You all, Disney didn't invent Mulan. The original poem is 1500 years old and has been adapted countless times.

In the poem, she fights for *10 years.* And it takes her another 2 to make it home after the war. There is no love interest. (There's more to life than men!)

And while it's surprisingly subversive about gender & gender roles, it's also ultimately very concerned with filial piety & service to one's rulers.

Mulan doesn't sneak away - she says bye to her parents before serving in the army & happily returns home once her duty is done.

So while I'm all about adapting stories, and even changing and subverting them (it makes for interesting art!), this quote from the so-painfully-white writers of the new Disney version rankles:

“In EVERY PREVIOUS VERSION WE COULD FIND, she always ends up coming back and just returning to her old life, and we thought that that was not a SATISFYING ending for her journey" (emphasis mine).

"Satisfying."

That phrasing betrays a complete lack of understanding about anything in the culture they're writing and a total lack of allowing Mulan herself to have any autonomy.

It's one thing to make a totally different ending. It's another thing to make a totally different ending because everyone before you was clearly doing it wrong.

It's whole other thing to make a totally different ending because the culture that's been telling the story for 1500 years has been doing it wrong, but you, a colonialist outsider, are clearly Doing It Right (TM).

*That* is the very definition of arrogance.

I just posted this thread to Medium so it's easier to read: https://medium.com/@DawnXianaMoon/mulan-on-adapting-another-cultures-stories-and-missing-the-point-7bba4cbf3d85?source=friends_link&sk=c532c88c162774c59e77daebd01bc9fc

Worth mentioning: I think most Asian Americans in a certain generation have a soft spot for the Disney cartoon, myself included.

Yeah, it was pretty American. But it has charm, and it was AAPI rep in its era. Also one of its many writers was AAPI, unlike the current mess.