That Time Disney “Accidentally” Made a Movie Promoting Prostitution

Malcolm and Simone analyze the symbolism in Disney's "Turning Red," where a girl turns into a red panda when she feels sexual urges during puberty. They argue the movie sends toxic messages like embracing sexuality too young, selling sexualized photos of yourself, and lying to parents. It could even be seen as promoting OnlyFans or sex work to minors. They compare to positive coming-of-age stories that handle themes of adolescence better.

Some key points:

* Panda is clearly meant to symbolize emerging sexuality

* Sells panda pics to afford concert tickets

* Lies to parents under guise of "mathletes club"

* Ultimately rejects family wisdom on sexuality

* Poor messages for girls on deceit, self-objectification

* Better coming-of-age films handle themes with more care

* Did creators consider implications of plot points?

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] It is not vague that this movie is about her sexuality and the panda represents her sexuality. So a lot of people got that.

And they, they ended, how controversial the movie was at that. If that's what the movie was about, I would think it was a wholesome, good message. . And in one of the core things in the movie is she is breaking from that because she is accepting her sexuality at the end of the movie . She decides to not seal away her panda. She thinks that she needs to embrace her panda and make it a part of her.

Everyday life. And this is to represent the traditional Chinese culture's rejection of sexuality and her embracing of sexuality. The core conflict of the plot is she wants to go see this boy band with her friends.

But, she cannot afford to see this boy band with her

Simone Collins: friends.

Malcolm Collins: , so her friends get together and they advertise her panda to her panda to all the other young kids in the [00:01:00] school and the young kids pay to interact with her panda

Only came to win the game, can't,

Malcolm Collins: but.

It's not that she has no scruples at all, there is one boy who is a dick, and she doesn't like this boy, . And so they have this boy pay an exorbitant amount to have the Panda be the main attractor at a party that he is hosting. . So it's saying one. Use this new sexuality you have found to pay for your lifestyle, IG only fans or whatever these days. Yes! Yes! If somebody is a jerk Restrict their access,

but if they are paying a ton, yeah. Ah, that's where you really need to go all out with the panda

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. So we are going to do an interesting video today because I really liked our Barbie video. Anyone who hasn't seen our video of Barbie being the most based movie ever made? [00:02:00] I genuinely believe that. It is an incredible movie. An insanely based movie. Like the point that Ken learned specifically, like, and I think it was an intentionally based movie, that Ken specifically learned about the patriarchy from a high school bookstore.

They could have made it anything. They could have made it a regular bookstore. They could have made it TV. They chose to make it like what a conservative conspiracy theorist would make it. Like, why did they do that? But watch that if you want to see that. We're going to now talk about another video because people have been like, Oh, you should talk about this one.

You should talk about this one. I'm going to talk about the show Turning Red, that time where Disney accidentally made a movie promoting Epstein like behavior. I'm going to have to keep finding euphemisms for what we're talking about here.

Simone Collins: And a movie that genuinely terrifies our sons when they don't They don't flinch at Starship Troopers, Jurassic Park.

Malcolm Collins: They ran out of the room at Turning Red.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we were watching it again last night and our son [00:03:00] Octavian was like, I can't, I can't watch! And he runs out of the room. Because you know what? Female puberty is terrifying. Genuinely.

Malcolm Collins: Genuinely. Few things that are scarier. So before we go further, I need to make a confession, Turning Red, if you haven't seen it, if you watched a bunch of people being like, oh, this is a woke movie or whatever, you shouldn't watch it because woke ism, and I don't watch movies because of woke ism, it's woke as hell.

But it is a great

Simone Collins: movie. And let's just, for those who don't have a watching it but maybe still want to watch this, the gist of it is it's about a girl who hits puberty and happens to turn into a giant raccoon. When she feels sexual urges,

Malcolm Collins: basically. Well, a red panda, which is technically a raccoon.

Okay, yeah, a red,

Simone Collins: fine, a red panda. Yes, a red panda. I

Malcolm Collins: love that you mentioned the actual species name, because a lot of people don't know that red pandas are actually a subspecies of raccoon, but anyway, continue. Yeah. It's not [00:04:00] a tanuki, by the way. It's a red panda. But anyway. Yes.

Simone Collins: So yeah, tanukis are super different.

Come on. So, basically whenever she, she becomes emotionally aroused, but also sexually aroused. She, she turns into this panda. It turns out it's this hereditary family trait that she sort of her, her answer, her female ancestral line has supernaturally inherited. That it has, you know, great power, but with great power comes great responsibility and her traditional Chinese parents especially her traditional Chinese mother decides to be very, very protective of this young girl as she hits puberty and becomes a panda.

But this young girl. With the help of her friends figures out a way to master it sufficiently to get a little bit more leeway from her mother, continue going to school, do after, after school activities.

Malcolm Collins: You don't need to give the whole plot away. We're going to do that in our discussion. Okay.

Okay. Plot describing here. But one thing I wanted to start with, which I think is really important, it's a [00:05:00] lot of people have this innate disgust or negative reaction to woke media. Okay. Okay. Okay. Where they see woke media and they think it woke media is toxic messages and they think nothing good can come from it.

And I really take a different perspective than this. I actually think a lot of woke media can be both fantastic and have good messages now. Turning red, I think it's fantastic from an entertainment and setting perspective. For example, like it, it takes place in the 90s, like late 90s. If you grew up in the late 90s, it was such great nostalgia for me.

The songs they have from boy bands in it, which are a major focus of the show, are just perfect. I almost wish there was a genre of like this style of boy band music that I could just go listen to tons and tons of songs of. Yeah, they're

Simone Collins: very cash in the 90s. But like boy band songs made for the movie.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, and they're great. They're really good renditions. Very [00:06:00] catchy. I could watch them over and over again, but it's not just turning red. It's like another show, for example. What's a few others that I absolutely love that are woke. The She Ra rework. Oh, I thought it was fantastic. Which is funny because.

This is one of the shows that was constantly complained about by one of my favorite YouTube channels, which is clownfish TV, which does like takedowns of like woke comic book culture and comic book translations and stuff like that. And they hated the She R