The Othering and Scapegoating of the Asian Culture in Mulan

MULAN

Throughout our childhood we are exposed to many new things that include different experiences, different languages, and even different cultures. Many of these things are learned through watching television shows or having someone tell us a story since it might be difficult for us to experience it first hand. Studies have shown that a child will have spent more hours watching television than hours spent at school. This becomes an important issue to address when most of the learning can happen from being exposed to those 1,200 hours of television (statisticbrain.com).  A communication researcher named Stuart Hall (2000) said, racism and the media touch directly the problem of ideology, since the media’s main sphere of operations is the production and transformation of ideologies (p. 272). Sorry to ruin anyone’s childhood with what I’m about to say, but Disney movies do have a lot of racism and misrepresentation of cultures. Some of the racism might be unintentional, but nonetheless is still exist and can cause racism outside the television. To show this, I will be analyzing Mulan and how there is racism towards the Asian community. I will analyze how the movie Mulan is racist when using scapegoating to make China look sexist. 

           Minorities and women have always been underrepresented in movies and television shows. When represented, there has always been a problem with either showing the race as too white or showing the minority races with certain stereotypes. For example, the Cosby Show, many African American complained that this show did not represent their community well and there was a negative portrayal of the majority of the African American community (Acham). In most cases, people wouldn’t care if a television show was accurate. In this case, it is important to show accuracy when portraying a minority group, since this television exposure might be the only In other words, what you see is what you think is accurate. In many instances, the exposure of another race in a television shows is the only exposure a child might have to a different race and culture until they’re older. By the time that they do get exposed to different races, the child will have already set up certain stereotypes and ways on classifying that race. As Bell Hooks explains in his article, "Eating the Other," as a culture, we like to see other cultures differently to be able to identify ourselves. By doing this, we are also causing the other to look negative to make us look positive. This misrepresentation happens in the Disney movie, Mulan.

                                  Mulan was aired on the big screen in 1998(IMBd). The producer had put a lot of thought into it and wanted to look for a way to show the Chinese tale of a girl who passed as a man to fight in the war (Disney.wikia.com). “Development for Mulan began in 1994, after the production team sent a select group of artistic supervisors to China for three weeks to take photographs and drawings of local landmarks for inspiration; and to soak up local culture. The filmmakers decided to change Mulan's character to make her more appealing and selfless” (disney.wikia.com). Already we have an outsider’s perspective trying to categorize and build a racial identity to represent the Asian culture. Mulan was a character built to also represent a strong feminist character. Compared to the other Disney princesses, Mulan showed courage and even went as far as switching gender roles.

            In order to present Mulan as a powerful and feminist woman, there had to be something that they could contrast her with. This something they chose was China. In the movie, China is represented as one of the most sexist countries in the world. In the video “Disney Racism Examples,” they state that in fact that is not true to China and that women don’t have a matting arangements like the one described in the film (YouTube). 

 The film shows this Mulan scene, which focuses on the importance of an Asian women’s appearance. The song called “Bring Honor to Us All,” is about Mulan being good enough for a man and bringing the family honor if she carries someone’s last name. This scene can feed in to the Asian stereotype of the Asian woman as a sex object. When focusing on the woman’s appearance and on the goal being to find a man, it makes the woman look like an object. The problem with this is the idea of looking at a woman as an object of desire and beauty, rather than an equal human. This stereotype has been popular in the media because it causes a sense of being exotic and "different"(abagond). 

                        Another scene where a lot of sexism is portrayed is the scene when the solders sing about the kind of woman they want in their life in the song, "A Girl Worth Fighting For." The simple fact that they used the word "fighting," already shows that they are trying to have the characters define themselves as a hyper-masculine stereotype. The stereotypes the men are constructing about women are, the woman in the kitchen, a woman who looks beautiful for them, and even criticize women for being unintelligent. This is important because it shows what the male perspective is on these females. When Burke talks about the definition of a Hu(man), he talks about how we "are rotten with perfection" and how we want the "perfect enemy." With scapegoating these sexist roles into a foreign culture, it allows us to put the blame on the other to not see it in our culture. 

            In order to make Mulan a character that represented a “Warrior Princess,” Disney had to use scapegoating (Jasinksi), which is the process of putting hate and the negative onto something or someone else, and put the sexist role on China. This is one of the major problems because we see the Asian culture as a different culture which we “other” ourselves from, and think that these sexist roles are normal because it is a different culture. When children are exposed to these cartoons, their perception of that certain culture is the one that is being represented by Disney characters. It is important to raise awareness of these dangerous issues because of the limited options of identity that minorities get on television. It might not be Disney's intent to be racist and portray the Chinese as sexist, but that is the way that they are reflecting it. 

Abagond. "Abagond." Wordpress. N.p., 18 Nov. 2010. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/stereotypes-about-east-asian-women/>.

Acham, Christine. “ICON” Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power: Christine Acham: 9780816644322. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.Hooks, Bell. Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. Boston: South End, 1992. Print.

Burke, Kenneth. "Definition of Man." The Hudson Review 16.12 (2013): 491-514. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. <https://icon.uiowa.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/main_frame.d2l?ou=2167432&tId=2937503>.

"Disney Racism Examples." YouTube. YouTube, 21 Mar. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHyzAbV6nuM>.Jasinski, James. Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001. Print.

"Mulan (1998)." IMBd. Amazon.com, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120762/>.

"Mulan-A Girl worth Fighting for." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Nov. 2006. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiqmZLOaD8o>."MULAN Bring Honor to Us All." YouTube. YouTube, 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnUEDaeoF0Q>.

"Television Watching Statistics." Statistic Brain RSS. BLS American Time Use Survey, A.C. Nielsen Co, 7 Sept. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://www.statisticbrain.com/television-watching-statistics/>.

"Wikia." Disney Wiki. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Mulan>.

         Hall, S. (2000). Racist Ideologies and the Media. Media Studies: A Reader. New York NY:New York University Press, pp. 271-282.