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Last-minute Monday Fluff: Mysterious As The Dark Side Of The Moon

Isabel

In which I talk about my really like disproportional, somewhat inexplicable, and frankly kind of embarrassing love of Disney films! …again. Y’all, I swear, I think about things other than this! Like all the fucking time! Like, I HAVE semi-substantialish posts in the works, I do! Buuuut none of them are going to get done tonight sadly, and man, wasn’t my last post ever a total bummer (which: I really, really appreciate the comments on that post, which I do not have time to respond substantively to right now which I feel terrible about, but – thanks to all who have done so for sharing)? Plus, Monday start with “M,” and so does music, which this is, and so does Mulan, which this also is, and so do both make and man, which are also relevant words to tonight’s babbling session post!

So: Mulan! I ♥ this movie, pretty weirdly intensely, especially since I can’t even really claim childhood nostalgia for it since I was like ten when it came out, which is kind of beyond the pop-culture-imprinting stage. THE BAD THINGS that exist in like seriously every Disney movie, like I thought Great Mouse Detective was maybe the exception because it’s about mice, in England? But then I watched some clips from it a while back (seriously people, I need a new hobby) and Basil’s first appearance is in this totally racist disguise and you’re like, “…ah. WELL then.”

…that was supposed to be an introduction, let’s try this again. THE BAD THINGS: racism, pretty much. There’s a lot of humor that has a kind of undercurrent of “lolz Asian people are funny,” and also I admit I am not really well-versed enough in almost-ancient (? what is the cut-off for ancient, exactly? I was thinking BC but that’s super Western-centric of me, isn’t it, which is even wronger than usual in this case) Chinese culture to detail the particulars of this but it being Disney, I am just going to go ahead and assume they get it horridly, wildly, egregiously wrong. Also, the Huns are like, literally inhuman-looking, which, what is up with THAT? So, as per always: this is just as if not more important, and I care about it at least equally in a very different way, than the thing I am going to talk about super-enthusiastically below!

Now that that is clear, may I present to you: what is pretty commonly agreed upon by every person I’ve ever asked, at least, as the greatest Disney song ever (it also cracks the top five of the list of most people my age I know of Best Songs To Sing Along Drunkenly Too, right up there with Don’t Stop Believin’):



VIDEO: “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” from Mulan, discussion of which immediately follows, full description of which at the end!

So FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE (which: WHY? answer: probably because you have better taste in film than I do), the super-short version is: the Huns are invading China, the Emperor requires every family to send an eligible dude to the army, Mulan (a daughter and only child) fears for her elderly father’s failing health and so disguises herself as a dude to go in his stead. Wacky hijinks ensue, also acts of heroism and general bad-assery, and she has a spirit-animal dragon guardian voiced by Eddie Murphy. If for some reason you want the full story, Wikipedia is your friend.

At this point in the movie, it is the first day of… boot camp, I guess, or Disneyfied-incorrectly-portrayed-ancient-Chinese-army-equivalent. The song is basically Shang, her captain (voiced, awesomely, by B. D. Wong), telling his people they have to shape the fuck up or… get killed. Except he phrases it, essentially, as “man up,” promising them (as possibly you smart readers have guessed) that he will make men out of them.

Sexism like whoa, right? Right! But what makes this awesome is that, of course, Mulan is among his “men,” and she mans up with the rest of them! Thus, the scene becomes a super-efficient demonstration of the artificiality of assigning traits as belonging to a particular biological sex! Disney has a couple other heroines who could be argued to do their own versions of ass-kicking, but to my knowledge none of them kick the ass specifically of enforced gender roles, and also invading armies. Gender essentialism: take THAT!

Adding to the fuck-off-gender-essentialism aspect of this song is that the first time we meet Mulan, she’s making herself all properly-feminine to meet the local matchmaker, looking rather unhappy as she does it, and then totally failing at performing enforced femininity to the extent that the matchmaker is like, “GTFO, NO HUSBAND FOR YOU.” She gets all sad and sings a song that was also a Christina Aguilera song about how her reflection doesn’t show who she is inside – being forced to conform to standards of femininity bums her the fuck out! She ultimately finds fulfillment and a feeling of self-worth in definitively dude-coded behaviors! I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HAPPY THIS MADE ME AS A CHILD. Happy enough to totally love the movie even though at the ripe old age of ten I kind of thought like I should be over Disney movies (LOL, WAS I EVER WRONG). Honestly, the fact that she failed at compulsory femininity made me even happier as a kid, I think, than her eventual BAMF-status – I played with Barbies but my real childhood heroines were usually the ones who had no interest in the whole feminine thing (see also: my blog-moniker namesake, Harriet The Spy, who cares so amazingly little about the whole deal it took me until I was much older to register her utter apathy and recognize that in retrospect, that was definitely something that had drawn me to her). Which is not to knock femininity at all! I am into some aspects of it myself! But girls into feminine-coded behaviors are pretty easy to find in kid-oriented art & entertainment, and girls who are not are… harder to find, to say the least, so as a wee one I tended to relish them especially.

