she was a clutz in the beginning in order to show her growth by the end. The audience needed to know that her competence and confidence in herself was hard won.
ok
we didn’t say the themes of filial piety and nation were not present in the disney film, like clearly a film about a daughter taking her father’s place to fight in a war is obviously going to be about these things. but what disney did, and is quite famous for doing, is took the source material and adapted it to have a moral that is ultimately quite different than the original intended moral. they notably did this with classic fairytales like the little mermaid: yes, the original had a romance element in it, but was primarily about her quest to become human so that she would have a soul, and finding true love was merely a means to get to that point. when disney adapted it, they threw out the major plot point about humans having a soul and mermaids not, and focused primarily on the romance being her driving motivation.
with mulan, they kept the filial piety but turned it into a vehicle to drive home the “girl power” theme. this is seen over and over again when the other soldiers talk about women and what they expect of women: you have lines like “did they send me daughters / when i asked for sons,” and there’s a whole fucking song all about the kind of women the soldiers all prefer. then you get to the scene where she is discovered as a woman and is sentenced to death, which absolutely was invented by disney and is not a plot point in the original ballad, where they basically don’t give a shit that she’s a woman. instead, she is celebrated and offered an official post but turns it down so that she can return to her family.
this is what we’re talking about when we say disney turned the film into a primarily feminist story instead of a tale that is primarily about filial piety.
-e
Uh… actually no.
In the ballad, her identity as a woman is never revealed to the emperor.
Also, here’s another version of the tale:
木兰，宋州人，姓魏氏。恭帝时发兵御戎，木兰有智勇，代父出征，有功而还。朝廷知其为女子，欲纳入宫、木兰不敢从，遂自尽。唐封为“孝烈将军”，乡人为之立庙。
so did you really need to post this to /r/tumblrinaction, which is actually set up to harass “sjw” blogs like thisisnotjapan, when you had already reblogged it to correct me? like was your correction not enough? you had to go out and show this post to a group of literal racists/sexists who get off on harassing POC and women on tumblr? fuck off and pls unfollow.
-e
Here’re some of my opinions.
Mulan’s story is mainly about filial piety and loyalty to serve the country. The original poem didn’t say they only ask for men. It says her father’s name was on the list. The poem has several sentences describing how Mulan getting prepared to join the army and saying goodbye to her family. She didn’t steal anything (I’m sorry if it’s not that dramatic as you think).
About why others automatically think Mulan was a guy? If you follow where the author try to lead you to, this is where he explained why the other soldiers are surprised:
“雄兔脚扑朔，雌兔眼迷离；双兔傍地走，安能辨我是雄雌？” It means when you grab a rabbit on its ears and pull it up, the male rabbit often moves its legs. The female rabbit often squints its eyes. When male and female rabbits run together, no one could tell what gender they are.
It’s a close metaphor to say “when men and women fight on the battlefield together, you can’t tell who is man, who is woman”. The author didn’t say “You will think the female rabbit is actually male”.
By reading the whole poem, there’s no sign implies the author thinks a woman fighting in a war is so unusual. Just like no one thinks female rabbits can’t run. Actually there’re a lot of famous Chinese heroines throughout the history:
妇好(Shang Dynasty) 迟昭平 (Han Dynasty) 梁红玉 (Song dynasty) 穆桂英(Song dynasty, from the famous General Yang’s with 12 female generals) also 秦良玉，樊梨花，折太君so many others even a princess平阳. In Chinese operas, female warrior roles has two fixed categories Daoma Dan and Wu Dan.
What makes Mulan’s story special is on the “filial piety” part which other Heroine stories didn’t focus on. Mulan didn’t want to become a general, because different people have different goals for life. Mulan went for the family and back for the family which is a highlight for her filial piety at the end.
《河南通志》 was completed in Ming dynasty with editing supervisors. There’re lots of later versions about Mulan and they all have different family names for Mulan. Only the poem is the earliest, original, most influential and widely accepted. I know lots of people feel connections with the disney character Mulan. I love her too. But I only consider her as another portrait of Mulan like the one in 《河南通志》.
