Undersea Adventure Overview.

   How do you do,

  (First, let's take a moment to remember the people in the Southern Atlantic coastline who are dealing with Dorian and pray for the safety and recovery efforts they will face.)

   After having a nostalgia blast with Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey, I decided to revisit another game of my childhood: Knowledge Adventure: Undersea Adventure.

   Knowledge Adventure was a series of computer game like programs issued in the late eighties, early nineties time frame, as a way to educate children, as well as be entertaining. Thus, the series was popular for people of all ages. The motto for the franchise was "Have Fun! Get Smart!"

  Admittedly, some of the programs they offered didn't age well. Space Adventure had a few things set for after 2000 which never happened (including people returning to the Moon in 2012). The knowledge of dinosaurs has come a long way since the release of the original Dinosaur Adventure (which was re-released later as Dinosaur Adventure 3D), while it seems the last was released on the sudden revival in dinosaur interest due to the release of Jurassic Park and Land Before Time. Other programs have held up over the years, such as Body Adventure 3D, to some extent, along with Bug Adventure, Kid's Zoo, and American Adventure (the preview shows the presidents morphing over the years, though dated now as it stopped with Bill Clinton). Topping the ones that holds well is Undersea Adventure, one of two of my favorites (the other being Dinosaur Adventure).

  Open the program on the CD or floppy disk, get into DOS in the process (in those days, some computer programs worked by getting off of Windows and into Disk Operating System, or DOS, where you had the annoying task of having to type out the program you wanted), and then you see the title screen with three electronic notes played. Then comes the video of the great white shark approaching, making one think he was in the cage see, before it goes to the other and then swims away (perfect for any too young to see Jaws). That was how the program opened.
   The game came in two versions, which I'll call the Alpha and the Beta versions. The Alpha version is the one I liked the most: it had the simplistic menu design where you are in a kind of cabin of a boat looking out. Each of the lay out items led to a particular item, such as the popcorn leading to the movies or the treasure chest to the 3D Undersea World.
   There are games involved: Can You Find Me?, What Do I Eat? and Who Am I? Each game is a trivial one where you match the food with an animal or a body part with an animal. Get all correct and you are treated to a CGI orca leaping out of the water (enough to cry out "Willy!")
    While the games are for fun, there is also the reference where you read articles about the flora and fauna of the oceans, most of which are based on Jacques Cousteau's exhaustive work, The Random House Atlas of the Oceans. There's even an introduction article on him that comes when one first enters the reference page. The reference page comes with category areas for fish, crustaceans, mollusks, marine mammals, marine reptiles, maps, the shore, and so on. Click on either of them and you go straight to one particular subject. There's also a series of red, yellow, and green buttons on either side of the picture that when pressed on results in all kinds of noises (some are just added for humor-sake). The one thing with the reference page that I couldn't figure out is how you could zoo out the globe to the point of being in space as with Space Adventure. 
    While the reference page has movies, you could watch them separately in the movie page. You can also go to the lab and see the inside of the shark, octopus, and lobster. There is also the story book, which is meant for the pre-school and kindergarten aged audience because a voice speaks out the words, and the writing is in a simplistic manner to allow things to be explained without going over one's head.
    These areas are not as impressive as the 3D Aquarium and Treasure Hunt, which use the 3D engine for movement with the mouse. The graphics are somewhat dated (being like that of Wolfenstein 3D, which came out a year earlier; yet was enough to make someone who played that game expect to see the bad guys pop out any second). In Aquarium, you start at the end of a hall and enter the atrium that resembles a flower. You then chose which of the rooms to enter. Unlike in Wolfenstein, the doors don't open and each time you go in, the music changes.
    You can see for yourself in this series of videos posted by KGrove94 on Youtube. The player in the videos is like me, and I am sure some of y'all who remember are, by starting at Coral Reef room first, then working one's way around from there. The music includes a presto obstinato for the atrium, followed a gentle sounding tune for Coral Reef and Exotic Fish rooms, pleasant harmony for the Marine Mammal and Open Ocean rooms, a somewhat Calypso beat for the Danger and Weird Fish room, while The Shore room has a tune of steel drums with the sound of waves crashing. The Aquarium is breath taking either way and is the only aquarium in the world that is open 24/7 and is all free admission (and you don't even have to beg your parents to set aside a time for a road trip to a real one).
    The set up is impressive and the dated graphics ignored, though it does seem a disappointment that each room only has pictures and never once can one see three dimensional creatures. Nor are the pictures moving. Instead, one clicks on the pictures and a text appears for a description, similar to seeing it on the side of a fish tank. One interesting bug is in both versions: you click on the wall of the Coral Reef room and the text for the Brain Coral appears. This never happens in the other rooms, something I can't explain.
    Treasure Hunt has the same set up, but this time you are greeted by a manatee named Splash (he claims he used to be a boy-a-tee, but then he grew up. 😄😄😄) You start out in an area with a center room and three halls leading to different room. Behind you is a poster of a shark, which you click and it disappears forever, enabling you to begin the game. First, you might be more conscious of the set up, so after Splash speaks, you would explore the three rooms: Kelp room, Coral room, and Surf room (Splash will sing "Surfin' USA" upon your exiting of that room). Each room has another manatee: one with a shorts, one with sunshades, and the third with a tie. In each room, you interact with an animal for some facts, each one talking as though to impersonate a celebrity (the nudibranch sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example). When you start the game, you go in with one minute worth of oxygen in the tank. You must find the treasure before it runs out, barring stops to interact with additional aquatic life along the way (though Splash says to avoid the predators).
    One thing noticed by anyone is how you come into contact with Splash and he vanishes. Why, I don't know. The beta version fixes this glitch, but since he is at the end of the game, we can assume he found a short cut.
    The beta version of the game is about the same with a few changes. The movies are expanded to have more videos, which all come with an annoying commentary at the start before the doors open to let you watch (you'd have to click to skip over it). It also gave new voices to the characters (making Splash sound younger and removing the celebrity impersonations) as well as adding a commentary to each picture in the aquarium (which only works on the illiterate and the visually impaired). Even the menu is made to resemble the inside of a submarine, which doesn't have the same personality as the alpha version. Other than that, it has no improvements on the graphics or anything else.

    Since the CDs don't work on my current computer, it is a disappointment to not bring it up again, plus it also seems unlikely to share the experience with any of my kids in the future. That is indeed a shame, because it really is a classic. So far, I am yet to hear of any HD versions or some newer releases made, one that not only updates some of the knowledge, but possibly show how far computer technology has come to enable a more realistic aquarium or treasure hunt.
     For someone who doesn't live near a coast, the viewing of the game videos is enough of a way to come close, as well as providing the nostalgia blast. 

The Nutcracker and the Mouseking: A Christmas Allegory

How do you do.

  For the upcoming Christmas Season, I decided to start the reviews on literature with one of my favorite Christmas tales, E.T.A Hoffmann's Nussknacker und Mauskoenig or The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. This has been long in the work and has nothing to do with the recent film adaptation that is in theaters now, but since everyone is watching I decide to get it posted this year.