IN CONCLUSION: I do sometimes think and write about things that are not Disney movies, I swear, but not right now; Mulan is a badass, especially by Disney and, really, by US-pop-culture standards; and this is more or less what my writing looks like when I don’t spend like three hours on a post, so now you all know why I don’t have a real blog.

VIDEO DESCRIPTION TIME, for those who cannot watch it (let’s not talk, okay, about how I could, if I tried really hard, probably do this with a fair amount of accuracy without rewatching the video, because that will cause me to ask some questions about my life I’m not sure I’m emotionally prepared to answer) or choose not to, though, really, if you can, I highly recommend it, but also I have EXTRAORDINARILY QUESTIONABLE TASTE, so. It’s your life, maaaan!

DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Shang, would-be-totes-hot-if-he-were-not-a-cartoon captain; Mulan, our feisty heroine dressed up as a dude in Disneyfied-Chinese-army-garb; her eventual army buddies, Chien-Po (tall fat sweet-tempered bald guy), Yao (short black-eyed tempestuous dude… voiced by Harvey Fierstein, WHAT, learn something new every day!), and Ling (skinny… nondescript dude); and Mushu, Eddie Murphy as a cartoon orange guardian dragon.

BEFORE THE VID: Shang has told his troops that they’ll know they’re ready when they can retrieve an arrow from the top of a tall, smooth wooden pole (must… resist… inappropriate… joke), while carrying up with them two gold discs on ribbons, representing strength and discipline.

AT THE START OF THE VIDEO: Yao, Ling, Chien-Po, and Mulan try to get even a little ways up the pole and fail miserably. As Mulan rubs her aching back and resumes her place in line, Shang rubs the back of his neck and says, “We’ve got a long way to go.” He passes out narrow poles to his troops; Yao snatches Mulan’s and trips her before giving it to her.

COMMENCE SINGING. Action descriptions refer to the lyrics just above.

SHANG: Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns; did they send me daughters when I asked for sons? You’re the saddest bunch I ever met, but you can bet, before we’re through: mister, I’ll make a man out of you.

[Shang demonstrates his impressive pot-destroying skills with his pole; Yao sticks a beetle down Mulan’s back and she flails, knocking into her neighbors and setting off a cartoony chain reaction that ends with everyone on the ground; Mushu and her lucky cricket facepalm; Shang pole-vaults over to her to say the title line right into her face.]

SHANG: Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within; once you find your center, you are sure to win; you’re a spineless, pale, pathetic lot, and you haven’t got a clue; somehow I’ll make a man out of you.

[Shang successfully demonstrates and the army – specifically Mulan – fails at various tasks: tossing up a fruit and shooting it with an arrow into a target on a tree; beating off with a pole rocks being hurled at you while balancing a bucket of water on your head; reaching into a river and bringing up a fish (Mulan brings up Yao’s foot instead, awkward!)]

CHIEN-PO: I’m never gonna catch my breath!

YAO: Say goodbye to those who knew me!

[: they struggle to dodge flaming arrows]

LING: Boy was I a fool in school for cutting gym!

[As he tries to smash a cement block with his face and knocks out several teeth]

MUSHU: This guy’s got ’em scared to death!
MULAN: Hope he doesn’t see right through me!

[Shang kicks Muan’s ass at hand-to-hand combat; Mushu squeezes water from a cloth onto her black eye]

CHIEN-PO: Now I really wish that I knew how to swim!

[He nervously jumps from pole to pole above a raging river]

SHANG (with male chorus back-up): (be a man!) You must be swift as a coursing river! (be a man!) With all the strength of the great typhoon! (be a man!) With all the force of a raging fire, mysterious as the dark side of the moon.

[the army tries, and fails some more, to alight firecracker-bomb-things and hit the target of a Hun-fascimile; Ling trips Mulan, whose firecracker goes into the tent of the official of the emperor bent on proving Shang’s unworthiness as a captain; Shang sits sadly on a hillside at night.]

SHANG: Time is racing towards us till the Huns arrive; heed my every order and you might survive!

[The army struggles to carry poles on their backs weight down with packs of some kind on either side, which Shang does easily; the mean government official points towards Mulan, who is collapsing at the back; Shang goes, takes her pack from her, and looks down scornfully]

SHANG: You’re unsuited for the rage of war, so pack up, go home, you’re through – how could I make a man out of you?

