Latest / Left of the Projector / Mulan (1998) with Proles Pod

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Mulan (1998) with Proles Pod · Left of the Projector

• 0:18
  Track 5: Hello, and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host,
• 0:21
  Track 5: Ward, back at it again with another film discussion from the left.
• 0:24
  Track 5: If you'd like to support the show for as little as $3 a month,
• 0:27
  Track 5: you can go to Patreon forward slash Left of the Projector Pod.
• 0:30
  Track 5: If you'd like to dress in style, we've got shirts, and at leftoftheprojectorpod.threadless.com,
• 0:36
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• 0:39
  Track 5: Wherever you're listening, give us a rating and subscribe, and you'll get notified
• 0:44
  Track 5: of our weekly episodes that drop every Tuesday. Now, on to the show.
• 0:49
  Track 5: This week on Left of the Projector, we'll be discussing the Disney animated
• 0:52
  Track 5: film Mulan, released in 1998, an era where Disney was stepping into Asian-themed
• 0:57
  Track 5: legends, and in this case, China.
• 0:59
  Track 5: The Disney adaptation takes the legend of Hua Mulan, and originally is thought
• 1:03
  Track 5: to be based on a folk song from the Northern Wei regime of 386 AD, and brings it to life.
• 1:12
  Track 5: The story follows a young girl, played by Ming-Na Wen,
• 1:15
  Track 5: as she impersonates a boy taking the place of her father
• 1:18
  Track 5: as the family is conscripted to war against the huns the rest of the cast includes
• 1:22
  Track 5: eddie murphy bd wong harvey feinstein miguel ferrer definitely more on this
• 1:27
  Track 5: later with us to discuss are two of the hosts of the proles pod we have antonia
• 1:33
  Track 5: and ray welcome to the left of the projector thanks.
• 1:37
  Track 4: For having us.
• 1:40
  Track 5: It's great to have y'all.
• 1:42
  Track 1: Thanks for being here. And I guess, Ward, you're joined by all three of us, Bill Ward and Evan here.
• 1:48
  Track 5: Yeah, I got Evan and Bill here too, I guess.
• 1:50
  Track 2: Yeah, we're here.
• 1:52
  Track 5: As always.
• 1:53
  Track 2: Evan let us out of the basement.
• 1:56
  Track 1: Well, Bill, you're still in the basement, but I'm curious.
• 1:58
  Track 2: That's true, I'm still in the basement.
• 2:02
  Track 1: So we had done, in the past, we had done a podcast with a couple of your other hosts of Pearl's Pod.
• 2:07
  Track 1: So I'm wondering, in this case, why you chose, like, normally we send out,
• 2:12
  Track 1: like, a list of films and stuff, but you were pretty intent on doing the line,
• 2:16
  Track 1: which, which, that's not a, that's not, I'm not saying that as,
• 2:20
  Track 1: like, a slight in any way.
• 2:20
  Track 1: But I'm curious why you chose it and, you know, maybe what made you think of doing it.
• 2:27
  Track 3: Okay, so this was my call. This was my suggestion. Hi, it's me, Ray.
• 2:33
  Track 2: Ray's like, I will now throw myself on my sword. I did this.
• 2:41
  Track 3: I did this. We were supposed to be on the show with you ages ago,
• 2:46
  Track 3: and I'm not entirely sure what happened, but it just didn't work out.
• 2:49
  Track 3: Previously, the list that you had given us included a children's section.
• 2:53
  Track 3: Childless, though I am, those are the bulk of films that I've seen.
• 2:56
  Track 3: And so when I got the updated list, it was all... Okay, I say this all the time.
• 3:01
  Track 3: I always say it wrong. And my husband is always like, this is not correct.
• 3:04
  Track 3: I keep wanting to say it was all adult films. But that is...
• 3:10
  Track 5: Just nothing but porn that's.
• 3:12
  Track 3: A different podcast yeah,
• 3:17
  Track 3: movies movies for grown-ups it was all movies for grown-ups um and i knew i was gonna be on it.
• 3:23
  Track 1: No it does it sounds better.
• 3:28
  Track 2: Yes left of the projector well yeah well known we run all yeah it's all porn
• 3:33
  Track 2: from the leftist perspective that's what we do here porn from the leftist perspective.
• 3:37
  Track 3: When a mommy when a mommy and a daddy love each
• 3:40
  Track 3: other or or when parents of
• 3:43
  Track 3: any gender as we're going to see through this movie love each other
• 3:46
  Track 3: because it is very obvious that he prefers ping but we'll table that i it was
• 3:51
  Track 3: all movies for grown-ups and therefore i had not seen them tony is a parent
• 3:57
  Track 3: himself he also like has a job etc and so i knew that if he was going to come
• 4:02
  Track 3: on maybe he also wouldn't have time to watch movies.
• 4:04
  Track 3: But Tony had mentioned before that when he was a youth himself,
• 4:07
  Track 3: he was obsessed with Mulan and spent an entire summer just watching Mulan.
• 4:12
  Track 3: And I was like, hey, I know a movie Tony won't even have to prep for.
• 4:17
  Track 3: And so I said, can we watch Mulan?
• 4:20
  Track 4: Real, let's add to that. So the summer of 1999, when that VHS came out for this
• 4:24
  Track 4: movie, I watched it every single day for like two and a half months in the morning.
• 4:29
  Track 4: I'd wake up, go watch that movie get some cookies get some um cereal and i'd
• 4:36
  Track 4: be good to go for the rest of the day so that was my jam for 1999 summer of.
• 4:40
  Track 2: So my wife's prediction that i will be a negative opinion in comparison to others
• 4:46
  Track 2: it was correct okay all right cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool um also
• 4:51
  Track 2: evan and ward both have children and jobs and watch a fuck ton of movies,
• 4:58
  Track 2: my
• 4:59
  Track 5: Kids are in a horror.
• 4:59
  Track 2: Movie Pearls is a really reading.
• 5:01
  Track 3: Heavy like Pearls is a really.
• 5:03
  Track 2: Reading heavy show.
• 5:04
  Track 3: As it is plus Tony has to research for his other show so it's like,
• 5:08
  Track 3: We have to do all the things to run our own show on top of all of that.
• 5:12
  Track 3: And then Tony has a second show on that is what I think.
• 5:14
  Track 2: That is a good point. That is literally kind of.
• 5:17
  Track 3: And sometimes when you have families, right, it's like helps if you can stack your activities.
• 5:21
  Track 3: And I was like, worst case scenario, if he can't find another time to watch
• 5:24
  Track 3: it, he could watch it with his family.
• 5:26
  Track 4: But Bill does have a point here. It is not rare to have a job and to have children at the same time.
• 5:31
  Track 2: And watch movies.
• 5:31
  Track 4: It is not an uncommon. And watch movies.
• 5:34
  Track 3: I have neither. And I still don't watch movies. So there you go. The whole spectrum.
• 5:37
  Track 2: I mean, like I, I don't have children and I have a job. I watch movies,
• 5:42
  Track 2: but not nearly as many as Evan does. Evan watches movies.
• 5:46
  Track 2: Like if he doesn't, he will die.
• 5:50
  Track 5: It's, it's kind of impressive and borderline sad. What?
• 5:55
  Track 1: What is that? I missed that.
• 6:01
  Track 1: Yeah.
• 6:03
  Track 5: You edit these. Yeah.
• 6:05
  Track 1: Well, I mean, I do. I have been trying. I mean, I still read books for listeners out there.
• 6:11
  Track 1: They're also I read books, but I definitely lean more towards a movie and I
• 6:16
  Track 1: should shift a little bit more into the books. I'm doing better this year. So I'll.
• 6:19
  Track 3: Well, guys, we are so aspirational. We have jobs and watch books and read movies.
• 6:25
  Track 2: We read movies. I read movies all the time.
• 6:27
  Track 1: I mean, I listen to I listen to books, you know, audio books for for those who
• 6:32
  Track 1: who count. I listen to books.
• 6:34
  Track 2: I read books. I'm currently reading a book written by one of our former guests,
• 6:40
  Track 2: a friend of the show, Brianna Cox.
• 6:42
  Track 1: Good book so far. Well, we can talk about that at another time.
• 6:45
  Track 2: Yeah, we'll talk about that.
• 6:46
  Track 1: So I guess we know why you maybe chose this, but I did lead at the beginning
• 6:49
  Track 1: that you guys are on, have your own podcast, Pearl's Pod.
• 6:52
  Track 1: Do you want to maybe just remind folks? I'm sure that most people who listen
• 6:55
  Track 1: to this podcast probably neither know or listen to your podcast,
• 6:59
  Track 1: but just so people can be reminded what you do over there.
• 7:05
  Track 3: Pearl's Pod is like an extremely long form niche Marxist-Leninist history podcast.
• 7:12
  Track 3: So it's really, it really advertises itself. It's really for exactly the people
• 7:17
  Track 3: that it's for and not really anyone else.
• 7:19
  Track 3: Tony, do you want to introduce Tony's other podcast?
• 7:22
  Track 4: No, well, I'll say more about Prolspot. So we are formerly known as Prols of the Roundtable.
• 7:27
  Track 4: You may have heard the podcast in its original iteration from 2018 to 2020 before
• 7:32
  Track 4: that initial show fell apart.
• 7:34
  Track 4: It was kind of resuscitated in 2024 underneath the new name Prolspot.
• 7:38
  Track 4: So that's what we do. Our tagline is...
• 7:41
  Track 4: Correct me if I'm wrong here, Ray, but it's history, politics,
• 7:44
  Track 4: and culture without the liberalism.
• 7:47
  Track 4: And so from a communist perspective, it's kind of our jam.
• 7:51
  Track 4: Most notably, since the show rebooted in 2024, we took on the insane task of
• 7:57
  Track 4: putting together a 23-hour long narrative form discussion-having series on Joseph Stalin.
• 8:07
  Track 4: So if you do have 23 hours to spare, I recommend that you check that out.
• 8:11
  Track 4: Um, so yeah, we are the, the Stalin heads, uh, of the communist podcast verse.
• 8:17
  Track 4: Um, what Ray was alluding to earlier is that I do have another podcast as well.
• 8:21
  Track 4: It is known as actually existing socialism.
• 8:24
  Track 4: And the goal of that show is to have that perspective of socialist countries
• 8:29
  Track 4: that we often don't get in the West, which is, you know, a positive one.
• 8:32
  Track 4: And so I have scholars, uh, people who currently live in a socialist country
• 8:37
  Track 4: or previously lived in one to talk about their own experiences and kind of the
• 8:40
  Track 4: material realities of actually existing socialism countries that have actually
• 8:44
  Track 4: taken that step to develop uh in a socialist way.
• 8:47
  Track 1: Awesome yeah i i did listen to the not not the all 23
• 8:50
  Track 1: hours of the stalin episode but like all the base the base pieces of it and
• 8:54
  Track 1: it was uh it was quite uh impressively researched so kudos to the to that thank
• 9:01
  Track 1: you appreciate that incredible in the in terms of mulan i mean when you were
• 9:05
  Track 1: introducing a war, I couldn't help but,
• 9:08
  Track 1: I didn't go down like a deep down the rabbit hole on this and hopefully this
• 9:11
  Track 1: won't ruin your that the summer of 99 and listening or watching Mulan, Tony.
• 9:16
  Track 1: But like I was looking into what Disney was doing at that time,
• 9:20
  Track 1: which was they're trying to make a bunch of films that were like Asian themed
• 9:24
  Track 1: after Aladdin had come out and made them a ton of money.
• 9:28
  Track 1: And I don't, I mean, I can't help but separate, you know, just Disney from just
• 9:34
  Track 1: their taking over of the world of movies and media and everything.
• 9:40
  Track 1: And thinking about this from just what Disney's trying to put together.
• 9:44
  Track 1: I mean, what do you, do you think it's like reasonable, a reasonable story for
• 9:48
  Track 1: them to tell even, you know, like, do they have a perspective enough that's
• 9:52
  Track 1: worth telling the story of, you know, a legend of China?
• 9:55
  Track 3: Okay, so Tony and I were kind of talking about this a little bit earlier,
• 10:00
  Track 3: but I feel like there are certain parts of the world that the West uses to launder
• 10:07
  Track 3: its anxieties for which we as the Imperial Corps have no sort of cultural grounding.
• 10:13
  Track 3: And so East Asia is where we go when we want to launder our anxieties about
• 10:18
  Track 3: bringing honor to the family and to honoring...
• 10:22
  Track 3: and to like honoring our lineage. Right.
