Who holds the power to make movies that reach millions of people?
And who do they represent?
At age five, my room was decorated with Disney-themed stickers on my walls. My backpack was Disney-themed as well as my lunch box and school erasers; one could say I had the whole set. Despite having all of my things Disney-themed, I had only seen a few of the Disney princess movies and I had little to no interest in them. I had little interest in them because I knew they all had a similar plot: “girl in distress, boy saves girl, girl rescued.” However, it was not until my mom plugged in the VCR and played Mulan that I yearned for more Disney movies like this one.
I got caught up in the trends and looked up to these Disney characters like millions of other children. Mulan was very independent, she did not need saving, but in fact, she was the one saving a whole army.
Most importantly, Mulan helped represent a completely different culture that was not white or of European descent. Not only was this important to people in the Asian community, but to all (people of color (POC) communities.
Mulan gave me and other little girls the hope that they too could find a character that could represent themselves.
Though, it wasn’t until recently that I began to think about how Disney movie creators could have influenced the storytelling and production of these movies. What influenced Disney to story-tell Mulan through animation after years of storytelling about Princesses of European descent and conservative gender norms or who helped convey this story? As I pondered about the questions I presented above, I became interested in who holds the power to make movies that reach millions of people and how their experiences are built into the famous Disney movies.
As a result, I argue that these are important ideas to keep in mind when creating a movie because movies are stories and stories are windows of experiences for children; but one must keep in mind that not all children are the same; not all children come from the same background, thus, I argue that it is important to have a diverse team of Disney creators sharing their personal experiences throughout the cinematic storytelling in which more people of color can be reached.
Like any individual, Disney creators hold experiences that are referred to as life stories and goal-oriented stories known as situated stories. A researcher named McLean and her colleagues studied how narratives influenced self-development. Life stories and situated stories influenced storytelling and found that storytelling influences one’s self-concept. In other words, McLean and her colleagues found that storytelling is molded by the experiences of the individual constructing the story, and the experiences in the story, in turn, influence the author and the audiences’ self-concept. As McLean et. al., stated, “The self affects the construction of situated stories.” In short, the audience is getting to know a piece of the author through narrative.
Through movies, the audience gets to know the director, the producers, the writers, and the entire creative team of the movie. For example, Mulan is one of several stories that have been retold throughout history. Note how all the stories retold come from one folk story, but are all told differently based on the writers.
Specifically, one of the first retellings of Mulan dates back to the 16th century, known as “The Heroine Mulan Goes to War in Her Father’s Place”, where one of the first changes to the original story happens with the introduction of footbinding (Haynes, 2020). During this time, foot-binding was common to find among women and would create a new detail in the story, which would help distinguish Mulan as a woman. Although it was a cultural experience that the writer had and it helped shape the situated story of Mulan for the 16th century, it’s believed to be the writer’s view on what is considered to be a woman, specifically a beautiful woman. It is interesting to think about how a woman director would have defined beauty: would footbinding be considered as a form of beauty?
Later, in 1939, Mulan was retold through films in China during the height of political conflicts with Japan, where it became renamed Mulan Joins the Army ( Haynes, 2020 ). According to Haynes, a lot of emphasis was put on Mulan disguising as a male soldier and the gender-role distinctions, because it was seen as almost a political reference as if one was saying it was easy to distinguish the enemy from their own people. In this case, the storytellers are portraying their own political message and we have an insight into the writers’ and producers’ perspective on women becoming soldiers; it was an unrealistic one and a joke-worthy story. Then in the 1998 animated film, Mulan is still portrayed as having a clumsy-characteristic and has limited interactions with her father, whereas in the 2020 movies, Mulan is portrayed as more serious and there are more interactions with her father.
Could it be that the creators involved with making the movie, would like to retell the story with more seriousness? Could it be that the creators had more relationships with their fathers than past creators, therefore they found it to be valuable to add more of the daughter-father relationship in the 2020 movie?
Although there is not much information on Mulan’s creative team’s biography regarding close relationships with their father figures in their life, it is known that two of the writers, Lauren Hynek & Elizabeth Martin, were strongly interested in gender equality, due to frustration
“with the limited roles for women in Shakespeare’s work, they started to dream of creating their own stories — ones that featured strong women that their little girl selves could look up to” (CAMARA, 2020).
Both writers portray this passion and self-concept in the scene where Mulan is discovered as an imposter and is portrayed as taking responsibility for tricking everyone, instead of the 1998 film where Mulan is portrayed as helpless (Acuna, 2020).
The writers also support Director Caro’s and Cinematographer Walker’s shift from portraying Mulan as more like a superhero than a Disney princess.
Also, in the 2020 movie, Mulan does not chop off her hair like in the 1998 film, which was one of the most iconic parts of the 1998 movie.
