Mulan – Bitch Flicks

Gender and Tradition in ‘Mulan: Rise of a Warrior’

Unlike in the Disney film, this version of Mulan shows that women don’t have to “be a man” in order to be powerful. On the other hand, Mulan’s father (Hua Hu) attempts to restrict Mulan to the traditional role of Asian women, a role that would have made Mulan meek and submissive. In one of his first scenes, he says to an old man, “Why did you teach her kung fu? She’s a girl! Who will marry her?”

This is a guest post by Latonya Pennington.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Mulan was one of the first female Asian characters I looked up to. I first saw the film as an eight year old in the 2nd grade as part of a school assignment unit involving Asian culture. As a young black and Asian girl, seeing a strong female character like Mulan was the coolest thing ever, especially since I didn’t see too many female Asian characters in U.S. media yet.

A few weeks ago, I watched Mulan again with a mind enriched by cultural theories learned in a Media and Culture college course I took a couple years ago. This time, my opinion of Mulan was much different than the one I had at eight years old. Mulan and the other characters reeked of Orientalism, depictions based on what the United States thought Asian culture and people were like rather than what they were really like.

Out of curiosity, I looked up feminist critiques of the film that discussed the Orientalism and discovered the Chinese film Mulan: Rise of a Warrior. While watching the film with English subtitles, I saw stark and mostly positive differences between this film and its Disney counterpart.

One of the best differences is the story’s plot. While there are similarities between the Disney version and this film, an important difference is that Mulan (Zhei Wei in a fantastic performance) doesn’t just disguise herself as a boy and take her father’s place in the army as a soldier. She also rises through the ranks and becomes an inspirational warrior after much loss and hardship.

Another positive difference is Mulan herself. In the film, she is given agency as a female before and after she takes her father’s place in the army as a male. A flashback scene that takes place just before Mulan heads out to join the army shows her using kung-fu as a young girl to defend her childhood friend Tiger (Jaycee Chan). Toward the end of the film, Mulan defeats Mendu (Hu Jun), the film’s main villain, while disguised as a female member of the Rouran, the tribe of the opposing army.

In addition to Mulan, the Rouran princess (Liu Yuxin) is another character worth mentioning. She doesn’t have many scenes, but she helps Mulan defeat Mendu by tricking him into lowering his guard. At the end of the film, she marries the prince of the Wei dynasty in an arranged marriage to ensure peace between the warring factions. When put side-by-side with Mulan’s actions, she shows that Asian women can balance traditional values and the ideal of the strong woman.

At the end of the film Mulan returns home as a general, but Hua Hu still defines Mulan’s new role in terms of her gender. When Prince Wentai (Chen Kun) comes to visit him and Mulan, Hua Hu says, “It’s nice to have a daughter always filial, understanding, and obedient. And now, she’s a pretty general!” While calling Mulan pretty seems harmless, it draws attention to the fact that she is a female general.

When you consider the time period that the film takes place in, the novelty of Mulan being a female general is understandable. However, this is no excuse for the gendered implications of Hua Hu’s praise. If Hua Hu had said that Mulan was a great general, then it would have shown that Mulan could be valued as a general regardless of her gender.

Despite the sexism of Hua Hu, his character also serves a positive purpose. Mulan’s love for her father and his physical and spiritual presence shows that the Asian cultural value of family can be balanced with the ideal of a strong woman. While this is demonstrated throughout the film, this is best seen in the last few scenes of the film.

At this point, Mulan returns home to her father almost exactly like she does in the Disney version. When it comes to the Disney version, some feminists have criticized this because it seems like Mulan returned to the meek submissive role she had at the beginning of the film. However, Mulan: Rise of a Warrior shows otherwise.

Mulan returns home to care for her father after refusing the solo position of commander of the Wei army. Yet, she is not the same person she was before. She has become stronger by learning that sometimes the needs of many outweigh the needs of a few and to stay true to her roots.

