Disney Does Dallas

All I want us to do is talk about what the metaphor is, because this is a movie that clearly tells us in the beginning that this is all a metaphor for something. Ergo, everything must somehow be a metaphor for some portion, some part of coming of age. And we're just going to analyze what these filmmakers were thinking. Yeah, except they weren't thinking anything. And we know that because we watched the documentary. Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'll be your host today and I'm here with my co-host, Torvald. That's me. I want to pitch to you the logline of a movie and you tell me what it is. A young teenage girl on the cusp of womanhood discovers that she can sell her body around school to make money against the wishes of her overbearing mother. You just described a 1978 porno called Debbie Does Dallas. It's a very famous porno, and that's what you're talking about, right? It's basically about this cheerleader girl who wants to go to Dallas to join the Texas

Cowgirls, but she doesn't have enough money for it. So she and her friends band together and form basically a prostitute company where they sell themselves to various people around the school for cash. Well, I hadn't ever heard of that, but I would say that to me, that logline sounds like It comes from any number of indie or oftentimes French films that are about a coming of age. It tends to focus on things like that, it seems, especially in indie and French film spheres. But we're not talking about an indie French film or a 1970s porno. We're talking about Disney Pixar's movie, Turning Red. so you're saying your theory is that turning red is a modern reimagining of the 1978 porno debbie does dallas but for kids that's your theory i've never heard of that movie so i can't really say for sure robot chicken did a skit of debbie does dallas that's how i know about it what season was it season one you probably haven't i haven't gotten to season i'm watching

them backwards and it sucks i'm watching them forwards and it gets better and better it's i know they just keep getting better further back you go the more jokes there are about like bush and like yeah i know a lot more of the humping robot which i didn't even know was a thing i hate why is that a recurring character it's the worst recurring character ever the worst part is there's virtually no uh bitch pudding who is the best thing about the show i can't believe there was a show before bitch she's the whole show so we're talking about 2022's turning red which was written and directed by Dami Shi. I watched the making of Turning Red documentary and the first 15 seconds is her explaining how she came up with this idea. And she's all like, I just want to see this cute thing on screen and then I'll find the meaning and the metaphor and the themes to justify what that should be. But really it all just came from a place of like,

oh, they're so cute and wouldn't that be awesome if they were gigantic? That's all she was thinking. and red pandas aren't that big and the next scene is her going to a zoo and being like oh they're not really big are they she had no idea how red pandas even looked what was she doing which is pretty obvious watching the movie they clearly thought that a red panda was just a normal panda but red they're just big pandas yeah she thought they were actual pandas red pandas are nothing like pandas they're much more closely related to raccoons they're like weasels i gave her every benefit of the doubt i could i kept being like okay like you know maybe she had some vision here maybe she was imagining something she she had no idea she had no metaphor she had no thought and then i was like well maybe maybe it's a chinese myth maybe it's something i don't know it's not she made up her own stupid myth nothing why would pixar make up

this fake sun yi myth when chinese mythology has so many awesome stories to draw upon like this is culturally insensitive it's like if someone in china made a movie about coming of age in america and they made it about some kid named like paulie bunion seed who is like a gigantic apple tree planter who had like a faithful blue donkey that he carved out of a cherry tree with an axe or something like i'd watch that it's like a hodgepodge mishmash of what an american thinks chinese myth is right like that's what they created here the poster for this movie is so uninspired it's a picture of the quote-unquote red panda they created for this movie which is not a red panda in any way it is a somewhat panda-like creature that is red but not any way like a red panda no no no but yeah it's looking like surprised and scared and then you got like disney's pixar turning red and then whoever was making this poster must have realized oh crap there's nothing

in this poster that implies even a little that this panda is the little girl who's the main character yeah so they put a name tag on the panda that she never wears in the movie it's got this big name tag on a lanyard that says maylin lee student at lester v peterson middle school she never wears that she doesn't wear a name tag to school the first time i watched this I did not know that she was going to turn into that. I had no idea she was about a group of girls. Like I'd seen some of the trailer. I thought it was about a group of young girls who find a Totoro like creature. And I was under the impression that this was Pixar's My Neighbor Totoro. Like I thought that was what it was. Is what it looks like. Yep. The theory today is more. I want to look at the themes in this movie and figure out what the metaphor is in each scene. Because I believe this is a movie that tells us at the very beginning that the panda is always a metaphor for something.

And while that metaphor may be extremely mixed, everyone watching this movie is always going to be asking themselves in every scene, what is the metaphor here for the panda? And I think if you ask that question every scene, you eventually start to get very disturbed by this children's movie. Where does the movie tell us that the panda is a metaphor? There are a lot of people who like this movie. When it first came out, my social media feeds on various different platforms were just filled with people praising it and saying how great it is that Disney made a coming-of-age movie specifically about female coming-of-age that deals with things like menstruation, also stuff like mood swings, body odor, body hair, stuff like that, all dealt with through sort of this metaphor. But people were praising it for that because they're like, wow, that's such a taboo subject. I can't believe Disney tackled it.