 When you first hear of The Nutcracker, you might be thinking of the ballet by Russia's great composer, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky. The ballet was from a late period in the composer's life, about a year before his death, best known to American listeners in the abridged style "Nutcracker Suite", on which a sequence from Disney's Fantasia is based on. Tchaikovsky reportedly disliked the piece and after 1892 it was rarely played[1], until in the middle of the last century with the frequent productions of the ballet itself. Because of the setting of the story being in Christmas eve, it's become part of the Christmas traditions just as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicolas" had before it.
  Yet, before there was a Russian ballet, there was the fairy tale, and it was the work of two men: a German Romantic writer named Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann, aka E.T.A. Hoffman, and French novelist Alexandre Dumas, the man who gave us The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I list it as the work of two men because the original story was written twice. The first was by Hoffman in 1816, done as a novella, while Alexandre Dumas rewrote it as The History of the Nutcracker twenty eight years later. The plot lines in the story are completely identical that one could accuse Dumas of plagiarism, yet a few changes in writing style are noticeable, the way Dumas looks into the Christmas Tree concept like that of an anthropologist observing natives in a ritual in contrast to Hoffman presenting Christkind tradition, and so on. So, we're basically looking over the same story if I reviewed the both at once.
   One noticeable difference is in the family, where Hoffman features the Stahlbaum family while Dumas renames them the Silberhaus. The first is said in genealogy.com to mean "steel tree", whereas the latter "silver house"[2]. And it's not too hard to see that plenty of German influences are in the ballet, such as the inclusion of "Grandfather Dance" in the libretto, itself a traditional German dance done to signal the end of a gathering (making its place as the end of the Christmas Party scene right).
   The heroine of The Nutcracker is not named Clara, unlike what the ballet has, but Marie Stahlbaum / Silberhaus. Marie is a variant of Mary, a French and German variant mostly (though The Sound of Music taught us German speakers could also use Maria). This name connection, as well as the way she holds the Nutcracker, invokes the image of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child. In a way of avoiding the actual motherhood, Drosselmeier, her eccentric godfather, gives Marie the Nutcracker doll that he made himself and she protects the doll like a mother protects her baby. Like any mother, she discovers that there are other things to come between her and her doll, which was originally to be shared with, but Herr Stahlbaum / Silberhaus deemed it to be in Marie's care. First case is when Fritz breaks the Nutcracker while trying to crack nuts. Later, she finds him being threatened by the mice.
  The theme of protective motherhood shows in the differences between Marie and her brother, Fritz, in treatment of the Nutcracker. Fritz, like any boy, just sees the Nutcracker as a toy to play with; another hussar to command. He even tries to crack a really hard nut with it and it breaks the jaw. Marie weeps over the injury of the Nutcracker while Fritz considers him not a good soldier. By every right, Fritz should have gotten a good spanking for that but he was lucky that time. Instead, his father makes him ashamed of his treatment of a soldier, since Fritz is in to toy soldiers. This protective mother stage goes to the Mouse King's advantage when he threatens to chew him up if she doesn't appease him with sweets. The Mouse King, of course, uses this for extortion.
  When Drosselmeier comes on the scene, we learn alot of the man from the start. Godpapa Drosselmeier, as he is called in the story, is Fritz and Marie's godfather, a special sort of relation in Marie's life: he is there to rear the children should their parents die, as according to his role when they were baptized. Drosselmeier is described as a little man with wrinkles in the face and some long hair, plus a black patch over his right eye. Looking at him, you would think of the Norse god Odin, trading in his wanderer robes for that of a clock maker. The appearances are just about the only connection to Norse mythology that Drosselmeier appears to have. His whole name is Christian Elias Drosselmeier. If you look at the name, you notice the two instances of "el" being used, especially in Elias.
    Drosselmeier is a strange sort. Though he is good natured and friendly, I couldn't help but notice he could be a jerk at times. When Fritz breaks the Nutcracker, he sides with the boy. Later, he scoffs at Marie figuring out who the Nutcracker really is, and tries to show her false. Yet, when he presents his nephew in the end. There are times that Drosselmeier is someone who knows more than what he is saying, which makes him the most unpredictable of the characters. 

   On Christmas Eve night, Marie sneaks into the toy room to check up on her nutcracker doll (stored with, along with other toys, a doll that is named Clara) and that is when the mice arrive. Mice were a common pest in Europe for centuries, along with their cousins, the rats. The reason is because mice and rats were considered carriers of the Plague (ironically, a family of rats is also called "plague"). Mice also like to get into food and will eat anything left out, as evidenced in the story where the mice bother the queen to have some lard. They also get in people's hair, nibble on exposed skin, crowd in clothes, and leave stains on floors and walls. So, based on this knowledge it's no surprise to see the mice as villains.
  The worst among them is as big as a hamster with the attitude of a shrew. He has no name but is called The Mouse King. Now, the ballet productions portray the Mouse King as a conventional mouse with a crown on his head, with the animated film The Nutcracker Prince making him seem rat like (perhaps playing off on Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective), but Hoffman's story describes him as a large mouse with seven heads. The image is also in Dumas' version. The seven headed rodent invokes the image of the Dragon and the Seven Headed Beast described in the Book of Revelations (both cases are described wearing a diadem on each head). The reason most productions didn't use the original image is practicality; you just can't create a seven headed mouse mask and put it on the body of a man, and they are yet to use today's puppetry like they are with King Kong. One thing scary is real life rodents in Germany have been recorded bounding together into a bigger menace, usually because they are stuck together by sticky substances. Rat kings, they are called, and they could consist of up to thirty-two rats stuck together as one body.
   Reading over the battle with the mice seems like that of a miniature version of Armageddon. The Mouse King is the Beast, Whore of Babylon, and Satan himself rolled into one while the Nutcracker and the dolls become the angels defending Earthly paradise from the Armies of Darkness. Mostly the toy soldiers, along with international dolls, while the girly dolls hide in the rear; yet I am positive in this day, you could have some of the most popular toys taking part in the action (even Barbie dolls taking on the mice). In the first battle, the mice appear to win near the end as the Nutcracker seems outwitted as a commander and then the toys get literally help from above. Marie throws a shoe at the mice who scatter and then everything goes black (The Nutcracker Prince takes it a step further by having the Mouse King land on his candle and run off screaming "MY TAIL'S ON FIRE!" and later winds up in the fire place, sort like the Devil tossed into the Lake of Fire).

