MULAN, and The Ongoing Complications of ’90s Disney Animated Films

The arrival of Disney’s new live-action Mulan has opened a few cans of worms, some that definitely relate to Disney’s animated adaptation of the Chinese ballad that was released back in 1998…

You may know that I’ve had a history of being very harsh on some of the features released during the esteemed Disney Renaissance period. A lot of that harshness is rooted in a need to understand and even defend those who have found fault with Disney’s tellings of certain stories during that time. As a teenager many moons ago, when I had caught wind of people disliking Disney’s films for various reasons, I had been particularly stung by a particular criticism leveled at films based on pre-existing stories. I knew for the first time that the films I loved were not… Quite… Loved. Hated, even.

Nowadays, Walt Disney Animation Studios has shifted to telling more original stories, though they do loosely adapt the occasional fairy tale or two (Tangled, Frozen), and maybe even work some folklore of another culture into a more original endeavor (the integration of demigod Maui in Moana), and there was the one Marvel adaptation (Big Hero 6). Otherwise, this current iteration of Disney Animation has strayed clear of adapting classic novels, other folk tales, and many more. But perhaps a bigger problem than changing stories is how they represent other cultures, and this is something that definitely applies to the films they are making nowadays, and their past films…

I had already broken down the five animated features – Mulan is one of them – that comprise the latter half of the Disney Renaissance in a multi-part series on here back in 2016, but I looked at them more as films than anything else. Looking at them again in new ways is just what I do these days, it seems. I had also waffled on about how being a Disney “fan”, a more critical one at that, is complicated. You want to point out issues in a certain kind of Disney animated film or product, but you don’t want to insult or hurt anyone who worked on those films, and you really don’t want to upset someone who may really have a connection with those films. I’ve probably stressed it before, but I don’t have a problem with the people who worked on Mulan, and similarly flawed ’90s Disney animated features like Hercules and Pocahontas. I don’t have a problem with people who genuinely like, or even love those films, or consider them to be cinematic achievements. I actually quite like them myself, even the wartier ones. At the beginning of this past decade, I was a little more provocative when it came to this stuff. Maybe I was little too harsh…

But I have to stick to what I feel. My criticisms are mostly directed at those who were the powers-that-be during this period in Disney’s history, and mostly always have been…

Disney Pictures’ Mulan reimagining, a live-action film combining just a few elements from Disney’s 1998 animated feature with elements from the original Chinese folk tale, is right around the corner. Many have wondered where the snappy, wisecracking Mushu is. Or where Li Shang is. No songs? How could they?! On the other side of the coin, there were probably a good many people who wondered why a silly little dragon and such were even in a Hua Mulan movie to begin with. Mulan might’ve been a critical and moderate commercial success in North America back in 1998, but it wasn’t quite given such a welcome in China, and audiences and even their government rightfully found the picture to be rather offensive. As the remake nears, we’re once again hearing about these flaws present in the animated film and why they needed to be strayed from in order to make the new movie fare better in China, and to make it a “better” movie in general.

The medium of animation, obviously, is not to blame for Mulan‘s issues. I wouldn’t even blame directors Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook, nor anyone on the writing team. It is true that Bancroft, for example, didn’t want to explore Buddhism in this film and instead tied the story to his Christian beliefs. That’s certainly an issue, but I’m not going to rag on him for that, especially now since it’s been nearly 22 years since the movie came out. That’s just one instance of many… Mulan basically shares the same problem as something like Pocahontas… Disney, as they were in the 1990s, should not have tackled this kind of subject matter for a family-friendly, McDonald’s Happy Meal and Szechuan sauce-toting movie.

I actually had the Happy Meal toy of Mushu, by the way. My only memory of it, tellingly, is a day where I was beyond sick. I was throwing up all day, TMI, but the toy was on the table, and I played with it… I guess to keep my mind off of my ills. I’m autistic, so I hyper-focus on things… And whenever I was in pain, or was in trouble, or was… Sick… I would fixate on something. The plastic Mushu toy, pictured above, was what I was fixating on that afternoon. I kept pulling the arm back so it would snap back and hit the little gong. I don’t know what happened to it, I was 5 1/2 years old.

