MEET ONCE UPON A TIME’S MULAN
Don’t expect to see Mulan in her geisha getup when we first meet Disney’s warrior princess in Once Upon a Time’s September 30 premiere. She’ll be armored up and battle-ready.
“I go on a journey with Prince Phillip to find his princess, Aurora,” teases Mulan’s portrayer, Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch). “There’s this evil spirit that’s moving and my character ends up bonding with Sleeping Beauty. And as you’ve heard, Captain Hook is joining us.”
So might sword overpower hook? “Definitely,” says Chung, who mastered her sword-wielding skills on ABC Family’s Samurai Girl. “If you compare the size and length of my sword to his hook, who do you think has the longer reach?”
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MULAN. IS. NOT. JAPANESE.
STOP SAYING GEISHA WHEN YOU REFER TO HER.
SHE WAS A NORTHERN WEI DYNASTY WARRIOR WHO LIVED SOMEWHERE BETWEEN AD 386-534.
THE TRADITION OF JAPANESE GEISHA’S DID NOT FULLY EMERGE UNTIL THE 18TH CENTURY.
JFC PEOPLE
And it’s not even the fans.
William Keck did this on twitter too, and he was called out, and got all defensive and never apologized. And now he’s just continued being a racist fuck in his article on TVGuide.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
Not all Asian countries are interchangeable.
QUESTION: So, I get annoyed when, say, a Puerto Rican actor is cast as Mexican (and other similar examples), because it feels like movie/TV people see Latino cultures as interchangeable
Do people feel similarly when this happens with Asian actors/roles?
Like, this is the second Chinese role I’m aware of Jamie Chung (who is Korean) playing, the first being her character in Premium Rush
I know there was a THING about the Chinese actors in Memoirs of a Geisha, so I was just curious
It’s blurry. There is a lot of sinocentricism and so often all Asians are assumed to be Chinese (or Japanese or Korean.) So I can see how casting an Asian American actor of any ethnicity for a specifically Chinese role like Mulan could make people frustrated because it reinforces the stereotype that Asians all look the same and that Asian cultures are interchangable.
At the same time, there are so few roles for Asian American actors that it would be totally unfair to ask a Laos American actor or Tibetan American actor to wait around forever for someone to write a role for someone of their ethnicity.
I was relieved to see that at the very least an Asian American was cast in the role. Often times Asian American actors are passed over for popular actors from Asia, even though it is an American production—further marginalizing Asian Americans in Hollywood.
