Anonymous asked: i just watched mulan and WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT

[0dense]

[backing up my major tumblr posts because that site has the integrity of wet tissue. anyway between this and another fun paper on transphobia, it's beeing A Weekend]

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

 

god, RIGHT

 

like 100%, what the fuck is any of it. this movie shouldn’t exist. Disney didn’t need to remind us all of how little they care about china or chinese history or culture or people or people of chinese diaspora. Disney is here to make money off of misconstruing other cultures’ assets and they have NEVER hidden this, so I can’t say that I’m even disappointed, because that implies expectations, and I have NEVER trusted disney. 

 

no, I’m heartbroken. 

 

When I was little, and disney was culturally relevant, my repeated first interaction with new classmates or other peers was “you’re chinese? have you seen mulan?” which is bullshit on any axis, but mulan did mean something then. It was something special to my family, that other kids also knew. Back then, I hid and ate lunch in the library with the two other asian kids in my school on days when I didn’t have something western packed. I don’t knowhow to express the extent to which Asian-ness was rejected, but I can’t overstate how few opportunities there were for an asian kid in a white neighborhood to enjoy being asian.

 

unless you played along with the shred of interest that kids had in disney, and got into Mulan whenever it came up. something, something, one grain of rice. something, something, honor for us all. this time, everyone’s laughing with you, right? This chinese story is catchy and funny and it’s also giving us a rudimetary vocabulary for gender deviance. Everybody loves Mulan! so if the white kids got to have a Girl Power moment and meme on Mushu, at least the asian kids got to exist. 

 

Mu xu is a dish. It’s good, it’s tasty, it’s fun to make for yourself. My classmates called it dog food. I guess it’s a step up from Yum-yum by virtue of at least being chinese phonemes, when Pish-tush wasn’t even pretending to try. 

 

am I - am I saying this right? am I getting across how hard it is to learn to love parts of yourself when their acceptability is entirely in someone else’s hands? how to enjoy scraps from someone else? That’s growing up, and then sometimes I have the audacity to wonder why I have a hard relationship with chinese-ness in american culture.

 

God, I wanted to love this movie. I wanted it to be good. I had no grounds to have confidence in Disney, but I hoped so much that this time, I’d be proven wrong, and maybe this time, something quintessentially american would actually appreciate something so important to me. I love being Chinese-American. I love being part of this community, part of this continuity, going about life as an extension of something ancient and beautiful. I am history alive, I am the hope that refugees whispered. My family has survived so much for my sister and I to be here now and yes, I do pay homage to them. Chinese heritage is a beautiful, wonderful thing, and one day, one day, my country will see that.

so far though, fuckers are just turning it into fucking reylo imagine-spots, and this is why I fucking hate white people.

 

Tagged:

• dr jung your 3:30 appointment is here
• I can't speak to the like narrative structure of the movie because I'm not seeing it
• but as far as being an at-all respectful portrayalit's just failed so hard
• and it's hard to feel failed by something that has never really supported you
• but wouldn't it've been nice
• we're not asking for the mainstream world to love us like we love ourselves
• but it would be nice to be treated as real
• and not just toys
• anyway this is just my take and I can't speak for anyone but myself
• but considering I've only got my own experiences to speak to
• remember that I'm mixed and the genetic lottery made me light enough that white people think I'm one of them 99% of the time
• so passing is its own entire can of worms but anyone less white-passing would've gotten a wildly worse dose
• it gets in your head man
• it sneaks in and poisons when you're an adult trying to live your best chinese-american life
• but now being asian is getting trendy and I'm so happy
• I'm so excited to see people appreciating mdzs and guardian and nirvana in fire
• and I can't unhear the voice whispering to me to be jealous because it's easy for white people now to get to enjoy something that I never got
• anyway thank you for the ask and the platform but I don't think I can handle anything more on this topic
• I hope you're having a good day and maybe listen to the original animated soundtrack
• it's got some good numbers despite everything
• mulan
• diaspora blues
• Anonymous