Mephisto in Onyx

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2012)

Tony Bancroft directs "Mulan", an animated musical produced by Walt Disney studios and hailed by its makers as the first "feminist" Disney film. The plot? In dynastic China, a young girl named Mulan assumes the identity of a man in order to fight in the Emperor's army against marauding Huns. Mulan is portrayed as a budding feminist, a spunky young woman who abhors rigid gender roles, fights against sexism and believes that women should be celebrated for their brains and brawn rather than their bodies, bodices and/or domestic/sexual duties. In this regard she puts on pants, grabs a sword, slays barbarians and saves the lives of several men, most notably the Emperor of China. Significantly, in her final showdown with a muscular Hun, Mulan (and her male comrades) wears a dress. Her sidekicks are a lucky insect and a pint sized dragon, both creatures who, like Mulan, are underestimated and forced to conform to the rigid preconceptions of others. Like most supposedly "progressive" or "feminist" films, female empowerment here boils down to women proving that they can be as violent, barbaric, base and hyper-masculinist as men. This is not feminism, as conflict exists where none should.
The film's intent and content clash in other ways: Mulan's supposedly "feminist" actions ultimately stem out of a duty toward her father (and his duties to the Emperor), idealised male and female bodies discriminate against anything less than ideal (almost everyone other than Mulan and her lover is a buffoon), the film is packed with stereotypes, portrays Mulan's victory as a victory of Western ideals over those thought to be more traditionally Chinese, is resolutely white, in real life the Emperors of China were as brutal as any Hun, and the early dynasties were themselves as sexist to men as they were women (hordes of men were castrated and made eunuchs to fulfil specific "effeminate" roles in dynastic politics). The film is less sexist and racially insensitive than is typical of Disney, but still grates.
Disney has a history of taking stories from different cultures and sanitising them of anything "too ethnic". Here the film is based on the legend or ballad of Hua Mulan. The character has been ascribed to different dynastic periods (Sui, Tang, Ming etc), but Disney instead opted to set their film during the Han Dynasty. This allows the filmmakers to get away with creating a "nice Emperor" (China was somewhat progressive during this period) and use a type of "Han Dynasty iconography" that resembles more traditionally Japanese iconography (rose petals, samurai attire etc), which perhaps plays well to geographically confused Western audiences. The date of the movie is odd, the film conflating events and invasions that took place in different dynasties (bizzarely, its emperor, Zhou, and chief warrior, Shang, are named after separate dynastic periods).
The film banalizes totems which mainstream culture oft associates with "oriental" or "asian" cultures. So we have lots of bamboo, dragon statues, great walls, plum blossoms, Chinese gardens, kung-fu, Chinese lanterns, Chinese fireworks, chopsticks, ink brushes, Chinese hair combs, pandas etc. It's wonderfully drawn, but all feels like the result of a corporate brainstorming session. As with most Disney films, anything remotely alien, alienating, hostile or strange is made to seem resolutely familiar and/or cleansed of all cultural and racial background.
"Mulan", the first Disney "princess" with a body count, would lead to a period in which Disney made a greater effort to target male audience members. She, and the princess of "Tangled", seem to mark a change in Disney princess body-types (younger, less "womanly", less curvaceous, more spunky and "teenage"; the new sexual ideal). The film is wonderfully animated, very cool, some of its animation work has a primal quality, reminiscent of Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings", only more abstract, and at times resembles minimalist Chinese ink paintings. The film possesses several exciting action sequences, its song-and-dance routines are less grating than usual, our lead has wonderfully expressive eyes, and a strong sexual undercurrent exists, as is typical of Disney.
7.9/10 - Worth one viewing.