For research purposes, I begged my children to go to Disney's new movie, "Mulan." Having suffered the agony of "Pocahontas" and boredom of "Hunchback of Notre Dame," they cited the "Fool me once, shame on Disney. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice???" principle. They finally agreed after extracting the right to exit the theater when the political correctness became nauseating.
"Mulan" is better than Disney's aforementioned painful experiences. Disney is back to what it does best - cricket sidekicks. The songs are horrible, but children are entertained by slapstick and Eddie Murphy's voice as Mushu the dragon. However, I haven't seen this much feminist dogma since the Promise Keeper march.Mulan finds her gender problematic because in China women marry, which Mulan feels compromises true self. She sings, "Why is my reflection someone I don't know? When will my reflection show who I am inside?" Mulan sees lipstick and eyeliner as betrayals of her inner being which, we soon learn, is a Samurai warrior/engineer with expertise in air missile trajectories. A matte foundation suppresses women's capabilities.
Mulan's identity problem could stem from the fact that she is the only one in her village, apart from Mushu, without a Chinese accent. Mushu has a 2 Live Crew accent.
In the midst of Mulan's feminist awakening, Huns invade China, and the emperor conscripts one male per family. Mulan's father plans to go until Mulan, fresh from a disastrous meeting with a matchmaker, dons her father's armor to go in his stead, be all that she can be, and do more before 8:00 AM than Baptist wives do all day, thereby avoiding Lancome cosmetics.
So disturbed are Mulan's ancestors by her decision that they awaken to argue about their descendant, "the cross-dresser." The ancestors bemoan Mulan's actions as a disaster that means "traditional values will disintegrate." Why, the six Disney twits it took to write this script are mocking!
Mulan's arrival at training camp provides a Disney look at males. The first man shown has a finger up to second knuckle in his nose. Mulan's colleagues are sloppy, rude, spitting idiots. Mulan wants war and killing, not belching.
From here we move into post-modern feminism. Mulan is the only soldier capable of climbing a 10-story pole because her upper body strength exceeds Jack La Lanne's, yet she still takes the time to bathe. "Just because I look like a man doesn't mean I have to smell like one," she huffs.
Because the subtitle of "Mulan" is "The Making of a Hero" (not heroine), Mulan must save the day. During a fierce battle with the forensically talented Huns who have located their enemies by smell, Mulan produces a victory by firing a cannon at a mountain, targeting just the right angle and location to produce a Hun-burying avalanche.
This feat comes from the same girl who was banished by the matchmaker because her poor aim prevented her from pouring tea without body burns. But pouring tea has misogynistic undertones whereas killing folks in snowy mountain passes with smelly guys is why women exist. Cartoons don't mention the reality of Lts. Carey Lohrenz and the late Kara Hult-green, the two female substandard U.S. Navy pilots who couldn't aim aircraft onto carriers.
Mulan's gender is then revealed by an astute medic. The penalty in China for women joining the army is death. Apparently young girls would flock to the military in order to take advantage of free karate lessons or date. Captain Shang, Mulan's leader and romantic interest whose life she saved, decides against killing her but leaves her behind and leads his troops to the emperor's palace for their glory parade.
Mulan, left without a military career and, surprisingly, no sexual harassment claim with which to get some bucks, is coping with tears when she sees the Huns rise from the snow. She rides like the wind to warn the emperor and her victorious colleagues of impending danger. They ignore her, because in Eddie Murphy's ghetto-inspired accent and words, "Hey, you're a girl again!"
Undaunted, Mulan, the klutz who couldn't walk in a dress, climbs walls, swings on ropes, and twirls like a dervish to save the emperor. He invites her to join his Cabinet, and she declines so that she can return home for courting by Captain Shang, an obvious match because he also speaks without a Chinese accent. A happy feminist ending: Make war, then love and marriage.
What kind of message is this to send to our young girls? Mulan should have taken the ex officio Cabinet member slot. A village could raise her children and she could develop health-care plans and change her hair style frequently. What fun the movie could have been if we could have had the voice talents of Sharon Stone as the beret-wearing palace intern and Goofy as her lawyer.
The most profound moment in the movie came from the 4-year-old in front of me when he turned to his mother and asked, "is she a girl or a man now?" How proud Walt would be to know his legacy now is confusing kids about gender!