4/8/2025

The other day, I ended up rewatching Turning Red, because we started watching it with some students at school. Much like Inside Out, I really identified with it when it came out, because of my experiences in late elementary/early middle school. My relationship with my mom became very strained when my mental health issues really kicked in until we decided to seek treatment, and I struggled with the typical pubescent lack of impulse and emotional control.

Inside Out was released when I was fourteen - and while I found the personified emotions too childish for my mature adult sensibilities, I really identified with Riley's plight and how it showed up in her behavior: the uncontrollable and seemingly unjustified rage, the sudden swing into crippling guilt and anxiety. Similarly, Turning Red did a good job in capturing the alienation and lack of control I felt, and how it impacted my relationship with my parents at the time. Again - it's a movie for kids, but the themes it tries to tackle really resonated with my own experiences too.

When Turning Red came out, my uncle wrote it off, joking about it just being an allegory for a girl getting her first period... which made me momentarily question myself: was I just completely making up the added depth that I had seen when I watched it? But watching it a second time, I know that he just was so far removed from what the film was trying to tackle that he just completely misunderstood it and wrote it off. This is an uncle who also continued to make weird bigoted and homophobic jokes, use a few select slurs, etc. while framing himself as a liberal. (which yeah, I guess liberals are often like that.) But the film was definitely not for him, so he could've done everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.

I won't fully get into an analysis of the film and it's themes here, but it tries to address quite a few things: generational trauma, the aforementioned psychological impacts of puberty, gender, ancestry, etc. I've been thinking a lot about the concept of ancestors these days, I'll probably end up writing about it at some point, but what really stuck out upon rewatch was the way Mei's decision to keep her panda is a way of moving in solidarity with her distant ancestor, and acknowleding her family's ancient history of activism and justice - my thoughts on ancestry have largely related to the types of non-genetic ancestors, and the connection we have to past radical movements and the pursuit of justice, so I see it heavily tied to us taking up the mantle and carrying on the work of our revolutionary predecessors.

I'll stop there - maybe I'll pick this up another time.

4/6/2025

Earlier this year, I finally deleted the Instagram off my phone, so that I could only access it on my computer. For some reason, I re-downloaded it the other day. Yesterday I went downtown to browse the bookstores, and then messaged a friend about all the interesting zines and literary magazines I had to narrow down when deciding what to buy - that night, when I got sucked into a long scroll on Instagram, I was suddenly bombarded with ads for various zines and literary magazines - ads I had never received previously. Immediately deleted the app yet again after that. Yes, that will not stop the robots from listening in, but it was still unnerving enough to snap me out of my daze!

1/10/2025

I was just talking online about how I’m moving away from watching film bro movies and focusing on consuming media (movies and books mostly) that isn’t made by people who are well-established to be terrible people, and instead supporting the work of marginalized and under-hyped creatives and then someone responded by saying that the only film bros I need is Channel Awesome. I’m sorry to anyone who still does, but I didn’t realize anyone still watched Doug, and I have zero intention of doing so. Sorry to this man.