Lessons from Disney

[shanex]

Important Lessons I learned from animated Disney movies:

Movie: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Lesson: If you have a problem, do nothing about it, and wait for other people to solve it for you.
Explanation: At no point did Snow White take any proactive action on her own behalf at all. Aside from running away into the forest when the huntsman told

Comments

[landley]

> But Mulan only solved her problems by befriending a tiny mystical
> creature

The mystic sidekick only found her _after_ she'd left home with the horse, armor, and sword.

The "mystic sidekick" was often an active physical hindrance, such as setting fire to the ammo wagon and giving away their position to the enemy.

He was a consistent source of bad advice, right from the start. From the "man walk" heading in to camp the first time, how to make friends in the army, the naming montage leading to "ping" was only problematic because she was listening to him in the first place. This extends to major plot points: he attempted to actually _dissuade_ her from going back to save the emperor ("They popped out of the snow! Like daisies!").

At most of her moments of victory he missed the point and was busily criticizing her ("how could you miss, he was three feet in front of you"... not only was it _not_ his idea, but he didn't even catch on to what she was doing until it was done).

Mulan had to redeem _Mushu_, not the other way around. The "mystic sidekick" was one of the problems she had to _solve_.

> and pretending to be a boy...

Pretty much a requirement to be taken seriously in context. And she also convinced the male soldiers to cross-dress for tactical advantage at one point.

Mulan is, in point of fact, a bad-ass. She tended to solve problems by being both clever and persistent, triggering an avalanche after fighting the army conventionally, getting the arrow with the two weights after being expelled, coming back to save the emperor after being abandoned in the snow, winning over co-workers who hated her _twice_: both during training and after being revealed as a woman...

She didn't get hung up on specific goals or setbacks. She was slow to master her army training but persevered and did it anyway. She started out trying to save just her father (being expelled for incompetence would presumably have been good enough for that) but expanded that into actually fighting in the army and eventually personally organizing the emperor's rescue when it became necessary. She repeatedly kept her head in a crisis, navigating the avalanche and shooting a rope to safety while falling off a cliff (yeah, pulling the _horse_ back up was stretching it, but that's Disney for you). At the end she beat the bad guy with a _fan_ and a judo throw.

It's too bad the second movie was so utterly horrible, but again: that's Disney for you.