Personally, one of my favorite Disney movies is Pocahontas. I love how strong Pocahontas is and I love her connection to her environment. I love the music and the story telling and the breathtakingly beautiful art.

At the same time, I understand that it's a very white washed version of History. I understand that the Powhatan people HATED the movie. The ending was completely fictitious and what happened to the Powhatan people during colonization was atrocious. All the same, I somewhat guiltily love it.

Anyway, what problematic faves do you guys have?

Not so much a problematic fav show or movie, but a character. I watch the TV show Once Upon a Time and I have grown to love Regina! The problem is, she was a psychotic murderer with no regard for life who just decides that one day she will be good and be here for her son and join the light side. Which is great, but in the real world, she would be living out the rest of her days in a prison, if not executed. She has not received proper punishment for her atrocious actions, yet I really want her to find her happy ending?

I totally thought I didn't have any problematic faves, but then I remembered...

Hans from Frozen. I mean, he completely screws everyone over and almost murders two people after seducing one of them and pretending to save the other. But apart from all the psychopathic shit, he seems like he'd make a really good king. He hands out blankets to people and is good with animals, plus he has charisma, charm, great sideburns and an amazing singing voice. And a bit of a backstory-related reason for wanting to be king (being thirteenth in line for the throne). And he still has some genuinely good moments, so overall I just find him to be a really interesting Disney character.

I love RGB from The Property of Hate. Specifically Negative RGB, the most problematic of problematic faves tbh. But I tend to go for the villain so most of my faves are problematic

I loved Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas. I can't think of another more haunting Disney character who's also good.

I love Dumbo but I don't know whether the crows is problematic and that bothers me.

Mulan. It's likely problematic too, for similar reasons that Pocahontas is.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is my problematic fave because although the message is nice and all, their portrayal of Romani people is very stereotyped and they use a racial slur pretty much the entire movie and it just undermines the entire message because they were too lazy to do their research or consult anyone who was actually Romani. :I LIKE YOU LITERALLY FUCKED THIS ONE UP SO BAD DISNEY WHY. A lot of Disney movies are my problematic faves for this same reason of lazy research/lazy storytelling.

The crows are problematic to my knowledge because of the stereotypical way they behave (and the fact one is literally named Jim Crow like... inappropriate much??????). Disney noticed and has considerably toned their accents and behaviour down in new Dumbo material. It's a cute movie though and you're definitely allowed to like it, it's just important to recognize what's problematic and speak up about the problems instead of defending them. c:

My problematic fave would probably be Pocahontas as well. I just love the music in that movie to death, but it's so horrible white washed and inaccurate.

I wouldn't say Mulan is problematic though. The problem with Pocahontas was that they took a native woman's name and culture, and then chose to portray an incredibly inaccurate, white washed, and watered down version of her story. While Mulan isn't 100% accurate to the original lore, neither are most Disney movies, since they are made for children. The movie doesn't bring in a non-chinese character to save the day, nor does she have to be rescued by a man. I don;t find anything wrong with Mulan, but I'm open to your interpretation.

Peter Pan is my problematic fave. I like the movie but it portrays Native Americans horribly. There is a song is called "What Makes the Red Man Red?" in the scene of the Native American tribe, the scene implies they all just get high (the pipe being passed around), the chief is portrayed as speaking broken English, which implies that Native Americans are not smart and I am pretty sure the yelling in the video is supposed to be a war cry.

Mulan is also my problematic fave. Like hardcore for real. It was the ONLY thing that was mainstream and Asian I had growing up. The one bit of visibility. I'm Chinese btw so everything I'm saying is coming from an I perspective.... But I am no means an expert/scholar on Chinese culture or critical race theory.

Anyway, it is ridiculously problematic. Like for starters... the way they portray the HUNS??!??!?! Like I know you can argue that they're the villains, but they are literally a group of people. So that's racist to begin with. Grey skin, yellow eyes, fangs... They're all horrifying caricatures of Mongols. And they're not even contemporary with time frame in which the Ballad of Mulan is supposed to take place?

