Cultural report
With “Red Alert”, Disney explores the theme of female puberty
Audio 04:33
In "Red Alert", Disney humorously deals with the pangs of puberty in a young girl.
©Disney/Pixar
By: Sophie Torlotin Follow
3 mins
The great animation studio Pixar is already back with a feature film.
Entitled
Red Alert
, it has been available since Friday on the Disney+ platform.
This fantastic comedy humorously deals with the pangs of puberty.
The first American animated film with Asian protagonists, it is signed by a young woman, Domee Shi, who had already won an Oscar for an animated short film.
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The director, Domee Shi, was inspired by her adolescence to create the character of Meilin, an excellent student of Chinese origin who perfectly integrated in Toronto, Canada.
However, a major difference separates the 30-year-old filmmaker and her character.
In the movie
Red Alert
, little Meilin turns into a giant red panda as soon as she gets angry.
“
I was this very confident, passionate, dorky child who liked to control everything and had a great relationship with his mother, his family and his friends.
And then one day, boom, puberty arrived.
I grew suddenly, hair grew everywhere and my emotions took over, I was fighting with my mother every day.
I wanted to revisit this period to understand what had happened.
»
Characters viewers can relate to
The first Pixar film directed by a woman,
Red Alert
aligns strong female characters, between Meilin, her girlfriends, her very demanding mother, her grandmother and her aunts.
It is also the first animated film to talk about the onset of menstruation in a young girl and periodic protection in a sequence that is both hilarious and embarrassing for the main character.
For producer Lindsey Collins, this sequence was essential: “
We trust our teams and our test screenings to know if our ideas work.
And when we showed the film internally, everyone laughed and then put themselves in the character's shoes.
And that's what we're looking for, this identification of the spectators with the characters.
Everyone wanted to keep that scene in the movie.
»
Domee Shi therefore metaphorically shows the transformations of a little girl into a teenager.
She uses for this the figure of the panda.
“
Even if the panda is a Chinese animal, it's a nice metaphor for puberty, because it's red, hairy.
I was not inspired by any existing Chinese mythology.
I invented mine.
»
Music by Billie EiIish and Finneas O'Connell
The challenge for Meilin and her friends is to go to a concert of a
boy band
that occurs in Toronto.
Lindsey Collins called on Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell for the band's songs.
“
We wanted artists who speak to this generation, singers who give the impression that they wrote the songs especially for their 13-year-old fans.
Billie Eilish and Finneas write songs that speak to this generation.
They were therefore offered to create this boy band of the film and to compose their music.
They immediately accepted and wrote three songs that we love.
»
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