Mulan (1998) is Still a Film ‘Worth Fighting For’

On the eve of release of its live-action Mulan, backseat drivers at Disney have been justifying the new film’s questionable creative choices by retroactively laying blame on the 1998 animated classic. They claim the earlier production was too “Western” and “individualistic” — is that code for too free-thinking and liberal? — which made a globally popular film somehow unpalatable to audiences in the People’s Republic of China.

This essentialist take does the earlier work serious injustice. It misinterprets the film and overlooks its core messages: defying gender norms and overcoming social expectations to do the right thing; enduring hardship, bullying, and hazing with the help of loyal friends; protecting innocent civilians against genocidal violence, even in the face of overwhelming odds; and thinking outside the box to show love for one’s parents, and to honor one’s ancestors.

More fundamentally, this irresponsible interpretation of Chinese sensibilities in both 1999 and 2020—the movie was released a year later in the PRC than everywhere else—misreads modern China. Attacks on the original animated film are predicated on a discriminatory and orientalist perspective that should be flushed down the drain, along with the tears of so many defeated Huns.

“Some Chi­nese movie­go­ers rejected Dis­ney’s an­i­mated tale be­cause it es­poused Western val­ues, like per­sonal trans­for­ma­tion, above Chi­nese pri­or­i­ties such as com­mit­ment to fam­ily,” a recent story in the Wall Street Journal suggests. For the 2020 rendition, the company has contorted itself to avoid any misfires, sticking to anodyne, government-sanctioned fare, while assuring global audiences of the work’s cultural “authenticity.” (On the latter point, it doesn’t succeed.)

As revealed by a co-director of the 1998 film, Disney had— shockingly!—aimed to “tell a story about an in­di­vid­ual, re­gard­less of gen­der.” Far from controversial, this narrative approach taps on a not-uncommon fairy tale trope that reminds audiences not to judge others based on appearances. Does such a provocation relegate Disney’s original Mulan to a decadent and unrelatable Western story? Or might it actually be a universal narrative about transcending arbitrary social norms in pursuit of the greater good?

The animated Mulan ultimately grossed $120 million in the United States and Canada, and $304 million worldwide, roaring into the cinematic pantheon as part of the Disney Renaissance. A combination of poignant scenes, jubilant and unforgettable songs, and a beloved cast of characters with Asian faces—in a Hollywood that was, and still remains, mostly white—made the film a true cultural touchstone that resonated with audiences abroad and hit close to home in America.

Trying too hard backfired for Disney 

In China, the film did experience lackluster attendance, which can be attributed in part to Beijing’s meddling—not only artistic merit. Its release was scheduled after the end of the Lunar New Year “Golden Week” holidays, when children were already back in school. Observers at the time speculated the “inauspicious” timing was intended to punish Disney for making Kundun, a Scorsese-directed film about Tibet. Eight months after its global release, pirated copies of Mulan were already available in local shops, driving ticket sales down even further.

Yet setting aside these logistical quibbles, the commentators who take jabs at the earlier animated classic for supposedly trafficking in “Western individualism” are actually engaged in lazy hand waving as cultural diagnosis—a terrible habit that unfortunately aligns with the CCP’s carping about the invasion of unacceptable “foreign ideas” such as constitutionalism, the rule of law, or judicial independence.

At the same time, it’s more evidence of the all-too-real caricature of “clueless white people” continually “othering” both Asians and Asian Americans—casting them as “perpetual foreigners” in their own country. (That is, when they aren’t barring the Chinese from immigrating to the United States, putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps, and wrongfully attacking Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during a pandemic, including doctors and nurses no less, under the false pretense that they are spreading the coronavirus.)

Writ large, Disney’s tired “Asian values” argument insultingly suggests that because the current incarnation of China is statist and authoritarian, Chinese people can only accept films promoting imperial hegemony and groupthink.

Yet Chinese audiences’ recent moviegoing habits show this assertion to be false, prima facie. No appetite for “Western” cinematic products? With Marvel franchise films consistently topping the box office, Captain America, Black Panther, and the Avengers all beg to differ.

Writing off Chinese audiences as irredeemably alien, and therefore incapable of appreciating a film enjoyed by the rest of the world, dismisses the possibility of great stories that transcend time, place, culture—or even species. Tellingly, other works from Disney and Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli have been tremendously well-received in China, praised for their delightful visuals and emotive storytelling.

Jeanette Ng’s barbed review of the live-action Mulan rightly points out many of the new film’s problems, including its “regurgitation” of the CCP’s “current nationalist myths,” and its use of “clichés the screenwriters seem to think represent Chinese culture”—even fetishizing obedience and “service to the emperor” as the paramount (Party-approved) virtue.

A myopic view, of what Chinese audiences will warm to, rejects the borderless quality of universal ideals such as justice and compassion, while ignoring the common aspirations of global youth. It overlooks the exasperated glances exchanged by millennials everywhere, as they sigh in commiseration at the state of the world. And most importantly, this reductive—and frankly, patronizing—framing of the Middle Kingdom as a once-and-always despotism disregards China’s own history of radical reform, counter-cultural movements, and progressive activism.

The spirit of the May Fourth Movement  

A century ago, on May 4, 1919, China experienced a surging tide of political and social advocacy by youth. Beginning in Beijing and spreading elsewhere, students protested against a feckless Chinese government for bowing to the rapacious demands of imperialist powers in Europe and Japan. Over the next decade, this May Fourth action merged with ongoing calls for social and cultural change, and blossomed into a fully-fledged New Culture Movement, which sought to make room for the twin pillars dubbed “Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy.”

