‘Racist’ Critic Forced to Cower for Innocuous Review

I f, say, a gay woman of color from Brooklyn said she didn’t connect with American Sniper because the white, Texan military culture it valorizes felt alien to her, you might feel sorry for her, but it’d be pretty silly to call her a racist. Yet an equivalent dynamic is playing out in the latest online fainting fit over a review of Turning Red, the (delightful) new Pixar movie I reviewed last week whose lead character is a pubescent Chinese-Canadian girl growing up in Toronto.

“Racism” cried the online mob, and a review on Cinemablend was actually deleted — this almost never happens, and I can’t remember the last time it did — because of these dumb but harmless remarks by critic Sean O’Connell:

I recognized the humor in the film, but connected with none of it. By rooting ‘Turning Red’ very specifically in the Asian community of Toronto, the film legitimately feels like it was made for [director] Domee Shi’s friends and immediate family members. Which is fine — but also, a tad limiting in its scope.

In a follow-up tweet, O’Connell added, “Some Pixar films are made for universal audiences. ‘Turning Red’ is not. The target audience for this one feels very specific and very narrow. If you are in it, this might work very well for you. I am not in it. This was exhausting.”

That’s it? That’s it.

The kind of people who love to cry racism cried racism, again. Cinemablend predictably cowered and apologized, as did O’Connell. Cinemablend editor in chief Mack Rawden: “We failed to properly edit this review, and it never should have gone up. We have unpublished it and assigned to someone else. We have also added new levels of editorial oversight. Thank you to everyone who spoke up.” O’Connell: “I’m genuinely sorry for my ‘Turning Red’ review. Thank you to everyone who has reached out with criticism, no matter how harsh. It is clear that I didn’t engage nearly enough with the movie, nor did I explain my point of view well, at all. I really appreciate your feedback.”

Those who hurl themselves at the feet of their attackers and beg for forgiveness instead of defending themselves against spurious charges are making the once-prized culture of pluralism of opinion a little bit worse each day, and so it’s hard to muster much sympathy here. Rawden should have defended the principle that O’Connell should write what he thinks, and O’Connell should have rejected the bogus charge of racism. Instead he tacitly conceded his critics’ point. The ravening mob is rarely appeased by offering to let it have one of your limbs to eat.

No one should be offended by the review. There’s no hatred in it. O’Connell was simply trying to be honest about why the film didn’t grab him. But when it comes to race, any discussion that doesn’t repeat the approved catechism gets labeled racist. Crying racism is rewarding: Even the most shrill and least justified claims provide great self-righteous satisfaction, in addition to guaranteeing attention from journalists. But as every parent knows, indignant tantrums should not be indulged.

If you get the sense that you can’t trust reviews of anything anymore because critics are terrified of departing from orthodoxy on any subject that might trigger the way-too-online Left, I’d say you’re approximately 100 percent right. (Which is why you should rely heavily on NR’s critics: We aren’t afraid of being canceled. Don’t we prove it every day?)

O’Connell (whom I don’t know and of whom I had never previously heard) was wrong on both the smaller point and the larger one, but that makes his review merely foolish, not racist. Far from getting bogged down in an opaque subculture, the movie isn’t really about being Asian in Toronto. With minimal alteration, the movie could have just as easily been set in San Francisco or New York. Moreover, Toronto is the fourth-largest city in North America. It’s larger than Chicago. And yet how many movies have been set there? (Many, many movies have been filmed there). It’s not a mystical, unknowable place.

The comic focus of the movie is not ethnicity but the awkwardness of puberty — especially female puberty — and as such its themes are universal. As for the Asian touches of the film, they add richness and texture, and the main character’s mother rings true insofar as she seems an example of the Tiger Mom phenomenon often associated with Asian immigrants in North America. But all of this specificity and detail adds to the effectiveness of a story. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in “The Rich Boy”:

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created — nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves.

Besides, to the extent that a movie takes us inside a culture or subculture with which we might be unfamiliar, that’s a good thing. Film does a better job than any other art form, except maybe the novel, of liberating us from the restrictions of our own experience and catapulting us into a world we might otherwise never come to know or understand. We should be eager to profit from the broadening of soul and imagination. If your impulse is to think, “I don’t know these people,” think again. Film, even sometimes a Disney cartoon, can be a great way to get to know your neighbors on this planet. Be grateful for the opportunity.