   Another biblical allusion is presented in the story Drosselmeier tells to Marie and the children. The core of The Nutcracker is the story of a literal tough nut to crack, the Crackatook Nut, which is introduced as a cure to a curse. In the story, which is never used in the ballet, a king and queen of an unspecified kingdom have daughter named Pirlipat, presented as a beauty with good teeth. At least, she was until Dame Mouserinks comes on the scene.
   Dame Mouserinks, aka the Mouse Queen, starts out extolling the Queen for food, such as the lard used in making sausages, resulting in them not tasting well (it's strange how the King faints when he discovers "too little fat"). Once more, the fact mice were a problem in the past is illustrated and the King has it decreed they are to go. Drosselmeier is shown in the story working with the Court Astrologer in taking out the mice plague with mousetraps, with only the Mouse Queen escaping and vowing revenge.
  She does so by biting Pirlipat, turning her into an ugly thing. The King is angry and tells Drosselmeier to find a cure. When he couldn't, the King almost has him executed, but spares him at the urging of the Queen, sort of a play to scene of Bathsheba petitioning to King Solomon, only streamlined. Instead, when Drosselmeier brings up the Crackatook Nut, he is sent on a quest with the astrologer to find it.
   Besides the occult theme with magicians involved in the court, one thing that seemed queer is how the Princess is examined. Drosselmeier is said to take her apart as one would take apart a machine to examine for repairs, making one wonder if she were a girl or a puppet. It's likely a metaphor for a body examination, which makes it seem creepy (I don't think someone other than the court physician would be permitted to examine a princess' body like that). Anyhow, they realize they need not only the nut, but also someone who hasn't shaved yet and never worn boots, and the man turns out to be a youth who is also named Drosselmeier.
  The theme of virginity is shown in the younger man in various ways: he has not shaved yet nor has he worn boots. It's an interesting symbolism of virginity as shaving and wearing boots were considered the trademarks of manhood and boys generally don't do one or the other (it was once a rite of passage for a boy to put on a collar on the top of his shirt and cuffs at the end of sleeves, while also putting on trousers). Since I grew facial hair before age fifteen, it does seem strange for the youth to not be shaving at age fourteen, but some boys at that age have only peach fuzz. The boots part is understandable since such were hard to come by that could fit and fourteen is when boys go through growth spurts in the legs and feet that would make it hard to have the right size. Yeah, you might be wondering what do those things have to do with it? Let's say it's a cultural thing to compare male virginity to boyhood, since people believe men cannot be virgins.
   With this theme, this makes the younger Drosselmeier the one who can crack the nut. He cracks it and gives it to the Princess, sort of how in the Last Supper, Christ takes bread, breaks it, and gives it to His disciples. He then walks back seven steps (as if to mark the days of  the week, if not Creation). However, the Mouse Queen comes in once more to avenge her broken spell by biting him in the ankle, turning him into a Nutcracker, thus turning the Young Drosselmeier into a Christ figure (think Genesis 3:15), taking Pirlipat's curse away and upon himself. The Mouse Queen pays for the bite with her life, but upon transformation, the Nutcracker is rejected by the princess he cured, which brings to mind how the people of Israel rejected Christ. Instead of crucifixion, the Nutcracker, Drosselmeier, and the Astrologer are banished from the kingdom.
    Just now, I was thinking it over and see that the Blessed Trinity in the three men: in this case Uncle and Nephew play Father and Son, with the Astrologer as the Holy Spirit. Considering the Bible also has kings rejecting God, it should be no surprise when they are banished from the kingdom after the Princess is cured. It is also a sad twist, considering how Pirlipat fell for Young Drosselmeier on first meeting, when he was at his height, only to reject him when at his lowest. I should add on that that the Brothers Grimm were arranging their fairy tales around the same time Hoffmann was writing his. In a sense, Hoffmann had satired the Grimms' fairy tales where a beautiful and pure princess is paired with a handsome and noble prince, by showing beauty to not mean good. It's at that point, we return to the story proper.

  After the first battle with the mice, Marie's role as mother ends and she becomes less like the Virgin Mary and more a princess guarded by a prince. A psychologist would consider this progression a case of Freud's Oedipal attraction in reverse, where instead of the son being attracted to the mother figure it's the mother attracted to the child figure. The fact that the child is actually a man makes this sort of thing taken to another level. How is it a man? The Nutcracker comes to life that night (not in the Toy Story sense) and we hear of a story from Drosselmeier of how a nephew of his was turned into a Nutcracker. Marie figures it out and starts calling the Nutcracker by his name, even refraining from the Pieta pose that she had earlier. The Nutcracker tells her to stop sacrificing her things for him and requests a sword, which he uses against the Mouse King.
   At this point, I should point out that the story takes on a turn similar to most fairy tales and folk tales with dragons. The common image has them guarding things, and sometimes a princess, and the man would slay it to rescue the latter. In this case, the dragon is played by the Mouse King. Without us seeing it, he slays it, wakes up Marie, and takes her to Toyland. From this, we see the Brunhilde legends being referenced as well as "Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow White."
  Finally, Marie becomes the perfect bride. She is presented a fairy tale marriage when the Nutcracker takes her to his kingdom. She does wake up from this and goes to the Nutcracker to make a vow to be not like Princess Pirlipat. This vow results in the Nutcracker taking human form at last and Marie finds a handsome suitor presented to her by his uncle.This kind of transformation follows that of the Beast in Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast" where the girl makes a solemn vow of love and it breaks the spell that was holding the man in another form. In this case, it's as a nutcracker doll.
   One final Biblical allusion comes when the Nutcracker takes Marie to the Doll Kingdom, shown as a magical world where toys and sweets live and every Christmas tree known grows. The set up of this fantastic world is meant to resemble Heaven, and Marie sees it twice. First the Nutcracker shows her the place after slaying the Mouse King. The second is after the Nutcracker becomes human again and takes her there upon hearing she would love him regardless.
   In the final chapter, Marie tells everyone of it but no one believes her. Her father even threatens to throw her toys away if anymore talks of it come. But, Marie keeps faith and says the magic word. In the end, all are happy. That ending is preferable to the Baryshnikov production of the ballet that ends with Clara back in the living room and wondering if the whole thing was just a dream.

 

Notes.

1. Fantasia. Disney Pictures. (1940) (Classicalmpr has an article on the movie's use of the suite in better detail).
2. genealogy.com. (accessed in 2018). 

Going Twenty: A Bug's Life

   How do you do, 

  It's winter and the "Going Twenty" phase will end now with Disney and Pixar's A Bug's Life. A Bug's Life was the successful follow up film of Pixar in wake of Toy Story, the film that struck it rich in being a completely computer animated movie. Toy Story appealed to all ages when it came out in 1995; adults enjoyed the intelligent story telling and dialogue while children were delighted by the film's fantasy and adventure elements. Toy Story was even rated among the top ten films of the year when it came out, and is on the list of 100 greatest American films of all time, along with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the latter was a breakthrough in traditional hand drawn animation.
   While it was in production for the anticipated Toy Story 2, Pixar attempted another follow up in what was practically a tough act to follow. But, they pulled it off in 1998 with A Bug's Life, where the film centers on arthropods interacting. It wasn't a real technological leap of anything at all. The real breakthrough was Toy Story, which was to bring toys to life on the big screen with computers. Everything after that focused more on the story telling elements, just as Disney did in everything after Snow White. A Bug's Life permitted new ways to explore this new form of animation and allow Pixar to have a bigger scope to things, whereas Toy Story was the technological leap to get computer graphics in motion. That can explain why this movie has a better story than Toy Story. The projects to come also allowed writers to develop their characters more, considering how Toy Story largely centers around Woody and Buzz and have all the other toys in the background. In A Bug's Life, we have a protagonist in Flick, but we also have other characters with their own conflicts, their own plots, and their own resolutions.