Young intellectuals, like the incandescent Hu Shih (胡適), advocated for academic learning from the West, and for incorporating new political systems into an ossified China. Perceiving the country suffocating under the yoke of conservative Confucian thought, they called for a modern form of education (Mr. Science), the use of vernacular language, and participatory models of governance (Mr. Democracy). Many of these youth, or qingnian, had studied abroad. When they returned to China, they were charged with diverse sources of inspiration and harbored great hopes for the country’s modernization. The liberal tradition they transplanted is merely one historical example, among many, of influential human ideas taking root in Chinese soil, adapting to local circumstances, and blooming.

In 2020, cultural differences and consumer preferences in different markets clearly exist, but films like Disney’s first Mulan—a tale about resisting unjust social pressures while seeking parental approval—shouldn’t cause too much of an allergy, unless you’re a monarchist born in the late Qing. Creatives around the world weave this utterly human theme into works set in many different countries and cultures.

Moreover, if patriarchal straw men like the “Chinese moviegoers” that Disney is fretting about are indeed patronizing the local theater—or more likely, seated in the corporate boardroom—the fact that they’re still hanging around demonstrates precisely why films like the vivacious Mulan of 1998 needed to exist then, and why they must continue to be made today. A protagonist who challenges social expectations and gender norms? Who navigates familial obligations in conflict with personal choice? Who ultimately makes her own place in the world? That cultural mirror is exactly the type of cinematic experience a modernizing China—or any other nation in transformation—ought to reckon with. Instead, all Disney has served up in 2020 is a sloppy, unreflective effort that Yang Zhang deems a case of “failed empowerment.”

Filial piety vs. finding yourself

If we look back at the ripples of May Fourth and the New Culture Movement, we see that the issues Chinese activists grappled with more than a century ago still resonate in present day. The poet Xu Zhimo (徐志摩) advocated for the freedom to choose love—for marriage to be based on the consent of individuals, not the contractual arrangements of families. Lu Xun (魯迅) criticized the premise of xiao or “filial piety,” arguing that blind obedience to one’s parents should be supplanted by mutually caring relationships based on affection. Influential periodicals like La Jeunesse (New Youth), written by and for qingnian, flourished in that age, as revolutionary Chinese thinkers advocated for science over superstition, and democratic government over dictatorship. They engaged in philosophical and political debates, floating proposals for ideas such as federalism and the devolution of state power.

A hundred and one years later, despite meaningful progress toward gender equality and greater democratic participation in some Sinophone societies—though clearly not all of them—the promise of May Fourth is not yet complete. New and important fronts have emerged, if not always in China itself, then certainly in overseas diasporic communities with links to Chinese intellectual tradition, to pursue LGBT equality, ecumenical coexistence, respect for the rights of indigenous peoples, and greater social inclusion.

“Okay, boomer!” Cover of the activist “New Youth” magazine, La Jeunesse 新青年, Vol. 2, Issue 1 (source: Shanghai Daily)

Confucian conservatives derided the reformist initiatives of Chinese youth, to which the activists replied, “Okay, boomer!” and then redoubled their efforts to make change.

Some contemporary scholars have griped about the animated Mulan, claiming it is “fun­da­men­tally at odds with the folk­tale’s ethos.” The same Wall Street Journal article quotes a Chinese American professor of English literature, pointing to the ancient Chinese-language bal­lad that “em­pha­sized Mu­lan’s fil­ial piety…a Con­fu­cian idea,” and contending that “the cen­tral mes­sage shifted in the [animated] Dis­ney ver­sion, be­cause it re­ally em­pha­sized the main char­ac­ter’s strug­gle to find herself.”

Yet that very struggle is what so many young Chinese absolutely do contend with in 2020: how to meet family expectations, how to withstand societal pressures, how to survive in an overbearing, sometimes inhumane, system that frequently seems to dictate one’s life outcomes.

To be filial while finding one’s way in the world is the defining struggle of modernity for Chinese and Diaspora youth the world over. It is a continuation of the struggles in the 1910s and 1920s of luminaries like Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀), Monlin Chiang (Jiang Menglin 蔣夢麟), Fu Ssu-nien (Fu Sinian 傅斯年) and their contemporaries, who published heartfelt essays in radical magazines and rallied together to found civil society organizations. That spirit remains, as contemporary novelists, playwrights, and artists have been joined by irreverent bloggers and creators of humorous memes, extending an existential dialogue across time.

To be liberal and Confucian, whether in the 20th century or the 21st, is to carry the burden of bridging generations. As Hu Shih once thoughtfully penned, the youth who aspire to reform have a dual task: they must seek to understand their parents, who were born in another era and educated with conservative (“feudal”, “boomer”) ways of thinking; but at the same time, they must strive to raise their own children in a vastly different manner—to inculcate them with progressive values from the start, allowing them to escape the stranglehold of fossilized thinking. In this way, the next generation can enjoy the liberty and equality denied to their forebears, drawing their very first breath in an increasingly just and tolerant world.

For the generations transiting between tradition and modernity, the struggle is not merely to break free of the past—it is to identify meaningful elements in one’s culture worth maintaining, while pushing past existing boundaries to build a more plural future. This ongoing struggle is precisely why we need subversive Mulans who speak to the concerns of Chinese and Diaspora youth, rather than an obedient, docile, acceptable Mulan who upholds the patriarchy and celebrates state power.

(Feature photo from Mulan, 1998)