• 10:25
  Track 3: And I think that this is like something that we sort of experience.
• 10:29
  Track 3: And I think that in the relative like people were still doing OK in the late
• 10:35
  Track 3: 90s as certain people were still doing OK.
• 10:37
  Track 3: We had the illusion of OK-ness in the late 90s with neoliberalism and like this sort of like influx.
• 10:42
  Track 3: And as a result of our identity being flattened into consumers,
• 10:46
  Track 3: there are other things that get lost that we're sort of sacrificing.
• 10:49
  Track 3: And there's really like nowhere for those things to go.
• 10:52
  Track 3: So do I think that Disney has any business telling the story of Mulan as a Chinese myth?
• 10:57
  Track 3: No. Do I think that Disney is leveraging a vague gestures vaguely Western imaginary
• 11:03
  Track 3: of China in order to launder anxieties about lineage?
• 11:07
  Track 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's what's happening.
• 11:08
  Track 2: That's a very interesting take
• 11:11
  Track 2: it reminds me of we've discussed this
• 11:14
  Track 2: before and like my like i've returned to this like
• 11:17
  Track 2: personally and like here like the fact that like capitalism basically stole
• 11:23
  Track 2: the heritage of vast swaths of european culture and like the indigenous heritage
• 11:33
  Track 2: of the indigenous heritage of like,
• 11:36
  Track 2: most European peoples and like their roots.
• 11:41
  Track 2: And then when they come to, and then when they came to America,
• 11:44
  Track 2: it got even more lost in capitalism.
• 11:49
  Track 2: And so America culture, American culture, U S culture often tries to recreate
• 11:56
  Track 2: those things and commodify them in a way that serves the, the superstructure.
• 12:02
  Track 2: Um, for instance, I, I mean, I wrote a column about comic books for 15 years and to me,
• 12:08
  Track 2: like comic books and superhero stories are very much like the bedrock of like
• 12:15
  Track 2: us culture and like us, like cultural myth.
• 12:22
  Track 2: Like they are very much rooted in that. And yeah. So So, yeah.
• 12:26
  Track 2: And I think you're right. They're
• 12:27
  Track 2: like, you know, it's like white Westerners kind of glom on to other.
• 12:31
  Track 2: Because it's like it's almost like they're like, I miss I miss things that mattered and meant something.
• 12:37
  Track 3: Right. Right. But we don't have the ability to fully humanize another culture
• 12:43
  Track 3: and to actually examine it on its own face. All we can do is compare it to the
• 12:47
  Track 3: way the world looks to us.
• 12:49
  Track 3: Right. For people within the imperial core. And so, yeah, it becomes like the
• 12:52
  Track 3: knockoff of the knockoff.
• 12:54
  Track 3: I mean, hey, at least Mulan stays legibly China if you wanted to compare it
• 12:57
  Track 3: to Aladdin. Like, what are they even appropriating?
• 13:00
  Track 3: Is that is that the Gulf? Is it Turkey? Is it the Levant?
• 13:03
  Track 5: I no i
• 13:06
  Track 5: can yeah i completely agree with you especially like how
• 13:09
  Track 5: obsessive the theme of honor is in this
• 13:12
  Track 5: film but like as you're saying like no it definitely makes sure it's definitely
• 13:16
  Track 5: china because like it opens up with like the uh the water brush painting and
• 13:20
  Track 5: the great wall of china just to let you know just in case you didn't know this
• 13:24
  Track 5: is disney's asian film like if in case there's any questions about that this
• 13:28
  Track 5: is the asian one yeah it's.
• 13:31
  Track 4: Surprising they didn't do like a based on a true story.
• 13:35
  Track 1: Yeah well and this is um well
• 13:40
  Track 1: there's two well there's two things i was thinking about both of these is
• 13:43
  Track 1: one is when war mentioned the beginning sort of talking about the actors
• 13:46
  Track 1: who are in this and maybe maybe it's worth
• 13:49
  Track 1: talking about this now since we're talking about the just the film as a whole
• 13:52
  Track 1: is the i mean the main actress who plays mulan is a ming nong wen but then you
• 13:58
  Track 1: have eddie murphy and harvey feinstein and a bunch of other you know white american
• 14:04
  Track 1: not eddie murphy black but, you know,
• 14:07
  Track 1: not Chinese-American.
• 14:10
  Track 5: I was going to say, Eddie Murphy's wife.
• 14:11
  Track 4: Famous white American, Eddie Murphy.
• 14:13
  Track 5: We're here on Left of the Projector.
• 14:14
  Track 3: Wait, and for all of the Broadway heads that are, I'm sure, listen to your show,
• 14:20
  Track 3: hey, there's got to be like six of us, it's also worth noting that the speaking
• 14:23
  Track 3: voice of Mulan and her singing voice are voiced by two different actors.
• 14:26
  Track 3: And her singing voice is provided by Broadway hero, Lea Salonga.
• 14:31
  Track 2: The speaking voice of Lee Shang is B.D. Wong, but the singing voice is Donny
• 14:38
  Track 2: Osmond. And I'm just like,
• 14:39
  Track 2: Chinese people sing. Like, you
• 14:41
  Track 2: could have gotten a person of Chinese heritage who sings. They do sing.
• 14:47
  Track 1: And, you know, Harvey Fierstein as Yao, he's been in a lot of,
• 14:53
  Track 1: tons of films over the course, you know, a bunch of Disney movies.
• 14:56
  Track 1: I guess the point I'm coming to is, yes, you have this movie that's kind of
• 15:01
  Track 1: taking this mash of Chinese culture,
• 15:05
  Track 1: bringing it to Western audiences, and then saying, like, we couldn't be bothered to include, you know,
• 15:11
  Track 1: even people of Asian descent as the actors' voices when we easily could have.
• 15:17
  Track 1: I mean, a bunch of them are, to be fair.
• 15:19
  Track 1: But I don't know. I felt very like the Eddie Murphy voice to me was the voice
• 15:24
  Track 1: of like comedy they're trying to bring.
• 15:26
  Track 1: But it also felt extremely offensive in a way.
• 15:31
  Track 2: I think this movie doesn't get enough recognition for being as casually racist as it actually is.
• 15:36
  Track 2: I think it really does not.
• 15:39
  Track 3: Yeah, I think of the racialized offenses. Eddie Murphy's casting is like one
• 15:44
  Track 3: of the lesser ones, to be honest.
• 15:47
  Track 5: In comparison yeah did you see the huns with their yellow eyes.
• 15:51
  Track 3: Like the depiction like everybody's asian but then like the huns are like extra
• 15:55
  Track 3: asian in a bad way right like you know what i mean there's like there's like
• 15:59
  Track 3: so many other racialized jabs that happen yeah.
• 16:02
  Track 4: It's like almost in like in comparison eddie murphy's.
• 16:05
  Track 3: He's a dragon eddie.
• 16:07
  Track 4: Murphy's role is like progressive relative to the other crazy shit that they're doing in that movie.
• 16:11
  Track 3: Eddie murphy woke dragon yeah.
• 16:14
  Track 4: Eddie murphy as chinese dragon is like progressive.
• 16:16
  Track 1: Yeah i mean yeah that's that's probably true we were we were joking in our like
• 16:20
  Track 1: our group chat earlier when i was watching it sort of saying on a level of like
• 16:24
  Track 1: one to aladdin being like maybe one of the most racist you know disney movies
• 16:28
  Track 1: like where does the mulan fall in that and i think i say it was like what a
• 16:32
  Track 1: six or a seven i think is what i came to i don't know yeah,
• 16:35
  Track 1: in this six song.
• 16:37
  Track 2: Of the south is an 11 aladdin is.
• 16:40
  Track 1: 10 probably 10.
• 16:42
  Track 2: And then this is like at like yeah aladdin's 10 and then this is a six because.
• 16:47
  Track 5: The scale started as one to aladdin.
• 16:51
  Track 2: Yeah and because everyone else forgot the song of the south so.
• 16:55
  Track 4: It's like from one to from one to zippity zippity doodah what is.
• 17:00
  Track 2: Yeah like everyone else forgot everyone else the like evan and ward forgot about
• 17:05
  Track 2: song of the south and i was like you forgot about song of the south so that
• 17:08
  Track 2: has to be 11 that has to be 11 that.
• 17:13
  Track 4: That's why it's in the vault right now.
• 17:15
  Track 2: Yeah.
• 17:15
  Track 1: Yeah yeah we're we're saying you know it's it's so racist
• 17:18
  Track 1: that it took them until 2024 to remove it from
• 17:21
  Track 1: disney world or whatever as like a ride like oh yeah it's only now is that you
• 17:25
  Track 1: know a problem for us as a as a company that this is okay but yeah i mean the
• 17:29
  Track 1: like the characterization you mentioned the huns as being sort of like even
• 17:33
  Track 1: more racist or sort of depicted you know as more chinese it's very,
• 17:39
  Track 1: stark like the you know sort of the americanized
• 17:43
  Track 1: chinese with the you know mulan's family albeit i wouldn't even say it like
• 17:48
  Track 1: westernized i mean it's they're still trying to depict them very much as this
• 17:52
  Track 1: culture from a long time ago where they have arranged marriages and you know
• 17:56
  Track 1: the the woman you know reviews each woman to see how how their material but like,
• 18:01
  Track 1: level of bride material for someone in the community to bring honor as the very
• 18:06
  Track 1: first moment where we learn about honor.
• 18:08
  Track 4: Yeah and like it's even it even goes beyond just like
• 18:11
  Track 4: their the kind of like exaggerated orientalizing like features of the huns it's
• 18:16
  Track 4: even just the color of their of their skin and their clothing right they're
• 18:19
  Track 4: given this dark gray kind of filter to the uh to to their appearance which is
• 18:24
  Track 4: you know very much in line with just racist depictions of any other in Western media.
• 18:30
  Track 5: Yeah, and they get yellow eyes and claws.
• 18:32
  Track 4: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Track 3: Versus we have Mulan, as you said, trying to stay true to some,
• 18:37
  Track 3: again, like Western Orientalized version of Chinese, but she still and her family
• 18:41
  Track 3: still maintain this like extreme proximity to whiteness. And also...
• 18:46
  Track 3: very obviously tend to have like some kind of like affluent class positioning,
• 18:50
  Track 3: which Tony also mentioned to me before, that it's like very clear that her family
• 18:56
  Track 3: does not, even at the end where he's like, do you want to be in the government?
• 18:58
  Track 3: And she's like, girl, no, I could go home, live with my family where I don't have a job.
• 19:02
  Track 4: Yeah, that's one thing we were talking about before. And it's like the class
• 19:04
  Track 4: position of Mulan is very interesting because you see that no one in her family
• 19:08
  Track 4: ever does any form of work whatsoever.
• 19:11
  Track 4: The ancestors in one scene do mention that they have a farm of some sort which
• 19:15
  Track 4: we never see and i think the implication is that other people are working on
• 19:19
  Track 4: that farm right and so some.
• 19:21
  Track 5: Of them became acupuncturists.
• 19:22
  Track 2: Which is in and of itself which a racist trope like it is very like to me the
• 19:30
  Track 2: way i see the racism of this movie it's it's very distinctly three different
• 19:36
  Track 2: tiers of racism you have the the model minority,
• 19:41
  Track 2: Mulan's family is the very typical Chinese model minority American.
• 19:50
  Track 2: Acupuncturist. They become doctors. That's literally what it is.
• 19:55
  Track 2: They became acupuncturists. They become doctors.
• 19:57
  Track 2: And they have one child.
• 20:00
  Track 3: And it's a daughter, and they don't complain. Which I think in the original
• 20:03
  Track 3: myth, there's another sibling. He's just too young to be called to the war.
• 20:06
  Track 2: And then like, even, even to the point where like one of the ancestors pulls
• 20:11
  Track 2: out an abacus and talks about numbers and it's like, also, they're also really good at math.
• 20:17
  Track 2: They're also good at math. Okay.
• 20:19
  Track 2: Chinese people become doctors and they're good at math. Okay.
• 20:24
  Track 2: And they're very like, you know, the, the good ones are very concerned with honor and dignity.
• 20:31
  Track 2: And then we have the other kind of like Chinese immigrant,
• 20:36
  Track 2: which is really like the only way I can like describe it is the way Jim Crow
• 20:44
  Track 2: America depicted black Americans with the exaggerated features of that.
• 20:51
  Track 2: And then all the background Chinese characters,
• 20:56
  Track 2: all the background, exaggerate, buck teeth, they walk in a very specific kind
• 21:03
  Track 2: of like mincing, bowing way.