If the character Hua Hu implies that Asian women can only be respected in traditional roles, the characters Tiger and Wentai, show that women can be respected as women in any role they have. In this case, Tiger and Wentai respect Mulan as a woman and a warrior and play key roles in helping Mulan grow as a warrior. Until the end of the film, they are the only male characters that know Mulan is a woman besides Mulan’s father.

When Mulan first arrives to the army, Tiger discovers Mulan’s plan to take her father’s place as a man. However, he agrees to keep her real gender secret and helps her adjust to life in the army.

Meanwhile, Prince Wentai joins the army undercover as a sub-commander and discovers Mulan’s secret after she accidently runs into him at a hot spring. Wentai doesn’t recognize who she is, but an incident with the army bully forces Mulan to tell Wentai the truth and he agrees to keep her secret.

When the original commander is killed in a surprise attack by the Rouran, Mulan is made a sub-commander alongside Wentai after performing well in battle. Once this happens, Mulan and Wentai become closer. It is not explicitly stated that the two have romantic feelings for each other until the end of the film, but this allows their feelings to be shown to the viewer in a way that is very poignant.

Wentai cares for Mulan and her potential as a warrior so much that he is willing to fake his own death so that Mulan can learn to grow without him. At this point, Mulan’s feelings for Wentai have gotten in the way of her responsibilities as sub commander. She has also become weary of the bloodshed and personal loss of her comrades. After Wentai’s “death” causes Mulan to numb herself with alcohol, Tiger steps in and gives her some tough love.

“Are you living for the dead or for the living? You are no longer the Sister Mulan I adored!” he says. Tiger’s words enable Mulan to regain her fighting spirit and give a rousing speech that fully exposes her fear to the troops while showing her newfound strength. Mulan and the troops resolve to become stronger to protect each other and prevent further personal losses.

It then is revealed that Tiger was told by Wentai to tell Mulan he had died on the battlefield. By the time Mulan discovers Wentai is alive, she is a fully-realized general who has decided battle plans, stood up to Mendu before the great battle between their troops, and led her troops in that battle.

At the end of the film, Wentai tells Mulan he loves her even though he is supposed to marry the princess of the Rouran tribe. At first, he suggests that he and Mulan run away together, but Mulan tells him the marriage must occur so there will be no more bloodshed and loss. Wentai respects her decision, and the two share one last embrace before Wentai leaves.

Unlike its Disney counterpart, Mulan: Rise of a Warrior shows a powerful and dignified view of Asian women and traditional values. Through Mulan, the viewer discovers what it means to be a warrior and a woman. Mulan shows that you don’t have to separate the woman from the warrior. Watching her grow as both is raw and beautiful.

Latonya Pennington is a freelance writer who writes to geek out, promote, and encourage discussion. She has written for Black Girl Nerds, AfroPunk, and Atlanta Blackstar.

Tropes vs. Princes: Sexism-in-Drag in Modern Disney Princess Films

While #Gamergate has not yet officially rebranded itself as #EpicStreisandEffect, the one heartwarming thing about a mob trying to silence their critics is how bad they are at it. The inflammatory atmosphere created by #Gamergate makes it difficult for balanced discussion of Sarkeesian’s critiques, but one interesting aspect that recently occurred to me is how neatly six of her tropes fit the portrayal of men in recent Disney Princess films (from 1989’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ onwards).

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

While #Gamergate has not yet officially rebranded itself as #EpicStreisandEffect, the one heartwarming thing about a mob trying to silence their critics is how bad they are at it. The inflammatory atmosphere created by #Gamergate makes it difficult for balanced discussion of Anita Sarkeesian’s critiques, but one interesting aspect that recently occurred to me is how neatly six of her tropes fit the portrayal of men in recent Disney Princess films (from 1989’s The Little Mermaid onwards).

Since the Disney Princess film is almost as male-dominated as video games (Frozen‘s Jennifer Lee was the first female director of a Disney feature), this appears less a genuine reversal than a clumsy “sexism-in-drag” aimed at empowering young girls. But it offers a golden opportunity for female viewers to interrogate our response: do these tropes empower us when reversed? Do we recognize them as sexist? Would they still be dehumanizing if applied equally to male and female characters?

