This is true. But I also felt like the secondary characters had far more Asian culture representation (this is not quite the right wording, but I've typed and deleted three things and can't come up with anything better so I hope you get my general point) than Mei Ling. Still, absolutely huge leap and I agree.
Haha, so I'm not offended, but this can be a learning experience, lol. It's exactly that gap in what you express as 'more Asian culture representation' that makes it SUPER Asian-American/Canadian. That IS the Asian-Diaspora experience. Just because younger generations are not as outward expressively Asian, doesn't make us less Asian. Cultural identity isn't just how you dress, or speaking with an accent, or even certain values. It's about a shared experience.
When immigrants and their families spend enough time in a place, they tend to assimilate or integrate into those cultures as time goes on and as new generations emerge. It just happens naturally through cultural osmosis. Immigrants will come to a place, there will be language and cultural barriers with their new homes, they'll tend to more obviously look/sound/feel like immigrants because integration isn't easy when there are barriers like that in the way, and old habits die hard. And that's before you get to feeling like an outsider in a strange land, and not feeling comfortable with being a minority with all the pressures societies place on minorities to adapt and conform to the majority. When your entire life is a reminder that you don't fit into a place and belong, it can be a very alienating and stressful experience. Especially if that society has any ingrained hostility towards outsiders/other ethnic groups. Very often, conservative impulses kicks in when suddenly the cultural identity you've taken for granted feels under siege. Those inward inflective tendencies can be even easier to facilitate if you have access to an immigrant community where you can speak your native tongue, and not have to adapt yourself for. And when immigrants begin raising their children in their new societies, those impulses can become borderline toxic.
Because for kids who grow up the children of immigrants, or the children of those children of immigrants, there's often a weird tug-of-war at play. Where your family lives by one culture, but you go to school and mingle with an entirely different one. Mei here spends half her waking life in school surrounded by diversity,and mingling with kids from all walks of life. She's still young where language acquisition comes easier, so she speaks like everyone else does in school. Sometimes it's subconscious as people naturally code-switch, sometimes it's intentional if there's insecurities involved being ESL. In the movie we see Mei struggle with growing up in metropolitan Toronto. She feels at home and integrated into her school social setting. Maybe even more at home there versus her actual home, where her parents just don't get her in the same way her peers do. Because when she comes home, she has to conform to the conservative expectations of her mother who still values more traditional, conservative, Chinese social values. Something that affects both boys and girls, but can be especially harder on the girls who overwhelmingly get less leeway.
And then we learn that Mei's mom was really the same way and grew up with very similar experiences. But her generation was much closer to the point of immigration, and her upbringing was much more strict. And she can't help but pass her trauma (for lack of a better word) onto her daughter as a result. That's just kind of how families are in general, you know? But this is how it often gets expressed in Asian-American families. My old man grew up in a very conservative Asian-American household, swearing up and down he'd never grow up to be like his father. And while he's no carbon copy, he still ended up inheriting a lot from him anyways regarding values, disposition, temperament, etc in ways his younger self would have been appalled by. And it expresses itself in the movie by having Mei's mom's Panda-form be so gigant and out of control. She dealt with a much more strict and harsh cultural tug-of-war in her youth versus Mei who relatively had an easier go of it, growing up in a more modern time and with parents who understand what she's going through a little more. It was something I saw myself and my family in, in the film and it was really affecting to be able to see our experiences on a big screen like that.
And that brings us to the fact that while a lot of people hone in on the obvious Mei turning into a Red Panda as a metaphor for puberty, it's also simultaneously a metaphor for Mei kind of exploring her own cultural identity as well. In school, she presents as a typical, ordinary, fully assimilated kid. But kids can be very perceptive and sensitive to their surroundings and how they do or don't fit in with the group in school. There are strong social dynamics at play in school settings that manipulate kids into conformity, and tons of immigrant kids get easily embarrassed by even the visual presence of their families when they say, have bossy/nosey parents show up at the school and act/dress differently from the other parents, or get send to school with a lot of smelly ethnic foods instead of something 'normal' like a sandwich. And now, she's got this symbol of her heritage that shows up that's almost impossible to hide and she freaks out about it because she's afraid people won't accept her if they know she's different from them in strange ways.
But... then they do anyways! Because her friends are dope, and modern society is on average a lot more accepting of cultural differences than it used to be a generation or two ago. Her friends think what makes her different and unique is dope. Partially because they're open minded, but also because they love and accept her no matter what. Watching her peers fawn over her Panda-form gave me weird flashbacks of when some of my peers would discover, "Oh, you're Japanese!? I love anime and sushi!" She begins to embrace being different with her syncretic identity because it's both liberating and empowering. But she feels she has to hide it from her family because as much as the family prizes maintaining their Asian cultural values at home, older generations can definitely feel paranoid about expressing their culture on a public stage in a way that makes them targets for ostracizing and hate. Mei's family sealing their Panda-forms away and immediately trying to do the same for their child felt like a very obvious expression of that. Be the Model Minority, don't rock the boat or complain, work hard, smile, and don't give the white people reasons to be afraid of you, and life will be good. That's a distressing number of caveats to always be worried about in order to live a happy life that people in the majority never have to even contemplate in order to fit in. But here Mei is, flaunting her differences and even profiting off of it in ways that terrify/appall her conservative mother.
Non-Asians might not pick up on any of this, but we see it. And it's immeasurably valuable. I wish I'd had movies like this as a kid growing up, instead of insulting shit like Karate Kid. It can feel pretty isolating growing up split between cultures and it's always comforting and empowering to know other people out there experience what you have and that there are ways to thrive and make what feels like a handicap into a strength. I had to come to those conclusions on my own through a lot of pensive self-reflection; I hope there are kids today who can take shortcuts through seeing themselves in films like this and growing up with more natural confidence and self-acceptance. Especially when you're a member of a relatively small minority like most Asian-Americans are.
Oops, I accidentally effortposted lol
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