And I actually agree on that level that I like that Disney made this movie in the sense that it is not something they usually tackle. And I'd like to see more of that. I do have many complaints about the movie itself because I feel like it's like people watched this movie and they watched the first 15 minutes of it. And that was the impression of they got it. But then they just like turn their brain off for the rest or something. at the very beginning of the movie when she first turns into the panda her mother immediately relates it to getting her period and that's where the movie ham-fistedly tells you this is a metaphor for coming of age it just tells us that right there so from that moment on right at the very beginning of the movie we know that and i would think it's natural to then question everything that happens to the panda and say how is this a metaphor for coming of age what does this mean

And I'm totally following you from what you've said so far. And just to clarify, your theory then is that the panda is always a metaphor? The panda is always a metaphor, but I think that it's confusing as to exactly what that metaphor corresponds to in every scene. It's clear at first, but as the movie goes on and the plot becomes a little more complicated, it becomes unclear. And when you try to come up with a metaphor for it, it becomes weird and disturbing. And also, you mentioned when you gave me that elevator pitch for this movie, you said that it's about some preteens selling sex to go to a concert. Is that right? A specific preteen discovers as she's coming of age and her body is changing that she can sell her body around school to make money. That is the plot of this movie. Like, I'm not, that's not a theory. That's the plot. That is the plot. Yes, she's selling her body. But anyway, I do want to make that clear at the very beginning that to the people who liked this and liked what it's saying and doing and the risks it's taking that are different from Disney, I agree with those people.

I think it's cool to see a coming of age like this. I had no hopes for this movie. We might spend the rest of this episode kind of tearing apart the rest of the flimsy plot. I had no expectations for this movie when I turned it on. I knew basically nothing about it. I thought it was going to be My Neighbor Totoro. But I got to say, when I started watching it, I was like, holy, holy crap. This movie is like actually talking about stuff people don't talk about. Like Bruno, right? Yeah, we don't know about Bruno. Talking about stuff like periods. No, I was like, hey, this has potential. If they're going to actually show how awkward it can be coming of age as a young girl, that could be an interesting movie. I'd like to see what they do with it. No, they didn't do anything with it. Like, it just didn't go anywhere. It was like, oh, panda time. Wow, big pandas. And the reason I wanted to make this clear is just because on my various social media

feeds, I did see a lot of people also complaining about other people who didn't like it, who were saying things like, oh, I didn't want to sit down and watch a movie with my two boys that talks about girls having their period. That's just so inappropriate, blah, blah, blah. I just want to make it very clear. I'm not one of those people. However, we're going to look at the middle part of this movie, the main plot, the main they're doing in this movie and just see what we see the director herself in the making of she says what it's a metaphor for she says the red panda is basically a metaphor for magical puberty what's magical puberty why do we need a metaphor for magical puberty she misphrased that you don't have a metaphor for magical things you have magical things it's a metaphor for real things as a metaphor i think she just misspoke she means that it is a magical metaphor for puberty

but it sounds like the director is on the same page as us so that means everything that this red panda does must be some sort of aspect of puberty coming of age sexually maturing yeah devon the store clerk is so ugly why are they all so into devon he's not i know well i mean that's the joke though like what the joke is there were so many other people that they walked past the joke is just like no i kind of feel like that there's a certain realism there that's like you when you're young at that age you're kind of just attracted to people near you even if they're like later on you would look back and be like oh that person wasn't good looking at all and that's kind of the joke yeah no no i i get that too don't worry this is back when i liked the movie um this part of it i thought was okay i just so well yeah so may lin is is is her first of all her name is maylin lee and i have to point out this is very similar to maylin ray from card

characters whose last name was actually lee but they changed it for the four kids dub because They didn't want her to be related to Lee Shoran.

Anyway, so her name is the same as the character from Cardcaptors. That's cool. So she has a group of friends. Now, I just have to say, while a lot of this is kind of like nostalgic, like, oh, yeah, we were all so silly when we were 13 year olds, you know, kind of thing. I have to say, a lot of this I don't identify with because of how freaking extroverted her friends are. Like, they're just so out there. I'm like, as a 13-year-old, I was so self-conscious. I wouldn't be doing any of the things these people are doing. Even Priya. Like, Priya is quiet in the sense that her volume is low, but she's extremely extroverted. Still, she does all the singing and dancing and stuff that they do, just in like a slightly cool way. But she's not shy at all. None of them are even remotely self-conscious. Well, I guess Mei-Lin a little bit when she turns into a panda, but not even that much. i mean i also think that her friends are just like literally the greatest friends anyone's ever had