[At night, Shang walks Mulan’s horse to her, saying these words as he kicks her out; on her way out, Mulan grabs the strength and discipline discs for one last try]

CHORUS AGAIN, sung entirely by a male chorus (Be a man, etc.)

[Mulan looks at the discs pensively, has an idea; uses the ribbons to loop the discs around the pole and around each other, turning them into a loop with which she can hoist herself up; slowly but surely climbs as the sun rises and the troops come out of their tents and gather around her anxiously; Shang comes out of his tent and immediately sees the arrow from the pole hit the ground in front of him, looks up to see Mulan sitting contentedly atop the pole with the discs]

CHORUS AGAIN
[montage of the army succeeding spectacularly at all the tasks they failed at before]

41 thoughts on Last-minute Monday Fluff: Mysterious As The Dark Side Of The Moon

  1. YES!

    Oh wow, I love this song SO MUCH, even just for the reasons you mentioned. But even so, you didn’t even mention my absolute favourite part of this song which I think bears mentioning.

    Because, like, this song is good in and of itself. For all the reasons you mentioned. I don’t need to repeat those. But also, it seems that in this kind of story lines, there is some inherent -ism present? In this case it’s “This girl can do as well as a boy! Look how cool that is!” which sort of makes traditionally boyish behaviour out as a good thing. You can have the same thing with, like, queer relationships, where you are like, “Look, these two women who are in love are also monogamous and have raised a healthy child!” where you make out monogamy and child-raising to be morally great things, and thus at the same time making a good/bad distinction which has non-monogamous queer couples without children on the wrong side of that distinction. (I could give examples of, like, racism, and classism (that is so a word Firefox spell check) but I think you get my point.)

    BUT! And this is what I was getting at: What I love absolutely most about this song is that later in the movie, it comes back. It comes back at the moment the guys are the ones dressing in drag. At the end of the movie they are trying to get into the king’s castle, and … for no apparent reason, the three army guys who were Mulan’s friends (sort of) dress like Mulan did at the start of the movie when she was meeting the matchmaker. And this song just comes back. How great is that?!

    So yeah. That’s why I love that song EVEN MORE.

    [Also, I found a Youtube video of the thing I am referring to:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWa-Z4s8VQI
    The part I am talking about starts at about three minutes in. I would give a video description but there is not much to say. Three guys dress in the same clothes and make-up as Mulan did at the start of the movie while you hear part of the song.]

  2. I adore Mulan, for exactly the reasons you describe. She runs away from being a girl, learns how to do man-things, does them better than most of the men, and saves the day. In other words, Mulan’s decision to do male-assigned things is applauded and successful in the film and those who would shun her for breaking gender role are firmly slapped down.
    It was immensely encouraging in the same way as the Tortall books were and are: sometimes, girls like me can do man-things and be right to do so.

  3. I owned a Mulan backpack and matching lunchbox when I was really too old to be bringing Disney merchandise to school (power of the corporate machine!). Seriously, though, I loved this post. Mulan was and is my favorite Disney character because she portrayed all of my personal insecurities (concerning gender performance, plans for the future, even family obligations) and still managed to be one BAMF. There’s so much fail in the Disney franchise that we seem to sometimes overlook the little things they do right.

    So, yeah, awesome post.

  4. This post seriously made me giggle. Also, Mulan has been one of my top ten all time favorite movies ever since it first came out when I was…oh look 13. So you’re in good company! I actually knew someone who worked on the music for Mulan, so I remember getting a taped version of the movie soundtrack before it actually came out in theatres. I played the music over and over and over…yea.

    Anyway, despite all their problems (and yea, there are so many, but they keep getting progressively better, so that’s good right?) I majorly <3 Disney movies too. ^_^
    ~Lia

  5. I always took this song to be so tongue in cheek. The grand men’s chorus singing ” (be a man!) You must be swift as a coursing river! (be a man!) With all the strength of the great typhoon! (be a man!) With all the force of a raging fire, mysterious as the dark side of the moon” To me they are saying isn’t this ridiculous that we are all putting such stock into the idea of “MANHOOD”.

    I loved this movie. I like how they don’t really go out of their way to portray Mulan as a “Tomboy” just as a girl that doesn’t fit with the super girly princess stereotype. I like the humor. I like how the mother isn’t dead. I like how it doesn’t end with a wedding.
    I love this Movie.

  6. ITA with this post. There’s also the part at the end of the movie where the male warriors dress up as women in order to sneak into the palace. The amount of gender-questioning is truly remarkable.