   Of course, Pixar rarely does much original with its stories. A Bug's Life is basically a rewrite of The Three Amigos, which in turn uses plot elements from The Magnificent Seven, which is an Americanized version of The Seven Samurai. I wouldn't call it stealing from any of them; A Bug's Life is merely retelling an old story in a new way, which is itself not that old.
   In the days before writing, stories were told aloud and what was told got passed down to the next generation. Some were preserved the same all through the ages while others borrowed elements from the world and incorporated them into the narrative. Then came the invention of writing and stories could now be preserved in print. As people began to move around, they encountered other stories in other cultures and elements would sometimes be borrowed in making new stories. For example, Ancient Greece had Homer's epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, which inspired the Roman poet, Virgil, to write The Aeneid. Later, in the Middle Ages, you can find great works that use Christian influences and Biblical themes combined with tropes from a pre-Christian era and create something with it. It continued on: Blake took inspirations from John Milton's Paradise Lost, Dickens' A Christmas Carol is greatly influenced by Shakespeare's plays, and Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes uses the inverted species order that Jonathan Swift featured in his Gulliver's Travels (which also inspired Dr. Seuss' "The Butter Battle Book").
   A Bug's Life uses the same basic story line of the previous films, being that a village is terrorized by bandits and a group of heroes are called upon to protect it. In the Kurosawa film, the samurai are treated as the Japanese version of the Medieval knight in Europe, where they sacrifice their lives to protect people from evil, though the image is a romanticized version at best. In reality, the samurai of Feudal Japan were more like Luca Brazi of The Godfather than Sir Lancelot of the King Arthur legends, the strongmen in service of their lords. If we are to use Star Wars, since the Jedi are said to be inspired by samurai warriors, the real ones would lean more toward Darth Maul, Darth Vader, or even Kylo Ren more than they would as Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Luke Skywalker. Yet, the romantic image is what is used in the movie and is passed to the cowboys in The Magnificent Seven, another figure of a man who is often glamorized and romanticized in Hollywood as a symbol of chivalry. Considering from reading books about the Old West, the American cowboys were not modern day Sir Lancelots; they were mostly hired hands on ranches who drove cattle across trails and came to town after work where they sometimes got out of line with the law. The Magnificent Seven adds something of the Americans rescuing others trope where Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen enlist five others to help them beat Mexican bandits who terrorize a Mexican village. Of course, both it and the Japanese movie are depicted as tragedies in the fight as half of the group is cut down and both have someone lamenting that the helpless farmers were the actual winners.
  Fast forward to the eighties with The Three Amigos where some of the tropes that made The Magnificent Seven great in the sixties has been challenged and reevaluated. Revisionism on the Punitive Expedition brought on by Vietnam introduced the trope of the Anglo Americans getting into places he clearly doesn't belong and the tradition hero worship is nothing but the White Messiah trope. The Three Amigos is not very heavy handed on it, but it uses this by reducing the seven warriors down to three, and the plot twist is they are not really gun slinging heroes but simply actors brought in on false pretenses. When they meet the big bad, the cover is blown and the results are disgraceful, but in the end they decide between being phonies back home and phonies in another country it would be better to be the latter and they help the villagers win out.
   All that finds its way into A Bug's Life, replacing the Mexican banditos with grasshoppers, the villagers with a colony of ants, and the three Anglo American actors turned saviors into circus bugs. Another older story inspired the movie, of course.

   You may have heard of the fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper", how the grasshopper "fiddled" away summer while the ant and his pals worked in collecting the harvest. When winter came, the grasshopper is cold and hungry, and begs the ants for food and shelter, to which the ants refuse. Aesop's original message was harsh, which explains how retellings, including Disney's cartoon "The Grasshopper and the Ants" would feature a change in which the ants do welcome the grasshopper in who repents of his previous stance and earns his keep by entertaining the ants with his music. The fable is still used to illustrate the benefits of working to prepare for thin times during the thick and how idleness wastes away the thick times and leaves on unprepared.
   A Bug's Life appears to add another twist: suppose the children of the grasshopper took advantage of the hospitality of the children of the ants and set themselves up to rule over the latter. Now the ants stock up the food to offer as protection tokens to grasshoppers who claim to be their protection against other bugs. Thus, we have a connection to other three movies mentioned above.
   One thing that people have caught on during the years is the film's anti-authority message. When the grasshoppers question the need to return to the ants after having enough food, their leader, Hopper brings up that Flick, the hero, has stood up to him. So how does one ant matter to him? He illustrates it well in this scene. The grasshoppers hold a whole colony hostage and if their control ends, the grasshoppers could be overwhelmed. In short, it's all about power.
   The message of the conflict between Flick and Hopper is basically the people in power are vastly outnumbered, and often weak without support of the people, and the masses could overthrow them all, and they know it, so the powers that be will maintain their power using means of fear and keeping groups divided so as to avoid a united mob coming after them. One thing they fear most is when one person stands up to them, the entire population will, thus examples must be made to maintain that power. Consider historic examples, like the Nazis in Germany, the Bolsheviks in Russia, and you can see it done before; and some might think the same with the US today where certain elements are in charge and use fear mongering (and political correctness) to keep everyday Americans in line. Hopper understands that and will do everything to keep that power (one telling example is the way he threatens harm to his younger and less smart brother, Molt).

   In the end, the masses do revolt, and the circus bugs assist. Other subplots include Princess Dot wanting to be taken seriously, Flik's progressive ideas of invention while ants stubbornly hold to traditional ways, and the circus bugs' arc of redemption after losing their jobs happen as well. Plenty of the humor is the way how the circus bugs try to hype up and subvert stereotypes to their specie. For example, Francis the Ladybug can be relatable to those gender fluid sorts since we all assume ladybugs are female. The same with Rosie the Spider, a black widow (who jokingly talks of the deaths of her husband at one point) who is suppose to be a deadly arachnid and yet hangs with the others like it's no problem. Heimlich the Caterpillar even makes one think of the children's book "The Hungry Caterpillar" with his eating habits. Meanwhile, Manny is a praying mantis who is introduced in meditation (instead of praying) and P.T. Flea (named for P.T. Barnum, the guy they made a musical on) who owns a circus, both in reference to his namesake (and he even looks like Barnum) and the fact people have flea circuses.
   Other cases of artistic license are made. For one, real life ants have nests made mostly of female, technically, while males like Flik would have wings and exist mainly to mate with the Queen, whose daughters make up the workers. Flik is made a worker ant, and a male, and given a romantic subplot with Princess Atta, who becomes queen in the end. Others include the way they humanize insects by making them walk on two legs and have arms like people while spiders are generally depicted with six legs (sort of a way to make them out as monsters). Yet, pill bugs have more than six legs and are shown in the movie too. One thing that could have worked with the circus is if Rosie had a scorpion friend, the pill bugs replaced by a centipede and a millipede, and maybe a crab for the strong guy, then the circus would have all the groups of the Arthropod phylum represented. Of course, as most people are aware, not all arthropods are bugs.