THE DUDEZEL IN DISTRESS

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: The Damsel in Distress

The “dudezel in distress” is a plot device in which a male character is placed in a perilous situation, from which he cannot escape on his own, and must be rescued by a female character. Traditionally, the “dudezel in distress” is a family member or a love interest.

DISNEY DUDEZELS: Among family members, Maurice in Beauty and The Beast (which had a female screenwriter, incidentally) is a classic example of “Dudezel Dad.” His kidnapping forces Belle to risk her life to rescue him, while his pitiful attempt to rescue her is actively counterproductive – his near-death drives Belle to risk her safety again. Both the Beast and Gaston hold Belle hostage by the threat of locking up Maurice, who is consistently punished for attempts to assert agency or independence. Other female characters whose plot arcs are motivated by rescuing their fathers include Ariel of The Little Mermaid (father petrified as worm-creature) and Mulan (father’s peril motivates daughter to take up arms).

The “love interest” as “dudezel in distress” is yet more troubling: girls are taught through this trope that love is the inevitable result of gratitude, rather than the dudezel’s own choice. Take The Little Mermaid: not only does Ariel rescue Eric from drowning, Eric’s inability to love her is depicted as the direct result of his failure to recognize the girl who rescued him. Similarly, Pocahontas must save her love interest, John Smith; Mulan must repeatedly rescue her love interest Shang; Tiana must rescue gold-digging Naveen from his entrapment as a frog. Disney offers no examples of women rescuing men who choose not to become romantically involved with them; being rescued is shown to obligate the dudezel in every case. As such, this trope cannot be seen as empowerment, but as a harmful lesson for girls that also alienates male audiences.

MEN IN REFRIGERATORS

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: Women in Refrigerators

“Men in Refrigerators” refers to the trope of men suffering a loss of powers, brutal violation or an untimely, gruesome death, most often as a plot point for the female hero to seek revenge or further her heroic journey.

DISNEY FRIDGE-DUDES: The best example of violation in the Disney universe is that of Eric by the witch Ursula in The Little Mermaid. His mind and control over his emotions are utterly violated to motivate Ariel’s final confrontation with Ursula and completion of her heroic journey. The traumatic effects on Eric are never shown; Ariel’s response is centered. This rewrites the original story, where the prince chose the mermaid’s rival freely and she learned to accept his choice: surely a better model. Male characters suffering loss of powers to motivate female heroines include Ariel’s father, Triton, and Jasmine’s father, the Sultan, reduced to worm-creature and jester respectively. Male characters killed to facilitate the heroine’s journey include Tiana’s father, whose death motivates her desire for a restaurant, and thus the whole plot of The Princess and the Frog, and the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, whose traumatic murder allows Belle to realize her feelings for him. Once again, its use of ‘men in refrigerators’ reinforces a utilitarian attitude to male characters in Disney Princess films.

MANIC PIXIE DREAM DUDE

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The Manic Pixie Dream Dude is a bubbly, shallow male character written in order to help the female character learn to loosen up and enjoy life. Typically, the Manic Pixie Dream Dude has no job or defined interests of his own.

DISNEY PIXIE DREAM-DUDES: Disney’s most obvious Manic Pixie Dream Dude is Prince Naveen of The Princess and the Frog. The heroine, Tiana, has clear career ambitions, loyalty and responsibilities which cause her life to lack joy. Manic Pixie Naveen, despite being a prince, has no independent career or goals and adjusts seamlessly to working in Tiana’s restaurant: he exists to facilitate her goals, while exuding fun, madcap spontaneity and irresponsible wildness to help the heroine embrace joy. Similarly, Rapunzel in Tangled has a clear sense of responsibility, moral values, a conflicted relationship with mother-figure Gothel and the goal of reuniting with her parents. Flynn is the perfect foil: he exists to be a fun and wild antidote to Gothel’s influence, but assimilates to Rapunzel’s lifestyle in the end by abandoning his personal goals (or rather, by being revealed as an orphan who lacks all ties and purpose, and who is explicitly told that his dream of wealth and empowerment “sucks”). He also exhibits a tendency to petty crime that TV Tropes identifies as typical of Manic Pixie Dream Girls. In both cases, the empowerment of the female character is portrayed as a wish fulfillment only realizable through disempowerment of the males.