  7. Ooo Like “You’ll bring Honor to us all” The movie doesn’t actually mean “A man can bring great honor by bearing arms and a girl by bearing sons” Just the opposite.
    I am off the gym now with Mulan on my Mp3player. Yay.

  8. Oh man. One of my best friends in college and I had a penchant for inventing interpretive dances to this song, which would inevitably end with both of us rolling on the floor, howling and crying with laughter.

    Also what I love about it, from a gender-constructive perspective, is that not just Mulan, but ALL the gendered folks have to learn the manly behavior. The rest of the dudes are just as clueless as she is, in the beginning. From DeBeauvoire to Disney: One is not born a (wo)man; one becomes one.

  9. That really is pretty much the best Disney song ever. It’s very gender-binary-fucking, especially because it’s so very very embraced (tongue-in-cheek, naturally) by so many girls and women. For example, my women’s-college freshman class nearly unanimously voted that as our class song; every year during our cute-girly-little-white-dresses-and-tea festivals, that was the song we all belted out at the top of our lungs. 🙂

    Also, it’s arguably super homoerotic — Mulan and Shang make so many eyes at each other while he’s all in her face up-close-and-personal about making her into a man. Really, sir, you’re going to personally “make a man” out of that guy in your army? Oh, subtext.

  10. Miles/Sarah:

    BUT! And this is what I was getting at: What I love absolutely most about this song is that later in the movie, it comes back. It comes back at the moment the guys are the ones dressing in drag. At the end of the movie they are trying to get into the king’s castle, and … for no apparent reason, the three army guys who were Mulan’s friends (sort of) dress like Mulan did at the start of the movie when she was meeting the matchmaker. And this song just comes back. How great is that?!

    So yeah. That’s why I love that song EVEN MORE.

    When I first saw the film, the bits where she was cross-dressed and in the army were my favorite parts, but looking at it years later with a lot more Feminist Knowledge, I too love the end where – she’s wearing a dress and fighting with a fan! – it shows that you don’t even have to be performing masculinity to be awesome.

  11. @Miles:

    But also, it seems that in this kind of story lines, there is some inherent -ism present? In this case it’s “This girl can do as well as a boy! Look how cool that is!” which sort of makes traditionally boyish behaviour out as a good thing. You can have the same thing with, like, queer relationships, where you are like, “Look, these two women who are in love are also monogamous and have raised a healthy child!” where you make out monogamy and child-raising to be morally great things, and thus at the same time making a good/bad distinction which has non-monogamous queer couples without children on the wrong side of that distinction.

    Exceptionalism. There are people who defend their prejudices from actual evidence to the contrary by claiming that the exception proves the rule—that THIS girl is special, different, anomalous, super-powered, and therefore doesn’t really count as evidence of whether girls in general have what it takes to succeed.

    You can see it in people’s reactions to publicized exploits of “exceptional” women in history, from Amelia Earheart to any woman who dressed as a man to fight in a war or go to sea—or even fetch and carry for cannon crews or something like that. It gets sensationalized, and people called her heroic and impressive and kept an eye on their daughters, to make sure “she did THAT” didn’t translate into “I can too.” It created a culture in which there was an accessability trap: a woman could do that, but only exceptional women, and of course nobody was going to waste time helping girls find out whether they were exceptional—she could only wait and maybe, maybe there would be a once-in-a-million opportunity sometime in her life, at which point she could do it—once—and then go back to skirts and children and kitchen and such, lest she betray her femininity. It let the men, the sexist establishment, deflect blame from themselves to circumstances and facts of life, for keeping women away from male achievements.

    My favorite illustration of this concept is from Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small quartet, in which the realm’s first female knight, Alanna (who disguised herself as a boy throughout training), talks to Keladry, the first girl to train openly for knighthood under the decree allowing it, just after she’s earned her shield—Alanna being magically gifted and with several legendary achievements behind her so far: something to the effect of “I’m gifted, legendary, with Royal favor and the mark of the Gods on me. People could, and did, say that I was an exception, one of those once-in-a-century hero types. No need for anyone else to try, because they couldn’t do it. But YOU are real—everyday, normal; they can see you working for it, and they can talk about your technique in the saddle, and see themselves accomplishing what you have accomplished.”

    There’s a twofold benefit to patriarchal forces in doing this kind of thing. It deflects the blame for the sexism (because look at how they’re praising and admiring her! they can’t be sexist!), and it makes girls think that being a woman who runs with the men takes a stronger woman than they can ever be. It brings it that much more out of reach, mentally, to the girls who are dreaming about it.