   While the story is recycled, the film A Bug's Life has the legacy of making Pixar a household name, doing more so than Toy Story did. With its success, Pixar was able to create not only the sequel to Toy Story but also such hits as WALL-E, Up, and Cars. In each case, we see many motifs and tropes of older stories regenerated into new tales.
    It really is a fun movie to watch; even someone who is not into bugs would agree. 

Food For Thought: Armistice Centennial.

    How do you do, 

   In the United States, November 11 is Veteran's Day. It's that one time of the year where we honor the veterans of wars who had fallen in combat as well as the ones who are still among us today. Yet, it wasn't always called that. 

  One hundred years ago, this day, the Armistice that would end the fighting of World War I happened. It came into affect at 11:00 on this day, a century ago (by which point, nearly everyone in the Western Hemisphere was still asleep). For many, it seemed the war was completely over. Perhaps, the whole concept of war was over. Perhaps Man may be able to live in peace. At least, that is what we all felt as the Treaty of Versailles was being signed, a document intended for peace that instead led to another war. 

   Prior to November 11, 1918, there would have been millions of European men who were, like Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind, willing to be happily buried in their homes, knowing that they were in countries that ruled the world. In 1914, the Great War came. In between those years, those millions of young men watched as their childhood friends were cut to pieces by machine guns, tangled up in barbed wire, or suffer from trench fever. They saw real men die in agony when they shot them, yet tanks seemed unfeeling with their armor and airplanes appeared unstoppable since they could fly. All for what? Just to capture a few yards in some places, or a hill in another. And at sea, the submarine added another monster lurking below. 

   For each country involved, World War I had a different meaning. For Great Britain, both it and World War II marked the watershed moment in the power of the empire. For France, the war was a trying time for the Third Republic, considering as most of the battles were fought in France and her will was tested to the limits. France certainly came out intact and stronger than before (even if it seems it was all thrown away in World War II, France had earned the final victory in the end). Italy's time in the war does seem strange as she turned on her allies and tried to defeat them, only to lose for the most part. Then, the Centrals attack and send Italy running, which makes one think Italy lost this one, but the Italians did hold out on the Piave Line and their final battle was a victory (even if the troubles of post-war times led to Fascism). For Russia, Germany, and Austria, the war was marked with defeat, the dissolution of their empires, and chaotic aftermaths. As the Russian reader knows, the hardships of war kicked off the revolution, which led to the Communist take over and the rise of the Soviet Union. For Germany, the defeat also meant hardship and anger as she was blamed for it, and it would plant the seeds for the Nazis taking over. This doesn't mean nothing good can be said for them all, considering how the Germans were defending their home at the start and Russians defended theirs later on. And I also admire the determination of the Austro-Hungarian Army at Przemysl, where they withheld a siege for 133 days. 

  The war wasn't confined to Europe. The Middle East was involved, also, where the Ottoman Empire made its last stand. During the period Turkey was fighting, the tragedy known as the Armenian Genocide occurred, while the Anglo-Egyptian Army enter Jerusalem, something no Englishman had done since the Crusades, and the British-Indian Army went into Mesopotamia (which meant such places my generation know like Basra, Baghdad, and Karbala were fought over then), and one British soldier helped an Arab revolt. In the end, Turkey became a republic and maintained her sovereignty while her southern neighbors were occupied by the British and the French. The war was also fought in Africa, where even African soldiers fought each other and one German Army present surrender undefeated in the end. Asia saw Japan grab off the German settlement in China as well as the islands she would later fight the US in in World War II. In the Americas, the war was largely naval battles fought away without any engagements on either continent. So, that explains why it was a world war. 

    For the United States, World War I was what ended the tradition of focusing on our home waters. Before, the US was satisfied with staying out of international affairs, with a few exceptions. World War I changed it; it meant the US would be involved with world affairs besides the Western Hemisphere, and World War II would later consummate that, making it possible for the US to assume the role as the world police. And all the US did in the war was minimum compared to everyone else and we arrived late in the war. 

  One thing World War I did was it ended the romantic notion of war. There was a growing movement prior to it that was seen by many who felt that wars are too horrible to use in solving problems. It really took the Great War to really make it official, since there was no way to hide the trenches and the basket cases. Indeed, it is a fact that war was what halted Fascism and Imperialism and Communism in the past; it is a fact that it took a war in Southeast Asia to make US society, indeed all the Western Civilization, to change itself for the better or for worse; it is a fact that through war Saddam Hussein was twice defeated and Kuwaitis and Iraqis were free of his tyranny; it is a fact that war was the only way to stop ISIS and the Taliban; and it is a fact that without war humanity would never have evolved to its current state. But there is another side to this: it's something that General Sherman pointed out once.

   "War is cruelty, no use refining it," he said. He made it cruel enough that the Confederates were willing to surrender, and to some if we have plenty of Shermans around, it can make any wars that happen now be done with quicker. At the same time, wars also breed more evils while destroying one form of evil. Think of how the Twentieth Century would have been if World War I had ended sooner, or never happened. We have to think of the grieving widows that are spawned of wars, or the orphans, and we must think that in many religions there are those who pray that war would never happen in their lives. We have to think of the young men we send to the slaughter or leave maimed, or mentally scared for life when we start wars. Never mind if the earth is over populated, especially since it would take an apocalyptic sort of war to reduce it greatly and that would mean hardships for the survivors. 

   For that reason, most of us see that view of the peace feelers in 1918 and wonder at the naivety. Then again, who is to say someone a century from now would think the same of our current society. Since another war happened, the day we set aside to remember the Armistice is made Veteran's Day. In the past, the United States had Memorial Day (once called Decoration Day) as a way to give honor to servicemen. This was a product of the Civil War. After World War II, which with the First World War gave us two generations of veterans, we had a holiday set up for the living while Memorial Day leans more to the dead. 

    So, what are we to learn from this. Basically, to avoid counting our chickens before they hatched. In order to have peace, we would have to avoid making the same mistakes as before and not make additional antagonisms. Those vets from 1918, they saw that lesson learned even as they grew old and then ancient, even as they became shadowed by their sons who fought in World War II, and grandsons in some armed conflict of the late century (for the US, the Vietnam Conflict). So, in honor of those men who fell in the Great War, whatever nationality they may be, and for those who saw the end and have it lived it through, even to the last ones left alive, let us all take a moment to pause and make peace with the past. May they all rest in peace. 

    "Blessed are the peacekeepers for they will be called children of God."

                                                                               Matthew. 5:9. 

Notice.

   How do you do,

   Due to this year being when the centennial anniversary of the Armistice in World War I happened, there won't be an entry to "Going Twenty" for November. Instead, December will take up the next, and last, entry. On that matter, there won't be a new season for "Going Twenty" for 2019. So, sorry to disappoint anyone looking forward to a few words on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or American Pie, both of which will turn twenty. 

