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ohshit-itsyagorl · 5 months

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I agree with this, yes, but. My entire life I’ve been under the impression that the true star of Disney’s Mulan was Li Shang, in the background, having a very hardcore bisexual crisis for a good 3/4 of the movie.

Anyway, the Christianity bullshit comes after the fact. There was a lot of homoeroticism they later tried to pass off with a “he knew all along”-type spiel, a “you just know, you know?” Which.

Is just not a thing. The whole point is that no one knew. The entire division has a collective stressy-depressy episode about leaving their good friend Ping behind because he turned out to be an AFAB person.

And then Mulan shows up wearing a dress, with a plan that will get them into the palace when what they’re trying isn’t working, and, look—

It’s not about men and women and how both are good at different things. It’s just not.

It’s about how gender doesn’t matter.

The cold, hard truth about that point in the history of china is that Mulan should have been executed, and the other troops, seeing her in the imperial city, although desperate for a better way to do things, should have also killed her for treason. They didn’t look at Mulan and see a way in because she was wearing a dress and they could too. They looked at Mulan and saw someone who was smart and strategic in a time of desperation, who had saved their lives before and they were all banking on her being able to do it again.

These are soldiers that grew up being told about and in the presence of women pushed into roles that inspired songs like “A Girl Worth Fighting For”. That kind of relearning just doesn’t happen that fast, on a neurological level. They didn’t trust Mulan because they could get in if they acted like girls. They trusted Mulan because Mulan is Mulan, and Mulan is Ping, and that’s all they needed.

Women can do things. Celebrating women doing things we are capable of doing as novel or special or revolutionary as a moral of the entire movie - which is so chock-full of life lessons just waiting to be teased out if you’re just willing to look - is frankly a bit insulting.

It’s impressive that Mulan was able to pull off living in an army camp because her situation was so wildly inconvenient in that regard, and also dangerous because of her sex assigned at birth. It’s impressive that Mulan can fight and think the way she can, but unlike what a lot of older generations or watered-down explanations might convey, it’s not because she was a woman.

It’s because that’s really baddass. It would be and still is baddass no matter what gender identity someone chooses for themselves.

Mulan being a woman is only so important to the plot as the adversity she faces in response to it. She is not baddass in spite of it, and neither is she baddass because of it.

She’s baddass because she did some pretty freaking cool things. In my objective, professional opinion, mulan’s gender is mostly important for plot inconvenience than any sort of life lesson or take away.

It’s a big part of the plot, and it adds heavily to the circumstances that make what she did so baddass, but it did not inherently contribute to the amount of baddassery she posseses.

Now, none of this would pass as any sort of well-written argument, because it reads like a joke that turned into a snake-shaped, tangent-flavored soapbox rant with the structural equivalent of a tissue in a hurricane.

However. I don’t really care all that much, to be honest.

What is tumblr even for, if not soapbox rants about subversive gender stereotyping in the morals of (allegedly, just to cover bases) religiously fueled animated children’s films with absolutely boppin soundtracks?

“Women can do stuff too!” As a moral takeaway is just a wee bit depressing, mate.

If you haven’t seen Wish yet and you love Disney, do not go see it. I am telling you now. It is ripping out the hearts of the Disney movies you love and then waving their corpses around as if celebrating those hearts.

I’ll explain why, again: the message of Wish? Awful. Anti-Disney.

But they've been doing this for a long time. Saying one thing with their movies, and saying another with their PR and Disney Parks Soundtracks.

I'll explain.

Main Idea of Disney's Wish (and the You Are the Magic theme park song and merch): "The power to make your wishes come true is in you."

≠

Most Disney Movies' Idea on How to Have Wishes: "Do what's right, (trust a higher power) and something even more wonderful than what you wished will happen."

Don't try to argue with me about this. You have to look underneath the slogans and the sweater designs and the song titles to what the stories actually support to acknowledge this.

Because you can’t say “do what’s right” has power unless you answer the question “who gets to decide ‘what’s right?’” (Which, coincidentally, is a question Wish brings up and then doesn’t answer.)

Audiences of Disney used to accept that wishing on a star was much like prayer; there’s something you long for, and it’s out of your hands, but you wish for it and you do what you know is right in the meantime. And you’re not crushed, you’re not downhearted, because somewhere in your mind you trust that the combo of those two things—wishing on a higher power and diligence to do what’s good—will be what makes your wish come true.

Trust in a higher power—COMBINED WITH:

—diligence to do what’s good.

The Blue Fairy (higher power) gave Geppetto his wish specifically because he had demonstrated commitment to do good, whether he got what he wanted or not. The Fairy Godmother (higher power) gave Cinderella her wish specifically because she kept on being kind and good to low creatures like mice and wicked stepsisters, whether she got what she wanted or not.

Do you know why that combo (higher power + diligence to do good) is impactful? Timeless? Important?