  12. I too love the end where – she’s wearing a dress and fighting with a fan!

    [Mulan and Shan Yu are balanced on poles above the Emperor’s courtyard. In a desperate search for a weapon, Mulan pulls out the only thing she has in her girl outfit – a fan. Shan Yu shoves his sword through the fan, narrowly missing Mulan.]

    SHAN YU: (leering evilly) It looks like you’re out of ideas.

    [Mulan snaps the fan closed and wrenches the sword out of Shan Yu’s hands, then falls confidently into fighting stance.]

    MULAN: Not quite.

    BEST. SCENE. EVER.

  13. I hope it is not thread drift to talk about how Mulan is my FAVOURITE HISTORICAL (maybe) LADY EVER, and how last year there was a live action version which was SUPER AWESOME, in which Mulan was super fierce, and yes there was no singing and it was a bit less happy but FIERCE, YES PLEASE.

    And it’s funny because, revisiting the Disney movie after all this time, I thought I would hate it because I am now a Loud Chinese Woman who Hates It when you Take Her Stuff, but actually I kind of still love the Disney version of Mulan because…it is not terrible! And also it features Ming Na, who is the best.

    (I talked a little bit about the 2009 movie in my blog if you are interested)

  14. The great thing about ‘Mulan’ is that it isn’t the story of an exceptional woman, taking on challenges no-one else could. It’s about a young woman questioning roles, and her value in life. It deals implicitly with the notion of woman as second class citizen. In the end of movie Fa Mulan learns to value herself and be proud of herself the way she is. It’s an intensely feminist message.

    And, Donny Osmond sings “To Be A Man.” Perfect.

    I really hate the way Disney does it’s ‘invisible mother’ thing, though. When Mulan returns, it’s the reunion with her father that matters. Her mother and grandmother just watch. Disney hates mothers.
    All my nieces can sing “To Be A Man”. I know they are grown up when they don’t want to sing it in the supermarket anymore.

  15. N-ing the love for that movie and that song. One thing I’ll add, and this might be Thinking Too Much, but I find the metaphors interesting. “Fire” is omnipresent as a masculine metaphor, but “forests” (especially when they’re tranquil) and “rivers” are often feminine metaphors aren’t they ? And “Mysterious as the dark side of the Moon”, if I didn’t know the context I would definitely say that was referring to women.

    None of this would register with children but I don’t think the songwriters would’ve missed it. I don’t know if I should take it as an illustration of how some people will code any and all qualities they feel are positive as masculine when they need to, or as some more messing with the gender binary.

  16. Okay, so I drunkenly sang this song with a friend for karaoke not that long ago, and there was a dude there. Said dude commented that he’s “only heard girls ever sing that song,” as if this were somehow ironic. Because dudes sing it? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I gave him a “you’re a fucking idiot” look and said, “That’s because it’s about the arbitrariness of gender performance. And ladies suffer disproportionately from that shit. Duh.”

  17. “That’s because it’s about the arbitrariness of gender performance. And ladies suffer disproportionately from that shit. Duh.”

    If you could say that, you weren’t really drunk. Mulan remains a pretty good Disney film for girls, though, even to me and I’m old enough that I only saw it as the mother of 2 little girls. Both of whom though Mulan was great and Shang was a bit of a dick.

  18. I’m sorry but you COMPLETELY LOST ME at this post. I thought EVERYONE knew that The Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World” was the best Disney song…

    ::Sighs heavily::

    I’ll concede that this may be second best, but that’s as far as I’m willing to budge.

    Great post, I agree with you on everything else 🙂

  19. Oh goodness. No joke, this was the song of the graduating class at my high school this past year.
    It has a lot of fond memories associated with it, and it’s lovely to see it in a feminist light. I’ll be sure to let my friends in on this discussion.

  20. …I gave up watching Disney movies after someone insisted on showing me The Jungle Book because the Jungle Book stories (volumes 1 and 2) were among my favorite books when I was a kid. And I sat there grimly and said “But Bagheera isn’t LIKE that! And nor is Baloo! And nor is Kaa! ”

    So. You can assume I haven’t seen a Disney movie that came out since The Jungle Book or Bambi:

    Which three Disney movies would you recommend I watch, assuming I were to wander down to the local lending emporium and borrow three DVDs for their special offer?

  21. My mother’s favorite Disney movie is Aladdin, my favorite is Mulan but I also loved the Princess and the Frog. The Lion King is also quite popular.

    The problem with recommending Disney movies to someone who felt The Jungle Book was a wallbanger is that… I think every Disney movie is a wallbanger on some level, those people who like them usually get past those elements. As the OP points out, Mulan for all its awesomeness is still quite problematic on the racial side, and it isn’t like it subverts every gender problem in the books either, so if you’re particularly sensitive to those issues or the way they’re portrayed pushes the wrong buttons you’re going to hate it.
    And of course one must leave all concerns about fidelity to the source material at the door.