STRAW CHAUVINIST

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: The Straw Feminist

The Straw Chauvinist is an exaggerated caricature of a chauvinist, filled with misrepresentations, oversimplifications and stereotypes.

DISNEY STRAW CHAUVINIST: Gaston, from Beauty and the Beast, is the clearest example of a Straw Chauvinist in Disney film. Acting as the sole representative of masculine sexual assertiveness and self-confidence within the film (unless you count the comedy-relief candlestick), Gaston implicitly associates these features with self-satisfied ignorance, kidnap, blackmail and the persecution of the mentally ill: “No-one plots like Gaston, takes cheap shots like Gaston, likes to persecute harmless crackpots like Gaston.” Everything from the masculine desire for physical enhancement through body-building and protein-ingestion (“I eat five dozen eggs, so I’m roughly the size of a barge”) to the stereotypical male habit of spitting (“I’m especially good at expectorating”) is, through Gaston, made to appear ridiculous, over-the-top and unnecessary. The purpose is to separate the male lead, Beast, from any association with chauvinism that might be provoked by the character’s being huge, hairy and creepily controlling towards women. This clearly parallels the Veronica Mars example that Sarkeesian cites as “straw feminism,” where the independent, intelligent Veronica is separated from any association with “those kind of feminists” through the use of exaggerated, straw feminist caricatures. Is this, then, one of “the most disgusting tropes ever forged in Mt. Doom” or a reasonable way to use the very ridiculousness of feminist caricatures to separate them from actual feminism? Certainly, the worrying aspect of Disney’s “straw chauvinist” trope is not that it “discredits” chauvinism, but that it normalizes the abusive behavior of Beast through his contrast with Gaston; the “straw chauvinist” shifts the emphasis to ridicule of a stereotyped image rather than identification of harmful behaviors.

VAMPERMAN

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: The Evil Demon Seductress TV Trope: The Vamp

The Vamperman, or “evil demon seducer,” is a sexualized man who lures women into his evil web, using his sexuality as a weapon.

DISNEY VAMPERMEN: Strangely for family fare, modern Disney films are full of this trope: Jafar, Scar, Hades, Claude Frollo. Portrayed as manipulative, conniving and controlling men, in each case they exert power over the female leads in a sexualized manner: Princess Jasmine must kiss Jafar to save Aladdin; Scar’s rape threat to Nala was cut from The Lion King film but retained in the stage show; Claude Frollo has an entire “Hellfire” aria about his sexual urges for Esmeralda; Hades literally owns the soul of Megara and uses this to stroke and cuddle her to her visible disgust. Not only do the characters use sex as weapon, they are inappropriately sexualized themselves: tall, aquiline, sardonic and acted by velvet-voiced charisma bombs like Jeremy Irons or James Woods. Dracula’s (the novel’s) description of its female vamps’ “deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive” seems apt for Disney’s charismatic Vampermen. A streak of theatrical camp is often used to supposedly disarm the predator’s sexual threat, creating the Camper Vamperman variant. Vampermen allow female viewers to objectify the character’s “thrillingly repulsive voluptuousness,” while confirming what Sarkeesian might term “sexist, preconceived notions” that men are manipulative, deceitful, and sexually threatening.

MR. FANSERVICE

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: Women As Background Decoration TV Trope: Ms. Fanservice

Mr. Fanservice, or “men-as-background-decoration” is the practice of presenting hypersexualized men as ornamental decoration.

DECORATIVE DISNEY DUDES: While Ursula, the voluptuous and brazenly confident villain of The Little Mermaid has become a gay icon to the plus-sized lesbian community, who could claim that Triton’s torso is a realistic standard to offer aging males? The men of Disney are repeatedly presented as bizarrely pumped, fit and sexualized, wearing far less clothing than their female counterparts, all while the actual act of bodily self-improvement is ruthlessly mocked through figures like Gaston. How did these other dudes get their rock-hard abs? By unrealistic body image alone, apparently. Perhaps the most glaring example of “men as background decoration” is the character of “The Entire Chinese Army” in Mulan. Not only is “The Army” a background decoration in the sense of being utterly useless at repelling Hun invasions when compared with a single adolescent girl, but said girl’s invasive ogling of their nudity under false pretenses is trivialized as a subject of humor.

