Mulan – Review

Mulan

with Ming-Na Wen, Eddie Murphy, Pat Morita, Donny Osmond, BD Wong
Directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft
Written by Robert D. San Souci, Rita Hsiao
(Disney)
by Jamie Kiffel

When I turned four, my aunt bought me my first Barbie doll. Before I opened her gift, I knew that it was a Barbie: it was in an unmistakable four-by-twelve-inch box, and I could see pink cardboard through the wrapping paper. I could hardly conceal my excitement as I tore it open, imagining iridescent frills and glitter-stiff coils of satin ribbon overflowing just beneath the cellophane paper. I grinned up at my aunt and pulled the doll free as my mother was already saying, “Do you like it? Is this one alright?” I looked down at my hands, and froze. To my horror, I discovered that I was holding not Barbie, but her younger, uglier, flat-chested sister, Skipper. This was bad enough, but far more disappointing was the fact that this was not a glamour doll; it was a sporty doll. She came complete with Nike-style shorts, knee and elbow pads, a bulky helmet and a skateboard. “Thank you,” I said weakly, and tried not to cry. What was this sabotage of my all-encompassing desire to develop my femininity?

My aunt bought me this doll in an effort to promote my will to grow into a liberated woman. She wanted me to know that I could be whatever I aspired to, and she certainly would not confine me to a corseted tutu with earrings large and heavy enough to turn my entire neck green, as frequently happened with the fashion plate Barbies. She took a risk: in today’s society, little girls want pink frills, not jackboots and riding crops (when they do, it is often considered to be indicative of a much deeper problem). With the release of Mulan, Disney is taking an equivalent risk. For the first time, they are presenting little girls with a heroine who is not the fairest in the land, not blessed with a godmother who will give her an instant Chanel makeover, not a princess and not even endowed with breasts big enough to balance a tea service on. Mulan is a real girl. Not only this, but she is a real Asian girl, trapped in the tradition-lacquered framework of a Chinese household which considers any behavior outside that of the usual Disney heroine to be dishonorable to the family. My question is, are the little girls who make up the larger portion of sales for this film ready to identify with a feminist protagonist?

In terms of style, Mulan is stunning, with Taoist-inspired, wide brushstrokes, human-dwarfing mountains and rivers, and pale, scene-framing cherry blossoms. Mulan herself, however ( voiced by Ming-Na Wen/sung by Lea Salonga), is no weeping willow. She is too plump to comfortably wear the traditional, waist-crushing dress to impress the town’s matchmaker; her porcelain doll makeup appears gaudy and awkward, and when she attempts to display herself as a worthy bride, her lucky cricket bursts from the cage hooked to her belt, diving into the ogreous matchmaker’s tea and causing this gargantuan creature to race from her office like a thwarted Divine, her face smudged with a goatee of soot and her posterior flaming. Mulan can only hang her head in shame as her lame-legged father asks how her appointment went.

Soon, however, we see the real Mulan come through: upon discovering that her pa has been drafted to fight the Huns, she becomes determined to save him from marching to his death. To the tune of triumphant battle music, Mulan hacks off her long, ebony hair with a swish of her father’s battle sword, and dresses herself, football player-like, in his enormous armor. In an effort to help Mulan, her family’s ancestral spirits unwittingly send Mushu (Eddie Murphy), a chameleon-sized dragon who was demoted from his guardian post for getting another family member beheaded. Thus, Mushu and the lucky cricket become Mulan’s pals in battle, teaching her how to be a man (“Aw, my little baby’s all grown up and off to destroy people,” says Murphy in a typical Murphy moment). Mulan considers turning back, not when she sees death and immolation, but when she sees men hacking up gobs of phlegm, picking their noses, and belching vociferously at the army camp. She, too, learns to engage in this behavior, however, and thus she also learns to kick serious Hun butt. The Huns, with their flashing yellow eyes and screeching pet hawks, come to symbolize the rape of Mulan’s village as well as of her girlhood, as Shan-Yu (Miguel Ferrer), the leader of the Huns, crushes a tiny, female doll which his hawk has snatched from the desecrated Chinese village. When Mulan finds this lost doll, her anger is spurred, and she is moved to destroy much of the Hun army with her own brilliant military maneuver.

After an awkward moment where a bathing Mulan finds herself being chased by nude men in the watering hole (they cannot see her body under the water, and believe her to be a boy), Mulan learns how crucial it is to hide her femininity, realizing that, as Mushu says, “no one cares what a girl has to say.” Mulan drops her voice, calls herself “Ping,” and tries to ignore her arousal upon seeing Li Shang (voiced by B.D. Wong/sung by Donny Osmond), her captain, fighting shirtless. The main message of the film is that women are not taken seriously simply because they are women, and thus, women should do their best to “flower in the face of adversity” and follow their inner calling, even if it is not to become a delicate blossom, but a bloodthirsty Venus flytrap. In the end, when Mulan finally gets her man, it is not because she is beautiful, but because she is more man than any man in her army. She succeeds because she loves and wishes to honor her father, not because she is given magical assistance (her helpers largely foul her up whenever they interfere with her actions). She is beautiful because she has come into herself, not because she has grown into someone else’s vision of beauty (see Sleeping Beauty or Snow White for this). Mulan is not about girl power, but Amazon strength.

Incidentally, I recently came across that Skipper doll, lying in a box among my collection of pristine, ribbon-tressed Barbies. Skipper is the only doll there whose hair has been brushed until it became matted, whose kneepads are worn from pulling them on and off, and whose feet are squashed from riding her skateboard so often. Maybe Mulan is right: Little girls are more ready for real woman role models than we would lead them to think.