i don't know i disagree they're so supportive all the time you're right they're her pimps later and her mom calls them out on that rightfully but like they're incredibly supportive of her non-stop and they seem to be like completely happy with their role as supporting characters in may may's life no no they love it and they know she's the storyteller here they know that this isn't about them in any way, that this is all Mei-Mei all the time. And their only reason to be here is to compliment her and calm her down and reassure her and do everything for her. It kind of felt bad for her friends. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Mei-Lin's mom. So her mom is very odd, almost like she was a mix of ideas that they just mashed together into something that makes no sense. She wears a sharp suit that makes her look like she would be a high-powered lawyer or a business person or something but she works at a dinky little temple

in chinatown in toronto correct like it just doesn't seem like why is she exudes like success and ambition but like she runs like a tiny little tourist stand essentially or like a church i'm not even sure what it is well it's because like she you know her whole life just like may may she was forced by her mom to do her best all the time and always be the perfect person and it's to show this is what Mei Mei will grow up into if she doesn't, you know, rebel, that she's going to put on a facade. Whether she's actually successful or not is beside the point. And they show that later when her mom's digging around under Mei Mei's bed and finds papers with bad grades. And she's like, oh, turns out Mei Mei doesn't always get good grades. She just hides it when she gets bad grades. I thought that was really cool. That was actually one of the best parts of the movie. I was like, oh, she just makes herself look good all the time. And that's also what you're doing.

Okay. So this is supposed to be set in 2002. As you found, some supporting evidence that she doesn't make very much money as someone who works at a temple. She has been wearing the same clothes since 1996. She and her husband have been wearing the same clothes for the past eight years. And honestly, I actually liked that they're portrayed as a happy, loving family, but they're basically so poor they have to resort to child labor just to make ends meet. Right? Like, not that I like child labor um but i think it's cool to see a a very real and common situation in you know north america and other parts of the world get some representation where where maylynn gets it from then like she's like if i want to make money i have to exploit myself exactly yes i haven't seen child labor accurately represented in a cartoon since like all dogs go to heaven which this theory also has many things in common with you know if you want to take our all dogs go

to heaven theory yeah stay tuned for that maybe someday one other thing i noticed about ming and mei mei is that mei mei seems to really like badminton she's got like tons of trophies and even one for like duos with her mom and then they never even say the word badminton in the entire movie. I was like, why did they show all those badminton trophies if she doesn't even ever play badminton or talk about it? If you know what the main, shall we say, ball in badminton is called, then you'll know that this is a way of telling us that she's attracted to men. She's a little boy crazy, which we find that out very overtly in a totally different way. It has nothing to do with badminton. So out of her friends, which one do you think is the most forgettable and meaningless? abby yeah obviously i think you could lift abby right out of the movie and it would be a better movie right she's just supposed to be like people like oh yeah i had a weird friend

who was weird she's just the weird one yeah i like priya she's cool you know she thinks she's a vampire she sleeps like a vampire yeah she's really cool she's clearly the best friend which was not around in 2002 well and she's just like ridiculously over protective of mei mei like anytime anything happens she's like i'll sacrifice myself for you mei mei like wow she's intense well she's into tragic vampire romance so you know that's that's all about sacrificing which did exist in 2002 there were lots of vampire romances but if you look at the book she's holding it's written by like dude you got into a twitter war about this yeah you know and i was actually arguing on the other side but i mean they had a point because the last name on the book is roberta moyer which is clearly supposed to be stephanie meyer but yeah and twilight wasn't around back in 2002 yeah but vampire romances did exist buffy was around there was

all these other things there was blood and chocolate and chocolate movie about werewolf romance i mean and a book not a movie it turned into a movie later with hugh dancy anyway wow So, Mei-Mei is in her room. She's doing homework. Now, there's a lot of weird things about this scene. First of all, she's got a giant histology volume 4 textbook on her shelf. It's huge. It's like the size of a dictionary. Histology is the study of the microanatomy of cells, tissues, and organs as seen through a microscope. She's a middle schooler. She doesn't need this textbook. she wouldn't have this textbook and it's weird all of the other books are like middle schooling for middle schoolers the art of middle school she's like little tiffany in men in black seriously walking around in the ghetto with quantum physics books so she's doing some math problems at the top of her paper she's written solving the quadratic equation solving

by substitution there's two equations that she needs to solve and she needs to solve them doing substitution, okay? Equation number one, 3x minus 8y equals 24. Equation number two, which she needs to solve the first equation, is supposed to be negative 5x plus y equals negative 3. That equation is nowhere to be seen in her homework. She needs that equation because she uses it and has already used it in what she's written down. She substituted 8y, she solved it by substitution. So first she solved the second equation for y. That would be y equals 5x minus 3. And she has that on her paper. So somehow she's already solved that equation without ever seeing the original equation. But then she already substituted in for the first one. So she turned 8y into 8 times 5x minus 3, which 5x minus 3 is equal to y. So then she went on, she solved the rest of it. She solved and she found out that x equals 0. But after she solved that, she's erasing something. I don't know what