“The Entire Chinese Army” is only allowed to serve a purpose when dressed as women, intensifying the emasculation of male viewers.

However, the presentation of these male soldiers-in-drag as laughable highlights the overall problem with “sexism-in-drag”: it reinforces the inferiority of female gender roles while empowering women through their fictional reversal, and it affirms to male viewers that female empowerment can only be achieved by male emasculation. Male-dominated Disney Princess Film encourages a model of “Little Miss Chauvinism” that adds up to little more than a Ms. Male Character trope. Compare Jennifer Lee’s Frozen – not only does it prioritize unselfish love between women, ending the isolation of the Strong Woman, it affirms “everywoman” heroine Anna’s own empowerment as key to her abandonment of rescuer prince fantasies in favor of her unselfish, “everyman” counterpart. In other words, Frozen presents female empowerment as essential to enhanced appreciation of the male, rather than opposed to it.

However, the enduring popularity of other Disney Princess films does demonstrate that young girls are as susceptible to ideologies of empowerment-through-inequality, and to utilitarian attitudes toward men, as boys are toward women. Nor should the responsibility of female screenwriters be ignored in assessing “Little Miss Chauvinism” archetypes. Does Frozen, then, point the way toward a new paradigm, the integrated empowerment of both male and female? Must female empowerment otherwise be confined to a world of fictional escapism by its assumed incompatibility with male empowerment? Is it possible to merge the “pink” and “blue” aisles into a single, empowering cinema for children? As always, keep in mind that it’s entirely possible to be critical of some aspects of media, while finding other aspects valuable or enjoyable.

Brigit McCone adored The Little Mermaid growing up (but weirdly overidentified with Sebastian the reggae crab), writes and directs short films and radio dramas and is the author of The Erotic Adventures of Vivica under her cabaret pseudonym Voluptua von Temptitillatrix. Her hobbies include doodling and satirically endorsing dating sites.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

This week, we’ve been reading about Amy and Tina hosting the Golden Globes, the new films Carrie and 12 Years a Slave, the body positivity of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, media representation of African American women, and more. Tell us what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sign on to host Golden Globes through 2015 by Jeff Labrecque at Entertainment Weekly

‘Rocky Horror’ And Body Positivity At Midnight by Matthew Weddig at NPR

Hollywood Finally Catches Up With History (12 Years a Slave) by Salamishah Tillet at The Root

‘Carrie’ Is Back. So Is Kimberly Peirce. by Mary Kaye Schilling at The New York Times

The Most Ridiculous Mystical Pregnancies in Fiction by Katharine Trendacosta at io9

“Hollywood’s Not Interested in Stories About Women.” by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

5 Highlights from Women Film Pioneers Project: African-American Women in Silent Film, Women Camera Operators and More at Indiewire

The Internet’s Problem with TV Wives at Funny or Die

Heroines of Cinema: ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ and the Real Problem With Mal Filmmakers and Female Sexuality by Matthew Hammett Knott at Indiewire

Watch: Melissa Harris-Perry on “the invisible middle” of media representations of African American women by Syreeta at Feministing

Mulan Is Bisexual On ‘Once Upon A Time,’ Disney-ABC Show by James Nichols at The Huffington Post

10 Funny Black Women Who Would Rock “Saturday Night Live” by Erika Star at AfterEllen

Women Battle Online Anti-Women Hate From the ‘Manosphere’ by Alyssa Pry and Alexa Valiente at ABC

Does History Repeat Itself, But With More Porn? by Philip N. Cohen at The Society Pages

College Men: Stop Getting Drunk by Ann Friedman

Meet the Victorian women who fought back by Simon Heffer at The New Statesman

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Mulan: The Twinkie Defense

This review by Karina Wilson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.

