Do I enjoy
hero narratives? I think it would be unfair to say I didn’t. The sheer volume
of media I consume yields a large number of hero narratives, and I find some
sort of enjoyment from almost everything I take the time to exhaust. Before I discovered
the internet and Netflix I was reading, like, 5-6 novels a week. Now I’ve just
sort of replaced all that with online reading material, TV shows, and movies. Obviously
I don’t enjoy badly adapted hero narratives, but I think this is a mistake
people often make when they say the just “don’t like” hero stories. The truth
is, I like having someone to root for. In modern mainstream media the trend
that seems to be emerging is darker, grittier narratives with more morally
ambiguous characters. While these stories can be entertaining and satisfying to
a degree, sometimes I just want a simple good vs. evil dynamic, and hero
narratives tend to often fall into that category.
One hero
narrative that has deeply inspired me through the course of my life is the 1998
Disney film Mulan. Based on the
legend of Hua Mulan, a young Chinese woman who takes her father’s place to
fight in the army, the animated musical action-comedy was released in the midst
of the Disney Renaissance. The film takes place in Han Dynasty-era China (the
ordinary world), where Fa Mulan, the daughter of a wounded warrior, disguises
herself as a man to keep her father from having to return to war (the call to
adventure). Mulan enters the camp (entering the unknown) and a series of
comedic situations follows, most having to do with Mulan being a woman
disguised among men. As the story progresses we see that Mulan is not only
becoming an amazing warrior through her hard work (tests), but she is also
building meaningful relationships with her comrades (allies). However at one
point she gets wounded and her commanding officer sees that she is a woman, so
he dismisses her from the group. When she is leaving, she recognizes that her
troops are going to be ambushed by the enemy, and so she goes to warn them. The
movie culminates in Mulan using her superior strategy and skill to defeat the
enemies (the supreme ordeal), saving her friends and all of China. She is
awarded and then returns home to her family (master of two worlds).
As you can
see, Mulan follows the structure of
the hero’s journey very closely. She’s not your stereotypical war hero, but I
think that’s part of what makes this movie so enjoyable to watch.
From the
beginning of the film, we see that Mulan is out of place in her current
situation. The first scene shows Mulan preparing to attend a meeting to assess
her marriagability. It becomes clear that this (dressing up, etiquette, etc.)
is not really her strong suit, but she is determined to do her duty well and
bring honor to her family. However in a highly comedic scene, Mulan does
terribly in her meeting and ends up horribly offending her assessor, who states
that she will never get married and is a dishonor to her family. Mulan is
humiliated and devastated by this, showing just how deeply she values her family
and the concept of honor. Mulan’s desire to honor her family is a prevalent
theme throughout the movie, and also an ideal that has made an impression on my
life. Also the concept of Mulan struggling in the role that she was supposed to
play is an important element, because I think not “fitting in” is something
that everyone can relate to in one situation or another.
Probably
one of the biggest (if not the biggest) obstacles Mulan has to overcome on her
journey is the sexism she faces. Her comrades, who really respected her up
until it’s revealed she’s a woman, become “enemies”, or at least antagonists,
at the flip of a switch. It’s interesting that Mulan faces sexism at every
point in her journey: while she’s still at home with her parents, when her army
friends find out she’s a girl, even the scary Hun she fights at the end demeans
her for her gender. The lengths to which she has to go to prove herself are
ridiculous- she’s only accepted by her troop after she saves all of China and
the emperor awards her. I think that the creators of this movie really played
with the idea that Mulan had to work so much harder and achieve so much more
than her male counterparts in order to be validated, because as a girl it
definitely is a relatable experience.