she's erasing but it's on the next few lines but there's nothing left to do in this equation so i don't know what she could have written but furthermore she seems to still be working on that part of the equation solving for x and yet on the other side of the paper she's already used her deduction that x equals zero to solve for y in the other equation which the way this works is you're supposed to first simplify for y, solve that y equals 5x minus 3, then substitute y for 5x minus 3 to solve for x, find out x equals 0, then substitute x in the first equation and find out what y actually equals. Turns out y actually equals negative 3. And she has solved that too. She has it circled, actually squared. She's written a square around it on her piece of paper that x equals 0 and y equals negative 3. And yet somehow seems to still be working on the first equation solving for x i don't know how she could still be working on that if she's already solved

for x and used x to solve for y maybe that's what she erased yeah but why it was correct why is she erasing it maybe math worked differently back in 2002 the main thing we can say is that why is she still working on this and erasing stuff in the very first part of the problem if she has already completed the final step of the problem and solved every bit of it like everything solved She already used the first part of the problem to solve the last part of the problem. And now she's going back to the first part and erasing stuff. What is she doing? Blam! So yeah, then she starts doodling and her doodles come to life. And she's like, oh, getting really into it. She's like, I'm going to give him some abs and I'm going to make him like really sexy. She is doodling a picture that looks like the store clerk that her friends like. Yeah, but she didn't like. Not like. anyway what's happening here is that she's having a sexual awakening that's what we're seeing in a

disney film which is cool you know it's an interesting thing for them to be talking about it is interesting but in a minute she's about to have a very very scary nightmare which i thought was way too much for kids dude i love that part it's a great part but i'm like well i'm really straight out of rule of rose or something i'm glad i didn't watch this movie with my kids because That would have actually been really scary for my kids. That was like worse than Willy Wonka's boat trip. It's pretty similar. No, so she rolls under the bed to draw sexy pictures of this guy as a mermaid. And as she's doing so, we see sort of a red light, almost like a heat sort of glowing brighter and brighter from down under her face. It's like a bright, you know, hot pink light. And it's like the color of love. Yeah, exactly. so she's in love and her mother discovers her and is furious and then the most unbelievable part of

this scene recognizes the doodle as the guy as some guy she's never interacted with presumably beyond like maybe buying groceries from him i think they buy they buy stuff from that store often because she's like you just lost a customer so but like still i just don't think she like it works because this is animated right and that's the only reason but if we're to imagine this happening in real life apparently these drawings were so hyper detailed and she's such an amazing artist that you look at it and you're like bam that's the store clerk from the quickie mart down the street i could see her having like a hunch and being like may may is this the store cleric but for her like without question to just drop everything and drive down to the store and present the doodles to the store cleric is just nuts. To everyone. She like passes them out to everyone in the store. You gave everyone a copy. She's like, look how great my daughter is. She's

so good at doodling. Right. So she embarrasses her daughter and her daughter, like her daughter bottles it all up. She doesn't show that she's mad. She's like, whatever, mom. This is when the panda shows up, right? She turns into a red panda right after this. And what has happened is that her mother just repressed her sexuality so at this point it kind of feels like the panda might be a metaphor for repressed sexuality or you know as they say later it repressed emotion in general perhaps okay in the scene her mom catches her with some doodles this really felt to me like what really happened is her mom like caught her pleasure in herself especially by how the uh you know the aftermath of it is her in her room like beating herself up and having literally beating of like she slaps herself right looks at the mirror says this will never happen being ashamed right like but also wanting to do it again but then pledging to never do it again you know like

it really seems like she was and it's a disney film so like you know what they perhaps were maybe trying to say but they had to go a more kiddie route with it so it's like oh she's just drawing pictures no i mean it was a honestly of all the metaphors in this movie i think this one actually worked right like i understood it no and i and i have to to lay this evidence down early on even though it actually comes at the end of the movie in this movie we do see things through disney glasses and perhaps if this wasn't a disney movie we'd be seeing things differently because at the very end of the movie at the big concert the mom yells to everyone in the audience put some clothes on when everyone in that audience because it's a disney movie is very modestly dressed yeah no i noticed that too no one is wearing revealing clothing for her to yell to them like even the band members were like extremely well dressed in like full-on tuxedos with wings

at the time like no one right they could have at least had the band members have like open shirts and abs or something but no it's a disney movie so we're left to infer that then what we're seeing in this disney movie isn't necessarily what is actually happening dude by the way i love that a minute ago you self-censored you caught yourself trying to call it a disney film and then you stopped yourself and replaced film with movie which is just the greatest insult that any writer could ever unconsciously give to a come on they didn't release it in theaters they released it direct to video not a film now as she's sleeping the red floodgates are opening is this a metaphor for her getting her period because obviously that's what they talk about for her getting her period yes okay now that crazy dream is just like straight up horror yeah that flopping mermaid boy tied down to sushi like as a piece of sushi right like that's that's