Much has been written about Mulan since its release in 1998, largely because the intentions of the film-makers are so obvious, and so crass. If you buy into the movie’s ethos, you’ll believe that Mulan is a truly border-crossing story, bringing the best of classic Chinese culture to a global audience with – gasp! – a female action hero at its center. You can quit the revolution now, kids, ‘cos Disney says that post-colonialism and post-feminism are here to stay.

If you watch the actual movie, as I did, as a European expat teaching in a Hong Kong international school and grappling with cross-cultural questions on a daily basis (you try teaching A Bridge To Terabithia to a class of city-dwelling Chinese boys) — not so much. Mulan has always been a problematic text for me because it tries so hard to be culturally sensitive and gender-aware that it positively creaks, and those creaks can be heard by the least-savvy member of the target audience. Its sins are not the sins of historical omission of, say, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but are all the more egregious because they come from a place of awareness. Mulan is an attempt to fix something that was perceived to be, if not wrong, unbalanced. This clumsy attempt to wedge The Ballad of Mulan into the rigid, alien form of a Disney narrative (which, among other things, demands musical numbers, a comic sidekick and a Prince Charming to come home with at the end) doesn’t fix anything, and only serves to remind us what is broken about our global culture. The road to hell is, as ever, paved with good intentions, particularly when it heads from the West to the East.

Back in the mid-1990s, Disney had a very specific agenda when it came to China. They wanted to get back into the regime’s good books after the PR disaster that was Kundun. They wanted to replicate the success of 1994’s The Lion King in the region. And they wanted to soften up the government and local politicians when it came to breaking ground on Hong Kong Disneyland, and paving the way for the Shanghai park. What better way to win friends and influence people than by honoring a popular Chinese legend in the form of a Disney film?

So, ever mindful of the accusations of racial insensitivity that had been tossed at Aladdin and Pocahontas, and anxious to get it right this time, Disney sent key artists on the movie to China, for a three-week tour of Chinese history and culture. Three weeks! You can totally “do China” in three weeks. This was enough to give them all the visual reference points they needed, and the whistle-stop, touristic nature of their impressions is very much in evidence on the screen. Every Chinese guided tour cliché is tossed into the scenery hotchpotch, from limestone mountains to the Great Wall to the Forbidden City. This isn’t so bad – other Disney movies are set in a vague Mittel-Europe of mountains, forests and lakes – but the loving attention paid to trotting out the visual truisms of courtyard complexes, brush calligraphy, cherry blossoms et al is just window-dressing. Mulan does look like China, but only if you’re leafing through your holiday photos back in your Florida office.

It’s a shame the screenwriters weren’t sent on the same tour. Mulan is peppered with crass jokes about Chinese food orders (because that’s what Americans can relate to about Chinese culture, right?), disrespectful references to ancestor worship, superficial homage to Buddhist practice and some kung-fu styling, of the Carradine kind. Given that Wu Xia is a rich, diverse, centuries old storytelling tradition, it also seems a shame that the writers didn’t draw more deeply on those perspectives. Instead, they send Mulan on a tired, Western Hero’s Journey, plugging her variables into the 12-step formula tried and tested by countless Hollywood protagonists. She doesn’t ever think like a Chinese woman. She’s never more American than when her rebellious individualism (bombing the mountaintop) wins the day – her filial obedience was only ever lip service paid as a convenience in Act One. Even in Han Dynasty China, it seems, it’s best to follow the American Way.

There’s nothing particularly Chinese about Mulan herself, who is so brutally meant to be not-Disney Princess and not-Caucasian it hurts to look at her for long. Poor little Other. She’s shown wearing Japanese make up, and has a facial structure more suggestive of Vietnamese than Chinese (Disney really was embracing post-colonialism). For half the movie, she also has to be not-female. The lack of detail on a 2-D Disney face meant the animators had to design her as able to switch between genders via her hair – and something subtle going on with her eyebrows. The resulting face evokes, more than anything, a pre-op kathoey who hasn’t yet taken advantage of Thailand’s booming plastic surgery clinics in order to make zer gender-reassignment complete.

