Let's Get Down to Business

It's been a ridiculous amount of time since I last posted, so I thought that to keep things going smoothly, I'd make a weekly promise. I promise that I will post by Wednesday at midnight (which, let's be honest, is way after my preferred bedtime), with the goal of posting on Tuesdays. So, hooray!

No. We don't like camels here. Also, I haven't actually seen that commercial.

So, let's get down to business. Tonight I thought I'd discuss Mulan, the point of origin of my blog. As I'm writing this, my roommate is playing various Halo 4 matchmaking gametypes (yes, we know it's a Halo 3 matchmaking night, but we (and by we I mean I) were sucking) and we're listening to the Star Trek Into Darkness score (did I just do a parentheses within parentheses? Dude, it's like parentheception). By the way, how great was that movie? Soo great. I redboxed it and kept it for three days. Although, that also had a fair amount to do with forgetting to return it.

Space. The Final Frontier.

(These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her five year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before)

So, Mulan. Most of the reason I've been avoiding making this next post was because I knew I needed to do research for it, and I've been busy (marching band, working out, playing video games, making art, pick anything). Also, research sounded like a lot of work. But, like a true scholar, I decided to do the very hard task of typing the five letters I needed into the search bar of the wonderful Wikipedia. (Challenge, if you have a minute. Go from Mulan to Train Station on Wikipedia in as few links as possible. As I am dedicated to my work, I did not attempt this challenge. Yet.) Anyway, it was my assumption that Disney's movie Mulan was based on Chinese legend. Was I wrong?

That was the obligatory Halo quote. Yes, I realize this picture is from Halo 2 when that quote is obviously from Halo 3.

No, I wasn't wrong. The legend of Mulan can be traced back to a poem/song written sometime in the sixth century. The original was lost to time, as such things always seem to happen, but you can find Chinese and English side by side here (and I looked at several sources, in case you're one of those people that doesn't trust Wikipedia. They were all the same, this one just had the best layout.) Anyway, in case you're too lazy to read, it tells the story of a girl who wasn't like the others. Instead of sighing over a boy, she sighed because there was a war on and her father had to go. So she went in his place. After winning the war, she declined a government position (which I'll discuss more in a moment) and instead went home to her family. The guys she fought with (for twelve years) had no idea she was a woman. TL;DR: Disney's Mulan. I love the final two couplets, though:

The buck bounds here and there,

Whilst the doe has narrow eyes.

But when the two rabbits run side by side,

How can you tell the female from the male?

Also, my roommate would like to take this opportunity to ask you why there was only one set of footprints in the sane. The correct answer is because she carried the team.

The sixth century was a freaking long time ago. Women's rights and equality and stuff have progressed greatly since then, I think we can all agree on that. The story of Hua Mulan (the woman in the legend's name) shows what was expected of women then (makeup, boys, ...and I forgot the official word for making things on a loom) and it also shows a girl who lifted one finger to that and went to war. Except, you know, she probably did it in a much more dignified and professional way. Actually, maybe not. After all, she had to blend in with a bunch of guys.

Ba dum. Tss.

Unlike the many cautionary tales that women have to deal with (for example, No Name Woman by Kingston, in which a nameless aunt who was pregnant out of marriage drowned herself), this doesn't tell women not to go to war. Instead, it offers up the suggestion at the end that maybe, just maybe, the sexes aren't so different after all. For the time in which it was written, that was an amazingly forward thing. And it wasn't just a story that died out. It continued, showing that people were interested in breaking the rules, war, or at least equality.

"Do I look badass enough? No? Well, then I guess just put a little flame on my forehead." -Direct Quote

While it is pretty forward thinking, there are still elements that show that Hua Mulan was traditional in some aspects. For example, she went back to her family instead of taking a job that could advance her. At the end of the poem, the men she fought with only realized she was a woman because she put back on her pre-war clothing and makeup. But hey, it was a pretty radical step.

And with that, my phone decided to turn into a red-hot brick and cut off any mobile hotspotting that was happening (which was everything) and my brain is turning to tired mush. Next week, I think I'll discuss Scott Westerfeld or Tamora Pierce (I hope I spelled both of those right, no access to the beloved internet is awful). Until then, to quote a certain Green brother, Don't Forget To Be Awesome.