It is undeniable. In the 1990s, The Walt Disney Company used Walt Disney Feature Animation – an enterprise packed to the brim with very, VERY talented people who were at the top of their game as artists – as an outlet to make G-rated animated films meant to make lots of money, sell toys, and lots of other things. The executives seemed to view animation the way most people in their age group did, in that it was something you had to grow out of, something that is first and foremost for young children. All of the stigmas that were super-glued to animation in the 1960s really persisted, even into a day and age where animation enjoyed a real resurgence. Hell, it continues to this day.

Former chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had left Disney in 1994, had arguably set the template. Working under then-CEO Michael Eisner, Katzenberg had often stated in interviews during the 1980s that Disney’s animation was only for young children. He cut harsh scenes out of The Black Cauldron, ordered a title change to Basil of Baker Street, and even tried to remove ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid on the grounds that a few 8-year-olds in a test screening got bored during that pivotal musical number. After the successes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid, he was singing a different tune. According to John Sanford, a former Disney story man who had directed the studio’s 2004 feature Home On The Range, Katzenberg once remarked to the staff “You aren’t competing with other animated features, you are competing with the latest Tom Cruise movie. You’re competing with Top Gun.” Once more adults started flocking to animated films again, it became clear to Katzenberg, Eisner, and everyone else in the top ranks that they could make more money off of animated features. Not the $45-or-so million that they were collecting off of films like The Fox and the Hound. Indeed, the push to make Disney’s animated films more universal for the first time in a while lead to the blockbuster successes that were The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Those films laid the groundwork, and the executives didn’t stray from their formulaic elements.

The model for Disney’s animated features going forward still wasn’t on par with Walt Disney’s game-changing methods during the Golden Age. Katzenberg still seemed to feel that these movies were for kids first and foremost, and thus little things had to be implemented. I’ve mentioned these before, perhaps too many times, but you know… Silly sidekicks meant to keep the bored kids entertained and sell Happy Meal toys, toilet humor, slapstick intervals that attempted to lessen the intensity of certain scenes, that kind of thing. It wasn’t quite the delicate balance of Walt’s films, most of his animated features had a real sharp tonal consistency, which admittedly isn’t easy to achieve at all – no matter who you are. Walt’s films weren’t the kind to make a cute one-liner in a moment of pure danger, Beauty and the Beast sandwiches a silly slapstick fight in the middle of its pretty intense climax. Walt didn’t expressly aim his pictures at children, but Katzenberg and the top execs sure aimed for them.

Then something happened. Disney’s higher-ups saw how successful the new animated features were at the box office, and were high on the Best Picture nomination that Beauty and the Beast managed to get. Beauty and the Beast, of course, did not win Best Picture in early 1992. The nomination was pivotal for Disney, it was only the second time a mainline Disney film was ever nominated for such a prize, and the first animated feature to get one. Prior to Beauty and the Beast, Mary Poppins had been nominated for Best Picture of 1964, and it had also lost. This is where Pocahontas comes in, a film that I feel sums up the bad and ugly of ’90s Disney animation. Katzenberg and the higher-ups wanted Pocahontas to be “it”, the film that would win the Best Picture Oscar that Beauty and the Beast could’ve gotten. And what better way to do that than combine the elements of Beauty and the Beast with American history? The then-recent success of Dances With Wolves must’ve reverberated throughout Hollywood, and throughout Disney. Eisner and his crew had a hand in turning Disney around from where they were, and probably wanted to go to the next level after Beauty and the Beast blasted the box office and got all those raves. They had the talent, who were only getting better and better with each new feature.

Pocahontas is often one of the more contested Disney animated features, and perhaps grade-A ammunition in anyone’s “Disney is horrible” argument. I like the film enough, as a “film”, and I especially think the filmmakers themselves gave it their all… but I totally get why it’s not well-liked, and why it would be used as an example of Disney’s evils. Outside of the film content itself, Disney refused to heed most Native American consultant groups during the film’s production, and proceeded to make an outright romanticization of real-life events. Outside of dubious historical inaccuracies and its portrayal of Native Americans, it’s also a film that tries way too hard to be a kiddie flick and a prestige picture at the same time: The Disney executives’ narrow-minded approach to animation meets the executives’ attempts at making an Oscar-chasing film… Two very flawed approaches, slammed into one, with the animators and creative teams being the ones to execute it while still kind of doing it their way. It’s that uneven mix that defines many a latter Renaissance-era Disney animated feature. While successful at the box office, Pocahontas was met with mixed reviews and received fair criticism for its more offensive elements.