• 21:06
  Track 2: They are either, they are kind of effeminate in their ways while also being,
• 21:13
  Track 2: you know, kind of like stupid and not like measuring up. and then you have.
• 21:21
  Track 2: Then you have the Huns, which are like, literally, like, that's the best way to describe them.
• 21:26
  Track 2: The way, in terms of like the racist tropes, the way that every,
• 21:30
  Track 2: the West has always described everybody they've ever called a Hun.
• 21:34
  Track 2: Like, you know, this is the flip side of the, you know, you have the civilized
• 21:40
  Track 2: model minorities of East Asia, and then you have the monsters.
• 21:44
  Track 2: You have the sorcerers and the villains and the claws and all that.
• 21:49
  Track 4: Yeah, that's a great analysis. And, like, the monsters are motivated.
• 21:53
  Track 2: They have no motivation.
• 21:54
  Track 4: They have no motivation other than the fact that you have something and they
• 21:57
  Track 4: want it for some reason. And that there's no real, like, injustice that's taken place.
• 22:02
  Track 3: Which is never clear.
• 22:03
  Track 4: Yeah.
• 22:03
  Track 3: Which is never clear.
• 22:04
  Track 1: Some kind of revenge, but there's no actual motive for that revenge.
• 22:08
  Track 2: Because he built a wall.
• 22:09
  Track 3: Well, I think it's...
• 22:10
  Track 5: Yeah, no, it's...
• 22:11
  Track 3: I think it's more than this, though, because Mulan's father is already a celebrated
• 22:16
  Track 3: war hero. And he's, what, like 60 years old if he is a teenager when he joins the military.
• 22:21
  Track 3: There's only so many decades that he has had to have this illustrious military
• 22:25
  Track 3: career. So it's like, why are people always attacking this kingdom?
• 22:29
  Track 3: Like, they seem to be under threat a lot.
• 22:32
  Track 4: Yeah, it does beg the question that there's perhaps,
• 22:35
  Track 4: I mean, one could perhaps make the argument with the little information that's
• 22:39
  Track 4: given that the Huns are on actually a mission of, you know, trying to fight
• 22:45
  Track 4: back against an empire that is fucking around with everyone around them.
• 22:48
  Track 1: But they don't give you any backstory of content. They're just the evil people
• 22:52
  Track 1: that are doing the evil thing.
• 22:53
  Track 4: They have dark skin, so they're bad, right?
• 22:55
  Track 5: Yeah, I watched the movie. That makes sense.
• 22:59
  Track 2: It is very vague there is no motivation given.
• 23:04
  Track 1: Maybe this is off base like i one of the first things i noted down when i was
• 23:09
  Track 1: watching the beginning and i was trying to think about how this comes out in
• 23:12
  Track 1: 1998 obviously well past you know the chinese revolution decades after it but
• 23:18
  Track 1: still like in a period where i think the americans attitude towards china wasn't,
• 23:24
  Track 1: nearly as negative maybe as you would get 20 years
• 23:27
  Track 1: after that or even 10 years after that as china's growth
• 23:31
  Track 1: like it was magnified even more but i was thinking of
• 23:33
  Track 1: it as sort of like they're using this ancient
• 23:36
  Track 1: civilization or ancient chinese as the
• 23:40
  Track 1: backdrop for this mythos that they're or this myth the traditional hua muan
• 23:45
  Track 1: story but i feel like they're also trying to tell you that this is also what
• 23:49
  Track 1: modern china is like you know women are all being put in their place they don't
• 23:54
  Track 1: have any part of society and the men run everything.
• 23:58
  Track 1: And, you know, they it's this they're not any different hundreds and thousands of years later.
• 24:03
  Track 1: I don't know. Maybe that's a stretch, but I don't feel like they're they're
• 24:06
  Track 1: trying to tell you something about China now that's also bad.
• 24:10
  Track 1: That's not a very descriptive way to say it. I don't know. I don't know if that's a stretch or not.
• 24:14
  Track 3: No, I think that that's valid. I also think I just looked to double check.
• 24:18
  Track 3: Yeah, this is also, So, again, peak sort of one-child policy panic in the West,
• 24:22
  Track 3: even though we had much less animosity.
• 24:24
  Track 3: So, again, the centering of a family that just has one child and it's a girl
• 24:28
  Track 3: and she has this woke dad who thinks it's totally fine that he has this daughter.
• 24:33
  Track 3: But then also everything is sort of like about gender, which is its whole other
• 24:37
  Track 3: thing that we should, you know, talk about in this episode because I think that
• 24:40
  Track 3: this is Disney is exploring its own gender anxieties.
• 24:42
  Track 3: But I think that there's also the positioning in the U.S.
• 24:47
  Track 3: in the 90s where we're making sort of marginal, and it's basically just to acquiesce
• 24:51
  Track 3: with the neoliberalism needing more people to do more work because the cost
• 24:54
  Track 3: of living is about to skyrocket, that we start letting women into the workplace.
• 24:58
  Track 3: And one of the ways that these sort of Western women soothe their psyches is
• 25:02
  Track 3: just by thinking about how much worse all of the racialized women around the world must have it.
• 25:07
  Track 5: See, I thought about it in a slightly different time set where like they started
• 25:12
  Track 5: working on this film in 94 coming off the back of fucking the Somalia intervention and the Gulf War.
• 25:19
  Track 5: And I feel like this was the start of the more women drone pilot military recruitment.
• 25:24
  Track 5: And the focus on honor kind of tied in with that. That's where I was thinking with it.
• 25:28
  Track 4: It's funny you say that because I'm pretty sure it was Mike Pence who wrote
• 25:31
  Track 4: an article about the movie.
• 25:32
  Track 2: Gotcha. The live action one, right?
• 25:35
  Track 4: Yeah god no no mike pence no no no mike pence when he's i think he was a radio
• 25:40
  Track 4: show host back then oh yeah he he saw this movie and wrote a or wrote or spoke
• 25:45
  Track 4: about a critique of it saying that he was arguing for um getting more women into like the u.s.
• 25:52
  Track 1: Military kind of thing and.
• 25:53
  Track 4: So he raged against that.
• 25:55
  Track 1: Oh man that's.
• 25:56
  Track 4: That's it oh that's hilarious.
• 25:58
  Track 1: Wow i didn't know about that but i just looked it up i.
• 26:01
  Track 5: Didn't know that that's so fucking funny.
• 26:03
  Track 1: Yeah you see he called it liberal like liberal propaganda and i mean he oh.
• 26:09
  Track 5: Shit look at me and.
• 26:11
  Track 1: Mike pence having.
• 26:11
  Track 5: Something in common.
• 26:12
  Track 1: Hopefully that's the only look at.
• 26:15
  Track 5: That who would have thought.
• 26:16
  Track 1: Yeah i mean he wrote that it's uh well
• 26:19
  Track 1: like one of the quotes i just pulled up from it it says it is instructive that
• 26:22
  Track 1: even in the disney film young miss mulan falls in love with her superior officer
• 26:26
  Track 1: methinks the politically correct disney types completely miss the irony of this
• 26:29
  Track 1: part of the story they likely added it because it added realism with which the
• 26:33
  Track 1: viewer could identify with the characters you see now.
• 26:36
  Track 1: Stay with me on this. Many young men find many young women be attractive sexually.
• 26:40
  Track 1: Many young women find many young men to be attractive sexually.
• 26:43
  Track 1: Put them together in close quarters for long periods of time,
• 26:45
  Track 1: and things will get interesting, just like they eventually did for young Mulan.
• 26:48
  Track 1: Moral of the story, women in military, bad idea.
• 26:52
  Track 2: I feel like the way that was written kind of exposes Mike Pence's actual predilections.
• 26:59
  Track 2: And I'm not judging his predilections, i'm just saying i feel like he was giving
• 27:04
  Track 2: the game away a little bit the way he phrased things there.
• 27:07
  Track 5: Yeah people be fucking in the military whether there's women in the military
• 27:11
  Track 5: or not um that's just simple fact people be fucking that yeah so that's apparently
• 27:19
  Track 5: where me and mike pence diverges i think it's for more women drone pilots and
• 27:24
  Track 5: he's like no i don't like that and.
• 27:26
  Track 4: So evan i did.
• 27:27
  Track 5: I don't like it for the not the same reasons.
• 27:29
  Track 4: So, Evan, I do want to kind of flip your analysis around a bit. I was getting...
• 27:35
  Track 4: the impression that similar to how the
• 27:38
  Track 4: there's the Falun Gong cult in China and you
• 27:41
  Track 4: know they have these performances that all of us have come across a
• 27:44
  Track 4: pamphlet of some sort in some time in the past called Shen Yun right and
• 27:48
  Track 4: so the whole thing about Shen Yun is that it presents a vision of
• 27:50
  Track 4: China before communism when like China was
• 27:53
  Track 4: like so amazing and perfect and there was no injustice and all the hierarchies
• 27:57
  Track 4: were positive and all that all that reactionary stuff right And so I do think
• 28:02
  Track 4: that one reading of the movie is that it is presenting this China before communism
• 28:07
  Track 4: that is like very like sterile in like a beautiful way.
• 28:13
  Track 4: And like everything is, you know, everything is harmonious.
• 28:16
  Track 4: Yes, there are these oppressive structures of the gender stuff,
• 28:20
  Track 4: but things are like fairly nice and they need to protect it from the dark,
• 28:25
  Track 4: scary people because that's what we need to do kind of thing.
• 28:28
  Track 4: So I do think that there's a bit of both happening in the movie of how China is presented.
• 28:34
  Track 1: No, I mean, you're right. I mean, that's very much with even just like,
• 28:36
  Track 1: I think we were talking about the opening credits and sort of the way they show
• 28:39
  Track 1: the splendor and beauty of China is very clearly giving you this,
• 28:45
  Track 1: oh, in this mythical place when China was, you know, beautiful and not destroyed by, you know,
• 28:51
  Track 1: Mao and everyone after him and Great Leap Forward, whatever you want to go into.
• 28:56
  Track 1: I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
• 28:58
  Track 3: And maybe if you guys feel okay pivoting a little bit to discuss the gender
• 29:03
  Track 3: anxiety that is Mulan, the film that launched a thousand genders,
• 29:07
  Track 3: probably including mine, it kind of also, I mean, the backbone...
• 29:14
  Track 3: The backbone of the film is gender norms and adhering to one's gender norms
• 29:20
  Track 3: and exploring very niche-specific moments where you wouldn't necessarily have to do that.
• 29:25
  Track 3: And I think that this is also kind of a jab at post-socialist socializing China,
• 29:32
  Track 3: wherein they're aiming for some kind of equality that, of course,
• 29:36
  Track 3: the West has anxieties about and feels like, well, then what's going to happen?
• 29:40
  Track 3: We can't really give women equality and things like this, right?
• 29:44
  Track 3: And so it's also sort of laundering this idea of being like,
• 29:48
  Track 3: see what made this kingdom so majestic is that like women knew their place and men knew their place.
• 29:53
  Track 3: And every once in a while, you might get a great little girl who can do something big.
• 29:58
  Track 3: But at the end of the day, this is still she is the exception and not the rule.
• 30:02
  Track 3: And still at the end, although we can all acknowledge that he definitely makes
• 30:06
  Track 3: her dress as Ping in the boudoir, she still enters into, like,
• 30:11
  Track 3: a cisheteronormative marriage, or at least we get the idea that he is courting
• 30:15
  Track 3: her for marriage at the end of the movie.
• 30:17
  Track 2: I think it's very interesting. I think that is such an interesting aspect of it,
• 30:22
  Track 2: especially considering the nature of the original story, which is that like
• 30:27
  Track 2: she serves for 12 years and no one knows.
• 30:33
  Track 2: like literally her comrades find out that she's not a man like years later when
• 30:42
  Track 2: they go visit her at her like home and it's like not a big deal they're like
• 30:47
  Track 2: she's like yeah i'm a woman,
• 30:50
  Track 2: And they're like, oh, okay. That's it.
• 30:53
  Track 2: She was there for 12 years. No one noticed.
• 30:57
  Track 2: And then they visited her later. It's like, yeah, by the way,
• 30:59
  Track 2: I'm a woman. And they're like, okay. End of conversation.
• 31:02
  Track 3: But again, the West is not interested in exploring other ways of dealing with
• 31:07
  Track 3: relationship and identity. It is only interested in projecting itself onto the
• 31:11
  Track 3: rest of the world as a soft cultural product, right?
• 31:14
  Track 3: So that can't be, because obviously being a woman is icky and gross and bad
• 31:19
  Track 3: and makes you bad soldier.