   Instead, the month of November will have a few things on World War I and the ceasefire that was to bring peace (but instead was a prelude to another war). However, there will be a few other things to dissect and analyse in the months of November and December too. Until then, 

   Pie Iesu Domine dona nobis pacem.   

Going Twenty: Meet Joe Black

    How do you do, 

   [Originally, I was going to have Practical Magic be the movie for the "Going Twenty" series, but since I haven't seen it in its entirety, I decided to skip that and go to the next entry. I'll replace this one with something else in November.]

     

    Meet Joe Black might not seem Hallowe'en material since it's largely a rom-com. However, there is a good enough creepy vibe to it with the opening voice saying "yes" with Parish confronting death in it to match. The film features Sir Anthony Hopkins playing a multimillionaire named Bill Parish, president of the Parish Communications. He's set up as something like President Trump with gray hair and a slight British accent (and this guy is younger than the president). On the eve of his sixty-fifth birthday, he begins hearing voices and learns they belong to Death who wants to explore the world before taking him to the next world.
   Meet Joe Black is a re-imagining of the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday, which in turn is based on the Italian play La Morte in Vacanza, by Albert Casella[1], while using a title structure like that of Meet John Doe. It's the second of two movies where Hopkins played opposite Brad Pitt, who takes on the title role. Though a remake, a few differences are in the character of Death. In the 1934 film, the character, played by Frederic March, wants to know why people fear him and asks a duke to be guide. In Meet Joe Black, Death is only doing this to explore what Parish speaks of with "passion, rapture, [and] obsession." Another change involves Susan. In the original story, the woman who captures Death's heart was not the Duke's daughter, but his son's sweetheart. In this one, Susan, played by Claire Forlani, is made to be Parish's younger daughter, with the older, Allison, played by Marcia Gay Harden, already married.
   There is something like Martha and Mary deal in the two daughters. We see Allison spending many of her screen time focusing mostly on her party planning for the big birthday soiree she is hosting for her father, while Susan is a bit more relaxed and keeping everything hands off. Clearly, Allison is Martha while Susan is Mary, in this action. The reason for this is more of favoritism, as revealed in Allison's talk with Parish late in the movie, with Allison clearly suffering a case of a need for her father's approval. That need basically translated into her constantly worrying about how it will turn out and rarely taking a break, even with her husband, Quince, an employee of her father, coming along. Susan, on the other hand, is basically dotted on by Parish who wonders if she had found the right man, even though she is clearly in a relationship with Drew, another employee. For the most part, Susan plays up the character of the woman who is over thirty, very attractive, more focused on career instead of settling down, yet hasn't experienced true love, and then suddenly gets it when a good looking man steps in. At the same time, she's almost a daddy's girl, and the one time Parish shouts at her is enough to make her sad and avoid him.

   One thing that may not be known to most is there is an actual Joe Black. The real Joe Black was a baseball player, serving as pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, before dying a few years ago. Unlike Brad Pitt's alias in the movie, the real Joe Black wasn't Death in disguise. Not only that, the real man didn't even resemble Brad Pitt in any shape or form (look for yourself in this wikipedia article). The one reference to this is brought up by Quince in the first dinner scene, upon learning Joe's name.
    Considering how black is associated with death, there is a fair amount of it in the movie. Joe Black has it in his name, but there is also his suit and tux, as well as the swim suit and the dress Susan wears. Remarkably, Pitt's character doesn't get to be black either, but instead we get the white skin, blond hair, and blue eyed Joe Black, almost like something from Nazi propaganda. I am positive they went with Brad Pitt because he could project an expression of innocence if he wanted to, as if to match the way he interacts with the world. Really says something if they could only find blonds who show that more easily than they could find a dark skinned sort who can project the same image.
   Another thing to note is how secular the movie is. Joe Black plays off as Death, yet never once do we hear anything of God. Parish is never shown praying or making amends with God on anything; he only speaks God's name when cussing or swearing. There is a moment with the Jamaican woman that suggests some old religion, but it's never done too deep. To me, it's inconsistent to have Death as a spirit and yet not bring up any other spirits or deities into the mix. The movie is also a sign have how rotten some people in Hollywood are given that they can't find anyway of saying the word "God" unless in anger or as a swear word.
   On a less offensive note, there is no violence in the movie, not even a fight. The characters just talk and talk. There is a sex scene, done between Susan and Joe, but the scene is done very artistically. For one, we don't get any nudity -- everything is shot from the waist up with Pitt and the same with Forlani's back (ever her breasts get obscured by Pitt's arm in one shot). Instead, it mostly focuses on the faces and their reactions to the pleasure, which in a way makes much more erotic than any other sex scene in the film industry. Unfortunately, there's very little foreplay involved.
    After the sex scene and the two have redressed, it's obvious that Joe didn't learn the art of tie tying, something that is hard for some men. As a result, it's not put back on, but its absence provides another use of symbolism -- that of virginity loss.

   I do have a copy of the movie on DVD, though there are few things I noted like the fact the sex scene happens at the start, not end, of one chapter, thus making skipping the scene not an option if you don't like missing a few things. I also have found the shooting script for the movie and it contains scenes not included in the movie that the DVD failed to show (not sure if the Blu-Ray has them or not). For example, we have been hearing about this Bontecou deal and a meeting. The script has an actual scene where Bill Parrish meets this mysterious Bontecou and they have a private talk. Considering the talk doesn't include the deal, my guess to why it's not in the movie has something to do with plotting. The script has more depth to Drew in how he has Joe Black researched after the first board meeting and later on shows up to tell Joe he found nothing on him. Drew then shows up at the Parish house without an announcement to bring up the deal, mostly as a last warning before the scene of his dismissal. Parrish considers it threatening and orders him out. Drew leaves, but also has an argument with Susan, during which she ends things with him. Without the scene, we lose many plot points, especially with Susan and Joe falling for each other, because it almost looks like the usual leading lady cheats on S.O. with leading man, but that's okay because her fiance, or boyfriend, is the bad guy of the movie thing going on. There is also a funny scene after the Jamaican woman dies with Joe stopping by a Korean grocery store and getting some peanut butter. He doesn't understand anything of money change, even as the man brings it to him, and says he can't change. If only they kept it in the movie.
    Don't take my word for it, look it up.
   Meet Joe Black was also trimmed up for the airport version once, which was sometimes aired on television in the early Aughts. The trimmed version was disowned by Martin Breast, who placed on Alan Smithee in the credits. It's justified due to the removal of the bargaining and dealing plot, the deletion of the Jamaican woman's death, additional moments between Parrish and his daughters, even the love scene is cut up into a series of kisses with some undressing of Joe for the female gaze. I also consider that a good reason why they don't have it on home video.

