Articles
To help right some of the wrongs done by Disney in depicting
Mu Lan, Victory Press has published an historically accurate Mu
Lan doll with cassette and book.
A Mu Lan
removed from Disney discrepancies
by Natali T. Del Conte, Staff Writer Oakland Tribune
(c) Alameda Newspaper Group, February 3, 2000
reprinted by permission
When Eileen Hu's father went to Hollywood in the 1950's to
pursue a movie career, he was told that despite being Chinese,
he was too tall and did not look enough like a gangster to play
a Chinese man.
Though stereotyping similar to what her father experienced has
decreased in 40 years, there is still along way to go, Hu says.
Among her disappointments is the way the girl warrior Mu Lan is
depicted in the 1998 Disney animated film.
"At first I thought it was fantastic that Disney was willing to
do something to expose a different culture," Hu said in a recent
interview from her office in Monterey.
But Hu, in Oakland's Chinatown last week celebrating the Chinese
New Year and talking about the Mu Lan legend, added that she was
"disappointed when I saw the Web site before the movie . . and
(when) the doll came out, I noticed that they had dressed her in
a Japanese kimono from the early 1800s and 1900s.
"I think if they're going to spend all of that time in research,
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