The Mulan the World Deserves
Mulan has a special place in my heart, though in a different way than most talked about in the English media, I suppose. I grew up in Malaysia, and had a steady diet of Chinese period dramas from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore when I grew up. Representation of my ethnicity on screen wasn’t the draw here, but rather the fact that Mulan dared to defy gender roles. None of the badass heroines in other period dramas I watched defy gender roles and expectations quite so literally (that is, until the first series I watched about the female generals of the Yang clan. But that is a topic for another day).
Disney’s live-action Mulan has been making the news lately for all the wrong reasons for its creators. There was the lead actress’ support for the Hong Kong police, the filming in Xinjiang where there are mass internment camps, the lack of Asian writers among the production staff, and even the price of entry itself — a surprising $30 streaming price tag even for Disney+ subscribers. The latter is the reason why I have not seen the movie yet, by the way. I am not paying an extra $30 to watch something on a platform for which I am already paying, especially when the movie is supposed be ‘free’ with the subscription come December.
I really like the old animated Mulan movie, but I love the Mulan TV series I grew up with, a 1999 Taiwanese production with Anita Yuen as the lead actress. It was a glorious 48-episode production, and it had the space to flesh out the themes of a story like Mulan’s that no movie can.
(Warning: There will be many spoilers for this series for the rest of the article)
A cocky, flawed but lovable Mulan
The Mulan in this series had significant and delightful character development over the whole series. She started out kind and talented, yes, but also playful, cocky, and way too blunt for her own good. There are many retellings of Mulan out there, though many show her to be serious or grim; I love the cocky and blunt Mulan here the most. Her tendency to speak her mind got her into trouble over and over again, but it was also a trait that would eventually win her respect and loyalty from people more powerful than her.
The basic premise of the series is the same: in a time of war, Mulan disguised herself as a boy and took her elderly father’s place in the army. But her motivations were also more relatable in that they were not entirely selfless — aside from wanting to protect her father, she also really wanted to prove her mother wrong. Her mother had been expecting a boy when she was pregnant, and having Mulan instead was a very personal disappointment to her, and she resented and mistreated Mulan throughout her childhood. Such gender discrimination is not uncommon among traditional Chinese societies, where daughters are seen as less valuable than sons. As such, Mulan really wanted to prove her worth to her mother, and perhaps unbeknownst to herself, deep down, she just wanted to be loved by her mother. Even as a ten-year-old when I watched it the first time, her drive to prove her worth in something other than her expected role as a wife and mother resonated deeply.
After getting into the army, she had to learn how to balance her humanity with the ruthless order in which an army needs to be run. It was a struggle that she had to continually juggle as she climbed the ranks in the military, and it was beautiful to watch.
She also had two love interests in the show, and kudos to the writers for making both characters believable as love interests, and who have their own interesting arcs to contend with.
What brings this show far beyond the movies is that it went beyond the standard climatic battle and subsequent happy ending, and dealt with complex issues around feminism, politics, and even philosophy. Mulan won the big battle, got exposed as female, and married the love of her life about mid-way through the 48-episode series.
So what’s next?
After the happy ending: In-laws, gender expectations and leadership
Well, to begin with, there was the mother-in-law. Marriage itself is a complex thing, but in Chinese societies, there are additional expectations around relationship dynamics with the in-laws. Mulan, being a female general who married her lover by decree of the emperor as a reward for her achievements, threw that dynamic off entirely from the get-go. And even though she held a lower rank than her husband in the military, she was more famous for her exploits, which drove her proud mother-in-law crazy.
The show took a delightfully comedic approach to these situations and dynamics, and Mulan did not take these expectations lying down — in fact, she punched back (metaphorically) as hard as she was hit, and stood up for herself. She was a respectful daughter-in-law, but not a submissive one.
The show was also not all domestic from there onwards. Mulan remained a general in the military, and during a brief respite in the war, she and other generals at court were tasked to recruit new people into the army. The emperor set up a competition to see who could train the best army, and the winner would get to be the next overall commander. Mulan learned the hard way that despite her achievements, no men were willing to fight under a woman’s command. With the help of her sidekick Su Jili, a Mushu-like character who happens to be a deity trapped in a human body, she managed to gather a bunch of misfits and rejects whom she then trained into a decent team. This was where the show explored the differences in stereotypical male vs female leadership styles, and what kind of impact they might have. Mulan did not win the competition, but she won the respect of her peers and the loyalty of her new troops.
Mysticism: Deities, heavenly court politics, and critiques of traditions
Speaking of deities, the show also has its mystical aspects. It was, in fact, quite a crucial part of the plot. Su Jili, the aforementioned deity, may be the comedic relief and Mulan’s helper like Mushu was in the animated movie, but he was also a lot more than that. He was an important character that not only showed the quirkiness of common folk religion in Chinese societies, but also served as a way to critique it.