what i say when i say this dream is like rule of rose because like that's like the mermaid they make in that game yeah it is and then the unnerving like smiling flower boy band popping out of lockers that were laying down on the floor that really looked like coffins there's like a split second of an evil red glowing eyed buddha or something there's a dead bird next to a pair of glasses there's a burning fan with a screaming face reflected on it an evil long-tongued donkey that's breathing like radiation breath like green radiation breath a dead worm that's been chopped in half uh the crazy evil ghost panda attacks at the end like is a really disturbing uh nightmare horror when you're expecting it is not so horror horrific or scary right but horror in like actual horror in a kid's movie where you didn't expect it is far more horrifying even if it's technically less horrifying it's more horrifying just because you didn't expect it you're like whoa and because

we were talking about horror movies, that's a good time for me to mention my favorite movie in the whole world is Ginger Snaps. Turning Red is essentially a kiddie version of Ginger Snaps. Ginger Snaps is a movie about a... Oh, but you love Ginger Snaps so much and you don't love Turning Red. Well, because I feel like the metaphor in Ginger Snaps is so much clearer and simpler. It's just about like turning into a werewolf is a metaphor for puberty and kind of how while one sister grows up the other one doesn't and there's sort of a rift that grows between them because of that and it's a really wonderful movie and turning red is a kiddie version of it with a much more mixed metaphor that's a lot more confusing all right so yeah the next scene is when she's in the bathroom her mom's trying to come in she says she's a red disgusting monster and her mom who knows that she is at some point going to turn into a big red monster decides oh you've got your

period. Right. That was my question is that every single woman in their family has this red panda issue. Why didn't she jump to that conclusion? Yeah, no, there's some huge problems with the plot of this movie. For now, her mom's just a massive idiot for not immediately realizing that now her daughter is a giant red panda, which is what her daughter is telling her. In the next scene when she's in school and her mom's watching her through the window she gets so fed up with everything and so upset that she explodes in pink smoke everywhere in class and then runs out right if this is a metaphor what actually happened there yeah it's it's confusing because like this is literally right after the scene where they tell us this is a metaphor for puberty and so from that point on i it's i think it's totally natural for us to wonder what is everything following this a metaphor for specifically and yet apparently the people who watched and liked this movie

didn't do that they saw the first ham-fisted in-your-face metaphor like yeah that's what it is and for the rest of the movie turned their brains off and we're just like magic yeah but yeah so she explodes in this pink cloud and the red panda is a mixed metaphor that seems to have completely interchangeable rules about why and when and where it shows up well right now it seems to be back to like representing emotion just like right it's like it's mood swings right i think we can just say it's that like right now in this point the part of puberty that it's a metaphor for is mood swings so she's running home her body's big and hairy and it smells that's all puberty stuff she sees the store clerk on the way home it makes her leg shake and makes her shout why like this is not warner brothers this is not why would they do that that has no that has nothing in common with the rest of the movie that's not something that may may would do

so then she learns this the she learns the legend of soon me i think is her name no sorry soon ye he learns the legend of soon ye and apparently soon ye somehow passed down the ability to turn into a panda to her daughters. Well, and also at the very beginning, Mei says that they talk about their ancestors at this temple and she's like, and not just the guys, but the ladies too or something like that. But I have to point out, they only talk about somebody. It's only this one specific ancestor that they worship at this shrine. They don't talk about any of the others. Ostensibly, they should have talked more with each other about this because her parents know this entire myth. Why did they hide it from her? Like, why are they such irresponsible idiots? Why wasn't this the very first thing they thought of when she said, I'm a giant red monster? You know, like maybe the only the only reason I could think of for that, she's not really red.

She's orange. So maybe they were like, she'd say she's orange if she was a red panda. I think that like there are two explanations for why they didn't talk to her more about this. The in-universe explanation would be that, for whatever stupid reason, they just hoped it wouldn't happen to her. The metaphor explanation would be showing how dumb parents who are uncomfortable talking about sex just are like, oh, we don't need to talk about that with them until much, much later. Right. Exactly. And that's the only thing I got out of it when her mom's like, I just didn't think, I thought we had more time. And then they put her in an empty room. What? Yeah. Why? She can be in her own room. Like, why? This is so weird and cultish. Like, everything happening here is really freaky and strange. And she's scratching the walls. Her friends find out about the panda, and she convinces her mom she can go to school.