    Still, good luck with that !

  22. I love Mulan so much . . . I watched the VHS I had until it no longer plays properly. This post just makes me want to buy the DVD and watch it with my friends, so we can all revel in the awesomeness that is Mulan!

    Also, triple motivation to become awesome at wushu (weird Chinese government’s official martial art – think kung fu, but with WAY more stupidly quick, flashy moves thrown in).

  23. The thing that bothers me about Mulan and most “women can kick ass too” stories is that she has to pretend to be male to do it. And she can only do that because she’s a “tomboy” who already likes a lot of “male” things. Nothing wrong with that in itself but it tells femmie girls who like dressing up, playing with dolls, and cooking that their interests are inferior and that only a girl who can pretend to be a boy can go on adventures or have an interesting life.

    Therefore, my favorite Disney movies are the ones they bought the English language rights to from Miyazaki. Nausicaa kicks butt without ever having to pretend to be a boy or not be interested in “girl” things like feelings and children.

  24. I actually JUST HAD fiance watch this with me a week or two ago, and it was AWESOME though also waaay more racist than my younger self had realized. Mulan is a pretty kickass Disney heroine though!

  25. I’m really enjoying this discussion, as I think Mulan is the bestest Disney movie for a portrayal of female empowerment. I did want to point out, however, that Shang’s singing voice is provided by Donny Osmond. No matter how you feel about that guy, there’s no denying that he sings purdy.

  26. First of all: This IS a real blog.
    Do you know, I have been reading your stuff and love you, but then also I have been craving feminist not-too-academic critiques of disney movies, wondering, “how the ef are disney movies not analyzed more???” So.. the winning combination is YOU + Disney Critique. Can I ask for more??
    I, like many or all Americans, grew up watching Disney movies and it totally molded the romance section of my brain. It’s taken four years of college to BEGIN to week out that ridiculous garden living in there.

    PLEASE- intermittently (or lots), write about disney movies!
    Can you make it a goal to write about like, all of them please? I need to be walked through this subliminal cinematic jungle of my past.

    -Tara

  27. Tara, if you like criticism of Disney movies I’ve got a political comparison of Bambi and The Lion King right here. (well, I’ve got the link ! Didn’t write it or anything)

  28. I don’t know… I felt rather let down by Mulan. I felt like it had this great big setup to be the feminist tale that a lot of people see in it, but that the end ruined it. Mulan stands before the ultimate (male) authority in her world and states that no, she doesn’t want the job he’s offering thank you very much but her place is at home. Then she goes home, everyone is thrilled she brought a man back with her (sort of). Her life returns to normal, which was what she didn’t want in the beginning. The message I got out of Mulan was this: be exceptional for a little while if you must (and you’d better be VERY exceptional to get away with it) but remember your place. With a different, less status-quo-celebrating ending, I would have liked it a lot more.

  29. @Ashley, as a kid watching it, I got a different message from that same issue although I can definitely see how you got that and think it’s a totally valid criticism. But for me personally, I have always been pretty feminine in a lot of ways, but still wanted to do traditionally “boy” stuff like sports, martial arts, etc. In my teens I decided that I wanted to succeed in a traditionally male-dominated field, but still wanted a husband and to do some traditionally feminine things. There didn’t seem much room for me–girls were either tomboys or girly girls, and there wasn’t much media representation of girls who did both. For me, I saw it as Mulan doing both. She saved China, but also then got a live a life with a family who loved her and a man who accepted her as she was–because presumably Shang didn’t suddenly decide that she had to be all super-femme after that.

    Of course I do think it might have been better if she had stayed to work for the Emperor AND married Shang, but I guess that might be a little much to hope for with Disney.

  30. I should say, better from my point of view because part of the reason I watch Disney movies is for the silly romance stories. I’m a sucker for those.

  31. My friends and I have long discussions on the awesomeness of some Disney songs-those from Hercules and Mulan especially. We’re fifteen. Sometimes the actually movies get mentioned as well.

    I agree with Tara. Real blog posts can totally be about Disney films. Especially when they are on an epic song (yes I am obsessed with Disney music. I have a CD).

  32. Ahhh I remember when it came out in movie theatres near me ^_^ Back then I practiced Kung Fu, and our Si Fu informed us that this was a must-see Disney movie, because they actually got the Kung Fu moves right. So, on his orders, instead of training a Wednesday evening, we all went and saw Mulan. And the following Friday training we totally got out our kwans (quarterstaves) and copied the form they’d done in the movie. It was so totally awesome.