Oh, Mulan. She’s meant to be non-offensive, and she ends up being not-anything. Despite claims to the contrary, she’s not a feminist hero. She has to dress as a boy to achieve selfhood, and refuses political influence in order to return to the domestic constraints of her father and husband-to-be. The movie itself doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test, if you consider that the only topic the other female characters discuss is Mulan’s marriageability – a hypothetical relationship with a man. The final defeat of the antagonist is achieved by the male Mushu riding on a phallic firecracker, as Mulan flails helplessly at his feet. Positive female role model? Case closed.

Nonetheless, Mulan did brisk business worldwide – apart from in China. It perhaps had most impact on second or third-gen Asian-Americans, who could relate to the over-simplified view of China, and feel a connection with this stereotypical version of “their” culture, lacking many other reference points. For Asian-Americans across the board, not just Chinese-Americans, Mulan’s brown, angular features represented something vaguely familiar, which made a delightful change. For Chinese-Chinese, Mulan was a thoughtless Western blunder. For Asian-Americans, particularly little girls, Mulan was a rare screen representation of aspects of their selves. Mulan drove the story, at the center of almost every scene, instead of pushed to the periphery as a “typical Asian” shopkeeper, geek, or whore. They could even purchase Mulan merch – although it’s still impossible to buy a doll, a t-shirt or a pin showing Mulan in warrior mode, she’s always got her hair down, and is wearing her hanfu frock. For a generation of Twinkies, Asian on the outside, American on the inside, Mulan was significant, a role model in the Disney pantheon of princesses. It didn’t matter that she was a bit low-rent (no castle, not really a princess), and she hadn’t snagged a proposal by the end of the movie (that happily ever after is a ‘maybe’), she allowed Asian-American girls, many of them adopted, to hold their heads high. And for that alone, you have to love her.

Mulan wouldn’t seem like such a frustrating, failed attempt to push gender and cultural boundaries if it had been followed up by other stories of empowered female warrior heroes. A Disney version of Joan of Arc or Boudicca could have been a blast. Unfortunately, since 1998, it’s been pretty much princess as usual. On the bright side, Disney achieved some of their other goals with Mulan. Hong Kong Disneyland (itself the subject of accusations of crass cultural insensitivity) has been doing brisk business since 2005, thanks to a US$2.9billion investment by Hong Kong taxpayers (of which I was one). The majority of tourists are from mainland China. They come to marvel at Western icons like Mickey, and an all-American Main Street that’s a replica of the one in Anaheim. Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Mulan images, they stick around. It feels a tiny bit more like they might have a stake in the happiest place on earth.

———-

Karina Wilson currently lives in Los Angeles and works as a writer and story consultant. She reviews movies for Planet Fury, writes about horror literature at LitReactor and horror films at Horror Film History. Her teaching site, Mediaknowall, has guided media studies students for more than a decade.

Animated Children’s Films: Mulan: The Twinkie Defense

Disney’s Mulan (1998)

Tangled: A Feminist Film Review

This guest review by Whitney Mollenhauer first appeared at Not Another Wave in December 2010.

Last Friday, I saw Disney’s Tangled with my husband. I thought it was a pretty good feminist-y movie, especially considering that it was a Disney princess-type movie. Because I am lazy, I have written my review in bullet-point form:

Rapunzel’s father (the king) cries on Rapunzel’s birthday as he remembers his kidnapped daughter. It seems like usually in these kind of movies, you see the mom crying and the dad consoling her; but here, it’s the other way around. Win! Men can express emotion, too!

Rapunzel sews and bakes, but she also reads, does astronomy, and paints like no other.

She is so awesome with her hair! She ties the male protagonist up, lets herself down from the tower, and climbs everywhere. Seriously, it’s very impressive. She can do just about anything with that hair–it’s not just for show.

Rapunzel ends up with short hair! Okay, that’s just a little thing, but have you ever seen a Disney princess with a pixie cut before? Even Mulan had longer hair!