Like, she's got it under control. She immediately, without any sort of difficulty, convinces her mom that she can repress her red panda. And suddenly, the conflict of the movie is gone and completely replaced with the new conflict of, I want to go to a concert. If we are seeing this movie at face value, that she is a literal werewolf with darkness inside of her, why does she want to go to this concert? Does she want to kill people? Well, that's proof that we're supposed to be enjoying it metaphorically. Very much so. Yes, everything about this movie. So like in the next scene, it's weird. So they go into the bathroom. Abby asks for a little hit of panda to help clear her mind so she can think. And at this point, the mixed metaphor seems to be that they're relating this to drugs, which again does relate to a lot of teenagers coming of age stories. Maybe she becomes a drug dealer. Like maybe that's the metaphor.

Where is she getting drugs, right? Like if her body just suddenly matured and she realizes she can use it to make money, that kind of makes sense. Even if I don't really want to watch that movie. If her body started producing drugs, it doesn't make sense. This is also right after she said going to the concert is their first step into womanhood. And in order to turn into the panda to give her friend Abby a hit, she has to imagine a sexy mermaid again. And this is when they realize, yeah, like they can sell the panda to make money. So you're saying it's not drugs. Her friend wanted, she's like, hey, could you make out with me a bit? Maybe. Her friends are really into her. They just hugged a lot, and that's about all they could show in a Disney movie. Maybe it's completely innocent. Maybe her friend is like, I'm stressed, I need a hug. Then why did they show it using the metaphor?

It's not a metaphor. No, it is a metaphor, because even the director said that it's all a metaphor for magical puberty. all of a sudden everyone at school wants the panda oh they all want the panda and the movie depicts this as them wanting to like take pictures with the panda and buy her merchandise i have to point out may already dresses up as a panda at her shrine and sells merchandise they could already get that if that's what they want like if they if we take it at face value they would just think she's wearing like some kind of costume no and even if she's not no one wants to take a picture with a big monster panda like she's not that cute it's a terrible character design i agree i think the panda is ugly it's not a cute panda even though they think it is why does everyone know that this ugly giant creature is a red panda because it's clearly not right like everyone refers to it as a red panda it's not a red panda no one who saw that would

ever say oh look a red panda so then i was like would a kid pay to take a picture with some giant fluffy thing in a suit and then i thought hey we just went to disneyland and there were lots of people paying money to get in and you know one of the things you do at disneyland is take pictures with like chewbacca so i was like okay maybe maybe kids would pay for that i don't let's say we kept it really really let's let's just let's let's just say let's keep it really really cheap something kids could afford and say it's like three bucks per kid if a hundred kids paid that's three hundred dollars and that's how much they made but i think that's still a little much i think three bucks is very steep for a kid in 2002 and i think that a hundred kids in the school being willing to pay this for a stupid picture is uh believable yeah and also it's like it's parents who go to disneyland and they force their kids to take pictures with mickey mouse like my

kids they love mickey they would never have been like let's go take a picture with mickey if we hadn't said go take a picture with Mickey yeah you know like as a 13 year old I wouldn't have been like I want to take a picture with a big red panda I just wouldn't have even thought of it all teenagers so I don't think they'd want a picture with any sort of mascot especially a mascot of nothing this is 2002 so they do have flip phones but then it wasn't like selfies weren't like a thing like nowadays you take a picture of yourself all the time with everything you do but back then it wasn't it's strange that the writers thought like in universe that this is a good way to earn money and the only way that i can understand it is if they were thinking of it as the metaphor for her selling her body yeah there are a few things in this movie here and there that don't quite fit the metaphor like oh she exploded in a puff of pink smoke i don't know what that

means but this this is the second act the main plot of the film if you're not writers maybe you don't know the second act is the bulk of the film and it always has a plan to achieve a goal and that plan is the plot of the film and this is the plan for their movie is to sell the panda around school so this isn't some little thing that you can just be like oh that doesn't fit into the metaphor no this has to fit into the metaphor it's the plot of the film yeah so our next clue is that her Friends are apparently making a plan to pimp her around the school to make money. They spread the word, and one of the girls texts, OMG, panda pics room 202. Yeah. I just feel like there's something about that when we know what this panda has been equated to. Whatever you think it is, panda equals magical puberty. So, oh my gosh, puberty pics. What does that mean? No, I don't know. And this is the point when I was watching the movie.

I liked it up to this point. At this point, I started to be like, what am I watching? I wasn't even in theory mode. I wasn't trying to ruin the movie. I was just trying to do what the movie was telling me to do. It told me this is a metaphor at the beginning. I'm just trying to figure it out.

