Mulan

Mulan is arguably Disney’s most feminist animated film. The story is based on a Chinese poem called “The Ballad of Hua Mulan,” about a girl who may have existed in real life. In the poem as well as well the movie, a young woman takes her father’s place in the Chinese army by disguising herself as a man, fights valiantly, and wins the emperor’s favor.

For the most part, the film fulfills its role well. The filmmakers handle gender issues pretty solidly and often draw attention to sexism surrounding Mulan. The film does, though, resort too often to easy quips about women and men just to get a laugh, and this tendency undermines what is otherwise a beautiful and inspiring story.

To begin, the film has a great story arc. Mulan commits treason by impersonating a man in the Chinese army so her aging father won’t have to fight. Once she’s in, she uses a combination of smarts and the strength she gains through training to fight more courageously than any man in her unit and defeat an entire army of Huns. I could have done without the love interest between her and the captain, Shang, but that subplot didn’t damage the positive messages about women the main story provided.

Throughout the film, Disney includes sexist lines in dialogue and song to draw attention to Mulan’s predicament. These moments usually highlight the ridiculousness of certain expressions, all of them modern ones and used widely today, when their meanings are truly considered. When Mulan first arrives at boot camp, for example, her commanding officer boasts, through song, how he’ll “make a man out of you.” When Mulan becomes one of the most skilled soldiers, it become clear that being a “man” simply means being physically strong, brave, and capable.

In another instance three of Mulan’s fellow soldiers catch her bathing in a pond near the training camp. One, Yao, climbs on top of a nearby cliff and yells, “I am Yao, king of the rock. And there’s nothing you girls can do about it.” The fact that, unbeknownst to him, one of the soldiers he’s taunting is a girl makes this a comical moment that calls attention to the fact that he’s using the word “girl” as an insult.

Perhaps the scene in which when unfair comments about gender become most clear is when Mulan, now discovered as a female, can’t get anyone to pay attention to her when she tries to tell them the emperor is in trouble. When she complains to Mushu, her dragon sidekick, he explains, “Hey, you’re a girl again, remember?”

There are time during the movie, though, when these kinds of moments work the to the opposite effect. Jokes about men having bad hygiene and a sleazy, weak male character “squealing like a girl” take a too-easy route to get laughs at a wonderful story’s expense. By putting scenes like these in the film, Disney undercuts the progress it makes in other parts of the film. It also shows that the company accepts the double standard that women can act like men, but there is something fundamentally wrong with men who act like women.

On a final, positive note, I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the producer and directors when I listened to the audio commentary about the film. They acknowledge they “battled with tone” throughout the movie and seemed to want to tell Mulan’s tale with the dignity it deserved. Something I noticed, though, is that the only female who spoke – Pam Coats, the producer – was also the only person who consistently mentioned gender issues in the movie and explained why the filmmakers made the choices they did. This is certainly one good example of ensuring women are well represented in media and the arts can qimpact the products we view.



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