Pop culture saved my life.
As a refugee-tomboy slogging through the swampy environs of a
Midwestern small town, I produced hundreds of bizarre fictions
starring me, pilfering from comic books and TV shows for fantastic
plots and daring personalities I'd suture into the fabric of
my otherwise less-than-panoramic existence.
Comparing childhoods
with a Latina girlfriend, the both of us migrants from wars of
all kinds, we lined up our icons side by side, secret identities
we appropriated to survive being alien in similarly hostile situations.
Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Laura Ingalls, Pippi Longstocking
-- together we're an encyclopedic recounting of all possible
pop-culture heroines.
And barring
the rare Storm or Karma from the mutant X-Men universe, all of
our early models were white as snow.
I'm still obsessed with pop culture, and I admit I was helpless
in the thrall of "Mulan," this year's animated feature
film by Disney about a young cross-dressing Chinese woman who
runs away to take her father's place in the Emperor's army and
eventually saves China. Loosely based on a historical myth, it
appealed to me on exactly that note: an Asian tomboy defies convention,
hoodwinks patriarchal authority and goes on to save the masses
the dominant narrative of my fantasy youth, thank you very
much.
I paid my eight
bucks. And I loved it.
So is "Mulan"
channeled through the coffers of a multimedia conglomerate-
an overdue exhortation of girl power for Asian America?
Well, not quite.
But as Disney fictional heroines go, the proto-feminist Mulan
outranks Pocahontas, Belle, and the pathetic Ariel. And she's
light-years ahead of Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, spunkless
specimens of yesteryear's Cold War gender roles.
Too butch for
the bride gig, Mulan is impulsive, disobedient and resolutely
vocal in her defiance of the "seen not heard" school
of social conventions. She's a skilled martial artist and an
intuitive strategist, a girl of action and intelligence who does
the feet-sweeping, butt-kicking and outwitting. All at once.
gender
subversion
Light on the Confucian strictures, the film pokes fun at the
ultimately repressive gender roles that seek to make Mulan a
domesticated creature. In some great boot-camp scenes, it satirizes
male homosocial behavior patting butts, punching arms,
trading insults.
What's amazing
is the sly acknowledgment that gender norms are socially constructed
both masculinity and femininity are exposed as elaborate
performances - while concurring that these same gender norms
prove to be the source of much injustice. Never mind feudal China,
it's a critique that resonates in contemporary U.S. society.
So throw in lots of drag and transvestitism, "Mulan"
becomes a veritable boiling pot of gender trouble.
Okay, so Mulan
doesn't take the cabinet position the Emperor offers her after
she saves China who wants to be a bureaucrat, anyway? And
there are the requisite cheap shots: The character who most obviously
signals "gay" the effeminate, sniveling consul
- happens to be the most resolutely misogynist. And the pompous
matchmaker finds herself the victim of the ever-popular "fat
lady on fire" gag.
But there's something awesome about an epic, animated or not,
starring a strong-willed heroine and an Asian woman, no
less. So call me a sucker, I'm easily susceptible to Mulan's
struggle and the revenge of the tomboy. If I were 10, I'd probably
change my name. I loved "Mulan" as long as I remained
selectively amnesiac. Disney, who?
Disney
cashes in
But "Mulan" -- the movie as opposed to the celluloid
heroine -- is, of course, strategic. Swift on the heels of Xena,
the WNBA, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Olympic women's hockey
team, the Mouse-Eared One rides the wave of female athleticism
with its own Nike-esque "Just Do It" directive. Tie
that to a current U.S. fascination with Hong Kong directors,
feng shui and Tibetan Buddhism all things Asian are all
the rage- and Disney cashes in. Action maven Michelle Yeoh's
burgeoning popularity is the apex of all these trends, and Mulan
is her animated counterpart.
But Disney
doesn't really want to inspire a generation of swashbuckling
tomboys, let alone foment any preteen gender-bending on the grade-school
playground. This becomes glaringly obvious in the toy store aisles.
There you can
purchase Mulan in a variety of strictly feminine guises, play
at having tea and dumplings with the Palace Playset or become
a suburban "China Blossom" with the Matchmaker Deluxe
Dress-Up Set, complete with coquettish fan, mandarin-collared
top and a mirrored compact.
