Mulan I Never Want to See a Naked Man Again!

Is your outside allowed to match your inside by your society and culture? It'due south this question that has made Disney'due south 1998 film Mulan a touchstone for the Western LGBTQ+ community, though there is, of class, the usual wrangling about how analogies to transgender or crossdresser life experiences should exist practical. But the capacity for the story, particularly the vocal "Reflection", to be applied to dissimilar life experiences is one of the great assets of fantasy storytelling. Later on the lifelessness of the songs in Hercules, it's no surprise Disney parted ways with Alan Menken at last (temporarily--he'd return for 2004'south Home on the Range) and for the first time employed Matthew Wilder in the part of songwriter with David Zippel returning from Hercules to write the lyrics. The issue is 2 songs, "Reflection" and "I'll Make a Man Out of You", that have enjoyed greater longevity than anything from the iii Disney films preceding Mulan. Meanwhile, the story benefits from a greater narrative simplicity and tonal consistency compared to Hercules and Hunchback and the Chinese inspired visual designs are lovely and simple. They aren't, though, Chinese, whatever more than the story or the characters, which is largely the crusade of the film's low popularity in Asia. Where I alive, in Japan, people seem barely conscious of it. Final year, ahead of the live action remake's release, I had to search high and low before I institute some Mulan trade at the Disney Shop on a shelf facing the wall in a corner. The live action remake was never released theatrically here in Japan, only on Disney+, despite the fact that at that place has not been a lockdown or movie house closures hither during the pandemic. And, of course, the troubled releases of both versions of the film in Mainland china have been well publicised. One of the complaints virtually the animated version is that the characters look foreign to East Asian viewers and anyone who has lived in the culture tin tell you how very American the characters do await in Mulan, nigh importantly for their physical mannerisms. Merely there'southward also the matter of beauty--there's long been a strange disconnect in Hollywood non just between Hollywood's idea of Asian beauty and East asia'south, but even between Hollywood and western enthusiasts of Asian media. Why, in this day and age, when BTS is wildly popular in the U.S., are casting directors non getting the picture? Just imagine the missed potential for the upcoming Shang-Chi moving-picture show, for case. That being said, Mulan's Western sensibility doesn't diminish the film's appeal to me. As a fan of the 1941 Thief of Bagdad, I take a long enduring love for the fantasy version of other cultures courtesy of a Western lens and, while Mulan never reaches the level of The Fiddling Mermaid, I'd say it's as least as expert as The Panthera leo Rex or Beauty and the Beast.

Despite the absence of animator Glen Keane, i of the film'due south virtues is that it was made before the studio lost appreciation for sexual activity entreatment. At that place are two scenes of Mulan (Ming-Na Wen/Lea Salonga) bathing, the second one with a horde of naked men, which ends with her proclaiming her hope never to see a naked homo over again. Scenes highlighting the heroine'due south shyness about her ain naked body is a recurring element in movies most women warriors who dress as men--and, yes, there have been lots of those, a few of them starring the bully Maureen O'Hara. Only my favourite is Jean Peters in Anne of the Indies.

That movie is a heavily fictionalised version of the story of Anne Bonny (non dissimilar how Mulan drastically differs from the poem that inspired it), an actual, historical female pirate, but whose exploits were much more express than the various tales about her would advise. Equally I happen to take a webcomic about female pirates, I've washed a picayune research into the affair of women at ocean in the age of sail. So I tin can speak to the question as to whether or not women ever dressed as men and went to war in the disguise--yes, they did. And they went to sea, as well, in weather where one would presume it'south far more difficult to conceal one's sex. In the often crowded and squalid conditions beneath decks, there was trivial to no privacy, more often than not. How did women muffle their sex? For the almost function, we but don't know. But it certainly happened. In the early 19th century, at that place was even a black woman serving in the Royal Navy. Aspects of her story may have been romanticised but this, as well, is a pregnant particular--the fact that people were pleased to romanticise narratives of female warriors suggests attitudes about women in service weren't quite uniformly snarlingly misogynistic every bit modern portrayals of the past would seem to propose. Personally, my theory (every bit expressed in Dekpa and Deborah) is that many of the women who served aboard ships were known to be women by their shipmates though the exact psychology of such awareness may have been subtle. I suspect there were many cases were shipmates knew on some some level that their crewman was a adult female but hands suppressed the cognition beneath the occupations of normal shipboard routines and chores. And, of course, one of the most successful pirates in history was a Chinese woman,

All of this is to say that, at its heart, Mulan is a very modern story. The humour is certainly very mod, with Eddie Murphy, voicing the diminutive dragon Mushu, making rapidfire popular cultural references in the mould of Robin Williams' Genie. The terms "cantankerous-dresser" and "drag" are thrown about--this is a movie about modern American culture, non ancient Chinese culture.

In calorie-free of that, it's interesting to consider how the movie shows Mulan earning the right to her identity within her culture. When her "I Want" song, "Reflection", presents her problem (and it functions much improve than the ones in Hercules, Hunchback, Pocahontas, or Dazzler and the Beast), the idea that her self-perception is and so at odds with how other people perceive her, the rest of the movie doesn't resolve the problem via a change in Mulan's culture but via Mulan's own actions. Mulan changes, not her culture. She proves herself with her valour and cleverness and so that, in the cease, when she warns her comrades about the Hun attack, they listen to her because she's earned their respect for her past displays of prowess. Notably, most of the soldiers don't want to see Mulan punished when her sex is revealed. The nature of Mulan'due south arc is emphasised past how it's mirrored in Mushu's--Mushu proves through his endeavours that he's a real dragon, other characters aren't expected to just call him a dragon just because he says so.

And that'due south where this movie may be at odds with the identity politics of the past v years--and, honestly, how many young people could take a valuable lesson from the motion picture.

Mulan is available on Disney+.

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This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney blithe catechism.

Snowfall White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Iii Caballeros
Brand Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Gratuitous
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Dazzler
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Downwards Under
Dazzler and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules

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