   Meet Joe Black is a long movie with funny moments, though the acting does seem to be something you'd see in Twilight (did Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart watch this movie before playing their characters?). The movie was modest at the time of its premiere, but most people went to see it only because previews to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was included. It's one of the few movies that is not fondly remembered today, most likely to be dismissed as another romantic comedy from the 1990s with cheesy dialogue, though Brad Pitt fans would enjoy it.
   One good part is the birthday scene where Bill Parrish offers his wish to the crowds, where he proclaims not on riches or fame, despite everything that has happened, but only for people to have a wonderful life. He had also heard Joe wanting to have Susan with him, but Parrish convinces him that love is more than the three things he said earlier, but also "trust, responsibility, making...decisions and spending the rest of your life living up to them." He knows, as do we, that Susan is only in love with the man whose body Death took, enough to claim Necrophilia on Susan's part, as well as basically the woman only being in love with the identity that the man has just stolen, not the man in possession. Once Joe realizes this, he breaks it off and returns the body back alive for Susan, though it does lead to us wondering how the man will react to being called Joe.
    Best part is how Parrish mends things with Susan and tells her how much he loves her while "What a Wonderful World" plays in the background. Though he won't be dancing with her at her wedding, the dance that follows is the perfect father-daughter dance. I also like the way they use the foot bridge to mark Bill Parrish's exit with Joe, with Susan coming up to see the two men she loved disappear, only for one to reappear. Under normal circumstances, she'd be asking what had he done to her father and call him a murderer, but since it's a movie it's let loose. Something about it makes it feel like the parting farewell of the nineties, if not the whole 20th Century, telling us how things will be okay and we shouldn't have regrets as we enter the new millennium.
  At the time the film came out, we were all like Parrish before he crosses the bridge as the Millennium arrives. After that part, we became like Susan, wondering what will come next and wait for whatever it is to come, to come to us. Certainly makes one wish we could go back in time and see the arrival without all the knowledge of what was to come. Bill Parrish was right in the movie. It is hard to let go.

[1] "Death Takes a Holiday." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Takes_a_Holiday (last modified August 12, 2018). 

Going Twenty: Mulan

   How do you do, 

   At some point, I knew this movie would be included as it's also turning twenty. Mulan is the thirty-sixth in what is now more than fifty Disney movies, coming out in the latter end of the Disney Renaissance. It's plot line is basically a Chinese girl, living in a time not stated, who has troubles fitting in as a girl, which doesn't give her family honor. One day, her country is threatened by invaders from beyond the blue, to which her father answers duty's call to fight, but Mulan decides to fight in his stead due to his illness, even dressing up as a man to do so. This leads to her joining the Chinese Army and fighting the invaders, and becoming a hero.

  That is the summary of the movie. A lot of effort was made in making this movie. I hear they actually had animators go into the Forbidden City in an effort to get the details right. And, despite being a rich farmer's daughter, Mulan is listed among the Disney princesses (for reasons that are hard to explain, other than maybe give Asian American girls someone to relate to, just as Jasmine did that for Arab Americans, Pocahontas for Native Americans). Remarkably, very little of the cast is made of Asians, such as having Pat Morita play the Emperor (expecting him to say "wax on, wax off"?) and Jackie Chan even voiced Shang Li in the Chinese dub. A couple of non-Asian actors are on the cast list. For example, Diamond Osmond does the singing for Shang during the "Make a Man Out of You" number and the late Marni Nixon is heard in "Bring Honor To Us All." Don't forget, African American actor Eddie Murphy plays Mushu the Dragon (since not many people are as funny as Murphy, which is why the German dub had Otto Waalkes voice him). In short, it's not really Chinese, it's a multi-ethnistic film.
  The movie is fun to watch, even if not everything is accurate. For one, the gender roles deal is presented in a childish manner, though one line in the song "Honor to Us All" does bring that up. When we see the army, the whole thing is treated like summer camp meets military school (the soldiers stop a fight at Li's voice and point at Mulan on the ground while saying together, "He started it."). The horrors of war are toned down considerably, even when we witness a destroyed village, while the deaths of characters seem lopsided. Of course, they don't add in a disclaimer that tells the audience that wars are not as fun as the movie presents it, and after going over Saving Private Ryan, you'll agree. The film also downplays Buddhism and Confucianism, while showing the ancestor worship (and even having the ghosts of the ancestors appear in two scenes), just as Aladdin downplayed Islam while featuring flying carpets and genies, Pocahontas reduce shamanism to magic tricks while having a talking tree, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame featuring people praying in church and talking gargoyles without going deep into Christianity. The reduction of religion, yet showing the spiritual side of it in the story is what keeps these movies from becoming secular. These are the tip of the ice berg.

 The film's plot line is based on the exploits of a legendary warrior named Hua Mulan, first mentioned in the Ballad of Mulan, written in the sixth century. The story is the same as the movie, but only in Mulan taking her father's place in the army. The original Mulan lacked the characteristics of the Disney version, largely served in the Chinese army for twelve years without anyone knowing she was a woman until the end. The legend was rewritten some six centuries later as Sui Tang Romance where Mulan meets other girls in the army, and dies at the end through suicide, to avoid being ruled by a foreigner. Rather or not Mulan actually existed is hard to tell and most scholars consider her a legendary as King Arthur is to the British. Apart from these two, the Chinese had a few other works, including plays, on her, with movies being in the recent century.
   In neither tale is there mention of the Huns. To clarify a few things, the Huns were an Asiatic people living in a largely nomadic life on the Steppes. Through a hypothesis by Joseph de Guignes, it was believed the Huns and the Xiongu were the same, although beginning with Otto Maechen-Helfen, historians have challenged this idea. Making it harder to tell if they are related, or the same, or even if they were actually Mongols, is the fact the Hunnish language is no longer spoken in any part of the world, nor did they leave many documents. The West knows of the Huns only as the hoards of horseback riding warriors who nearly conquered the Roman Empire under Attila, though they never actually defeated that said empire. They eventually settled in modern day Hungary, and were later assimilated with the Magyars, four centuries later. As to the Xiongu, they are a little more mysterious, as they settled in modern day Siberia and Mongolia, and did many invasions of China, but were defeated sixty years after Christ was nailed to His to Cross. This would put their invasion long before the time frame of Mulan, practically.
    So while the movie calls them Huns to make it easy on American audiences, but I'll use Xiongu for the sake of accuracy. The Xiongu are not really given much in the movie to go around. They are simply the invading enemy of China (that "other" if you will), just as the Germans in Saving Private Ryan are simply the enemy in a war (and incidentally, the Germans had been mistakenly called Huns as well). Their leader is Shan-Yu, a ruthless chieftain hell bent on challenging the Emperor in superiority. He is very powerful, able to break down doors on his own and chop columns down with his sword; he has heightened senses and the film makers had him have the ability to see through his falcon (kind of like the Beast Master in his movies), though that was reduced for the sake of timing. He does differ from most Disney villains, who usually have motives of their own to be villainous, enough that one could use all the Renaissance Disney villains as symbols of the Seven Deadly Sins. Shan-Yu, on the other hand, is not the standard Disney villain. He's just the leader of an invasion force; he's the country's enemy. Thus, he is perhaps the most simplistic villain in Disney history.
   He and the Xiongu are done in a way to make the audience always see them as invaders and not the old villains to identify with. First, we see them scale the Great Wall without much effort and without regard that the Chinese have a way of alerting the countryside of the breach (thanks to that one guard who lit a beacon, causing all the beacons of Gondor...er, the Great Wall, to be lit as well). A deleted scene shows the Xiongu destroying a village and leaving nothing alive, yet Shan-Yu executes a man who spared a little bird, in turn is killed by his falcon. The reason for its exclusion is perhaps leave out the lone descanting voice and instead we see the aftermath. That is when Shan-Yu finds Imperial scouts and sends them away with a message, before allowing a bowman to kill one of them. We also don't see what happens to the other village, but hearing how he speaks of returning a doll to a girl is enough to raise alarm bells, and we see the aftermath where the village and the Chinese army are wiped out. When we finally see the Xiongu in battle, they are basically fodder for the cannons, without any thought given on their humanity, as opposed to the Chinese.
   On that matter, some elements of the Yellow Peril are used with the Xiongu, something lacking in the Chinese, thankfully. The Xiongu are depicted have demonic faces, speaking in gruff voices, and having eyes like that of cats (Shan-Yu's are almost like that of Darth Sideous from Star Wars, plus the yet to be introduced Darth Maul). Another way the Xiongu are dehumanized is how we don't see any women among them, where the Chinese have women and children, basically following the perceptions of survivors of barbaric raids who only see the men. This can make the kids in the audience think that there are no women or children among the Xiongu (which is an impossibility). That leads to another theme.

