Disney is the not the real world....

Rating: Null/10 (30 November 2004)

Perhaps I am not the best person to review Disney cartoons...I spend too much of my time thinking things like......Hey they seem to be wearing Tang Dynasty clothes but they are practicing ancestor worship which was not introduced until the birth of the Neo-Confucian religion in the Song Dynasty.
However Chinese stories have always gone through a process of growth and change, with elements added and removed by different story tellers and at different times.
Disney's Mulan tells the historic/legendary story of Hua Mu Lan, a character popular with Chinese woman.
The historical innacurracies are really just a Disney Uber-China where the core elements of Chinese history are fused for the purposes of story telling.
I avoided seeing this movie for a long time because of the feeling that it would be racist. In many ways it was. Firstly it projects a western view that Asian women are meant to be stupid and compliant, when in fact Asian women are meant to be intelligent, well read, educated and capable and Chinese literature often admires these women. However the world's of women and men are meant to separate. The idea of women being brainless is a Western culture value projected onto Asia. The idea of women not being determined or strong is also a western culture value.
The other problem is the portrayal of the Huns as yellow eyed inhuman creatures or demons.
But the is the world of Disney. The good guys are good and the bad guys bad. The values of families sticking together, good beating evil, try your best etc are the 1950s American values that have lived on at Disney.
However it is an enjoyable story, and I watch it in China, in Inner Mongolia (Mongolians being from the same region as the Huns), with Chinese and Mongolians....and well they weren't offended....
and it is a lovely story, funny, sad, serious, with a lot of beautiful shots, heroic battles, clever dialog in the Disney fashion. Not an artist masterpiece, but a nice pick-me-up movie on a cold dreary night in Mongolia.