    And since a girl did it, mine and the other girl’s presence in the Kung Fu gwoon had totally been justified and made awesome rather than just slightly awkward. Yes, there were only two of us. Classic Shaolin Kung Fu is not as fat-burny exercise-esque as kick-boxing, which went on in the same club.

    I remember sitting through the movie in the theatre and naming all the stances, punches and kicks they used, and feeling totally awesome that the knowledge I’d crammed in my head for earning my sashes (same concept as belts in karate), was still there, and available to me when I wanted it.

    I was… hmmm… 14. I think.

    And I also developed a super-teenage-girl-crush on Shang, ‘caue he was the awesomest dude, evar! Accepting and liking Mulan despite her not performing the required femininity up to par. I’ve always been different myself (I’m autistic), so I get the whole “I don’t belong here, I don’t fit in”-issue, so I just really related to that, and I took the message to heart that no matter how weird, strange, different and unconventional you are, someone will love you for you anyway. And that was real powerful, ’cause I wasn’t feeling very loved during those years. It was the year after I had my first brushes with suicidal thoughts, so that message shone a bright light on my mental well-being, and probably instilled a little hope in me, too.

    And you never outgrow Disney films. Ever. My favouritest Disney villain ever was Zira from Lion King 2. Her Lullaby is epic evil, and I love it *cackles* (quite fond of Scar’s Be Prepared, too, not least because of the awesomest percussion evar in it mmmm marimbas)

  33. @jesurgislac: I also loved ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Belle isn’t bad as a feminist role model – she reads! she thinks! she stands up for herself! – and you get Angela Lansbury as a singing teapot, and Jerry Orbach channeling Maurice Chevalier. Very fun.
    My other favourite Disney/Pixar movies are ‘Monsters Inc’ and the ‘Toy Story’ movies. Pretty much a dud re. feminist heroes, but good stories.

    I defend Mulan’s choice to return home as a rejection of the political manipulation and favour-currying life in the Chinese Court would have entailed. She goes home in order to continue to be herself. (Yes, I spend way too much time thinking about this stuff.)

  34. I wanted to add to my previous comments because I’m a dork and think about blog posts all day while at work that I never got the feeling from Mulan that she wanted to go to war in the first place–she didn’t feel accepted for who she was, for sure, but in the early scenes with her family, she seemed content–pouring tea, sitting in the orchard, whatever–in fact they are accepting of her failure with the matchmaker, and it is only when the topic of her father going to war is brought up that there is strife, if I remember correctly. I always got the feeling from the character that she felt more tied to home and wanted to stay there, but it was more because she wanted to protect her father (which is also a fun reversal of gender and family roles IMO) that she left for war than out of any personal desire to do so.

    I think I would have been disappointed by the ending had she started out by longing for adventure and fame and whatever, but to me it seemed from the start it seemed like she only wanted a quiet life and so after she saved not only her loved ones but all of China, she returned to that life where she had been happy, without the need to fit into the proscribed gender role society had tried to force her into in the beginning of the film.

    Also, I too think too much about Disney films it appears.

  35. Definitely an A+++ drinking song! My housemates and I, staunch feminists all, know way too many Disney lyrics and may have *ahem* had a few dance parties involving this particular masterwork.

    I also think the other sexist-not-sexist song in Mulan is worth mentioning too, though. Later, when the goofy army guys are all singing about their dream girl and how all this war stuff will make them irresistible? It’s funny even to small children because “Haha! They don’t realize Mulan is a girl!” And disturbing to small children because it ends abruptly with the discovery of a burned out village and woah, this war thing, maybe not so cool after all. So the message I got pretty clearly is all about fantasies. These guys are so preoccupied with their hypothetical fantasy women that they don’t even recognize the real, breathing, ass-kicking, awesome and yes, conventionally beautiful woman right there in front of them.

    Yeah…I too spend too much time thinking about Disney. I would always hate on everything Disney as a kid, being THAT kid, but it’s still part of your cultural make up (I was on the older end for Mulan, but still in the under ten target bracket), and then watching them later on it’s hard to ignore that a lot of them are pretty damned epic, even though you can’t ignore the problematic parts either. So basically what I’m saying is I’m glad to see someone take these movies on in a way that doesn’t ignore either of those aspects. 🙂

  36. I agree with Dianne above.

    While, I think it is great that this Disney animation show that yes, women can indeed save the world, and yes, women can do all the things that men normally do (ie. war and fighting enemies)…it still makes it seem that doing boy things are COOL and GREAT and EMPOWERING For women, but Boys doing girl things are something to laugh at.