Disney Feature Animation, in the state that they were in, needed to stay in their lane. This is not to say that Disney Animation couldn’t, and shouldn’t, tell a darker, more prestigious narrative. They can! They totally can! They could’ve! Pocahontas, in another timeline, could’ve been an adult Touchstone release that happened to be produced at Walt Disney Feature Animation. An adult animated film with more nuance, no unneeded critter comedy and unnecessary flimflammery, and more of a sensitivity towards the culture they were trying to represent… But because Disney was very much a brand in 1995 as they are now, Pocahontas had to be a mainline Disney movie, and it had to be a kid-friendly, G-rated endeavor that aligned with a “Disney animation is for kiddies” mindset, no matter what the consequences would be. In other words, Pocahontas was always Eisner and Katzenberg’s big ego trip. Not that most of Hollywood in general handled this kind of thing any better. The Disney heads saw how big Beauty and the Beast was with critics and audiences, they saw it get nominated for Best Picture, they wanted to recreate that by meshing that film’s successful elements with something topical, something that could be seen as prestigious, and something right in line with Best Picture winner Dances With Wolves. Something to fit right in with the new age movements, too. Pocahontas ended up being none of that, and it likely remains a sore spot for Native Americans.

Where am I going with this? Well, Mulan is a similar case. Mulan is based on a Chinese cultural touchstone, not so much actual events in their history. Big bad American Disney thought they could turn that ballad into another G-rated, toy-selling, animated musical comedy. Well, what happened? Like I said before, it was viewed as a poor adaptation and a rather offensive one at that. Mulan is basically a ’90s Disney movie. It has songs, it has a heroine protagonist who “wants more”, it has slapstick comedy and a funny sidekick, it has a climactic action sequence where a big bad villain has to be defeated. It is a ’90s Disney animated movie, an American, Hollywood picture… but set in ancient China. Really, the Chinese setting and a few other touches differentiate it a bit from, say, The Lion King or Hercules. Of course it wouldn’t have gone over well, it is very Americanized to a point where it could’ve easily been about any Chinese warrior or princess. Or not about a Chinese person at all.

The strangest thing is, it could’ve been even worse. The film was originally conceived as a romantic comedy about Mulan being betrothed, that idea was in place until Lion King story man Chris Sanders convinced the studio to make the project more like the original folk tale. Perhaps Sanders was lucky to even get the film to that kind of state, making the film somewhat like the original ballad was the bare minimum here.

Niki Caro’s Mulan is seemingly belated course correction, but it too has faced its own small controversies, namely the fact that this Chinese story is being directed by a white woman. Caro’s justification for that a few weeks back rightfully upset many. While it is right to point out the animated feature’s more egregious elements, I don’t feel it is quite right to trash the film as a whole, or Disney Animation, the Renaissance period, or anyone who worked on it. I look at Bancroft and Cook’s Mulan as a more misguided endeavor than a bad one, not too dissimilar to how I view Pocahontas. As a ’90s Disney animated comedy adventure, it’s fine enough. I like the lead character, her adventure, the art style and ace character animation, the pacing’s pretty tight, some of the music is good, and I really dig the battle sequence on the mountain. As an adaptation of Hua Mulan? Let’s not go there. I pretty much feel the same way about The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules (which supposedly was very disliked by Greek audiences), and Tarzan. Did ’90s Disney executives get too big for their britches, assigning this material to a very-controlled Disney Feature Animation? Absolutely. Did Disney Feature Animation do a go job with what they were handed? I think so, for the most part.