• 31:21
  Track 1: It's such a good i mean it's such an interesting well way
• 31:24
  Track 1: they so like one of the early songs is when
• 31:27
  Track 1: she's talking i think one of the early songs is honor to
• 31:30
  Track 1: us all and she's talking about how they can bring them honor by
• 31:33
  Track 1: striking like a good match doing the sort of the normal the normal thing okay
• 31:38
  Track 1: woman you know is uh can pour tea for her husband she can say the nice things
• 31:44
  Track 1: and then you you know i think they specifically say men want a girl with good
• 31:47
  Track 1: taste calm obedient who work fast pace with good breeding and a tiny waist.
• 31:52
  Track 1: And so they're very explicitly telling you what they're supposed to be.
• 31:56
  Track 3: They're like, you need to be white, thin waist circumference.
• 31:59
  Track 3: And then there's another song later where all the men are like,
• 32:01
  Track 3: she also must cook me a variety of meats.
• 32:04
  Track 1: And then it goes from that. And then, okay, then she decides that she needs
• 32:07
  Track 1: to bring honor to her family because she's not able to do it.
• 32:11
  Track 1: She like completely botches the entire little interview with the matchmaker.
• 32:15
  Track 3: Because essentially she has some version of body dysmorphia or gender dysphoria
• 32:20
  Track 3: because she keeps saying that she doesn't look like herself in the mirror until
• 32:23
  Track 3: she gives herself like a fetching bob haircut and then goes to war it's.
• 32:28
  Track 1: Like the the women were expected to just do the things they're supposed to do and,
• 32:33
  Track 1: without being questioned like that's just what we do here.
• 32:36
  Track 3: Which is kind of the joke even from the get with the matchmaker where okay mulan
• 32:41
  Track 3: can't remember what she's supposed to do listeners,
• 32:43
  Track 3: spoiler alert if you haven't had time to watch this movie um so
• 32:46
  Track 3: she's like writing notes on her forearm in like old timey chinese ink right
• 32:51
  Track 3: and at a certain point the matchmaker grabs her arm and the ink transfers and
• 32:54
  Track 3: then the matchmaker touches her own face and it gives her a mustache and she's
• 32:58
  Track 3: already fat and she's got this mustache and then she lights her butt on fire
• 33:01
  Track 3: and then it's so funny and silly and then she pours water on herself and all
• 33:05
  Track 3: of her makeup comes off, right?
• 33:06
  Track 3: And so like one of the earliest scenes is already about this sort of like queering
• 33:10
  Track 3: gender and how it's so funny to step outside of your prescribed gendered lines.
• 33:16
  Track 3: And this is sort of like one of the major themes throughout the movie.
• 33:19
  Track 3: And I really think that it's because even though obviously as everybody's already
• 33:23
  Track 3: said, we don't really understand the socioeconomic situation of gestures vaguely
• 33:28
  Track 3: China in this gestures vaguely moment in history.
• 33:31
  Track 3: But what we do know is like the building blocks of fascism is the nuclear family, right?
• 33:36
  Track 3: Is the cis heteronormative nuclear family. And this is what is being challenged.
• 33:41
  Track 3: This is the anxiety that is being agitated throughout the film.
• 33:45
  Track 3: And we see it like from the beginning, right? That Mulan just feels like I don't
• 33:48
  Track 3: fit and I can only be this kind of girl.
• 33:50
  Track 3: And if I can't be this girl, then I'm going to the word that they use is crossdress.
• 33:55
  Track 3: Or as Eddie Murphy says, take her drag show on the road. Yeah.
• 33:59
  Track 1: Yeah, I don't want to call this like playing devil's advocate.
• 34:02
  Track 1: But if, you know, looking at it from the sort of like the liberal lens,
• 34:07
  Track 1: if you will, is the general way that Disney portrays women is through,
• 34:12
  Track 1: you know, the princess motif of, you know, the typical way.
• 34:18
  Track 1: And this one was such was probably I can't think of any movie before this where
• 34:23
  Track 1: there is a female protagonist play that wasn't a princess.
• 34:27
  Track 1: So for them, this was sort of like in their minds, they're selling this as the
• 34:32
  Track 1: woman can actually do things in a different way.
• 34:36
  Track 1: Like they're going to do it through a man, quote unquote, manly,
• 34:38
  Track 1: you know, portray themselves as a man and they can do just as much as well under this.
• 34:44
  Track 1: way and i i don't i think it's like it's very disingenuous to look at.
• 34:50
  Track 3: Yeah i mean it's a bourgeois feminism right is the argument that
• 34:53
  Track 3: it's a it's a pants a predecessor to the pantsuit nation that they're sort of
• 34:56
  Track 3: putting forth this rich white proximal girl who essentially is a princess it's
• 35:02
  Track 3: not a kingdom so there isn't a princess it's an empire right but she is the
• 35:05
  Track 3: daughter of a celebrated war hero who's very high up in the government is very well connected,
• 35:11
  Track 3: Like, again, when they meet her, when she shows up to camp pretending to be
• 35:14
  Track 3: a dude, they're like, I didn't even know he had a son.
• 35:17
  Track 3: And then it's a joke. And they're like, well, that's why he doesn't talk about
• 35:19
  Track 3: him because he's obviously insane or whatever.
• 35:22
  Track 3: She is sort of a princess. And it's a sort of like if you have all of the other
• 35:26
  Track 3: things, if you're beautiful, if you're intelligent, if you have already exhausted
• 35:31
  Track 3: every possibility before you. She went to matchmaking school.
• 35:35
  Track 3: She studied all the things she was supposed to study. She memorized all the
• 35:37
  Track 3: lines or wrote them on her arm and really tried.
• 35:40
  Track 3: And once you have exhausted all of those things, then maybe you can find a place
• 35:44
  Track 3: for yourself that, again, still ends in her just marrying a guy.
• 35:47
  Track 4: Yeah. So it does seem like there was there was some attempt. Yeah.
• 35:51
  Track 3: I mean, I think you're right. I agree with you. It is just bourgeois feminism.
• 35:55
  Track 3: Right. But it's like, wow, look at her breaking through that glass ceiling.
• 35:57
  Track 3: And she still found a man who wanted to marry her when she was dressed like a man.
• 36:02
  Track 4: Oh, no.
• 36:02
  Track 1: Which was his obvious preference.
• 36:04
  Track 5: The way he gets kicked and then looks at her like Nala. So Disney.
• 36:10
  Track 5: But yeah, no, the fact that she's able to like even steal a suit of armor and a sword from her father.
• 36:17
  Track 5: Compared to how many other people joined in the army and a fucking horse.
• 36:20
  Track 3: She has her own horse.
• 36:22
  Track 5: To go join the military, as opposed to how many other people are joining from
• 36:28
  Track 5: the peasantry that don't have that, that that's why they're being handed a bow staff.
• 36:33
  Track 3: And the like ancestor economy, which I'm not totally clear on like exactly how that works.
• 36:37
  Track 3: But I would assume that like peasants also don't have as like high quality or
• 36:41
  Track 3: ferocious ancestors. So the fact that she even has this like Timu discount dragon
• 36:46
  Track 3: is still more than like anyone else would have.
• 36:49
  Track 2: Yeah. Nobody else got us. Nobody else got not one, but two sidekicks.
• 36:53
  Track 2: Technically three. If we count the horse as well.
• 36:55
  Track 3: If you count the horse.
• 36:56
  Track 2: If you count the horse.
• 36:57
  Track 5: The horse is definitely a sidekick.
• 36:58
  Track 3: They also make like transgender jokes about when they're like,
• 37:02
  Track 3: what are you a cow? Are you a sheep?
• 37:03
  Track 5: The cow jokes were pretty funny.
• 37:05
  Track 3: They're like transvestigating every character.
• 37:08
  Track 2: The only things about this movie that I thought were good or funny were Dishonor
• 37:14
  Track 2: on Your Cow, the song I'll Make a Man of You, which I'm sorry,
• 37:18
  Track 2: no matter how probably, it's still a banger.
• 37:20
  Track 5: It's a banger.
• 37:22
  Track 2: And the leader of the Huns, who I think just looks awesome.
• 37:29
  Track 3: Justice for Grandma. Justice for Grandma. She has amazing one-liners where Mulan's
• 37:35
  Track 3: mom is like, I should have prayed to the ancestors for luck.
• 37:38
  Track 3: And she's like, how lucky could they be? They're dead.
• 37:40
  Track 2: That is a good line. That is a good line.
• 37:42
  Track 4: Like if there's like the positives about the movie, the writing is like excellent,
• 37:46
  Track 4: right? And looking at the character.
• 37:48
  Track 2: I disagree. I think it's literally just those three things. I think largely
• 37:52
  Track 2: the writing is terrible. And I kind of hate it.
• 37:55
  Track 4: So, so, so I, so I guess maybe we'll come to agreement in the sense of like
• 37:59
  Track 4: the one liner. So like, say for example, when the movie starts, right.
• 38:02
  Track 4: And then is it Sean, you name of the villain? Like he's at the,
• 38:05
  Track 4: the, the guardsman on the tower is like, no, all of China knows you're here.
• 38:09
  Track 4: And he's like, perfect. And it's like, damn, that was cold. Right.
• 38:12
  Track 4: And then, uh, later on in the movie when, uh, they find the two scouts that
• 38:17
  Track 4: have found the hunt army.
• 38:19
  Track 4: And then he's like, and then he's like, go, you go tell the emperor that we're
• 38:22
  Track 4: coming for him or whatever.
• 38:23
  Track 4: Right. and then as they run away he asks his like his uh crony like how many like.
• 38:27
  Track 2: How many how.
• 38:28
  Track 4: Many men does it take to send a message like one it's like oh like that still
• 38:32
  Track 4: hits like 20 years later man i love that shit.
• 38:34
  Track 2: He is they it's he gets so little overall and like so so little like depth and yet,
• 38:41
  Track 2: he is one of the most badass he is one of the most badass disney villains ever
• 38:47
  Track 2: written in my opinion like like absolutely like fucking he's even got a hawk
• 38:53
  Track 2: he's got a falcon he's got a sidekick yeah.
• 38:56
  Track 3: He's got a sidekick hawk.
• 38:57
  Track 2: Yeah and.
• 38:59
  Track 5: Do that line about like oh yeah and this little girl's gonna want her doll back.
• 39:02
  Track 2: Yeah yes dude he is so good the rest of it though no i'm sorry i i literally
• 39:10
  Track 2: the entire i watched this i'm like man this i'm just letting you know that there's
• 39:17
  Track 2: a seven-year-old who disagrees with you.
• 39:19
  Track 4: Who watched this movie every day. Seven-year-old me wants to fight you right now.
• 39:25
  Track 2: Wow.
• 39:26
  Track 3: You better dress up as a girl and do it.
• 39:29
  Track 2: You know what, Tony? I hate to break it to you, but I could beat up a seven-year-old.
• 39:32
  Track 4: Damn, okay.
• 39:36
  Track 4: I gotta step back on that one. I know when I'm a little kid and I can't win
• 39:40
  Track 4: a fight, I gotta step back.
• 39:43
  Track 4: Can't win them all.
• 39:45
  Track 1: There was another line that I wrote down that I thought was like,
• 39:48
  Track 1: I was surprised, speaking of like funny lines, is when they leave and she's
• 39:54
  Track 1: getting ready to, like she's having that conversation with the horse and.
• 39:57
  Track 2: And, you have to give, Evan, you have to give, Ray's die.
• 40:03
  Track 4: She is on life support from how hard she's laughing.
• 40:10
  Track 3: I'm so sorry.
• 40:11
  Track 4: Okay ray is literally crying right now she's she's literally.
• 40:17
  Track 3: Shaking right now because the image is like a small black child i'm so sorry baby tony i love you.
• 40:27
  Track 4: Ray ray ray i will be.
• 40:31
  Track 3: Ray, I will be your jersey.
• 40:38
  Track 2: A bearded bald white man with tattoos. It's a bad image. It's a bad image.
• 40:46
  Track 2: It makes it even better that I'm wearing a resist racism shirt.
• 40:52
  Track 4: As a result, left of the projector has now been canceled.
• 40:55
  Track 3: I beat white children equally as I beat black children. You hear that?
• 41:00
  Track 2: It doesn't matter race. Seven-year-olds, I can take them.
• 41:05
  Track 3: Race gender creed seven-year-olds i can take them and you're just you're just
• 41:12
  Track 3: beating the shit out of a baby tony who's like let's get down to business to
• 41:17
  Track 3: defeat the ones like mulan was my identity.