Disney's Mulan is incredibly different form the original legend. One thing that I find horrifying is that people don't even realize Mulan is based on a real story about a real person... Disney changed a lot of things to make it marketable to an American (read white) audience.

Mushu never existed in the original--there was no spirit companion. No ghosty ancestors. No goofy (completely desexualized and emasculated) friends/sidekicks. Now one might not realize that these things are problematic. I get that. They seem really harmless, but all of them come from stereotypes about Asian culture.

Mushu is named after, well, mu shu pork. In the movie, he is one of the "guardians of the family." I don't know what it says when one of your 'sacred' house deities is named after a common dish... It'd be like naming the animal on your family's crest, "corn beef hash..." This is really trivializing of the importance of what mu shu would be to the family... The name was chosen obviously because it was and familiar to American audiences whose notions of Chinese culture might only be (botched) Chinese food... (And there are tons of issues with the relationship between Asian food and the white majority that you can simply google)

The ancestors and the entire bizarre emphasis on filial piety is really othering. (define othering: to view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.) This paints an inaccurate and "backwards" picture of China and its culture. I mean they sing a song about honor... which is a HUGE stereotype about Asian cultures (see Zuko from Avatar TLA). Like it chalks up everyone's purpose in life to being "honoring the ancestors and family." Also the animation of the other women in "Honor to Us All" is pretty racist too. You can try to peg it on artistic license, but really. The woman who washed Mulan doesn't even open her eyes. They're just n.n two little arches... And then the angle and size of eyes of the other young women to be married... It's really /weird/ that Mulan is one of the only characters in the movie to have bigger eyes. There really shouldn't be a difference...

So, the emasculation and desexualization of Asian men is a huge problem. We've got stereotypes like Asian men have small penises, are nerds and can't talk to women, are physically weak... And Asian men aren't deemed attractive with regards to Western standards of beauty. These great problems can be found in Disney's Mulan. Yes, Shang is a hot piece of ass. But idk if you noticed he's the exception... Mulan's friends, Chien-Po, Ling and Yao, are all sufficiently desexualized (this changes in the second movie when somehow all three marry princesses). Chien-Po is fat and comically so. (I think we can all agree that we live in a fatphobic society.) He's supposed to look like Budai, which is evident in "A Girl Worth Fighting For." And at least once in the film people actually bounce off of his stomach... Ling is impossibly skinny and a total dork. He's even got a nasally voice. And Yao is really short and angry. But his anger isn't taken seriously. If he were a /real/ man his anger and threats of violence would be unacceptable. But as a pint sized man who can be subdued with a little chanting... He's more like an anthropomorphic bulldog...

There's also that whole thing with cross-dressing when they have to save the emperor... Chien-Po, Ling, and Yao all dress up like women (haha sooooo funny). But Shang, our love interest, can't be bothered? Like sure in the storyline there isn't time, but the writers actually had control over that so. This whole schtick is very transphobic further removes those three characters from Western ideas of masculinity... (Ironically, BD Wong, who voices Shang, played the title role in David Henry Wang's play "M Butterfly." Which is based on the TRUE story of a French diplomat, who fell in love with a Chinese male opera singer, because he thought the singer was a woman... for 10+ years. Yes they had sex. This play is great and really looks at orientalism and exotification and their respective relationships with Asian masculinity and sexuality.)

ANYWAY. It looks like I said a lot... But there are so many more resources and actual full length papers on this... here, here, here, and here. This is by all means not an exhaustive list... Just some of the first things that come up on the internet...

tldr; I like Mulan. But it definitely is problematic.

Thank you very much for your input. Everything you said really resonates with me, and I apologize that I failed to mention Mushu originally (really, why food?).

Personally, I never saw the Ling, Yao, or Chien-po as characters of Chinese people specifically. I interpreted them as simply exaggerated characters, in the same vein as Pumba is incredibly overdramatic or Kronk was a lovable idiot. But I can see how they might be seen as specifically making fun of Chinese stereotypes.

