South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
SHI STANDS AS SOLE DIRECTOR
First woman in Pixar’s history with that distinction tells an unabashedly female story in ‘Turning Red’
Pixar has a well-deserved reputation for dudes — movies focused on dudes (20 out of 24 feature films), movies directed by dudes (23 of 24), movies written by dudes (50 of 59 screenwriters). But the Disneyowned animation studio has been trying to evolve, largely because many of its artists have demanded it.
“Get some ladies!” Domee Shi said recently. “Draw from different creative wells!”
Shi arrived at Pixar as a storyboarding intern in 2011, when she was 22. She stayed on as a staff artist, contributing to films like “Inside Out” and “Incredibles 2.” In 2018, she became the first woman to direct a Pixar short. That eight-minute movie, “Bao,” about a dumpling that comes to life, giving an aging Chinese woman relief from empty nest syndrome, won Shi an Oscar — and put her on course to break an even bigger glass ceiling at Pixar.
The studio’s 25th feature, “Turning Red,” is now on
Disney+. Shi directed it, the first woman in the studio’s
36-year history with that solo distinction. (Brenda Chapman was hired to direct “Brave” (2012), about a defiant princess in ancient Scotland, and retains a credit. But she was fired during production for “creative differences” and was replaced by a man.)
Moreover, “Turning Red” tells an unabashedly female story — so much so that it reads as a corrective to the Woody-Buzz-Sully-Mike-Mater-Lightning-Luca bromances in which Pixar has specialized.
Shi’s film is about a Chinese Canadian teenager, Mei Lee, who finds herself engulfed by the onset of puberty: horniness, whipsawing emotions, her period. When she feels overwhelmed, she “poofs” into a giant red panda. Shi said her screenplay, written with Julia Cho, was influenced by pop culture totems like “Teen Wolf ” and “Lizzie McGuire.” Perhaps also toss in the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters,” the comedic group of older
women from “Crazy Rich Asians” and Judy Blume’s seminal “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”
“Did the red peony bloom?” Mei’s mother, Ming, asks in the film. Mei, who has locked herself in the bathroom, having “panda-ed” for the first time, can only stammer in response. She’s too busy having a meltdown over a sudden outcropping of fur.
“I wanted Mei to go through a magical puberty transformation, and I couldn’t get the image of a red panda out of my head because it’s so cute and funny, especially if you blow it up to, like, 8 feet tall,” Shi said. “There’s something about the color, too. Red represents your period. It represents being angry, being embarrassed or being very lustful for someone.”
Mei, voiced by newcomer Rosalie Chiang, has boys on the brain, as do her three best friends. Their obsession with a boy band results in a panda-onpanda showdown that is part superhero film climax and part sumo wrestling match. Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, wrote songs for the film.
“We are walking into that concert girls,” one of Mei’s nerdy friends says, “and walking out women.”
Even in 2022, this is groundbreaking stuff for a major animated movie, especially one from The Walt Disney Co. “It’s a side of teen girls that you never get to see,” Shi said. “We are just as awkward and sweaty and lusty and excited as any boy.”
About a decade ago, Disney and Pixar started to routinely showcase different cultures, races and ethnicities. The success of “Big Hero 6” (2014) and “Moana” (2016) led to diverse films like “Coco,” “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Soul” and “Encanto.” Some of those same movies continued to break down gender stereotypes by depicting bold, brainy women who didn’t need a man’s love to make them whole. (Credit to “Brave” for fostering that change.) Pixar also began to embrace progressive storytelling in its short films, most prominently with “Out,” about a man who decides to stop hiding that he is gay.
But adolescent sexuality and the biological changes that come with it have remained a third rail. Some slight innuendo? Maybe. Anything more might spook conservative parents and threaten Disney’s family friendly brand.
“How do I sneak this through?” Shi recalled thinking before one pitch meeting with senior Walt Disney Studios executives.
Disney, which, like other Hollywood studios, had been espousing female empowerment in response to the #MeToo revolution, put its money where its mouth was: In spring
2018, the company gave Shi a budget of roughly
$175 million to tell her story, along with the backing of its merchandising and marketing divisions.
“I felt like they were always in my corner, even if they sometimes were, like, whaaat?” Shi said.
Shi was an only child. Her parents immigrated to Toronto from China when she was a toddler. Her father, an art teacher, helped instill a love for animation. Her mother kept the home. Around age 13, Shi and her mother started to lock horns. “I was slowly going into this Western culture world, and that was very different from her,” Shi said, “and I could feel that rift happening, but not wanting it to happen, but, at the same time, I did want it to happen.”
That push-pull lies at the heart of “Turning Red.” The movie is about puberty, but it’s also about what girls inherit from their mothers. Ming wants to pass complete emotional control on to her daughter, noted Lindsey Collins, who produced the film. But Mei has to decide whether to disobey her mother and let her “inner beast” be seen.
“Girls and women are always judged for not controlling their emotions — ‘Ugh, she’s so emotional,’ ” Collins said. “I love that we have a main character who is learning over time that she doesn’t have to push emotions away or get rid of them to be considered a good girl or a good woman. The movie is ultimately about being able to own your emotions.”
Shi’s relationship with her father is not reflected in “Turning Red,” but Shi said he was the one who kept pushing her to pursue a career at Pixar, even after the studio initially rejected her application. “No pain, no gain” was his mantra.
But breaking into the animation industry boys’ club was daunting. “It felt like you had to know a guy who knew a guy,” Shi said. “It can still feel like that, but less so, I hope.”
“Turning Red” drives home that message. Mei’s family operates a temple. It was built to “honor our ancestors,” Ming explains while giving a tour.
Mei pointedly interjects. “And not just the dudes, either,” she says.