So yeah, the mom is the bad guy because she’s vain/wants to be young forever, blah blah blah. But I don’t know how they could have had a male villain or some other way for the mom to be the villain without straying too far from the original. But at least she gets some jokes.

The frying pan proves to be a superior weapon compared to the sword! This might be getting a little too psychoanalytic, but I saw the frying pan as symbolizing a kind of feminine/transgressive power, while the sword represents traditional masculine power. I just thought it was neat. You don’t have to be a swashbuckling dude to kick butt.

Her story and her adventure starts not because the guy “whisks her away” or something; but rather, she plans and schemes: she catches him breaking into her tower, and strategically decides to use him to reach her goal of seeing the flying lanterns on her birthday.

Spoiler alert: in the end, she’s not “saved” because of her compassion, but in spite of it–her compassion might actually have been her downfall. Unlike other movies/fairy tales where a woman’s only redeeming quality is self-sacrifice, this ending suggests that self-sacrifice isn’t always such a good thing–or at least that it’s not solely the domain of women. Men can be self-sacrificing too! (Didn’t want to reveal too much here. Go see the movie if you want to figure out what on earth I’m talking about.)

I liked the ambivalent nature of how it shows her mom’s and her relationship when Rapunzel leaves the tower for the first time. She feels guilty, but MAN is she happy and excited and brave!

She doesn’t get married at age 18!!!!

In my opinion, the relationship was not even really a central feature of the story, but rather a sub-plot. The main plot was getting away from her mother, figuring out her actual identity, getting to the flying lanterns she wanted to see.

I felt like it was good and feminist because it was a major improvement from how Disney usually is. Also, overt sexism did NOT distract me from what was otherwise a visually appealing, witty movie (as it usually does). And that is really saying something.

Even the rich, hypermasculine stereotype is challenged–the male protagonist reveals his true name/identity, as an orphan, and she says she likes him better than the fictional (hypermasculine) character that he aspires to be like.

In the end, I think it makes a good case for women’s “proper place” NOT being just in the home, but out in the world/public sphere! I’m not sure how you could get any other moral out of it. Even in Mulan, after she saves China, she ends up returning home, and (we suspect) marrying the army captain guy, instead of taking a job with the emperor. In Tangled, the movie’s premise is centered around the idea that it’s wrong and horrible to expect a woman to spend her whole life at home.

When the male protagonist breaks into her tower, she kicks his butt; she stands up for herself in the bar; and she stands up to her mother in the end (about having been kidnapped).

At the end of the movie, SHE dips HIM and kisses him. (I always hated it when guys would dip me. If I want to kiss you, I am going to kiss you, so just let me stay on my own two feet.)

Body image stuff: Okay, so Disney’s not breaking down any boundaries here. Also, infantilization much? Rapunzel’s face is that of a two-year-old.

So, I’m not very good at remembering specifics, but I DO remember not getting angry at seeing her needing rescuing again and again and again. It seemed like mostly she was able to save herself, and the guy didn’t save her a whole lot.

In the bar, Rapunzel and the guy (Flynn) meet a whole bunch of rough guys. They sing a song about how everyone’s got a dream: the one tough guy says to Flynn, “Your dream stinks,” referring to his dream of getting rich. The other tough guys have dreams of becoming mimes, finding love, being a pianist, becoming a baker–and one made little tiny unicorns. Even tough guys have nuance and feminine qualities!

Rapunzel’s animal companion is Pascal the chameleon. Pascal is super cute, and is possibly named after Blaise Pascal the mathematician (suggesting that Rapunzel is a math nerd like me, though that could just be me reading too much into it). Pascal can’t talk, and I felt like that was a good thing (feminist-wise), so he couldn’t show her up and become the hero (remember Mushu the dragon in Mulan?)

My points are random and some are not very significant. But still, small wins! And when it comes to Disney princess movies, any hint at feminist ideology is a HUGE win. And if nothing else, it at least passes the Bechdel Test:

Whitney Mollenhauer is a graduate student in California where she studies sociology. She has an awesome husband who doesn’t mind her running feminist commentary when they watch movies together. And, she loves cereal.