almost, maybe done with it, I have create something that I am so proud of. I am not proud because I got confirmation from others, even though I think I need that. I am proud that I did something out of my comfort zone, and I am really happy with my end product. I now realize that THIS experience of creating artwork and having it critiqued is something I can carry on with me to the educational world.

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I have made some adjustments and added sound effects.

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song choice:

the song that I picked is from my favorite artist, daniel caesar. this song is about him having to let a girl go and end their relationship. not that i am EVER going to end my relationship i am in now (because I have also found the love of my life) but i picked this song because I have let go of a lot of friendships and relationships with family members. the reason why my boyfriend is shown so much towards the end is because he is really the only family I have that i trust and can confide to.

theme of emergence:

the beginning of the video has some photos of family, however not showing them throughout the rest of the video is showing me emerging from toxic relationships to one healthy relationship.

the theme lingers at the end when I allude to my future, how the future is forever emerging for me.

using my eye:

other than me thinking it looks really cool, i picked my eye as the main focus because the focus of the video is me, my growth, and what is happening through my eyes.

some photos are cut out on purpose because no one has seen everything i have ever went through. i only choose parts that i am comfortable sharing, and i think that gives me so much power as an artist