Mysteriously
or not- all the packaging features a chubby-cheeked blonde
bedecked in hackneyed orientalia. A McDonald's commercial dishes
up another of these white clones mouthing some irritating "honorable
father" gibberish serving Happy Meals to the men in
her family, no less- while the Mac himself pulls some ill-executed
moves, Karate-Kid style and Rambo-red headband intact.
The conspicuous lack of props for the Mulan-inspired tomboy is
not a surprise. Imagine if hoards of little Asian girls paraded
the public streets with their own swords and utilitarian soldiering
togs, making proto-feminist declarations of both independence
and solidarity a la Mulan. That's my Fantasia, not Disney's.
So we can hardly
ignore the instrumental reason for Disney's cultural production:
profit. Take teenage sweatshop labor in Haiti and scattered overseas
Free Trade Zones, place it next to the "girl power"
message of "Mulan" and we have something of a gaping
inequality.
Obviously,
uprisings are for some and not for others, and in any case must
be tempered by the immediate purchase of a Simply Charming Jewelry
Necklace Set.
Even so, I'm
hardly innocent. For my 24th birthday, I paid the eighteen bucks
for the Secret Hero Mulan the only model of four with jointed
limbs, shorn hair, a sword and comfy shirt and trousers- with
a clear sense of my own ironic distance from any critique of
directed consumerism.
Aside from
girl power, "Mulan" is also being lauded as a breakthrough
for Asian American representation on the big-screen. It's hailed
as a signpost: we've made it. Tinseltown (i.e., mainstream America)
wants us.
Call me a selective cynic, but I don't buy it. To read "Mulan"
as a rubber stamp -- Asian America, as validated by Disney
means that in the desire to see our reflection splashed across
the blank white walls, we end up scrambling for crumbs and pretending
it's a whole meal. Are we only "real" if we're imprinted
on Hollywood celluloid? Should we be grateful? Are Asian-Americans
finally vindicated, and of what? Why should we be so desperate
for mainstream recognition in 35 mm to be mirrored in the
box office figures and merchandise sales?
Besides, I
never had a Mulan -- and I still managed to find inspiration
enough for long summer afternoons spent swinging through trees
and staging elaborate fight scenes on monkey bars. I borrowed
liberally from Star Wars, X-Men, Wonder Woman and even James
Bond flicks to fashion my own fictional interventions and alternate
personas, and I later realized my nascent feminist impulses in
the punk-fostered riot grrrl movement. Throughout my plundering
and partial identifications with space pirates, mutants and punks,
I remained a resolute Vietnamese refugee-tomboy.
That is, we
validate ourselves, when we have to.
On the other
hand, the sweeping denunciation that "Mulan"
is just another cheap vehicle for the Disneyfication of culture-
is similarly too, too literal. Of course there is no mass
culture that isn't shaped by mega-corporate management and marketing
trends. And we've all memorized the usual arguments decrying
how Hollywood simplifies, plagiarizes and Westernizes.
But outright dismissal suggests that those of us who derive pleasure,
however contradictary, from "Mulan" are dupes -- as
if our reception of pop culture is not a process of negotiation:
of picking, choosing and reimagining.
So let's get
over the obvious, the bad dog/good dog scenario. We give too
little credit to the power of the imagination if we believe either
that until "Mulan," little Asian-American girls floundered
without inspiration or, on the other hand, that with "Mulan,"
little Asian-American girls are ripe for conglomerate-sponsored
consumer conformity.
Between the
opposing camps one suggesting that "we" finally
are represented and acknowledged, the other arguing that identification
with the Mouse's Mulan is naive or otherwise participates in
a nefarious plot to assert mass mind-control - there is a third
space where, I think, we can juggle our critiques and our pleasures
with the complexity of analysis they deserve.
Still, I would've
killed for a Mulan when I was 10.
* Mimi
Nguyen is a doctoral student at the University of California-Berkeley
and founder of "exoticize this!" (http://members.aol.com/critchicks),
a virtual Asian-American feminist community. She wrote this article
for Perspective.