  Mulan holds a few feminist themes, which seem to explain the absence of Xiongu women by showing Mulan as the woman in battle with male empowered threats, the patriarchy from within and the rapist other from without. A more radical version would make Mulan a rebel against China's patriarchal society, but is caught between bringing it down on her own or having to protect it because the invaders might not be so generous about her. In short, she's between the rock and the hard place.
   Much of that is toned down because the target audience is children and most of feminism goes over their heads (unless one is named Lisa Simpson). Besides, Mulan is not enlisted to challenge gender roles or promote equality, she just does it because her father is sick and she has no brother around to take up the sword.
   Once in the army, Mulan finds that becoming a man is not what its cracked up to be. She gets to see other men in ways she never thought of seeing them (they are shown picking their noses at one point, and become very rough with one another). As the training goes, she finds it hard and is nearly discharged for it. Of course, she decides to try at the arrow again, getting it that time after much effort. Her determination even inspires the men to perform to their fullest.
   I have heard of how people talk of Rey in the new Star Wars movies, how she is something of a Mary-Sue, and it seems some would want a strong woman to be like that. Mulan does better than Rey in getting support because she is the underdog. She is not good at being a girl, yet can't be a boy either, but is willing to pull through despite the odds. When her identity is discovered, she is nearly killed for it, but Li spares her for saving his life. Then, she goes on to save the Emperor from Shan-Yu. In the end, she is a hero. Basically, it's just like the previous movie, Hercules for girls.
   Identity is one central theme, explored in the song "Reflection". Mulan, as mentioned, doesn't do well as a girl, and she wonders if her reflection shows that. She tries out as a man and fails at that, too. Yet, her identity as a hero is what matters in the end. This, to me, seems better than it being something of a transgender story line. Outside of politics, identity has become a recurring theme in the Disney Renaissance during the 1990s. In 1991, we had the Belle discovering the her prince within the Beast, who also learns who he really is. In 1993, Aladdin seeks to be more than simply a "street rat". In 1994, Simba gets exile and almost forgets his role, until reminded by an old friend. Hercules even has that crisis, before learning he is a demi-god. Even The Nightmare Before Christmas (which is not in the traditional canon) has that where Jack looks for something other than the usual trick-o-treat. They all have plenty of things to happen along the way. Most famous, Simba goes through his movie thinking he killed his father, Mufasa, until Scar reveals the truth in the film's climax. The Beast's temper gets the best of him early, though he learns how to be gentle. And there's Quasimodo who doesn't get the girl in the end. At many times, it seems as though nothing goes right for the heroes. Do they all get their "who am I" conflicts resolves? The Beast becomes human again, Aladdin wins the heart of the princess and a better life, Simba returns to become king, Quasimodo is accepted into society, and Hercules becomes the greatest hero around. The only Disney hero to not get his or her conflict settled at this point is Pocahontas, even though she prevented a war must be separated from her man. This theme continued the following year with Tarzan where a man raised by apes learns his true heritage.
    Mulan is not the only one. Mushu and Cri-Kee the cricket, who basically become the film's answer to C-3PO and R2-D2, have their own. Mushu is demoted from family guardian to simply the gong ringer and he wants the honor of being the guardian beast again. Cri-Kee is believed to be lucky by an old woman, and he seeks that out as well. I always liked this pair, besides being just like our famous droid friends. It is a good story about a girl becoming empowered, but these two are the supporting cast that Disney likes to use in its movies, there to give others someone to relate to. Mushu is even comfortable in his sexuality that pretends to be a mother figure to Mulan in one scene, and acts like an actual mom whose child is going to school for the first time (just replace the sword with a lunch box).
    I also find how Mulan's romance with Li Shang demoted to sub-plot, whereas many Disney films targeted to girls tend to put the romance in center stage. The reason such plots were popular with Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, is hard to say, but my opinion on it is most girls love romance and want true love, and their fantasies are always about getting that true love, often embodied by a man (though same-sex stories will replace him with another girl), and what better way to embody that than with a prince? Practically the fantasy of getting the perfect male specimen is why the Disney movies with princesses appealed to them for years. Mulan sort of speaks for girls who never like to wear dresses or do anything they deem silly in order to catch a boyfriend. We like to call them tomboys, of course. So, their fantasies are more about finding someone who will treat them as people, as their equal. In the case of Mulan and Li, Mulan considers him an admirable leader while Shang at first thinks of her as a man who admires him. He respects Mulan as a man, but can't figure out what to do when learning she is a woman, which plenty of feminists have ranted about enough that I won't add more to it. In the end, he decides he likes a strong woman on his side and decides to court her. That gets unresolved, but Mulan II makes a plot on that later on. However, that hasn't stopped many from accusing Li Shang of being either sexist or gay (check out this video, skip to 3:44 mark).

   As stated, Mulan is in the later end of the Disney Renaissance. It did modestly in the box office, especially on par with its predecessors, while dwarfed by The Lion King, and passed by Tarzan in 1999. The box office performance suggests that by this time the novelty of it was wearing out as Disney seemed unable to recapture the success it made with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. After Tarzan, the Disney movies began the process of a kind of slump with lesser quality films, until 2008 with the premiere of Bolt and a recent resurgence of Disney fandom. In the same process, Mulan has developed a cult following more so than the two male dominated movies it is sandwiched by. One evidence of that is how it's being aired on television frequently and Disney is even making a live action remake to come out in 2020. According to the wikipedia, article at the present, they are trying hard not to whitewash the story which is why the cast is now a solid cast of Asian actors, largely Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. As I write, they are already shooting this remake.