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?
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.
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.