Su Jili was a low-rank deity who started out as greedy and self-serving, and got himself caught up in the politics of the heavenly court. He was banished to live as a human, and he had to either aid or sabotage Mulan in order to get his former job back, depending on whom you ask (like I said, he was caught up in complicated politics). His journey in learning how to be human and to care for someone other than himself was a key part of the show, and it also served as a subtle critique of common folk religion.
While mysticism and special powers are not everyone’s cup of tea, the show used it well and tied it in with the broader theme of challenging traditions. One of the most interesting revelations came midway through the show, when Mulan was revealed to be a male deity in her previous life. Her past life had offended the Jade Emperor with his blunt words, and was banished to live a hard life as a female human as punishment. The gender switch was deliberate; life as a human was hard, but life as an unwanted daughter was harder than most. While some may dislike adding a mystical aspect to Mulan’s origins, the fact that she was set up to fail made her eventual triumph all the more sweeter.
The story came full circle in the final episode, where Mulan, her husband, and Su Jili had a confrontation with the Jade Emperor.
“This isn’t fair!” Mulan snapped after the Jade Emperor explained her past life to her, and that she would have to give up her current life and come back to serve as a male deity once more, “All the things we were taught — to be kind and do good deeds — none of it matters! What matters is we suck up to you and say only what you want to hear!”
Talk about speaking truth to power! The Jade Emperor was the most powerful deity in the story, and Mulan had no qualms criticising him. While this was entertaining to watch, it also served as a critique of the societal expectations to be respectful and deferential to authority. This is but one example of the many ways in which the story both showed and critiqued Chinese traditions.
Rewatching Mulan through a queer lens
My rewatching of the show earlier this year was the first time I watched it after coming out as gay. There were a few moments in the show that were homophobic on hindsight — at one point before Mulan was outed as a woman, she drew the short straw and had to ‘dress up’ as a woman to be the bait in a scheme to catch a serial kidnapper. Her then-commander and future husband, Li Liang, realised that she was very pretty as a woman and started becoming attracted to her. While he struggled with his confusing feelings, Mulan playfully teased him about being attracted to a man, and he got angry and felt insulted. Other characters made jokes about them too, with the unsaid assumption that being homosexual was a weird and unacceptable thing.
While that hurts now, it is important to keep in mind that this is a mainstream Chinese period drama series produced in the late 90s, and I don’t fault it for speaking through the cultural lens of the time.
That aside, gender expression and its subversion was clearly a big part of the story. By dressing up as a man, Mulan was able to do things that a woman could not in her society. Throughout the show, gender expression played a role in a few more plot points. The first was during the incident mentioned above, when Mulan had to dress up as a woman to play bait. It was also used in a complicated ruse to save both Mulan and Li Liang’s lives in the final episode, where they had to dress in the opposite gender. (Incidentally, that was not Li Liang’s first or even second time in drag. What can I say? Mulan married an interesting guy.)
It was also only recently that I found out how Disney’s 1998 Mulan was an accidental queer icon, and how queer fans in particular relate to Mulan and the struggle to be who they are on the inside. I was barely old enough to understand English when the movie was released, and more than a decade away from recognising my own queerness. When I rewatched the iconic ‘Reflections’ as a gay adult, I had tears in my eyes. Yes, I see why.
In the 1999 TV series, there was a tantalising ‘what-if’ moment that had the potential to turn Mulan into a more explicitly queer story — right before Mulan was exposed as female, the Emperor was so impressed with her achievements that he betrothed his own daughter to her. Wouldn’t it be great if both Mulan and the princess were queer, and they actually get married? My gay heart can only dream.
The rich, complex story the world deserves
I can go on and on about how much I love the 1999 TV series. It isn’t perfect — it is a late 90s production with limited budget, and there are certainly parts that made me cringe on rewatch. But those are minor annoyances in comparison to the rich and layered stories the show manages to tell. It also showcases and pokes fun at many core aspects of Chinese tradition and culture, and the overall tone is refreshingly modern for a period drama.
I don’t really care for another Mulan movie, where I know there would be limited space to explore the many possibilities that come with the basic gender-role-defying premise, and which will most likely end with some climatic battle.
Mulan’s strength as a character isn’t her physical prowess but her courage to defy conventions and to stay true to herself, and that is a battle that is fought every day in all our lives. That she disguises herself as a boy to fight in a war is just her first big act of defiance; there can be so much more — show how she learns to lead as a female general in a male-dominated army; show how she navigates her home life among family members still mired in tradition — or how those family members learn to support her; or even show how she defies the highest authority of all — like the Jade Emperor in the 1999 series — when she encounters injustice.
Mulan’s story can be rich and complex and timeless. We deserve that story. And that story deserves a format that allows for that richness to shine through, and a movie isn’t it.
I wonder if Netflix is up to the challenge?
P. S. In the meantime, here is the opening sequence of the 1999 TV series. Incidentally, the title of the opening song can be loosely translated as, ‘The World in Chaos’. Quite a fitting theme for 2020, no?
Also, delightfully, the song’s first lines go, ‘The heavens can’t handle this, and made it my destiny to deal with it’.
What swagger. How fitting for Mulan.