Perhaps we'll see positive changes made in the live action remake (though to be honest, I'm just praying it's not any worse).

God, that really was an awful scene. I'm not surprised they cut the song out of the later releases.

No problem about uh everything and Mushu... It's really something that goes over your head as a kid and unless you are aware of what issues there might be you won't see them.

I see what you're getting at with not thinking of Ling, Yao, and Chien-Po as Chinese specifically... Since everyone is Chinese. So they don't stand out as such. But idk its really hard to divorce people from their race (or any other of their identifiers). Like yes they are individual characters, but they are at the core of their being Chinese.

AND YES dear god I hope they don't screw up the casting... I might cry if they cast white people for the roles...

I've never seen it myself, but there was a live action Mulan made in China in 2009. which I heard was somewhat closer to the original?

There was an article a while ago about Disney being "pressured" to cast Chinese people lol. I don't know if they need the pressure, but I will be so mad if the pull a Last Samurai.

hahaahahahha. this isn't something to be laughing at. but I think they really do need the pressure. I mean Hollywood totally botched Avatar, and they cast Goku in the Dragonball Z live action as white... And they recently cast Scarlett Johansson as Motoko... (And you've got people arguing left and right that anime is actually all white people, even when the characters have Japanese names and live in Japan.)

the film industry is a hot mess. lol

Ug, I am such a huge ATLA fan, it was so hard to see that movie. And I know it's set in an alternate world, but each nation has a pretty clear ethnic basis. But it certainly wasn't the only thing fudged. I don;t know if whitewashing was his intention (he did cast Indian actors as the fire nation...for some reason), but it was still a nonsensical choice.

Dragon Ball Z was also a mistake on all levels, but I thought it was even more strange that our two main characters were white and just everyone else was Asian. They also made Chi-chi a completely useless sex symbol, which was so upsetting.

I hadn't even heard of ghost in the shell. Yeah that upsets me too, especially since when characters in Anime are foreigners, they usually make mention of it. Plus, anime characters have all sorts of crazy colored hair and eyes. I don't think them being blonde automatically makes them white. And if someone is saying that their eyes are too big to be Asian's, then they're ignoring the fact that it's a cartoon.

haha i didn't even bother seeing Avatar. I knew it was going to be utter rubbish. Also, I was boycotting it like a lot of other enraged fans... Bryan and Michael (the creators) both like to pretend it never happened... but despite all the terrible reviews and negative press the movie got... apparently, Shyamalan is getting to make a second one???

And I think the whole... making the main character white is so that white people can relate to the hero? Because obviously an asian hero is too foreign.... This trope of a chosen white (usually a) man is distressingly common in both film and in books... Like there are soooo many YA and kids books that have some sort of "prophecy" of a great hero yada yada. And then the hero is somehow miraculously a white kid on some cultural exchange field trip extravaganza to whatever mystical land it's vaguely supposed to take place...

Lol when people say a character's eyes are too big... not only are they ignoring the fact it's a cartoon... They also for some reason think that all Asian people have really small eyes... And that everything is about white people. Idk why anyone would think Japanese people would consistently be making shows about white people for their Japanese audience.... Especially in such a homogenous country.

Thank you for this. Many of your arguments presented are ones I've heard before, which is what I was basing my viewpoint off of. It was refreshing to get the point of view of somebody who is actually Chinese as they would obviously have the greatest understanding of the source material.

Also, about the live action Avatar movie: what annoyed me most about it is the fact they cast Indians as the Fire Nation, which are very obviously based off Japanese culture in the show. They also made all the other nations appear backwards and uncivilized, especially the Earth Kingdom. Lastly, WHY WERE THE MAIN CHARACTERS WHITE?! There is not a single white person in the ATLA universe since it's all based on Asian cultures.

In short, the live action Avatar movie is a giant steaming pile of shit which butchers everything that was awesome about the show.

thought we were talkin characters and i was so fuckin ready but yeah i guess puella magi madoka magica gets sexualized every once in a while but homu is my GIRL also LISA is literally a universe where there are no chicks and i love me a big beefboy