SEEING ‘TURNING RED’
Only the foulest and most detestable of preschool teachers sets up a computer monitor and shows a movie to a classroom of kids at the end of a long week. Of course, I would never subject my kids to such “low education”. Any teacher that does should feel ashamed of themselves. Because when you have kids that are bored with the monotony of everyday life in a classroom, who just want nothing more than to get outside and play (but can’t because of this laughably unending Michigan winter season), and are still force-fed curriculum, indoors, and that, at this time of year, consists of dull and droning material such as, “Hey, did you know this type of plant grows, too???”
*Insert facepalm GIF of your choice*
…you feel tempted to shuck away all modes of teaching and just park the kids down with a snack and a movie and call it a day.
Teaching, in actual practice (it should be noted) is oftentimes a war of attrition.
So, supposing I were one of these lowly teachers that brought in a computer monitor just to show his kids the Pixar film Turning Red on a Friday afternoon, it might go something like this:
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It’s becoming a trend for me to say, “Yeah, so I just saw this movie that’s been out for, like, 3 MONTHS, and here’s what I thought of it…”
How I see new movies is like my seeing a post on Twitter about the latest Wordle: I know vaguely of it, but I couldn’t exactly explain it or just when I’ll get around to learning about what it even is.
Anyway, more on Wordle in my next Weekly Post-Ed…
But why stop at simply seeing a new movie? Why not subject yourself to watching it with a bunch of 5-year-olds in a classroom—which is the audience you should see a highly anticipated movie with. Not only have all my students seen the movie before, they just want the highlights—mostly the 4*Town songs written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. The rest of the movie is red fluff for them, which doesn’t bode well for a semi-professional writer who cannot help but get absorbed in the story and underlying themes of a movie. Not only that, but the film was a surprisingly dense and unique way of investigating teenage womanhood and the act of breaking free of parental norms to embrace individuality.
So: let’s press PLAY and see how far we get.
–TWENTY MINUTES LATER–
“Mr. Robert, is the movie almost done?” asks the little girl closest to me. She’s tossed her teddy bear across her cot like a tumbleweed by this point, the stuffing frayed from blunt-force trauma.
“No, it isn’t,” I tell her calmly, with a warm smile. After all, I’m enjoying the movie and am entranced with what’s going on and assume everyone else should be.
The astounding thing about Pixar is how purposeful everything is in their movies. For example, a seemingly dull Father acts timid around an ultra-protective, oftentimes judgmental Wife/Mother? Sure, let’s have that in the movie.
But wait! It pays off. You see, the Father is this way because, as it turns out, HE was the object of—
“Is the movie almost done now?” wines a little boy next to the little girl who asked the first time. The blunt-force trauma of the teddy bear tossed between the two of them has me wondering if we should be teaching stuffed animal civil rights.
“No,” I say, with a bit more growl, but still smiling. “It’ll be over soon.”
“Ok,” they say, and I gesture to keep the teddy bear still for fear that it will end up in teddy bear E.R. with any more blows to the head.
Where was I? Oh! So, the Father is the crucial element that helps Mei Lee, the hero, realize that the Red Panda transformation, which – and I skipped over this – acts as the magical embodiment for young womanhood that I spoke about before. And it’s such a great symbol! That’s because whenever Mei Lee turns into a Red Panda, it’s her true feelings that come out, thereby confronting her obligation to “honor” her Mother and remain a child—a necessary rite of passage. When the Red Panda comes out, it is a wild, freeing form of expression, and it is precisely what—
“Mr. Robert?”
It’s the first little girl again. I turn to her with what can only be described as Academy Award Winning patience and resolve. “Yes?” I smile, all my facial muscles wanting to succumb to irritation instead. “What is it now?”
“Is the movie almost over yet?”
I sigh. “It’s been three minutes since you last asked me,” I say to the little girl who seems to have the attention span of a goldish. I’m also wondering how this girl “claims” to have seen Turning Red if she interrupts every umpteen minutes to ask if it is almost over. IF YOU SAW THE MOVIE, YOU WOULD KNOW! *Counts to four, five, six, seven…*
“No,” I say with a smile, “we just started the movie 25 minutes ago,” and you can tell I’m addled; I quantified time in front a preschooler, which is pointless—5 minutes might as well be 5 hours to a kid that can’t tell time. “I’ll let you know when the movie is close to being over.”
Which is a lie, but I mean no harm–I haven’t seen this movie and want to experience this great thing playing on a 27’’ computer monitor sitting atop a 2-foot tall Lego table at the front of the classroom.
