( Source from Wikimedia )
Mulan was my favourite Disney Movie in childhood. It produced in 1998 by Walt Disney Feature Animation. The story is based on the Chinese old poem “Ballad of Mulan”, about a girl dress up like a man to replace her dad to be a soldier. So it is a Chinese story made by a western country. Although it is my favourite movie, I do get confused in some scene which shows the orientalism.
Refer to the Oxford dictionaries, “Orientalism” is style, artefacts, or traits considered characteristic of the peoples and cultures of Asia. It also means that how western people think the people in eastern.
Since Mulan is a Chinese story movie made by the Western, the western people may have some misunderstood on the culture of Asia and I did find something wrong. I found out a Chinese background based movie have a mix with the Japan culture. It also has some stereotyped ideas and Western perceptions of the East were embedded in this movie. Here is some clip from the movie Mulan:
( Source from Youtube )
From Mulan outfit, she is wearing something like kimono but not a traditional Chinese costume. The makeup is about the thick coating of white foundation and the red lips, and the hair bun. This is all referred to “Geisha” which is the traditional culture in Japan, not China’s.
The clip also has shown a character a lot of characters outlook, and all of them are “thin and small eyes, yellow skin and thin lips”. It is the image that western think all Asian look like this, and even most of the Asian characters in Western animation movie look like this.
0:49 of the clip, the grandmother said, “Hold this, we’ll need more luck than I thought”. She gives a mascot to Mulan and makes sure Mulan will bring the mascot with her at 2:17. It is one of the stereotype ideas, western perceive that “Chinese are superstition”, but in China not everyone is superstition, it is only a small portion. There may have people are superstition in every country not only China.
( Source from Youtube )
In this clip, it shows the mix up with China and Japan culture again. The cherry blossom is shown so many time in the movie. The western may think the cherry blossom is from China but it is actually the national flower of Japan. The Western may think Japan and China are mostly the same since we are all Asian, they do not know the culture between this two country are totally different.
( Source from Youtube )
This is the scene that showing Mulan’s house is mystical and strange with all the ancestral tablets in the movie. Disney show in this way can be a disregard of Eastern cultures because veneration of ancestors is an important or crucial part of the culture in Chinese.
Western perceptions of the East make the western misunderstand the culture of different Asian country. Hope that Disney may do more research before they make a movie, it can help reduce the orientalist stereotypes since children may keep in mind of those orientalism scenes because they do not have any judgment or even this is the only Way they know about the culture of another country. It is easy to instil the misconceptions or influence a child on media.
References
Orientalism | Definition of orientalism in English by Oxford Dictionaries. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/orientalism
Anamika. (2018, May 14). All About Geisha Makeup History – WiseShe. Retrieved from https://www.wiseshe.com/all-about-geisha-makeup-history/
Said, E 2001, ‘From Orientalism’, in V Leitch (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, W. W. Norton, New York, pp. 1991-2012
The Ancient standard. (2011, June 17). The Real Story of Mulan. Retrieved from http://ancientstandard.com/2011/06/17/the-real-story-of-mulan/
M. (2013, December 10). Mulan- Honor to Us All Clip (HD). Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO263dPKqns
U. (2009, September 03). Mulan – Reflections [HQ]. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=120&v=1_BtlAw4trg
B. (2013, March 20). Mulan Transformation Scene. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=49&v=K08_gS2shfk
Movie Poster Mulan 2017, Wikimedia, United States, viewed 23 October 2018,
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Movie_poster_mulan.JPG>
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