Wen | Xilin
Recently, a red red panda has frantically brushed the screen on major social platforms, capturing the hearts of many men, women and children, because it is too much! can! love! finish!
This red panda is from Pixar's latest animated film, Turning Red. The film tells the story of Li Meilin (Meimei), a little chinese girl, who was 13 years old and found that as long as she was emotionally excited, she would become a red red panda, and then encountered a lot of troubles and problems.
This is a typical animation of the youth growth type, which is the growth story of a second-generation Chinese immigrant in Canada, but the topics related to parent-child relationship, self-embracing, and emotional management can still resonate with the public.
I can make my own decisions, but I can't do whatever I want
Li Meilin, a 13-year-old Chinese girl, is in the second grade of junior high school in Canada. She is a typical Asian bully, with good academic performance, almost a perfect score in science, especially loves mathematics, and has a soft medal certificate.
Enterprising, but also a little competitive, although not a "social master" among the classmates, confident and cheerful personality also attracts like-minded partners, has their own "sister Tao", looks like a warm, lively and assertive child.
But in front of her mother Ah Ming, she completely changed her face: well-behaved and obedient, obedient to her mother. After all, she was taught from an early age that filial piety to her parents, "filial piety" is the primary criterion of her family, and I believe this is also the basic requirement of parents for their children in many Chinese families.
However, if you listen too much to your parents and habitually accept your parents' arrangements, will your children lose their independent choices about their own lives?
The answer is no, at least in Meimei's own view, she has been doing what she likes, and she can make decisions for herself, while at the same time soberly knowing that as a minor, the decision on many things is still in the hands of her mother.
"I can make decisions for myself, but that doesn't mean I can do whatever I want."
Therefore, in school, she will be her true self, do not mind the eyes of others, do not care about the labels attached to herself, study well, play freely, chase stars with her sisters, dance, and peek at handsome men.
But as soon as the time comes, he will obediently go home on time, be his mother's assistant in the ancestral hall managed by his family, worship his ancestors with incense, engage in hygiene, and be a tour guide.
She was used to thinking and doing things according to her mother's expectations, and she didn't feel anything wrong. So when you have fantasies about the opposite sex, you subconsciously feel disgusted, and you shouldn't be like this. Even if her mother embarrassed herself by taking her diary without permission and making a big fuss in the supermarket, she did not hate her mother for this, but blamed herself:
"You are her pride and joy, don't let her down!"
This reminds me of the fact that when I read romance novels in adolescence, if I am discovered by my parents, my first feeling is full of shame.
But in fact, the little girl's fantasy about the opposite sex and love is a very normal reaction of adolescence, a very natural and true feeling of a person, without suppressing himself, correctly understanding and guiding.
In this way, the seemingly harmonious mother-daughter relationship is actually the result of the checks and balances between the absolutely strong mother and the daughter who suppresses herself. Such a relationship seems to be no big deal, but in fact, there are many hidden dangers behind it. When contradictions and conflicts touch what children care about most, it is not just a matter of playing a little clever to deal with the past.
And with Meimei waking up and turning into a red panda, everything has changed dramatically.
Gentle and strong mom VS good daughter
In the film, you can truly see that when faced with a controlling and perfect mother, a child struggles between obedience and self-pursuit.
In front of her mother, Meimei is a "well-behaved girl", from study, life to socializing of the same age, she basically will not resist head-on, even if she does not approve, she can only silently oppose in her heart, occasionally have emotions, speak fiercely to her mother, and will subconsciously say "sorry" first.
You can say that this is a child who was disciplined from childhood, but in Meimei's view, her choice to listen to her mother's words is based on her mother's difficulty in raising herself, which is easy to produce that kind of psychology: "My mother has paid so much for me, what reason do you have to complain?" "So, either obedience or cleverness to cope with things, this is the way of survival of aesthetic aesthetics."
However, is this excessive concern and protection of "in the name of love" and "for your own good" really appropriate for children? In the second half of the film, Meimei's change of attitude towards her mother may give our parents a wake-up call.
At first, Meimei could not accept the fact that she had become a red panda, and her mother mistakenly thought that her adolescent tide was coming, worried that she would not adapt, and secretly followed her to the school, hiding under the tree outside the classroom to monitor her daughter's every move. In the end, her tracks were exposed, and she was discovered by Meimei's classmates, and ridiculed her as a "mother's treasure girl", and Meimei suddenly felt groundless and out of control.
Later, her mother refused her request to go to the concert on the grounds that she was worried that Meimei would release the red pandas in her body due to emotional excitement, and did not forget to comment on Meimei's musical taste, thinking that the songs of the singers she liked were "garbage". Such denial is a very serious blow to adolescent children.
Then Meimei decided to make and sell panda peripheral products with her sisters, saving money to go to the concert, and her mother went to accuse her friends of harming herself, which not only hurt her friends, but also destroyed her friendship.
Interfering with children's social interactions and asking children not to play with people who are not learning well is undoubtedly suffocating for children. Especially for Meimei, the love of friends is the magic weapon to suppress the "little monster" in her body, and it is a soothing agent for emotions, and its importance can be imagined.
Even after experiencing this, Meimei actually had no intention of breaking up with her mother, and she was still afraid of failing her mother's expectations and was deeply sorry, because she knew:
"All my mother's hopes and dreams are pinned on me."
What a very sensible kid. But for parents, what we need to think about is: Do we want to raise a child who is obedient and has good grades, or a child who can really be himself?
Embrace yourself and coexist with your own "unruly"
Let's look again at the name of this cartoon, "The Metamorphosis of Youth", which is called Turning Red. Becoming red, turning red has multiple meanings here, the shallowest layer is that the protagonist Meimei has become a red red panda, which can also be used as a metaphor for the beginning of a girl's adolescent sinus and the beginning of adolescence. The core layer of meaning is to symbolize the protagonist Meimei's exploration of self and resistance to repression.
It can be said that one of the themes that runs through the whole film is about how to know yourself and embrace yourself.
For the first 12 years, Meimei has not dared to show her true self in front of her mother and obey her mother. Obedience, in a way, means covering up one's own personality and suppressing one's own nature.
Starting from the release of the red panda that represents emotions in her body, she completely felt the wanton and happy release of herself, even her friends around her can feel her difference, even her father said that she is very interesting.
When she was still oscillating between her mother's expectations and her true self, one of her father's words played a great soothing role:
"Everybody has a lot of faces, some of them are messy, and the point is not to push away the bad things, but to make room for it and live with it."
Therefore, in the final red moon ceremony, Meimei looks back and sees the happy time of becoming a red panda when she passes through the mirror that examines herself, and finally decides to keep the red panda in her body, that is, she chooses to coexist with her "unruly" side, because this is the real self.
I was deeply touched by a comment from a netizen, hoping that every child can be brave enough to be themselves, rather than living in the expectations of their parents:
This film is like a personal portrayal of me, I want to say to my parents: we can also get close friends when we are young, even if we are young, I also have a crush on the opposite sex, there is an impulse to have fun, life is not only to be admitted to a prestigious school, make money as a person. What is really good for children is to let them enjoy their childhood and find what they really want to do from life.
I studied dentistry and in my best years I met my parents' expectations and worked what they thought was 'good', but at the age of 29, I became a jewelry designer and started from scratch, and at a faster pace in China, the cost of such a reset was even greater, because my peers had gone a long way. In order not to let this wandering continue, it may be better to believe that children let them choose the path they want to take, and it may be better for parents to point out, supervise, and persuade rather than intervene and control.