An Actor’s Oeuvre Approach to Mulan (1998)
Mulan (1998) – Actor’s Oeuvre
Each May, we in the US celebrate Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month and National Military Appreciation Month. I don’t always acknowledge the national months as they are, but I have recently added a list of heritage months, historical dates, anniversaries, and observances to our website’s resources for public scholars (check it out!), and I have been prompted by some of the finest public scholarship we have to think more on these topics.
Of course, I’m talking about Ben’s podcast Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America, now in its second season (“Diamond in the Rough” – more on this in a sec) and his latest Considering History column for The Saturday Evening Post on Japanese American war hero and baseball player Joe Takata. If you haven’t checked out one or either of these excellent examples of the work we all should be doing, it’s never too late to correct that misstep. I especially recommend his podcast – Ben puts so much love and work into each episode, and I’m so proud of the vital research he’s doing to get this history out there at a time when it’s needed more than ever.
That history, in this second season, concerns the US incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II and how baseball played in the camps serves as an example of resistance through joy, joy as resistance. “Diamond in the Rough” is an exceptional educational tool and example of the rich cultural, social, and political layers of an American Studies investigation of a topic. Ben pulls together threads of photography, literature, spatial analysis, memoirs, and more to craft an impressive, engaging narrative public history piece about the best and worst of Americans in that dark period of our collective history.
So, prompted by Ben’s important example and at his suggestion of film, this week we watched Disney’s Mulan (1998). The Review Roulette wheel landed on Actor’s Oeuvre as our approach, and at first I was like “HELL yeah. Ming-Na Wen and Lea Salonga fuckin rock” but as we watched a film I know by heart from repeated viewings as a child, I listened with adult ears, and went “wait that’s James Hong, and that’s Pat Morita, and that’s George Takei,” and I had an idea. Bear with me.
Instead of looking at the filmography of the absolutely stacked cast in Mulan, I want to focus on four Asian American men in the cast and their experiences in and around WWII and the Korean War. Those three – Hong, Morita, and Takei – as well as James Shigeta lend their voices to the older generation of men in the film, and the talent and influence among them alone is worth us acknowledging and honoring today.
James Hong – Hong plays Chi-Fu, imperial mandarin to the Emperor. Hong, the oldest of this group, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in February 1929 to Chinese emigrant parents. Splitting his childhood between Kowloon and Minneapolis, Hong was subjected to racism in schools as the only Asian child of, reportedly, 500 students in his hometown. After joining the Minnesota Army National Guard while attending the University of Minnesota, Hong’s unit was sent to basic training in Alabama. While there, Hong found both his talent and passion in entertaining the troops and was asked to stay on at Fort McClellan and oversee the live shows, serving his country through the arts.
James Shigeta – Shigeta plays General Li, Shang’s father who is massacred with his troops by Shan Yu and the Huns. General Li is revered in the film as a legendary warrior, and so it is fitting that he is played by Shigeta who served in the Korean War and rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant in his short two-and-a-half year tenure. Shigeta was born in June 1929 in Honolulu in the then-Territory of Hawaii as a third-generation Japanese American. Unlike Hong who became a known-performer during the Korean War, Shigeta was already a famous singer and entertainer when he enlisted in the Hawaii National Guard’s 298th Infantry and later the US Marine Corps in 1951. Shigeta had previously been titled “America’s National Radio Amateur Champion” and performed on radio and television shows with Bing Crosby and Edgar Bergen. After his military service, Shigeta had an internationally renowned career and was even dubbed “The Frank Sinatra of Japan.”
Pat Morita – Morita plays the Emperor of China. Morita and our final actor, Takei, had very different experiences from the first two in this list. As a Japanese American born in 1932 in Iselton, California, Morita was incarcerated at the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona, a Japanese internment camp, at 11 years old. Morita was transported directly to the camp after spinal reconstructive surgery owing to spinal tuberculosis he contracted at 2 years old. Around 18 months later, Morita and his family were transported to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California.
George Takei – Takei plays the First Ancestor, leader of the ancestral guardians. Takei, born in April 1937 to Japanese American parents in Los Angeles, California, was likewise incarcerated for simply existing. At 4 years old, Takei was interned with his family first at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas and then also at Tule Lake in California where Morita was. Takei has spoken at length about the violence wrought on Americans by Executive Order 9066.
These four actors are powerhouse performers, and their histories deepen the significance of the film. While there are many criticisms that have been levied against Mulan, I found it quite beautiful on this rewatch that Shigeta, Morita, and Takei, at least, have roles in positions of wisdom and power (you can argue Hong does too, but his character is more comedic relief and satire). These are veterans not only of the industry but of war and American racism. We should heed Pat Morita’s advice as Emperor, a man who worked for decades trying to bring Japanese American experiences in the camps to light. We should, especially right this very minute as Ben argues in his podcast, be listening to George Takei as a wise ancestor. He is someone whose experiences and voice are paramount to our understanding of history and our moment right now as we rebuild and refill concentration camps yet again in another deeply shameful period of our history.
I was not expecting to be thinking about these things when I watched Mulan. I was expecting to have a sweet little bit of nostalgic escapism. But nothing in our past is not layered and complicated, and when we can celebrate hugely influential and bad ass Americans, we should. So, happy Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month and National Military Appreciation Month to these four iconic Americans actors who voiced a beautiful part of my childhood and guide me to a more inclusive and knowledgeable part of adulthood.
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