    Take for example, the scenes of Mulan saving the day and fighting the enemy. No one in the theater laughed when Mulan did “boy” things, like fighting against the baddies, and saving the Emperor’s life with heroics. Sure, she was as clumsy as the new recruits at first, but by the end of the movie, you know she did things that are normally done by men, ie. “fighting in an army” “fresh infantry recruits”, and that is what makes her cool: she can do it just as good as any boy. People clapped and cheered.

    However, when it was the men dressing up as women, everyone in the the laughed, because you can see how those scenes are contrived to make people laugh. I mean….what is more funny than men putting on make-up and being shy and coy , ie ‘doing something girly’. Notice how the funny thing is that while the 3-4 of them were in ladies’ clothing and how the guards mentioned they were ugly or unbecoming,…..this is generally played up for laughs with the audience at movies, the whole idea of men doing feminine things (see Toy Story 3 with Ken doll).

    So while there are some good points in Mulan, IMHO it doesn’t detract from the whole, “boy stuff” cool, “girl stuff” uncool.

  37. Notice how the funny thing is that while the 3-4 of them were in ladies’ clothing and how the guards mentioned they were ugly or unbecoming

    Good point. I definitely noticed that, too… and the one hot guy (Shang) gets to stay drag-free ’cause he’s not a sidekick he’s the hero/boyfriend and he has to retain all his masculinity. (Also, unlike the others, he might have looked pretty okay. Can’t have that! Men performing femininity can’t be attractive or smart it has to be incompetent and humorous.)

    Though I guess at least by having the guys fail at crossdressing they dodged the all-Asian-men-are-feminine thing…? *weakly grasps at silver linings* (Er, aside from the lisping cowardly academic, who was too many stereotypes to name. Oh, Disney, no!.)

  38. re: boys=cool. The film shows explicitly that in Mulan’s culture, men were valued and women were not; that men lead active lives and women serve them. Men could be loud or unhygienic or boastful or unkind and they were still valued. A woman had to be obedient and silent and pretty to be acceptable. Women have been complaining about how boring this is since they were able to write. It isn’t the tea-making and pretty dresses and being a femme girl that Mulan rejects as unfun: it’s the lack of choice for women.

    When Mulan’s squad dress up as women, it is to fool the guards. The guards do not expect women to be fighters. The squad’s knowledge that women are powerful enables them to defeat the guards. That is the source of the humour.

  39. Oh, and one other thing: Sheng says “heed my every order and you might survive” but it is Mulan’s ability to generate alternatives and perceive consequences that saves them all. Disobeying social imperatives is shown to have negative personal consequences, but great positive social consequences. That’s pretty good for a Disney movie.

  40. The squad’s knowledge that women are powerful enables them to defeat the guards. That is the source of the humour.

    I don’t think that’s the only source of humor, though. I distinctly remember that, before any guard-fooling happens, you see the cross-dressed guys sort of whip around to face the audience, showing how they look in drag, and just their appearance alone is played for laughs.

  41. Oh, yes, the Mulan! My little sister was about ten when it came out and burst into tears the first time she watched at the song- the one in the garden about “who is that girl I see” (this probably actually had more to do with her experience with a mental disorder at the time and everything being way harder for her than others than it did with difficulty fitting into a hyper-princessy mold…that part came later. I was more like fourteen so I was thrilled by the guys in drag to the “be a man” song. I thought at the time actually- and still do- that it aptly depicted the quandary of moving toward an adult identity in a patriarchal culture- you can be an apprentice male or barbie doll and those are the only models put forward. I might still have that journal entry, somewhere, actually.
    The Disney flicks actually seem to have played a major part in awakening the “hey! wait! something is REALLY not fair here!” realization in my family. For me it was The Little Mermaid- she has to give up her voice to enter the world at large from her safe underwater grotto thing. And I’d read the original where she’s told every step she takes will feel like walking on knives which somehow got collapsed in my head with the Annie Lennox song “Walking on Broken Glass”. For my youngest sister, obviously, it was Mulan. My middle sister got hooked in by Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Esmeralda. My brother has some choice words about The Lion King (something about Scar representing the dominant patriarchal male attitude versus Mufasa’s somehow different attitude which gets killed off and then you have entire generations of men abandoning responsibility and avoiding adulthood altogether for lack of role models…or something…it’s muddled because often he chooses to tell me these things when I am halfway through my friday night six pack, and also he is seventeen and tends to over generalize and is determined to have goodguy/badguy dichotomies still). It’s so weird since Disney typically sticks to these very traditional gender roles for everyone but somehow they seem to convey all the tragedy inherent in being trapped (to one extent or another) in those roles. How does that work?

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