• 41:22
  Track 4: So yeah but no.
• 41:23
  Track 3: That's that's good shit it's funny i'm sorry i've recovered room in hand.
• 41:28
  Track 5: Doing all the moves.
• 41:32
  Track 4: I would try to do that kick at the end of the song when they do that kick.
• 41:39
  Track 4: I would do that off the couch.
• 41:43
  Track 4: So maybe I wouldn't fare too bad if I landed that kick.
• 41:45
  Track 1: You'd be fucked up.
• 41:47
  Track 2: You never know. We'll have to try.
• 41:50
  Track 3: I've just recovered, please.
• 41:56
  Track 1: Well, the thing I was going to say was the one of the
• 41:58
  Track 1: lines that i'm surprised that disney put in
• 42:02
  Track 1: i mean sometimes i watch some of these older movies and i'm thinking you
• 42:05
  Track 1: know maybe there's people who are in pot
• 42:08
  Track 1: like you know executives don't understand some of the things sometimes when
• 42:12
  Track 1: they first leave and mulan is i guess talking to uh mushu and they're sort of
• 42:19
  Track 1: like getting ready to prepare to i guess join the uh the conscripted army is
• 42:25
  Track 1: she says my eyes can see straight through your armor.
• 42:28
  Track 1: I feel like that's like a, I don't know. Like that's a weird line. Yes.
• 42:35
  Track 4: Okay, so right now we're actually talking about this beforehand,
• 42:38
  Track 4: too, as well, is that in this movie,
• 42:40
  Track 4: it's probably more so than any Disney movie that there's, like,
• 42:43
  Track 4: this recognition that Mulan, like, is a woman and has a female body,
• 42:47
  Track 4: and as a result, the male characters respond differently to it, right?
• 42:51
  Track 4: It's almost like, it's like watching, like, a Disney movie and someone goes
• 42:54
  Track 4: to the bathroom, like, that just doesn't happen, right?
• 42:56
  Track 4: It's just outside of the realm of things that are possible in these movies.
• 42:59
  Track 4: And so when that line was said, and there's other things too,
• 43:02
  Track 4: like, you know, when she has to go for, have the bath in the lake or whatever,
• 43:07
  Track 4: there's all these like moments like that just don't, that don't exist in other Disney movies.
• 43:10
  Track 1: Yeah, that scene in the lake.
• 43:11
  Track 3: Well, we said, I thought of like the Little Mermaid where it's kind of close,
• 43:15
  Track 3: but like the gag is that she is a mer-person, not that she's a girl, right?
• 43:19
  Track 3: But when she washes up on the shore and she's naked and she has her human legs,
• 43:23
  Track 3: like there is this moment of vulnerability and shyness, but it's not,
• 43:27
  Track 3: it's not so much gendered. It's because she's never been a naked lady with legs before.
• 43:32
  Track 1: The scene in the lake, too, is once she finally sort of escapes,
• 43:35
  Track 1: and then she has the line, too, where she says, you know, I hope I never see
• 43:38
  Track 1: another naked man again. And then all of the soldiers just, like, run right past her.
• 43:43
  Track 3: And then there's, like, a stampede.
• 43:44
  Track 1: Yeah, I thought that's funny, too.
• 43:46
  Track 2: I thought that entire thing was funny from the perspective of,
• 43:49
  Track 2: they kept saying, like, you know, how Mushu's, like, they're like,
• 43:52
  Track 2: oh, you know, men don't bathe.
• 43:55
  Track 2: And, like, you know, how, like, and I'm just, like,
• 43:57
  Track 2: I'm sorry. It is a well-known fact that basically only Europeans did not fucking bathe.
• 44:03
  Track 2: The rest of the world was bathing themselves regardless of gender.
• 44:11
  Track 2: Everyone else was like, hey, maybe we should clean the shit out of our ass and not stink all the time.
• 44:16
  Track 1: Yeah, and not to mention the fact that she would have come from,
• 44:20
  Track 1: you know, a more wealthy family. I'm pretty sure that her war hero father was bathing.
• 44:25
  Track 2: Not only did the rest of the fucking world bathe, like East Asia is specifically
• 44:32
  Track 2: known, like, for a bathing culture, like bathhouse culture.
• 44:38
  Track 2: Like this is not like, like that,
• 44:41
  Track 2: that it, it, it just displays such a fundamental lack of like a fundamental
• 44:46
  Track 2: ignorance of the culture at large
• 44:49
  Track 2: to like have that entire thing and then only play it for like comedy.
• 44:53
  Track 2: And it's just like, no, that's just not the way like these societies functions.
• 45:02
  Track 5: It's funny, too, because Disney sent a team to China to do research for the
• 45:07
  Track 5: movie to try to make it culturally accurate.
• 45:10
  Track 2: What did they do there?
• 45:11
  Track 5: They fucked up a lot.
• 45:13
  Track 2: What were they doing there?
• 45:14
  Track 1: They're just hanging out at the hotel, you know?
• 45:16
  Track 5: Just hanging out.
• 45:19
  Track 4: Wait, can I say a thought? They went to Taiwan. Okay, sorry.
• 45:26
  Track 5: And what's the lesser China?
• 45:28
  Track 3: Can I say a thought? And now it feels like it's out of order.
• 45:30
  Track 3: Listeners, I need you all to know that we in the pearls have like an authoritative
• 45:35
  Track 3: dictatorial outline that that rules every episode.
• 45:38
  Track 3: And I know because I'm often the one who writes it. So I feel like I'm out of
• 45:41
  Track 3: order, but there is no order.
• 45:43
  Track 3: So I'm just saying that we don't do that here to abate my own panic.
• 45:47
  Track 3: But something that has just occurred to me and earlier we were talking about the conscripted army.
• 45:53
  Track 3: And when Mulan is in her village there's a
• 45:56
  Track 3: neighbor whose father is also like a senior citizen
• 45:59
  Track 3: and it is a young son and we're not clear on his
• 46:02
  Track 3: age but he's probably I guess like just 18 or whatever and he
• 46:05
  Track 3: volunteers for his father and it's like again the moment of bringing honor to
• 46:09
  Track 3: the family and not making his dad go to war which Mulan is supposed to let her
• 46:13
  Track 3: father do anyway when we're looking at the army of conscripts and how Shifu
• 46:19
  Track 3: deems them as a pathetic and not real soldiers.
• 46:23
  Track 3: There's also this, I really don't even know what this connects to. I'm sorry.
• 46:26
  Track 3: I'm just like having a thought, but it, you see that all of the men,
• 46:30
  Track 3: and I don't remember who said it earlier when we were having this discussion,
• 46:32
  Track 3: they're all sort of like feminized in a certain way, or they're fat or they're
• 46:37
  Track 3: stupid, or there's something weird about their bodies that makes them like quote unquote, not manly.
• 46:42
  Track 3: And you realize that it's sort of like the army of conscripts from these people
• 46:45
  Track 3: that do not have material wealth.
• 46:47
  Track 3: They don't have anything to Luz, they are the most disposable men.
• 46:52
  Track 3: And these are the people, because until Mushu pretends that they're called to the front,
• 46:59
  Track 3: this is just like a random battalion that nobody's expecting to do anything
• 47:03
  Track 3: and a super fatal army coming their way.
• 47:08
  Track 3: And there's really no chance that they're going to be war heroes.
• 47:10
  Track 3: And frankly, they're sort of like cannon fodder that stands between the Huns and the emperor, right?
• 47:16
  Track 3: And we just see this, like, generation of disposable men because,
• 47:20
  Track 3: and what they have in common is that they don't display sort of, like.
• 47:25
  Track 3: Like normative masculinity again i'm sorry i feel like that was off topic but it's just a thought.
• 47:31
  Track 1: That maybe things of something early when they're deciding like the emperor's
• 47:35
  Track 1: deciding that they need to have a like do the you know conscript an army to he he has because.
• 47:42
  Track 3: The guy who comes from the military is like no i think my army can handle it and he's like.
• 47:46
  Track 1: No he has some line where he says you know i'd rather have you know one person
• 47:51
  Track 1: i can't think of a line he says No.
• 47:53
  Track 4: He says like the one grain of rice can tip the scale.
• 47:57
  Track 1: Yeah, okay, maybe that guy. So it wasn't exactly what I was thinking.
• 47:58
  Track 5: It's like one grain of rice can tip the scale. So it's like one man can make a difference.
• 48:02
  Track 3: One grain of rice can tip the scale. So like one, the right soldier,
• 48:05
  Track 3: if they come, can save the whole army, right?
• 48:07
  Track 3: And then it cuts to the scene of Mulan not being good at being a girl and eating a bowl of rice.
• 48:12
  Track 1: Okay, so that wasn't directly right. But I think that the point of the like
• 48:16
  Track 1: the conscripted army is very it makes it easier for Mulan as the as the cross-dressing
• 48:24
  Track 1: woman to fit in because none of them fit in in any way.
• 48:28
  Track 3: They're all outcasts.
• 48:29
  Track 4: Yeah.
• 48:30
  Track 3: And then they have like Li Shang, who's like a Nepo baby of the military,
• 48:35
  Track 3: who is their leadership.
• 48:36
  Track 3: And so even though he's handsome and also has a fetching bob haircut,
• 48:40
  Track 3: we're also supposed to understand that Shifu and the rest of the upper echelon
• 48:46
  Track 3: of the military state complex, it's kind of unclear what the division is of
• 48:51
  Track 3: that, is like he is seen as sort of like a risk.
• 48:53
  Track 3: Even though his father like defends his credentials, he's still seen as like non-establishment.
• 48:59
  Track 1: I did actually didn't didn't realize until I was looking now is that uh Pat
• 49:03
  Track 1: Morita is the voice for the emperor of China which I didn't notice until now
• 49:07
  Track 1: if everyone knows him from Karate Kid probably Mr. Miyagi.
• 49:14
  Track 2: I do like the Emperor's design. That was a good piece of character design.
• 49:18
  Track 1: It's funny, Bill, you and I were talking before, you were saying,
• 49:20
  Track 1: I was saying that I thought some of the sort of the fighting action sequences
• 49:23
  Track 1: with the avalanche, I thought they were, you know, like looked pretty good.
• 49:27
  Track 1: And you told me you didn't think they look good, which...
• 49:29
  Track 2: I think the animation of this movie overall is substandard. Yes, the avalanche is...
• 49:37
  Track 2: The avalanche is pretty well animated, but there's actually,
• 49:42
  Track 2: you can actually tell They definitely used some, uh, computer,
• 49:46
  Track 2: uh, animation during that scene.
• 49:49
  Track 2: Um, but overall the 2d animation of this film, I think overall is substandard.
• 49:54
  Track 2: Um, it very much.
• 49:57
  Track 2: So like when it comes to animation, um, like you, there's like terms in like,
• 50:05
  Track 2: like high fidelity animation versus low fidelity.
• 50:07
  Track 2: And generally, um, films tend to be high fidelity throughout,
• 50:14
  Track 2: you know, as opposed to say, if you're watching an anime, um,
• 50:21
  Track 2: especially like a lower budget anime, um, they're going to be like low fidelity.
• 50:26
  Track 2: and then they're going to kick into high fidelity for certain scenes.
• 50:31
  Track 2: Whereas, so, whereas if you look at some things like say, for example,
• 50:36
  Track 2: the Cowboy Bebop film, okay.
• 50:38
  Track 2: Or Cowboy Bebop as a show, but Cowboy Bebop film is a high fidelity animated film throughout.
• 50:47
  Track 2: There are no low fidelity aspects of that film.
• 50:51
  Track 2: And if we were to look at even Disney films, um.
• 50:56
  Track 2: If we were to look at Lion King, for example, Lion King is a high-fidelity animated film.
• 51:02
  Track 2: Throughout Lion King, it is high-fidelity. That is high-fidelity animation through
• 51:07
  Track 2: and through from start to finish, the whole thing.
• 51:09
  Track 2: This film? No. There are scenes where you can actually see the low-fidelity,
• 51:16
  Track 2: where it actually steps down.
• 51:17
  Track 2: They're actually saving in budget, time.
• 51:21
  Track 2: They're either pushing, you know, it's that thing. It's like,
• 51:24
  Track 2: you can either, you can have it, you know, two of three ways,
• 51:28
  Track 2: you know, fast, cheap, good.
• 51:30
  Track 2: You can't have all three, you know, you got to pick. And it's like,
• 51:33
  Track 2: you could tell at certain points that they step down, especially like,
• 51:39
  Track 2: you know, intimate moments or just like regular moments.
