Why Men Should Watch “Turning Red”

(Spoilers, though I think you could read this and still enjoy the movie if you haven’t already seen it, because I only reveal fairly obvious plot points in the most general terms.)

Apparently some reporter had to retract a review of the latest Pixar movie, Turning Red, because he described it as being relatively inaccessible. His point was that a movie about a specific cultural niche, Asian Canadian girls living in Toronto, in a particular sliver of time, the year 2002, is too narrow a demographic for a wider audience to relate to.

This was rightly criticized on the grounds that no one seems to complain about talking fish or cars as being a world too different from our own to find meaning in. To claim that a story about human girls who live in modern society as being less accessible than sentient toys is clearly defining certain genders and cultures as being default, and everything else as something less.

But, not only do I not think that the movie is somehow limited in appeal to certain genders or cultures or whatever, I think it’s arguably a movie with more to say to the people who are specifically not the same demographic as the main characters.

A lot of assumption seems to be that this is a general coming of age story, where the focus is on the transition from childhood to puberty, and in particular…