By: SOPHIA PACHECO
The entertainment industry has become an escape for many people trapped in the Covid-19 quarantine, giving leisure and a chance to take your mind off of 2020 with movies, games, and books. But one such movie shouldn’t be an escape for online moviegoers: Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan, the tale of a Chinese woman who pretended to be a man to join the army. There’s nothing wrong with the story’s message, no, only that there is a major problem with the lead actor’s (Yifei Liu) political stand and where the movie was filmed. Unfortunately, Disney has not chosen the right people or the right places to make a proper, unprovoking and unpolitical movie.
Starting off with the first political issue encountered while the film was still in production, there were offensive actions of the lead actor Yifei Liu (who plays Mulan) as “public support of the Hong Kong police. Liu first revealed her support for the police during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy and anti-police brutality protests in 2019,” according to HarpersBazaar.com(Why People Are Boycotting Disney’s Mulan, Amy Mackelden). The complication of this is that the Hong Kong police at this time were actively infringing human rights in that area. So, “As a result, Liu’s public support of the Hong Kong police has been seen by many as controversial.”-Harper’s Bazaar. Having the lead actor in your movie publicly support police brutality is definitely not something you want to happen for
The second political issue that complicates this film is the involvement of the Xinjiang district in the making of the movie, where a lot of the scenes are filmed in. In the end credits of Mulan, Disney blatantly thanks the officials at Xinjiang, the region where “More than a million Muslims in Xinjiang, mostly of the Uighur minority, have been imprisoned in concentration camps. Some have been released. Countless numbers have died,”-(Washington Post, Isaac Stone Fish, Disney Criticized for Filming New ‘Mulan’ in China’s Xinjiang) as well as several companies in China who have been propagating racist and communist propaganda at Muslim groups. In basic terms, Disney filmed their movie in an area where a large cultural genocide was being held, and thanked the region in the credits for helping them, making this film even more of a scandal.
Not only are they turning a blind eye to Uighur suffering, they put the region prosecuting them in a positive light, becoming a threat to the very human rights we own. This blind action threatens the humanity we know today in America, to everyone who supports human rights.
So what can we do to help this situation? For one, we as Disney enthusiasts should not pay the ridiculous $35 rental fee to watch Mulan, and boycott the Movie and Disney in general. Throw out your Disney DVD’s and Disney+ subscription, until they repeal the movie and send an actual formal apology for this disastrous political affair. By doing so, we are giving awareness of the Muslim’s plight and showing that we care deeply about the dignity in humanity as a whole.
beniciapaw.com 