Yeah, well, and then this whole thing culminates in her getting blackmailed by a potential client when Tyler is all, you've been showing everyone your panda. I'm going to tell your mom you're showing off your panda if you don't service me at my party. And I'm like, whoa, this is a very, very strange scene. And then she's like, okay, $200 for one hour. And I'm like, that is how prostitutes talk in movies. She's worried about making enough money. I knew we should have charged more for the photos. So this is the scene you were saying. This is an important scene. They're sitting around watching these boys who are their age playing basketball. Is this really normal 13-year-old girl behavior? Like these boys are their same age. It kind of maybe makes sense if they were slightly older boys, but I kind of feel like at 13, you're still sort of disgusted by the gross boys that are your age. All right, and the boys in your class

are all the boys that you grew up with and you probably still see them as like the stupid, snotty bullies and jerks. I think like if they had a crush on one, they might talk to it about each other, but they're being so extroverted. They're like yelling out, whoa, I don't remember. Or what they say, but like they're catcalling the boys, which I don't think any 13 year old has the confidence to do that. They're all just so awkward, unless it's making a comment about the journey they've been going on in that montage we just saw. So, yeah, Tyler wants attention. He says, I wonder if your mom knows her precious little Maymay has been flaunting the panda all over school. Right. Now, I have a question about this. Why would Tyler think that her mom would care at all? Yeah. There's no reason that Tyler would think that her mom cares that she's showing off her ability to become a werewolf. It would make a lot more sense for him to say, what do you think the Toronto Police Department will do when they find out there's a werewolf at school, right?

Like, that would make a lot more sense than threatening about, I'll tell the mom, her precious little daughter, right? This implies that she's doing something vulgar that mom would be ashamed of. On the surface, there is no reason that Tyler should know that her mom would care. Like, Tyler doesn't know her mom. He doesn't know anything about this issue except that she becomes a big monster. No matter how you look at it, this has to be a metaphorical moment. This makes no sense plot-wise, but metaphorically, it kind of makes a lot of sense. She's been selling her body around school. Mom would want to know about that. In this case, once again, panda is a metaphor for sexuality that should be repressed, right? Just like the first time her mom heard about it, she was like, oh, you have panda. Panda is something that we all get, but we want to get rid of it. I didn't think this would be a problem so soon for my beautiful little pure daughter.

The scene makes perfect sense if you think of it like that. the scene makes no sense if you think of it as the actual ability to turn into a giant red panda it makes no sense it makes no sense and the language he uses implies what we're supposed to be thinking he says precious little maymay implying that she's like so sweet and innocent what does this have to do with her being precious little maymay if she's turning into a precious big panda like he's saying it as though the two things are like opposites like oh you're doing something so bad right one of the things they keep saying about this panda is it's so cute i want to hug it and love it so it is precious apparently right exactly so like this doesn't make sense unless it's a metaphorical moment that's telling us what's really going on well yeah and then the weirdest thing is apparently he wants her to service everyone at his party for

two hundred dollars for an hour and it's really and they unhaul our friends gasp and act like he said something really terrible like up until this point maybe i was just jumping to my own conclusions But once you get to Tyler here, it's pretty much a confirmed theory. This whole scene, to me, felt like Pretty Woman, where she has, you know, pretty much this conversation with Mothman. Mothman. Richard Gere. Is that the guy? Yeah, that's him. So, yeah, she's basically having a conversation with Richard Gere about how much he should get and, you know, how much he's going to pay her and how much time she's going to invest. Yeah. She comes to Tyler's party and says, you want the panda? You're getting the panda. Later on, Maymay is taking a break on the roof, eating cake. They talk about the concert. They say, tomorrow we are walking into that concert, girls and coming out, women. If at the end of Mulan, it ended with Mulan and Shane getting married, they go into a

house and it pans out and we hear Mulan singing, I'll make a man out of you, there would be some pretty sexual connotation there, right? Yeah, okay. That'd be pretty weird. I would love that. I guess you do have to put it in context and that would be pretty odd. That would be a great ending, I have to say. The more I think about it, the better it is. Would you think it's that odd if you've got, like, I don't know, a young boy coming of age story, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Tom is hanging out with Huck, and they're about to get the treasure, and Tom says, we're going to go into that cave as boys, but we're going to come out with that treasure as men, you know? Like, that wouldn't imply anything sexual and would be completely normal. Well, if this Tom and Huck movie started with Tom doodling pictures of a sexy lady and his Aunt May or whatever his aunt's name is, is like, hey, you're in trouble for that.

And then all of a sudden, he just starts turning into this massive creature whenever he gets aroused. It is actually a pretty good metaphor for male sexuality. He could turn into like a giant rooster, right? It's essentially Fooly Cooly. Dude, Fooly Cooly. That's a good comparison, actually. This is kind of like Disney's Fooly Cooly. Yeah. I hate to say that because Fooly Cooly is actually really good, and this is not. Right. Well, and then Tyler calls out to her, hey, Panda Girl, what are you doing? We want more rides. Does she give people rides? I didn't notice her giving people rides. I think she occasionally carries them around because she's so big. Tyler says, you want your money? Then get your butt down here. So she jumps on top of Tyler, like she's really going at him. And her friends are saying, Maymay, stop, you're hurting him. And that's when her mother shows up and she gets really mad about it.