• 51:44
  Track 2: It is the same fidelity animation as you would see in a standard Disney cartoon
• 51:51
  Track 2: of the time on television. It is no better, no worse.
• 51:57
  Track 2: They did not pour resources into that.
• 52:00
  Track 3: What are you talking about? They spent a ton of money on the recon mission,
• 52:04
  Track 3: sending everyone to China to research.
• 52:08
  Track 2: Like they spent...
• 52:10
  Track 5: Deep research.
• 52:11
  Track 2: Very specific scenes have higher fidelity but overall it's overall no the i
• 52:20
  Track 2: find the animation and now listen am i kind of like an animation like snob yes okay i am but,
• 52:32
  Track 2: also i think that just objectively large portions of this movie are what would
• 52:37
  Track 2: be considered low animation that's.
• 52:39
  Track 1: Fair i did see that part of it was i saw on the wikipedia that some of the was
• 52:43
  Track 1: some of what they used to animate this were the things that were later used
• 52:47
  Track 1: for the like pixar is very photorealistic,
• 52:51
  Track 1: content whereas other parts were not so maybe that's where this comes in where
• 52:55
  Track 1: they just use that for some of the movie and then other parts they just thought
• 52:59
  Track 1: like well no one will tell no one will know the difference no one's ever been to china like.
• 53:03
  Track 4: Yeah don't.
• 53:04
  Track 1: Know they won't know the difference yeah.
• 53:05
  Track 5: Yes they're gonna forget about this scene.
• 53:08
  Track 4: No one's ever gonna talk on a communist podcast about low fidelity and high
• 53:12
  Track 4: fidelity animation guess what disney.
• 53:13
  Track 2: Listen,
• 53:24
  Track 2: i'm an animation nerd and i've always been an animation nerd okay.
• 53:28
  Track 4: That's fair tony.
• 53:28
  Track 3: Didn't have the chance because he grew up watching mulan so that opportunity was foreclosed.
• 53:32
  Track 4: Yeah there was a time no there was a time when i was young and i was seven and
• 53:36
  Track 4: i'd watched mulan and i was so excited to study animation and this guy came
• 53:41
  Track 4: up to me and at his low fidelity and punched me in the face.
• 53:44
  Track 3: That was me.
• 53:45
  Track 2: I traveled in time. I went back in time.
• 53:47
  Track 5: Just beat the absolute shit out of him.
• 53:49
  Track 2: Tony, you should thank me because do you really want to work for Disney?
• 53:52
  Track 2: They're a terrible company.
• 53:53
  Track 4: You're right. You saved my life.
• 53:55
  Track 2: Changed the direction of my life. They're a terrible company.
• 53:57
  Track 4: It's very true.
• 53:58
  Track 3: Now you're an esteemed member of the left podcast chariot.
• 54:02
  Track 1: Yeah, Bill, you could have gone back and killed baby Hitler,
• 54:04
  Track 1: but instead you saved Tony, so.
• 54:07
  Track 2: There was a limit, you know. I couldn't afford the, you know,
• 54:09
  Track 2: I couldn't, you know, I couldn't afford that far back. You know,
• 54:13
  Track 2: I could only go back so far.
• 54:14
  Track 4: Fair enough, fair enough.
• 54:15
  Track 2: As a matter of fact, Tony might actually be young enough that I would be old
• 54:19
  Track 2: enough when he was seven to be, you know, possibly an adult.
• 54:25
  Track 4: I was seven back then, 99.
• 54:28
  Track 1: Bill and I were older.
• 54:29
  Track 2: Yeah, I was basically- Tony is the youngest.
• 54:32
  Track 3: Tony is by far the youngest prole.
• 54:34
  Track 2: It wouldn't be as bad as now, but yes, I was- I would still have been legally
• 54:40
  Track 2: indicted for striking a child.
• 54:48
  Track 4: You guys, Ray's having another fit.
• 54:50
  Track 3: You okay?
• 54:51
  Track 4: It's all funny.
• 54:52
  Track 3: I'm reeling it in. I'm reeling it in.
• 54:54
  Track 1: We've already sort of, like, talked about what happens at the end,
• 54:56
  Track 1: but they initially feel as though they've beaten the Huns by having the avalanche.
• 55:04
  Track 1: Like, they've now covered in snow. They're fine.
• 55:05
  Track 1: They're having a parade for them, and they've discovered the Mulan as a woman,
• 55:09
  Track 1: and they've, you know, cast her out.
• 55:11
  Track 3: After they abandoned her in the snowy mountain pass to die.
• 55:15
  Track 1: Not even, yeah. They're not even, you know. And she was discovered in this because
• 55:20
  Track 1: she was injured, and so they're, I guess, you know, tending to her injury and
• 55:24
  Track 1: now taking off her clothes, presumably, and they're like, oh,
• 55:27
  Track 1: she's not what we thought, or he's not what we thought, which is also kind of
• 55:32
  Track 1: weird and a little bit creepy.
• 55:34
  Track 1: They don't really say the subtext,
• 55:36
  Track 1: but the subtext is very much there that it's weird for all of them.
• 55:40
  Track 4: Again, it's that it's that same thing that's like very not very common in Disney
• 55:43
  Track 4: movies is like recognition that, you know, bodies are different.
• 55:47
  Track 3: And yeah, it is actually unusual that they find a way to discover it organically
• 55:53
  Track 3: rather than her wanting to reclaim her honor by just disclosing.
• 55:57
  Track 3: It is kind of interesting that they go for like, I mean, we don't see it on
• 56:00
  Track 3: screen, but like they physically choose to expose her body.
• 56:04
  Track 1: Yeah.
• 56:05
  Track 3: Rather than maybe her thinking, hey, I'm this great war hero.
• 56:08
  Track 3: Maybe they'll accept me and I'm just going to tell him transparently.
• 56:11
  Track 1: I feel like that would have been better. I mean, I say that like loosely,
• 56:15
  Track 1: like, you know, does that make her feel more honorable?
• 56:18
  Track 3: Well, I hadn't thought of it until now.
• 56:20
  Track 3: But I guess, yeah, that she's trying to like reclaim her honor by like disclosing her real identity.
• 56:26
  Track 3: And then they reject her, which I think tells a clearer story.
• 56:29
  Track 3: I think it is kind of a strange plot point that they, again,
• 56:33
  Track 3: like we're not the ones seeing it, but it is alluded to that they're seeing her naked body.
• 56:37
  Track 5: Yeah, no, I agree. Because also, like, because immediately afterwards,
• 56:41
  Track 5: like, Mulan is coming to him like, oh, I never meant for it to go this far.
• 56:45
  Track 5: And it's like, no, you did mean for it to go this far.
• 56:49
  Track 5: Like, that's the whole point of this story. Well, there is a moment.
• 56:56
  Track 3: Though, during the montage after she like right before she climbs up the pole,
• 57:01
  Track 3: which again, later becomes a really important part, apparently,
• 57:03
  Track 3: of Chinese military strategy is like weighted pole climbing.
• 57:07
  Track 3: But right before she climbs up the pole, he there's a line where he is like
• 57:11
  Track 3: dismisses her basically.
• 57:12
  Track 3: And he's like, get your get your horse cow and get out of here.
• 57:16
  Track 3: And she like gets up her horse and then she's like, wait a second.
• 57:19
  Track 3: And then she like climbs the pole.
• 57:21
  Track 3: Right. And so there actually is a moment where maybe she thinks she's not going to go that far.
• 57:24
  Track 3: And all she really wanted to do was make it so that her father didn't have to
• 57:28
  Track 3: go to base camp. So if she gets dismissed, her dad doesn't have to come in her place.
• 57:32
  Track 1: Yeah, she realizes she's stronger than she knew or something like that.
• 57:37
  Track 3: Because she has a lower center of gravity because she's a woman.
• 57:40
  Track 3: And so she can use her thigh strength to get up the pole.
• 57:44
  Track 2: They actually said it. This couldn't be interpreted as kind of like classist. Because...
• 57:53
  Track 2: They, Li Shang points out in the beginning, he projects.
• 57:58
  Track 3: First of all, the man saying this can afford name brand Cheetos.
• 58:02
  Track 3: I just want all the listeners to keep that in mind while discussing class.
• 58:06
  Track 2: You don't know that. I just said Cheetos. Maybe I just referred to my off-brand
• 58:11
  Track 2: Cheetos by the name brand.
• 58:13
  Track 3: Revealing his upward class aspirations, listeners.
• 58:16
  Track 2: Cheetos have now become the name Cheetos. It's like Band-Aid.
• 58:21
  Track 2: We just call all the Cheetos.
• 58:25
  Track 2: it's just orange crisp yeah.
• 58:27
  Track 3: That's just what we call that thing,
• 58:31
  Track 3: orange corn puff.
• 58:33
  Track 2: Yeah i'm sorry continue he basically says you know he's like what did we say
• 58:40
  Track 2: one is discipline and what is what what's the other one whatever discipline.
• 58:44
  Track 3: And strength i think.
• 58:45
  Track 2: Discipline and strength right and then she uses them to like you know she puts
• 58:49
  Track 2: them together, you know, she uses them how you fucking, how you, he projects.
• 58:53
  Track 2: So basically it's almost like, it's like the rest of these people who are not
• 58:57
  Track 2: from her class are just, they're a bunch of dummies and like only someone of
• 59:01
  Track 2: her class, regardless of gender could figure out that's what you do.
• 59:06
  Track 2: You use this as the tool, you use it as the thing that can help you get to the
• 59:12
  Track 2: top as as opposed to the burden, the weight of discipline, you know, and strength.
• 59:18
  Track 2: It's like you use it as the tool to do it.
• 59:22
  Track 2: But again, you know, the rest of the dum-dums can't.
• 59:25
  Track 3: I kind of read it the other way, that it,
• 59:28
  Track 3: again you have to put on your like liberal pantsuit brain
• 59:31
  Track 3: to approach this but it's like she is not because
• 59:34
  Track 3: her class position is like suspended or is maybe even
• 59:37
  Track 3: a deterrent because she hasn't had to do any kind of like manual labor
• 59:40
  Track 3: like maybe some of these peasant women would have handled it better frankly
• 59:42
  Track 3: but i took it as like because she's already at a disadvantage she has to find
• 59:48
  Track 3: a way to use cleverness to make up for what she lacks because what's being prized
• 59:52
  Track 3: in that moment is strength and she lacks physical strength that is prized in
• 59:57
  Track 3: a soldier and she has to make up for it with mental acuity,
• 1:00:00
  Track 3: which is what's mirrored back later when she does the avalanche.
• 1:00:03
  Track 3: They only have one cannon left and they realize there's actually like hundreds of soldiers coming.
• 1:00:07
  Track 3: And so she has to like leverage the small amount of quote unquote strength as
• 1:00:11
  Track 3: in like one explosion to do the work of hundreds because they no longer have access to it.
• 1:00:16
  Track 2: Yeah, I mean, I do think that that is also an equally valid interpretation,
• 1:00:22
  Track 2: because I think that the basic message of this is incredibly muddled and is
• 1:00:28
  Track 2: not straightforward in any way, shape, or form.
• 1:00:31
  Track 1: Well, that gets to, so I was kind of alluding to the end. So then she's now
• 1:00:36
  Track 1: cast off, left to die, basically.
• 1:00:38
  Track 1: And then she is able, she sees that they're now, the Huns are now going,
• 1:00:42
  Track 1: they've been resurrected from the snow and they're going to go and continue
• 1:00:46
  Track 1: to finish their mission of killing the emperor for no particular reason, you know, and...
• 1:00:52
  Track 2: Only like five of them.
• 1:00:53
  Track 1: Yeah, the only five of them.
• 1:00:54
  Track 5: That's a handful.
• 1:00:55
  Track 3: Also, the man is like 600 years old. This man is Old Testament old.
• 1:01:00
  Track 3: Like, you don't need to kill this guy. He's on his way out.
• 1:01:03
  Track 2: The entire time we're watching, I'm like, there's five of them.
• 1:01:06
  Track 2: What are they going to do?
• 1:01:08
  Track 2: Like, there's fucking five of them. And they come up on like this city.
• 1:01:13
  Track 2: They show you that vista.
• 1:01:15
  Track 2: This city is fucking huge.
• 1:01:17
  Track 5: It's like three of them were the big ones of them.
• 1:01:21
  Track 2: Like, there's five of you. The element of surprise. How did those three get in the line?
• 1:01:27
  Track 3: And they enter, they break into a military parade.