But not everybody views it the way I do, it’s not easy to just look at Mulan as just another ’90s Disney movie, given that not too many Hua Mulan movies exist. From the outside, if Disney and animation history are not your forte, yes, Disney Animation’s 1998 Mulan movie can be seen as offensive, tasteless, and schlocky. It probably is. Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is probably a horrible, insulting adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel. Ron and John’s Hercules trivializes Greek myths. Yes, I can understand any of those positions. At the same time, I’m more monkey-in-the-middle here, and always have been. I appreciate the craft that Disney Feature Animation’s talented folks bring to these films, whether it’s in the art, the directing, the staging, the writing, the visual storytelling, the music, and whatnot. Maybe that’s my bias speaking, because Disney has been part of my life since I was a wee bairn. Disney Animation’s film output and history is one of my major interests, maybe I’m in no position to speak about this. But films are not made in a vacuum, and I don’t just like Disney’s animation library for the content alone. How one of their works relates to the world and time and context it was made in is a big interest of mine. That applies to anything I’m interested in, whether it’s music or video games or art… What in the world inspired it? How does it relate to our world? What was the thought process behind all of it.

Context is always key, I think, when analyzing just about anything. Including, yes… Disney movies.

Back in fall 2017, I was enrolled in a history course concerning East Asian art. I loved that class, and I really enjoyed my time with my professor, who was such a great person to have a in-depth conversation with. Often times, I’d show up to her classroom an hour early, and we’d have these talks before any of the other students showed up. Early on, I had let her know that I was a big animation lover. She brought up Studio Ghibli, but mentioned that she didn’t quite like Disney, and one of the first films she pointed to was Mulan. So what did I do? Maybe some other Disney fan, nostalgic for the late ’90s, would’ve went “What? How could you dislike Mulan? That movie’s awesome!” No, I simply replied that Mulan was a ’90s Disney feature, and briefly told her about how the animation studio was run circa 1998, and how that culture affected the picture. She understood. I went on to tell her that I was more into the Walt-era films, though she did add that Bambi was nowhere near as intense as Felix Salten’s book… To which I explained, Bambi was made in the early 1940s, when pretty much all Hollywood movies had to adhere to the very strict Hayes Code. Walt Disney couldn’t make his Bambi adaptation a very violent affair, or a film that would be very much unsuitable for anyone under the age of, say, 10? Guess what… She understood.

Context is key.

Disney Animation, and a lot of American animation in general, is strengthened by context. It has helped me appreciate these works in ways I’ve never had before, and has also helped me with my own work, my writing, and everything else in-between. To write off Mulan based on its very American-ness is fair, but writing off animation, or Disney as a whole may not be. What you can criticize Mulan for, you can apply to *several* Hollywood films – animated and live-action. There’s a difference, to me, between The Walt Disney Company and a division like Walt Disney Animation Studios. The studio is full of genuinely talented people. Heck, most executives are just doing their job, trying to keep their job, etc. Sometimes, they all have a job to do, whether the end result is quite right or not. I don’t wish to trash the work of the directors, writers, animators, and such. If one of those people does or says something out of line (*cough*John Lasseter*cough**cough*), they themselves should be criticized and called out. But a lot of people within the animation studio are doing their work. I don’t idolize the company, but I do really enjoy the work that’s done by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and as such I come to their defense when it comes to Mulan and similarly flawed features while not giving them a pass for everything.

But maybe it’s totally wrong that I’m even breaking these films down and trying to separate the positive elements from the negative, the truths from the myths. Maybe it’s all bad American Hollywood capitalist trash and I need to throw it in the bin. But, it’s what I like. Along with other movies, video games, albums, songs, books, etc. Most media tends to reflect the world it is made in, for better or worse. I want to be critical of what I love, but not hurtful about it to others. A film like Mulan, or Pocahontas, or maybe even The Lion King, sometimes makes that a challenge. I don’t want to growl “It’s an insulting film!” I don’t want to be complicit and say “No, it’s fine.” I want to look at all of its facets. You know… The good, the bad, maybe even the ugly… Life has a lot of that, doesn’t it?

Anyways, Mulan has its strengths as a film, but undeniably can be seen as offensive and wrongheaded in its portrayal of Chinese culture and its reimagining of the original ballad. People did work their bums off on it, though. It was made during a certain time in Disney Animation’s long and ever-changing history, and it is undeniably the result of where Disney – and maybe even American culture itself – was in the mid-1990s. I have no interest in the new Mulan for my own reasons, namely because I don’t like Disney redoing their animated features in live-action, but that’s another story.