Mulan Disney, It’s Like, Re-Orients: Consuming China and Animating Teen Dreams

Sheng-mei Ma

Orientalism

• Orientalism in the name Mulan itself
• The self’s deepest longings onto the Other
• Accommodating and domesticating the unknown
• Mulan’s hidden last name is Disney…
• “Reflecting the desires of the multicultural, Gen-X (-Z?) audience in the United States these characters are composites based on images, stereotypes, and fantasies of the Other.”
• No longer blatantly racist Asian stereotypes like in Lady and the Tramp and The Aristocats
• 90s films born out of “multiculturalism”
• “...Simplistic visions of the exotic Other - China - to allay the audience’s fear.”
• “Re-orienting” rather than “dis-orienting”

Consuming China

• Iconography of the Orient - three categories
• Animate Icons (Animals and Insects)
• Inanimate Icons
• Human Relationships
• Animate Icons...
• Eddie Murphy as Mushu - performance has schizophrenic nature
• Mushu is “unadulteratedly black,” despite Murphy’s other roles where he’s able to impersonate other races
• “...The Chinese Murphy wears race like the emperor’s new clothes, unabashedly exposing an ebony self.”
• No effort to achieve “Chinese-ness”
• “...Mushu juxtaposes irreconcilable ethnic elements of Orientalist appearance and black English, as if racial differences could be resolved accordingly.”
• “Dubbing for animation, furthermore, entails the paradox of a voice divorced from the body and yet belonging to the body.”

Consuming China Continued...

• “Disney’s facile approach to multiculturalism is a wish-fulfillment, deriving from and hence validating racial stereotypes.”
• Inanimate Icons…
• Famous Chinese historic sites (Great Wall, Forbidden City)
• Dragons everywhere, plum blossoms, hair comb, chopsticks, ink brush
• Human Relationships…
• Bringing “honor” to the family
• Capital punishment for the offense of cross-dressing does not exist in the original stories
• Mulan saved by Shang’s love

Animating Teen Dreams

• Balance of childhood and adulthood
• Disney’s “anti-family” undercurrents
• “Children’s and adults’ desire for autonomy?
• The film usually ends before the main characters actually marry (or if they do, we never see what happens next, which keeps the fantasy alive)
• Children dream of becoming teenagers and adults dream of regressing into teenagers
• “From either point of view adolescence is seen as a time of looking cool, of experiencing adventures away from home, and of finding self-identity.”
• Hair as signifier of youth
• For Mulan, it is also a signifier of gender
• Mulan running away solo is not in the original stories
• Youth consumer culture

“Disney’s dominant genes dictate the look and the behavior of its brood of idealized adolescents, whereas race and culture become, ironically, recessive genes.”

A Few Final Thoughts...

• Search for a new gender is a fun-filled game for both boys and girls
• “To act like a man, Mulan has to learn to walk, talk, spit, and fight like one.”
• Masculinity is a role Mulan assumes
• Huns’ dark grey skin tone = bad. Hans’ lighter skin tone = good.
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