• 1:01:32
  Track 3: So they literally break into something
• 1:01:34
  Track 3: with the entire remaining military apparatus in line, in formation.
• 1:01:40
  Track 2: And then, and they hide. The sneaky big guys. They hide in the lion,
• 1:01:45
  Track 2: the lion costume, which I genuinely forgot.
• 1:01:50
  Track 2: Like, I've seen this before, but I forgot that that's what happened.
• 1:01:53
  Track 2: And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I turned to my wife. I'm like,
• 1:01:56
  Track 2: why is that thing so creepily behind her the entire time? Why is it still there?
• 1:02:03
  Track 2: But also for the characters in the movie, why wouldn't anyone be like,
• 1:02:07
  Track 2: why the fuck are you still here?
• 1:02:09
  Track 2: What are you doing, man? like back up.
• 1:02:13
  Track 1: In some ways it's like, it almost alludes to the fact that without Mulan as
• 1:02:17
  Track 1: part of their, like the brains of their military, uh,
• 1:02:21
  Track 1: without they aren't capable of you
• 1:02:24
  Track 1: know fighting against doing anything yeah one i mean again she comes in she
• 1:02:30
  Track 1: tries to warn them but of course they don't believe her and then you know it's
• 1:02:33
  Track 1: too late and the emperor is captured and they you know she has the idea to you
• 1:02:38
  Track 1: know go around and then another like gender scene is well.
• 1:02:41
  Track 3: Because the men are trying to break in by brute force right which is when she's
• 1:02:46
  Track 3: like this is not the tool for this moment.
• 1:02:48
  Track 1: And instead they dress up as women yes to.
• 1:02:52
  Track 3: Yeah so it's like when Mulan dresses up as a woman it's bad but when a bunch
• 1:02:57
  Track 3: of like ugly dudes dress up as women then it's good.
• 1:03:01
  Track 1: And they even sort of feel.
• 1:03:03
  Track 5: I mean they got called ugly.
• 1:03:05
  Track 1: Concubines they did.
• 1:03:06
  Track 2: That is true.
• 1:03:07
  Track 3: But one of the guys was into it.
• 1:03:08
  Track 1: Yeah he's like yeah you know whatever I'm cool.
• 1:03:11
  Track 5: Like, we don't kink shame here.
• 1:03:13
  Track 3: No.
• 1:03:14
  Track 2: No.
• 1:03:15
  Track 3: Shout out to ugly concubines.
• 1:03:17
  Track 2: As Warda said, we don't kink shame, but we might ask kink why.
• 1:03:22
  Track 5: We might kink ask why.
• 1:03:24
  Track 2: Yeah, we might kink ask why. But, like, the whole thing still makes no sense
• 1:03:30
  Track 2: because Lee Shan doesn't dress up, but he gets in.
• 1:03:34
  Track 3: Well, yeah, but that's the thing. We already had, but we already had a gay love
• 1:03:39
  Track 3: story. And then if he dresses up, it's too emasculating, right? This is the thing.
• 1:03:43
  Track 3: He has to be impeachably masculine so that he can go home and top ping, right?
• 1:03:48
  Track 3: If he dresses as a woman, then we as the viewer are left to question, are they both versus?
• 1:03:54
  Track 3: And it really opens us up to a different sort of archetypal romance than a clear
• 1:03:58
  Track 3: top bottom, which is what we as the viewer, which is what Tony needed when he was seven.
• 1:04:03
  Track 5: Yeah, they got to clearly lay out the whole like.
• 1:04:06
  Track 4: That was a bit of a jump wow.
• 1:04:10
  Track 2: Tony how do you feel about that.
• 1:04:13
  Track 3: He's used to it.
• 1:04:14
  Track 4: Yeah this is how I live my life.
• 1:04:16
  Track 2: It's truly like and it's like they dress up as concubines but they still climb
• 1:04:21
  Track 2: ropes to get in it's not like they used the fact that they were like concubines yes.
• 1:04:27
  Track 3: Because climbing because climbing the pole is a very important part of Chinese military.
• 1:04:32
  Track 2: Strategy which we learned from the beginning it's not you need to do it.
• 1:04:35
  Track 3: Like a lady.
• 1:04:36
  Track 2: It's not like dressing up as a concubine allowed them some kind of like easy access to the palace.
• 1:04:42
  Track 2: They climbed a fucking rope to get in there.
• 1:04:45
  Track 5: We can let them close the distance to their enemy. Thus making their attack more effective.
• 1:04:51
  Track 2: Okay. All right.
• 1:04:53
  Track 3: Also stuffed with fruit.
• 1:04:55
  Track 3: Their concubine costumes are stuffed with fruit. Fruit is a really important part.
• 1:05:01
  Track 2: The one guy had a banana in his bosom. I was like, that's a weird looking boob.
• 1:05:09
  Track 2: It's not a banana. I was like, listen, that should make sense if they were doing
• 1:05:13
  Track 2: something else. But like, that's in his bosom.
• 1:05:15
  Track 5: We talked about how these people are conscripts and like, they don't come from
• 1:05:19
  Track 5: wealth. They don't come from money. They're getting whatever they can.
• 1:05:21
  Track 3: They don't know where a banana goes. They don't know what a boob fruit is.
• 1:05:25
  Track 5: They're using whatever they can get their hands on.
• 1:05:28
  Track 4: Proletarian ingenuity.
• 1:05:29
  Track 5: That's why one of the apples had a bite out of it.
• 1:05:32
  Track 1: That's fair.
• 1:05:33
  Track 3: Because this empire is not feeding their military very well.
• 1:05:37
  Track 3: And like 80% of them died. They were absolutely fucking slaughtered,
• 1:05:41
  Track 3: including Li Shang's dad.
• 1:05:43
  Track 3: Everyone is fucking dead. And they still do not have enough extra fruit to fill
• 1:05:47
  Track 3: up like four dudes' titties.
• 1:05:50
  Track 1: It also seems, I was going to say, they learn that the way to defeat the Huns
• 1:05:56
  Track 1: is simply with fireworks and rockets.
• 1:05:58
  Track 1: Because that's how she ends up defeating...
• 1:06:01
  Track 4: The weakness.
• 1:06:02
  Track 1: Yeah, that's their kryptonite is, you know, fireworks. You know, he shoots...
• 1:06:05
  Track 3: Well, and they have to remind us at the end once more, this is China.
• 1:06:09
  Track 3: Fireworks equals China. China is explosions and lanterns.
• 1:06:14
  Track 5: Which is the Asian Disney movie. but also U.S. military recruitment rates and
• 1:06:20
  Track 5: we kill people by exploding them.
• 1:06:22
  Track 3: And she like slides in on the paper lanterns. You know, like that is a cool moment.
• 1:06:27
  Track 4: Like towards point, this is the original drone pilot.
• 1:06:31
  Track 4: Like Mulan is the original drone pilot woman, right? Using the rocket to blow them up.
• 1:06:35
  Track 5: She literally called an airstrike in on the bad guy.
• 1:06:40
  Track 2: I think it's a really good point, especially contextually like knowing Chinese
• 1:06:44
  Track 2: history and how, like, yeah, China had gunpowder, but it was not primarily used for war.
• 1:06:52
  Track 2: Like, that wasn't the point. Like...
• 1:06:55
  Track 2: But the West is like, the West got it, was like, how could we effectively murder
• 1:06:59
  Track 2: as many people as possible with this?
• 1:07:01
  Track 2: China was like, I mean, we'll use it, you know, but, you know, mostly not, you know.
• 1:07:07
  Track 2: But the West was like, we could use it to kill a lot of fucking people.
• 1:07:10
  Track 2: And this movie was like, why wouldn't they? Of course they would.
• 1:07:13
  Track 2: Like, yeah, we'd use it to kill people. That's what we do.
• 1:07:16
  Track 3: Again, when there's five of them surrounded by thousands of- Millions!
• 1:07:21
  Track 3: Of villagers and the remaining military men. They're like, we actually also
• 1:07:25
  Track 3: have to set off live explosives around, like, my grandmother and other,
• 1:07:29
  Track 3: like, country people who've come to this celebration.
• 1:07:32
  Track 2: Like, fucking, what were they going to do, these five of you?
• 1:07:38
  Track 2: What were you going to do if you killed the emperor? Like, what?
• 1:07:41
  Track 2: What were you going to do?
• 1:07:42
  Track 5: You're not leaving.
• 1:07:44
  Track 3: Eat the last four pieces of fruit.
• 1:07:47
  Track 5: You know, the bad guys can't, bad guys can't leave, but we got to reinforce.
• 1:07:53
  Track 5: Yeah, they got to reinforce for the U.S. military.
• 1:07:56
  Track 3: Well, and that's also, I mean, we see this in U.S. foreign policy today.
• 1:07:59
  Track 3: All you have to do is kill the emperor and then you just own it because you killed the emperor.
• 1:08:03
  Track 3: And that's how international politics works. If you're the U.S.
• 1:08:07
  Track 2: You could also put them in prison in New York State.
• 1:08:10
  Track 4: Yeah, that too.
• 1:08:10
  Track 5: Yeah.
• 1:08:11
  Track 1: And Bill, I was going to extrapolate your gunpowder metaphor to drones,
• 1:08:16
  Track 1: where the West uses drones to blow up hospitals and murder people,
• 1:08:20
  Track 1: and the Chinese use drones to do their fireworks ceremonies now.
• 1:08:24
  Track 3: To replace the fireworks.
• 1:08:26
  Track 2: Yeah, to replace fireworks.
• 1:08:26
  Track 3: Because they were like, even as fireworks, it still does damage.
• 1:08:29
  Track 2: So we should probably try to reduce that.
• 1:08:31
  Track 1: So we're like, we're going to use drones for pretty dragons in the sky while
• 1:08:34
  Track 1: you use it to blow up hospitals of babies.
• 1:08:38
  Track 2: I just always come back to the fact that at one point, China as an empire had
• 1:08:43
  Track 2: a powerful enough navy to just, and started doing imperialism.
• 1:08:47
  Track 2: And then like 10 years in was like, yeah, let's not do this. Let's just go home.
• 1:08:52
  Track 2: Like, fuck it. Like, why are we doing this? This is stupid. Let's go home.
• 1:08:55
  Track 2: Like, just like, fuck it.
• 1:08:58
  Track 3: Listen, guys, we tried. We tried.
• 1:08:59
  Track 1: Did you know there was a cycle to this?
• 1:09:01
  Track 2: But honestly, fuck it.
• 1:09:02
  Track 2: Yeah, of course there was.
• 1:09:04
  Track 1: And so, I mean.
• 1:09:04
  Track 4: I didn't know there was a sequel. Why would I know?
• 1:09:09
  Track 1: What I meant to say was, did you know what the sequel was about?
• 1:09:11
  Track 5: How many times did you watch the sequel, Tony?
• 1:09:12
  Track 1: More so. So, in that, it's, because you alluded to right before,
• 1:09:16
  Track 1: is, you know, presumably at the end, you know, the General Shang is going to marry Mulan.
• 1:09:22
  Track 1: And it's very clearly that that's now her fiancé in the sequel.
• 1:09:26
  Track 1: So, you know, very clearly what they were trying to do.
• 1:09:30
  Track 1: And they go on a special mission to, like it says in Wikipedia,
• 1:09:34
  Track 1: to escort the Emperor's three daughters across the country to meet their fiancé.
• 1:09:38
  Track 1: While they also have to have Mushu break up their relationship or something. I'm not going to say it.
• 1:09:44
  Track 2: So it's not about a gay marriage?
• 1:09:46
  Track 5: Call me out.
• 1:09:48
  Track 1: But Disney's progressive.
• 1:09:51
  Track 2: The one thing I did want to, I did want to say to go back to the arranged marriage thing.
• 1:09:58
  Track 2: Um, I think it's really funny that the, like how they like focus on the arranged
• 1:10:03
  Track 2: marriage and like how it's like portrayed and like how you said,
• 1:10:07
  Track 2: and I think you're right.
• 1:10:07
  Track 2: It's like, you know, the very idea it's like, oh, they're backwards.
• 1:10:10
  Track 2: but like every it's just,
• 1:10:13
  Track 2: there's this trend in like Western society in which modern Western society constantly
• 1:10:19
  Track 2: put, like puts itself as like the moral arbiter and like the advanced society.
• 1:10:25
  Track 2: But like you all did the same shit.
• 1:10:27
  Track 2: Like you, like, like they just constantly, constantly pretend as if like they
• 1:10:33
  Track 2: didn't do the same exact thing historically. Like,
• 1:10:40
  Track 2: But arranged marriages are a hallmark of, like, Western European, like, culture.
