MI CURIOSIDAD

Perhaps part of the [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’] popularity lies in their ability to represent what seems to be the spirit of mythic American boyhood; just as Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and James Fennimore Cooper’s Natty Bumpo did before them, the turtles escape from society (a world where school and mothers rule), eat whatever they want, and live the life that “real” boys only play at during recess: in their battle with the Foot Clan, they reenact another version of cops and robbers, cowboys and [Indians]. In this sense, “mutant” becomes a metaphor for being a teenager, an age classified as somewhere between child and adult, between conformity to peers and difference from parental figures; the turtles are appealing both in that they are radically different from anyone in authority—rebellious in that sense—and yet so much like each other. Read as metaphor, the term “mutant,” just as “freak” did in the 1960’s, represents the mindset of the younger generation who see themselves as deviating (by choice) from their parents.

However, the Teenage Turtles are not only mutants but “Ninja warriors,” and thus specifically related to Japanese culture. Mutation is linked, then, not just to generational difference, but to cultural and racial difference as well. Behind the inscrutable mask of the turtle, which makes literal the cinematic treatment of Asians as inhumane and animal-like, lies the stereotypical Japanese face that represents the non-American, the non-human. Though cloaked in the presumed innocence of a children’s movie—and thus supposedly safe from reality—“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is founded upon the same stereotypes, draws upon the same fears, myths and assumptions—of “clannishness,” of unassimilability—that inform much of Asian-Caucasian race relations in the U.S.

The turtles are like typical American teenage boys: they eat pizza and chips and pork rinds (the official presidential snack food), play Trivial Pursuit, hum the tune of “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” watch TV—everything from “Moonlighting,” to “Wheel of Fortune” to “Gilligan’s Island” to news and cartoons. In one scene, the turtles watch a representation of themselves in a cartoon of the stereotypical turtle and hare race. As the cartoon turtle dopily bumbles down the road, the Ninja turtles scream at the tube: “you dope, why don’t you speed up, ninja kick him, do something!” While their cartoon representation is a part of both America’s myth and the definition of American values, the actual turtles—who are as very different from the cartoon as Asian Americans are from Hollywood’s caricatures of them—are called “freaks of nature” and remain in the domain of the shadow, at home in the sewer. Though the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may consent to being American by adopting everything from its ideals to its slang, it is questionable as to whether America will consent to having them as Americans. As Splinter explains, “even those who would be our allies would not understand.”