And the next scene, Tyler's parents are yelling at Maymay's mom. They say, I cannot believe you would let your daughter do this. Like, they just discovered Tyler's sex party. And rather than blaming it on their own perfect son, they're, of course, blaming it on the woman. You know, they live in a patriarchal society. Their sweet little boy can never be responsible for that. Some of the things that Tyler's parents say are like, I cannot believe you would let your daughter do this. Do you understand what she did to my boy? This is a civilized society and we have. And then she kind of trails off. The whole conversation there I thought was really weird because it doesn't sound like they're directly referring to her beating him up. It sounds like they're referring to her doing something immoral. Right. Yes. That's what it sounds like. It doesn't sound like. It seems like normally they would say, look what she did.

He's going to need stitches or look at the bump on his head. You know, like, how could you raise her to attack people like that? Right. Yeah, they never said anything about hurting him. It was all just like, we expected a party where people would have good fun. Nothing about, like, she hurt him. More just like she was inappropriate. So her mother is talking to her friends, rightfully blaming them. She says, I knew you were trouble, putting all these thoughts into Maymay's head, parading her around. And her friends are like, no, she wanted to. And her mother interrupts and says, don't you blame her. She is a good girl and you've taken advantage of her. So yeah, she goes home and her dad, he tells the story of her mom's panda. And it's interesting because knowing what we now know about what the panda represents, it seems like he's telling us that, so he says that, well, yeah, basically he says that

her mom the only time he's seen her panda was when she got revenge on her mom on the grandma because she wouldn't let her marry the dad he's saying that your mom used sex as revenge against your grandma to force us to get married and what would that mean got her pregnant right yeah like that's the only thing i can check from it as a metaphor no it made sense like because at first i was like this doesn't make sense and i thought about it i was like nope it makes sense him and ming forced themselves to get married by having a baby together they used her panda i mean what her dad says about it he's like when she was a panda oh she was scary but amazing you should have seen your mom she was incredible i'm like the only way that i could interpret his character in this movie is he is an advocate for sexuality he liked when the mom was a sexual person and is kind of sad that she's not anymore so may may decides to keep it and goes to four

town going along with the theme when the four town band comes out they're all trapped in stripper cages and then they break out obviously relating to sort of like may breaking out from her mother's repression dude four four town puts on an amazing show like yeah they turn into angels and fly around that was awesome i would go to a show like that was really cool this is the point where christine noped out of the movie she's like i don't like this movie is when may says beating her mom by shaking her butt at her was the dumbest thing i've ever seen she's like i'm not your little maymay anymore it was my idea to hustle the panda i like boys i like music i like gyrating and mom's saying how could you be so crass and then she starts twerking at her mom and her friends say destroy her with your big butt it's like the dumbest it's it's horrible but once again they're equating panda with sex right like yes she specifically says i like boys

i like gyrating i'm twerking at your face well twerking wasn't a thing in 2002 well yeah but it was for the panda yes it was as she's doing it she keeps repeating take it mom take it yes so such a horrible scene but hey i do have to say four town rising from the ashes of their you know destroyed arena and saving the day was like really cool like i i can support that you gotta love four town they're a great stand up guys at the end they solved the problem uh now may may's mom is hustling the panda to get more business at their temple but then it's okay if she's a panda at the temple but she tries to go out as a panda and her mom's like no no no you only do that for me well it's a brothel exactly but then the last line of the movie is my panda my choice mom right once again is really equating it to something sexual yeah no it is so she puts on her tail and ears and her mom says you're not going out like that are you and then the final

line my panda my choice which is a phrase usually used for my body my choice she says everyone has that messy part of themselves have you let yours out yet i agree with the message of being your own person but i don't necessarily think you should encourage kids to rebel just because certainly not the way this film depicts it with selling your body around school. The most friendly explanation I can give for this movie is it was bad writing. They had an idea for a cute red panda movie and they didn't know what the metaphor was. And so they just made the movie and then tried to inject metaphor here and there and ended up with a movie that is weird and doesn't exactly make metaphorically make a lot of sense. Or the other interpretation is that they knew and they were doing this on purpose and that's the message of the movie do you think this is a good pixar movie uh no no i think it's barely a pixar movie i don't have a

problem with them being edgy and strange i just think the movie is a metaphorical mess it's just a mess and they should have picked a more of a clear story that they were trying to tell no do i believe that this movie was a metaphor for not only coming of age but also of uh sexuality and selling your body i don't see what else they were going for like i'll put it this way if the red panda stuff in this movie was a metaphor then that is what it was a metaphor of there's no other interpretation or it is not a metaphor at all and there's no metaphor in it and it's just magic and it doesn't mean anything but i refuse to believe that because the director specifically said it's a metaphor for magical puberty so um yeah i think your theory is confirmed as far as i'm concerned yeah cool well music for this episode was provided by christine follow us on twitter at popcorn isn't real if you have a theory that you'd like us to cover please tweet at us

we would love to discuss it with you and maybe even cover it one day and until next time remember The popcorn isn't real.