Because it’s selfless. You want something, but you’re not going to sacrifice doing the right thing to get it. You’re not going to focus so hard on making what you want a reality, on your own, that you miss out on things that could be more important than what you want. And, you’re not so self-focused as to believe that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

Jeez, that’s the whole point of The Princess and the Frog!

Tiana wishes to have her own restaurant, and she believes that only her own hard work will grant that wish. She misunderstands her dad’s advice before he dies. She isn’t willing to trust a higher power combined with her own diligence to do good—she only trusts her own ability.

It’s not until she realizes that Ray, the character of faith, was right all along that she learns—what she wished for was too self-focused. It wasn’t complete without love. Something bigger than herself. And getting that was never going to happen just based on her own hard work.

But you know what? It was never going to happen just by a “higher-power” flavored shortcut, either. Because Facilier offers her her wish if she’ll just trust him, no hard work needed. But what does she say?

Trust in a higher power + diligence to do what’s right = selflessness, and getting more than you could have ever wished for. And if your wish is selfish, doing those two things will change your wish into something selfless.

More examples? Get ‘em while they’re hot, in case Wish made you forget, just like the current #NotMyDisney executives have forgotten, what real Disney wishes are for.

Belle wishes to have adventures in the great wide somewhere--but when she's imprisoned and that chance is taken from her it's not reversed because she worked hard to make her wish come true. It's granted because she gave up her wish for her father: she just did the right thing, regardless of her wish. And in the end, she does get what she wished for, which is adventure in an enchanted castle...and much more, because she gets true love, a throne, and a castle full of friends.

How about the One Who Started It All? The one Wish is failing to pay genuine tribute to?

Snow White wishes for someone to love her, and he does--but when they're separated, she does not exercise power to make The Prince come back to her. Instead, she loves who she can where she’s at—the Dwarfs. In the meantime, she has faith that he will keep his promise, and that pure trust in a higher power outside of her control is a big contributing factor to why the Dwarfs come to love her, and learn from her...and in the end, even more than she could've wished happens. He does take her to his castle, but she also has seven new friends who also love her, and the Queen is dead. And she didn’t need to use “the power in her” to work harder and get it done. She just needed to not focus so much on herself at all.

How about a male main character? One who’s wish starts out selfish, but after learning to wish on a higher power and be diligent to do the right thing, gets more than he could wish for?

Aladdin wishes to be somebody different (somebody he believes Jasmine could love, somebody who lives in a palace and is respected and “never has any troubles at all.”)—but doing everything in his own power for that wish proves that it was selfish all along; so he switches to doing the right thing, regardless of if his wish comes true, and he gets even more than he could’ve wished. He gets real love with Jasmine, he gets his friend Genie, and he gets to be free from feeling “trapped” because he doesn’t have to hide who he is anymore.

Or Simba?

Simba wishes to get to do whatever he wants as King—but when Mufasa dies and he’s convinced it’s his fault, it isn’t for that wish that he goes back to Pride Rock to confront his past and his Uncle. It’s because he had an encounter with a higher power—his father—that helped him to realize his wish was selfish all along. He gives up the selfish wish, and he goes back to take his place as king, not so he can do whatever he wants, but so that he can take self-sacrificial responsibility that comes with ruling. And because he just does the right thing, finally, he gets more than what he wished for.

How about something more recent? Zootopia.

Judy wishes to make the world a better place by proving she can be what she wants to be and catching bad guys—but when she tries to make her wish happen on her own, in her own abilities, she fails and is forced to realize that she should’ve been looking for help by understanding “bad guys,” like Nick. It’s only after she humbled herself, admits she’s wrong, and changes her wish from “proving I can be what I want and catching bad guys” to “proving that understanding each other makes the world a better place” (much less self-focused) that her wish comes true—and so much more. She does make the world a better place, and she does get to catch bad guys, but she also gets to befriend one who was a good guy all along, and become all-around more effective at her dream job.

This is how Disney always has been. Because it’s at the heart of good storytelling, and even life (not to get too dramatic.)

The power is not in you. Because it’s not about you. Self-sacrifice, faith, and doing the next right thing regardless of if you get your heart’s fondest desire is what makes more than just your wishes come true. And there has to be belief in a higher power to make that message powerful.

But Wish?

Not only is it bad at showing instead of telling. Not only is it lazy and soulless.

But it’s characters rip the Star out of the sky and say “don’t wish on this. Wish on yourself, to get what you wish for. You don’t need a higher power. You don’t even need to sacrifice to do what’s good—whatever you do is good, because you are the one doing it.”

That is wrong. That is not true, and it is not powerful. There’s no sacrifice in focusing on or placing your trust totally in yourself, and it undoes every good thing Disney has done up until now.

And it undoes it on the 100th anniversary, and it flaunts Easter eggs of the very things it’s undoing.

#I am not British #but I am very neurodivergent and sometimes my inner monologue is accented for reasons not yet discovered in the scientific world #we’re still waiting on that research grant #probs not gonna get it but a girl can dream about her fake research study #and no one can stop me #and if you know me in real life no you don’t

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