About

Turning Red is a 2022 American computer-animated coming-of-age fantasy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film centers on a 13-year-old Asian-Canadian girl who turns into a giant red panda whenever she gets too excited. The film became the subject of memes in July 2021 shortly after its reveal.

History

On July 13th, 2021, Pixar premiered the teaser trailer for Turning Red on YouTube,^[3] where it gained 3.6 million views in two weeks (shown below). The film's release date is set to be March 11th, 2022, in the United States^[1] and is directed and written by Domee Shi, produced by Lindsey Collins and stars Rosalie Chiang and Sandra Oh.^[2]

Reception

In the week following the release of the teaser, many YouTubers and TikTokers released their own reaction videos to the trailer (example shown below).

On the day of the trailer release and in the week that followed, image macros mostly poked fun at the movie's setting of Canada, and the underlying, visual queues of Furries and Communism.

The first meme associating the movie with furries was posted the same day as the teaser's release by Twitter^[4] user @RealYoutubeKids (shown below), which references an earlier meme template that circled the internet around Luca's release making fun of Pixar's insistence on representing the "feelings" of many groups of people or objects.^[5]

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Related Memes

Turning Red Note Passing

On July 13th, 2021, the same day as the teaser's release, Twitter^[6] user @codaanim posted the first edited video meme of the trailer (shown below), changing the words the main character, Meilin Lee, receives on the note passed to her to, "You are NOT normal!" in reference to the You Are Not Normal memes based on Dream's 'Mask'. User @codaanim also changed Meilin's mom hiding behind the tree outside to "Mask."

pic.twitter.com/RIE7KY7igl

— Coda (@codaanim) July 13, 2021

Other edits using the same moment in the teaser trailer began appearing across Reddit, YouTube and Instagram (shown below), dealing with other cross-subculture references like Among Us and Skibidi Bop Mm Dada.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References