An Ambivalent Message

Rating: 5/10 (8 August 2014)

This is not quite the story of self realization and female empowerment that the commercial and internet reviewers are calling it. If she is a role model for the independent girl, Mulan is a very ambivalent one.
Mulan does balk at being married off by the matchmaker, she does go off to war, and she does prove to be not only tough and brave but the smartest soldier in her outfit. She twice saves the life of Li Shang's, her commanding officer and love interest, and she kills the chief of the Huns. The Emperor, who says "A girl like this doesn't come along every dynasty," gratefully offers her a seat on the Imperial Council.
Having seen the wider world at its ugliest in wartime, Mulan is uncomfortable with her newly won status. She turns down the offer because, she says, she has been away from her family too long. Prodded by the Emperor, the deeply smitten but none too swift Li Shang follows to court her. As the movie ends, it is perfectly clear that she will marry him, with the enthusiastic support of her mother and grandmother, who had despaired of ever marrying her off.
Li Shang is brave, conscientious, honorable, from a good family, and not all that smart. You can see him 30 years later in his father the general, a dignified, worthy man who gets his army massacred by the Huns. He is still an excellent match for Mulan and her family, and she is an excellent match for him. He'll love and honor her in very comfortable surroundings as he pursues a career at court. She'll run the marriage and bring some brains and spirit into the Li gene pool. Their sons should do very well.
Their daughters are another story. The Emperor sees Mulan as something that "doesn't come along every dynasty," not as an example of half the population of his realm. And Mulan turns down that seat on the Imperial Council. Her family comes first, and she's been successful enough already. She turns her back on her own exceptional quality. Mulan doesn't put on a glass slipper, but she makes her own glass ceiling.
If the movie has a message for girls, it is that the wider world of men is a nasty, hard and dangerous place. Having a successful career there when you're young is good because it wins you respect and puts you in touch with a much better class of husband material when the time comes to leave your career behind, go home, and settle down with your own family. Mulan's courage, spirit and intelligence raise her out of the marriage market to which she appears foredoomed in the first reel, only to win her the one extraordinary man whom she deserves in the last.
Mulan is popular entertainment shrewdly and successfully designed to appeal to an audience that favors gender equality in principle but is ambivalent about its price. While we'd like our daughters to do well in their own right, we'd also like them to mother our grandchildren. Mulan is all in favor of young women of intelligence and spirit going out to prove themselves in the world run by men, but it is equally in favor of their settling down with the right young man to carry on the family after they have gotten the career thing out of their system.