Why? For Walker,
"It was never written in the script that she cuts her hair, ... it was all about her being a woman and maintaining that. She hid her hair, but when it comes out, it's a big part of her being a woman... It's part of her femininity"
(Acuna, 2020). Thus, the experiences and the self-concept the creators of movies have are important, because they share their experiences whether they are negative or positive in the movies and it really is like you are getting to know a part of someone through their storytelling.
If Walker did not believe it was important for Mulan to keep her long hair, would it have influenced children to think that the only way Mulan can join the army was by cutting her hair or giving something up that was so important to herself a necessity?
On the contrary, in the 1998 film, if the creators did not include the scenes of Mulan chopping her hair off, could it have prevented some children from cutting their own hair and trying something new instead of having the more long-traditional hairstyle? All in all, these movies open new windows of experiences to children and it begins with who is telling the story, their self-concepts, and their experiences.
Though the writers, producers, and directors have experiences that promote the femininity that we need in this world, the creative team did not have a person of color and they did not have a Chinese nor a Chinese descent involved in the story making of Mulan; though this is common among other movies, I will also give examples of how the lack of diversity in regards to cultural and ethnic diversity in the creative process of movie-making can be detrimental.
For example, most of Mulan was filmed in New Zealand. This reflected the experiences that the Director and Screenwriter, Niki Caro had throughout her early life. She is from New Zealand, went to school in New Zealand and most of her early work was catered to the New Zealand audience (Dimos I). Therefore, if the team was more diverse, would the location of the movie take place mostly in China and how would that impact the storytelling of Mulan?
Moreover, the snippets of Mulan that were filmed in China became controversial because “ in the Chinese folk tale of Mulan, the story happened in North China, while in Disney’s 2020 version of Mulan, Mulan’s house is filmed [...] in Xiamen, a coastal city in Southeast China” (FAUGHNDER et al., 2020).
In addition, the location of Mulan’s setting was controversial due to political tensions at the time regarding the detainment of Muslims in that area; later the leading actor, Yifei Liu agreed with the government’s decisions and this sparked the trend of “BOYCOTT MULAN” (FAUGHNDER et al., 2020).
How would this have played out if someone knew more about China’s current political news? Maybe the movie would have never been filmed there and maybe it would have been filmed in the North to keep the origins of the story’s setting. With all honesty, this would have saved Disney a lot of trouble if the writer contributing to the storytelling had first-hand experiences with Chinese culture.
Furthermore, the Chinese audience commented on how the takeaway of Mulan was a bit different from the 1998 film where,
‘The background story of ‘Mulan’ is that she wanted to take her father’s place, protect her family and defend the people. But the film turned Hua Mulan into a palace guard protecting the emperor,” the review said. “The people that Hua Mulan wanted to defend became the background’ (FAUGHNDER et al., 2020).
For a lot of other cultures, the main focus of stories is not solely for entertainment, but for giving moral lessons or other cultural purposes and the 2020 film did not highlight one of the main values from the original folktale to the extent the audience wanted; this is true in the Taiwanese culture where stories have a moral purpose (Miller et al., 2001).
This is where the fact that Mulan 2020 was meant to be conveyed more like a superhero than a Princess affects the importance of moral lessons because it seemed as if the writer’s focused more on making Mulan look like a superhero and forgot about other aspects of the stories that are important to some Chinese individuals; for instance, most superhero movies are about action, the loudness, and the adventure and focus less on moral lessons.
In the US, a lot of movies are made with the sole purpose of entertainment, but other cultures tell more. With a more diverse group of screenwriters, the story could have easily incorporated the superhero aspect of Mulan’s character while portraying the importance of defending the people and not just the emperor, because having lessons portrayed in storytelling is essential in several other cultures and that experience would have been portrayed through the film.
While Mulan was considered a success in terms of popularity and finance, an article names, “‘Mulan’ Small Success Has Big Implications For Future Of VOD At Disney”, made the point that Mulan could have had a bigger success: “Lacking that, however, Mulan has grossed $70+ million in theaters to date, an undeniably disappointing number” (Hughes).
Again, I argue that by having POCs in the writing process and creative process of storytelling will allow Disney and other film companies to grasp a larger audience with accurate cultural facts and experiences. People of color are interested in listening to stories about themselves and about stories that relate to them. Consequently, the film industry needs to continue to make stories that will be meaningful to people and have creators that will genuinely speak to these audiences.
In other words, it is important to have a diverse team of creators and it is important to get their stories out to all children, to the POC audience, and to share experiences, cultures, and different ways of thinking, because if they do not, as McLean et. al, states “they would either not be told or would be constructed into a more acceptable story”, a white story for a white audience (McLean et al., 2007).
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