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- Title
Eastern Witch from the West: Xianniangin Niki Caro's Mulan.
- Authors
Sheng-Mei Ma
- Abstract
In Niki Caro's live-action Mulan (2020), the "witch," named Hawk by film critics or Xianniang (Immortal Woman) in closed captioning, is a twenty-first century "walk-on" (fly-in?), entirely absent in the genesis of the Mulan legend, the fifth-century "The Ballad of Mulan." Nor does she exist in any previous reincarnations in the Chinese and English language, including Maxine Hong Kingston's ethnic classic The Woman Warrior and Disney animation Mulan. Given the absence of the witch before 2020, is Caro's addition to the cast a Western wolf in Eastern sheep's clothing, speaking in English to boot, swallowing whole the gullible global audience? Is Caro affixing, fixating on, a feminist, homoerotic tail to an imperial, heteronormal Chinese tale? Is Caro a Western neo-imperialist bewitching--pun intended--the East in the name of a liberal, all-Asian performance? Hawk performs black magic on the battlefield, courtesy of Caro's special effects and computergenerated imagery. Occidental media technology conjures up the ghost of a phantasmagoric Orient, except this Orient is possessed by the Anglo-European mania over sorcery. How to read Hawk's power--including that of possessing and zombiefying her victims--empowered by Orientalism, or the Chinese witch's agency vested by the Australian Caro?
- Subjects
WITCHCRAFT; CLOSED captioning; KINGSTON, Maxine Hong, 1940-; WITCHES; CHINESE language; FILM critics; VICTIMS; BALLAD (Literary form); CALLIGRAPHY
- Publication
Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2021, Vol 6, Issue 2, p187
- ISSN
1948-0091
- Publication type
Article