• 1:10:46
  Track 1: And many of whom would go back to that if they could.
• 1:10:49
  Track 3: Marriage as the economic institution is a Western, largely Western phenomenon.
• 1:10:54
  Track 3: Of course, again, not to, hey, everybody can oppress women and treat them as property.
• 1:10:57
  Track 3: Good for you all. But yes, this is like a huge, is like the backbone of European
• 1:11:02
  Track 3: politics for, like, centuries.
• 1:11:03
  Track 2: You got some fucking gall to act like they're deserving of some kind of shame
• 1:11:10
  Track 2: as if you didn't do the same thing.
• 1:11:13
  Track 1: What? Americans being hypocritical, Bill?
• 1:11:16
  Track 2: Meanwhile, we've established we read.
• 1:11:17
  Track 3: Read books.
• 1:11:18
  Track 1: Books.
• 1:11:19
  Track 3: Read movies.
• 1:11:19
  Track 5: Read podcasts. We also watch movies.
• 1:11:21
  Track 2: And read movies as well.
• 1:11:23
  Track 5: Read movies?
• 1:11:24
  Track 3: I read movies.
• 1:11:24
  Track 2: I read podcasts. And listen to books.
• 1:11:27
  Track 3: I do listen to books.
• 1:11:28
  Track 1: And you can watch podcasts.
• 1:11:29
  Track 2: Oh, God.
• 1:11:30
  Track 3: Not ours, I hope.
• 1:11:31
  Track 1: No this will not be we don't pose any videos really.
• 1:11:35
  Track 2: No.
• 1:11:36
  Track 3: Neither do we. We're all hideous. Terrifying.
• 1:11:39
  Track 2: As adults having watched this, how do you feel about it?
• 1:11:42
  Track 4: I found like, I mean, talking about the positive aspects, like it's a funny
• 1:11:46
  Track 4: movie, right? There's a lot of visual gags that I really enjoyed.
• 1:11:49
  Track 4: Like at the start, Ray was talking about the part where they're at the matchmaker
• 1:11:53
  Track 4: and the matchmaker puts the stuff all over her face, right?
• 1:11:56
  Track 4: and before that the cricket her lucky crickets just chilling in her cup of hot
• 1:12:00
  Track 4: water like as if it's like a like a sauna a sauna jacuzzi hot tub kind of thing
• 1:12:05
  Track 4: and in that moment i was like absolute cinema this is so funny and like there's
• 1:12:12
  Track 4: other parts like that throughout the movie that i really enjoyed and like it's.
• 1:12:15
  Track 3: Right yeah well tony do you want to say the thing about that tony mentioned this really.
• 1:12:18
  Track 4: Interesting point when he and.
• 1:12:20
  Track 3: I were chatting before we recorded about the way that, okay,
• 1:12:25
  Track 3: I'll say it and you can chime in because I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I'm sorry.
• 1:12:28
  Track 4: I don't remember.
• 1:12:28
  Track 3: The way that Disney, okay. So first Tony and I were talking about the way that
• 1:12:34
  Track 3: things that could be considered religious or ceremonial, like in this case,
• 1:12:38
  Track 3: ancestor worship is seen as funny. And obviously it's a lighthearted movie.
• 1:12:43
  Track 3: So it's not, this is the only thing that they make fun of or that they take lightly.
• 1:12:46
  Track 3: But the idea that the ancestors themselves are sort of
• 1:12:49
  Track 3: like goofy and they're all bickering with one another and
• 1:12:52
  Track 3: they have this like beef going and it's like really funny i mean there is
• 1:12:55
  Track 3: a moment in the montage where we also see mulan like light a stick of incense
• 1:12:58
  Track 3: in a way that is at least just like normal they're not trying to make a joke
• 1:13:01
  Track 3: out of it or anything but the way that so many religious or traditional practices
• 1:13:06
  Track 3: in disney movies in general are sort of made light of made fun of in a way that
• 1:13:11
  Track 3: obviously you would not put Christ.
• 1:13:13
  Track 3: And the closest we get of anything Western at all would be Hercules,
• 1:13:18
  Track 3: the Greek gods and goddesses.
• 1:13:20
  Track 3: But then this sort of takes us a step back, even a step further than this,
• 1:13:24
  Track 3: because it's not just about the religiosity or the traditions of other peoples.
• 1:13:29
  Track 3: It's about seeing the world that we live in.
• 1:13:33
  Track 3: As a modern world and indigeneity is
• 1:13:36
  Track 3: not something that continues to exist and continues
• 1:13:39
  Track 3: to resist it is something that is just from a previous
• 1:13:42
  Track 3: era that no longer exists anywhere and
• 1:13:45
  Track 3: therefore we can make fun of it everywhere because now
• 1:13:48
  Track 3: we have these modern religious traditions that have no connection to
• 1:13:51
  Track 3: these indigenous practices that don't exist anymore right
• 1:13:54
  Track 3: and this is sort of like the the agenda
• 1:13:57
  Track 3: that disney is putting forth that like once we had you know western judeo christianity
• 1:14:03
  Track 3: we no longer needed these backward practices that other people around the world
• 1:14:07
  Track 3: were doing all of them are dead by the way none of them exist everybody exists
• 1:14:11
  Track 3: with us in this now modern moment if that makes sense yeah.
• 1:14:15
  Track 4: No that's exactly the point and like i think a good example this is like a recent
• 1:14:18
  Track 4: one relatively recent i guess is the moana is more the what the moana series, right?
• 1:14:24
  Track 4: Where there's like Maui and the other god and stuff like that who...
• 1:14:28
  Track 4: you know, are, you know, respected mythological figures in those cultures,
• 1:14:32
  Track 4: but they're played in like this comedic fashion that, again,
• 1:14:36
  Track 4: you want to see a Disney movie where Jesus is kind of like the,
• 1:14:39
  Track 4: the unserious character that just wouldn't happen. Right.
• 1:14:43
  Track 4: And I guess like one, one kind of piece of lore here is that when I first saw
• 1:14:49
  Track 4: the movie Mulan in theaters, I lived in Kuwait at the time, right.
• 1:14:53
  Track 4: And the Middle East and that country, I think still to this day has like,
• 1:14:57
  Track 4: they censor their movie so they'll cut out like kissing they'll cut out any
• 1:15:00
  Track 4: kind of religious stuff they don't agree with and so thank.
• 1:15:02
  Track 3: God finally somewhere i can watch movies.
• 1:15:04
  Track 4: I know right and so so for the
• 1:15:07
  Track 4: first time i watched uh bulan they cut out all
• 1:15:10
  Track 4: the ancestor worships or honoring worship scenes and so all the scenes that
• 1:15:15
  Track 4: you see them in i did not see them the first time i saw the movie they're all
• 1:15:17
  Track 4: cut out so it didn't really make too much sense for me at the time is when i
• 1:15:21
  Track 4: saw the vhs later i was like oh like where's all this stuff coming from i've
• 1:15:24
  Track 4: never seen it's like the extended version or something and so movie made a lot more sense after that.
• 1:15:29
  Track 1: What's what's sort of funny about that too not specifically that but is now
• 1:15:32
  Track 1: they're doing that in the opposite way where like lots of movies if you had
• 1:15:35
  Track 1: them on vhs or dvd they have scenes that you now if you watch them on like the
• 1:15:40
  Track 1: disney chip plus channel or whatever will remove things from tv shows and whatnot so.
• 1:15:45
  Track 4: Yes we've what american.
• 1:15:47
  Track 1: Center media what.
• 1:15:48
  Track 4: Yeah i mean this is kind of a more light-hearted example but this
• 1:15:51
  Track 4: is like from Lilo and Stitch um where it's like uh
• 1:15:54
  Track 4: Lilo in like in the original animated movie she goes into like a a washing machine
• 1:16:00
  Track 4: I think or like a dryer or something like that right which is like dangerous
• 1:16:04
  Track 4: for kids to do and so they quietly edited that to make it so that it's just
• 1:16:08
  Track 4: like a a draw like a little like open space so that it doesn't,
• 1:16:12
  Track 4: encourage kids to do that and it's like okay that's not a bad change.
• 1:16:15
  Track 1: That's interesting i never yeah i was looking at the history too of when this
• 1:16:20
  Track 1: was released in china because i think they were hoping that it would be like
• 1:16:23
  Track 1: a really big hit there and they they didn't you know release it immediately
• 1:16:27
  Track 1: i mean i don't know who told them they thought it was going to be a big hit
• 1:16:29
  Track 1: in china it was absolutely not all.
• 1:16:32
  Track 3: The people that they talked to during their research.
• 1:16:34
  Track 1: Mission yeah like the the rich bourgeois you know people at their hotel or whatever and that's it.
• 1:16:38
  Track 4: They're in home They called the room service.
• 1:16:40
  Track 5: That's all they did. They just called the room service. That's the only people they talked to.
• 1:16:44
  Track 1: Yeah, they didn't leave their hotel or whatever. Tony and Ray,
• 1:16:48
  Track 1: thank you for coming on Left of the Projector.
• 1:16:51
  Track 1: It was great to finally get this to happen.
• 1:16:54
  Track 1: And every time we do a children's movie, we will be sure to include Ray and Tony. For sure.
• 1:17:02
  Track 4: That was a lot of fun, guys. Thanks so much.
• 1:17:05
  Track 3: Tony also watches adult films. Tony can come on more episodes.
• 1:17:08
  Track 3: I can only come on for kids' movies.
• 1:17:10
  Track 4: There's an adult film you want me to analyze? I will be there for that, yes.
• 1:17:15
  Track 5: Tony watches porn.
• 1:17:17
  Track 3: Got it. Oh, my God. This is the second time I've been on an episode with Tony
• 1:17:21
  Track 3: where somebody has brought up Tony's porn app.
• 1:17:24
  Track 4: This is the second time, yes. I was directly asked by a guest one episode what
• 1:17:29
  Track 4: I like to watch, totally unrelated to anything we were discussing. And I was like, what?
• 1:17:34
  Track 5: I'm so sorry that happened.
• 1:17:37
  Track 1: Each time you'd have two nickels, but you're, uh.
• 1:17:39
  Track 4: I'd have two nickels. Exactly. I'd be capitalist.
• 1:17:42
  Track 1: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And then, um, I, I didn't mention at the beginning,
• 1:17:46
  Track 1: but we also had done an episode while back with your other hosts.
• 1:17:49
  Track 1: We did, uh, the wind that shakes the barley and maybe that was,
• 1:17:51
  Track 1: didn't work out for, for all of us, but we were just, uh, we were just closing
• 1:17:55
  Track 1: out our, uh, our thing here. Did you have any, any final thoughts, Bill?
• 1:17:59
  Track 2: No, I actually can't, I came back and like, I, I actually heard.
• 1:18:05
  Track 2: um Tony talk about like the whole like how like the honor ancestors were like cut out and I was like,
• 1:18:13
  Track 2: That's a huge plot. Like, you fucking think... The movie doesn't make sense without that.
• 1:18:20
  Track 4: Yeah, no, definitely didn't make... My brother, who's like 10 years old,
• 1:18:24
  Track 4: 8 years older than me, like, he said it didn't make sense the first time he saw it, so yeah.
• 1:18:27
  Track 2: Yeah, but I wasn't actually, like, present. I could just hear.
• 1:18:32
  Track 2: I don't know what the fuck's going on today with technology.
• 1:18:35
  Track 3: So you were sort of like an ancestor.
• 1:18:37
  Track 2: Yes, exactly. I was like a spirit just haunting the recording. Yes.
• 1:18:42
  Track 3: The specter haunting.
• 1:18:43
  Track 2: Yes, the specter.
• 1:18:44
  Track 1: Yes, yes.
• 1:18:45
  Track 2: I am the specter of communism.
• 1:18:47
  Track 5: Wow.
• 1:18:48
  Track 3: So nice to meet you.
• 1:18:50
  Track 1: The bullcrap.
• 1:18:50
  Track 3: Really sorry about what you did to Tony, though. We should talk about that.
• 1:18:53
  Track 2: Yeah, that's why I have the tattoo for it. You know, that's why that's there.
• 1:18:57
  Track 1: Those are for your transgressions. Awesome.
• 1:19:01
  Track 1: Well, Tony and Ray, thanks again for coming on. And go check out both of their
• 1:19:05
  Track 1: podcasts, Pearl's Pod and Actually Existing Socialism, wherever fine podcasts
• 1:19:09
  Track 1: are sold. And we'll catch you next time.