Anna Daniels
In June 2019, after protests started in March 2019, mass protests began forming in Hong Kong over legislation presented in its district council that would permit, among other things, extradition of people with criminal charges directly to the mainland — despite the fact Hong Kong has no formal extradition treaty with mainland China as a state. (Hong Kong still operates semi-autonomously from the mainland since England gave up colonial rights in 1997.) Tensions exploded between police and protesters as protests increased in volume and global attention was gained.
How does that relate to Mulan? Well, the star of the film portraying the titular hero, Liu Yifei (also known as Crystal Liu), landed in the middle of that tension when she posted a pro-police statement to the Chinese social media site Weibo in August 2019. This immediately prompted social media hashtag flareups on both sides of the conflict to either support or boycott Mulan – creating a new, global, and very public stage for the politically averse Walt Disney Company to be unwillingly set upon.
Later, Yifei wasn’t present at the D23 conference to promote the film, which was a week after her post on Weibo. The organized protests — which have slowed but not ended in 2020 due to some government concessions and the spread of the coronavirus — and the general hashtag campaign to boycott Mulan are both likely contributing to the YouTube rating bombing.
As of this writing, Mulan has no release date in China. This is common, since the government authority chooses when a film is screened. It’s impossible to tell how mainland China will react to a film with so much political discourse tied to it — if it’s ever released in the country at all.
Written by: Looper