All is quiet again. I sink back into my chair and watch.
Have I mentioned the role Mei Lee’s three friends play in aiding a journey into independent womanhood? I mean, wow! As a male, I have zero idea how the journey into womanhood works, and I was mystified (yes, MYSTIFIED) by the importance of community and embracing friendship as a means of overcoming the stresses and sheer terror of stepping out of that comfort zone of what we know as our honoring our parents.
“Mr. Robert?”
Same little girl.
“Yes?” I ask, noticing my teeth turn into Red Panda-like fangs.
“Is the movie almost—”
“No,” I growl, red panda ears sprouting from my head. I also bounce up another foot in my chair when my Red Panda tail blooms underneath me. “The movie is not done. Not ten seconds ago when you last asked, and not ten minutes from now when the movie will still be going on! Does it look like we’ve arrived at the Act II climax? I didn’t think so!”
“Uh…”
(If you thought introducing quantifiable time was a problem for preschoolers, now I’ve just hoisted the notion of plot elements only writers care about as though it were something kids ought to know alongside colors, numbers, and letters of the alphabet.)
I calm down and summarize to the little girl with a candid smile, “Just be quiet and enjoy the movie.”
Anyway, as I was saying: Yes! The Mother in the movie is losing control just as her daughter is, representing the symmetry of BOTH mother and daughter having to let go of previous notions of who the other previously was! The mother is a Red Panda, but massive, her insecurities and fears of what will become this new daughter, this new identity, and she becomes a Godzilla-esque kaiju monster as a result! She’s about to storm the concert venue that Mei Lee has escaped to with her friends and—
“Mr. Robert?”
I don’t even let her finish. I grow ten-feet tall, my rabid Red Panda snout towering over this little girl who was given the option of sleeping during rest time or enjoying a movie, only to keep annoyingly asking (the audacity, right?) if we are done with the movie.
Luckily, before I can claw her to bits, the Red Panda taking over my entire persona (as all teachers have their own Red Panda and have known this LONG before Turning Red was ever released), the credits roll.
Oh no, I think, sitting down in my chair, I’ve missed the finale. I’m defeated. I was deeply enjoying the movie, but instead I had to hear the constant inerruptions of:
“Mr. Robert?” asks the little girl, again…
I smile back at her, meakly. I shrink back to normal size, the Red Panda gone. I feel a slight welling in the back of my throat. It was a wonderful movie, from what I saw of it. I look around at the dozen or so kids that were watching; they seem mildly pleased and are getting up off their cots. Most are interested in finding something else to play with in the room.
“Yes, the movie is done now,” I say to her before she can even ask.
“Can I have a hug now?”
I open my arms, half annoyed, but mostly grateful to be able to give a kid a hug.
That’s the other side of teaching: that if you can endure all the hair-ripping frustrations of it, you can still give a kid something they really need (connection, fun, or, most times, a simple hug), and it feels pretty dang good.
“Did you like the movie?” I ask the little girl, expecting her to say she didn’t even watch it, blah blah blah.
Instead, she says, “Yeah. It’s my favorite movie. I’m going to watch it at home.”
It then dawns on me that I, too, can go home and watch the movie. And I can watch it in private, reverse-engineering how it was all put together to my heart’s content. It also occurs to me how stupid I was for getting irritated.
“Can we watch another movie?” asks the little girl.
I look to the other kids. Most come back to their cots, each with an idea of what we should watch next. I look to the clock, that mystifying circular object on the wall, and see there’s an hour and a half left of school.
“Sure,” I say, “we have a few more minutes. Why not?”
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This is all fictional, of course. A teacher would never show a movie when there is important curriculum to be taught instead.
I mean it; cross my Red Panda paws and hope to die.
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POLIWHIRL IN THE RAIN
In my quest to get better at digital illustration and draw every Pokémon card I own, I often get bored with the mundanity of some of the earliest cards (their poses, backgrounds, etc) and so choose to experiment with concepts of my own. I’m not sure why but when I think of Poliwhirl, I always think of a Broadway Musical Actor ready to break into singsong and choreographed dance numbers (maybe it’s those big, white gloves that would suit any tuxedo?). So, I’ve illustrated Poliwhirl in the pose of the great Gene Kelly from the movie poster of “Singin’ In The Rain”.
Good idea or not, this illustration makes me laugh. I hope you all find some joy in it, too!
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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,
