Xiran Jay Zhao

A thread for Xiran Jay Zhao, Chinese-Canadian author, Internet personality and cosplayer.

The above is a video dissecting Raya and the Last Dragon. It features perspectives from Southeast Asians and also discusses the reaction to Lindsay Ellis's tweet. Each video is an hour long.

Edited by windleopard on Feb 5th 2022 at 12:53:01 PM

As a Filipino the whole movie was really jarring, and this is me already expecting Philippines not being "repped" because Moana was already a thing.

Been following them since their very first Mulan video.

Still amazed this all started because of that.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 28th 2022 at 6:41:59 AM

I love her she's awesome.

Well there is Trese on Netflix.

It’s a bit short for an animated miniseries, but still a great watch for fans of modern-day monster hunters fused with Filipino myths and culture.

"Why cast Eddie Murphy as a Chinese dragon?" is low key my favorite line ever.

I still remember how the earliest trailers and previews for Mulan don't even show Mushu at all. In fact, I think it was fairly late in the game (like, a couple months before the film released) before they started highlighting him in ads. I think even Disney was shy of him at first.

"You guys,we need a comic relief character played a high profile star!"

..."We do?"

"those toys won't shift themselves!"

To be fair, Mushu is loved. But it has some weird context.

@ Red Hunter 543 & Aegis P; fyi, Xiran Jay Zhao is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.

I did not know that. I'll keep that in mind.

Got it.

Mushu was a really transparent attempt to replicate the Genie's success.

Get famous comedian to do role +

Get them to just riff endlessly through the movie +

Incongruous references =

Funny and beloved character.

And it sort of worked for Mushu, but not well enough for them to pay to get Eddie Murphy back for the sequel, replacing him with a white guy doing an Eddie Murphy impression which, oof. (The guy was Murphy's voice double on the first movie, apparently, and Murphy knew about it and didn't really seem to care, so not quite as bad, but it still feels real weird.)

That or they consciously decided to copy the way Disney ticked off Robin Williams by breaking the contract and hiring Dan Castellaneta to do a Robin Williams impression instead for the first Aladdin sequel and the TV show.

Speaking of the Aladdin/Robin Williams deal, a friend of mine theorized the reason why Mushu might have been left out of the original trailers and ads for Mulan, was maybe there was still contract issues with how Eddie Murphy's involvement could be marketed, that needed to be straightened out.

Given what happened with Robin Williams on Aladdin, that kind of makes sense.

It shouldn't feel weird to begin with...

Imitating a specific person isn't the same as doing a "racial" voice.

Xiran herself seems to feel differently, if her Mulan 2 recap is any indication.

A white person putting on a "blaccent" is always awkward at best (and yes, when an Asian person does it, it's also not great). Being a stand-in if a line needs to be rerecorded and Eddie Murphy isn't available is one thing but like...it's surprisingly easy to tell that it's an impression of Eddie Murphy in Mulan 2 and "vocal blackface" is a thing that blew up as an issue in 2020. If the character just sounded like some guy, that'd be one thing, but Eddie Murphy has a really distinctive voice with a lot of elements associated primarily with black people, and having a white man do that voice for a whole movie and not just a line or two is really unfortunate and should have been avoided.

There's a ton of really talented black voice actors who have a really hard time getting major roles, it could have easily been a great way for someone in that group to put a big thing on their resume. (Even if the movie isn't good, "I voiced a major role in a Disney production" is a big deal)

It's not just a white guy doing an impression of a black guy, it's also that it took a role that could have gone to someone that would have benefited much more.

Edited by Zendervai on Feb 14th 2022 at 4:09:13 AM

Eddie Murphy was always a baffling choice for Mushu. It was obviously an attempt to bag a new Robin Williams success but he just felt out of place in a mostly Asian-led cast (there was Harvey Fierstein but to his credit he refused the role until he found out it would be having an Asian cast). Murphy did give a Williams-esque level role with Shrek and that's considered one of the best vocal performances of all time, so it has nothing to do with his talents than it did with miscasting.

Could be worse. Eisner reportedly wanted Bill Maher to be Mushu.

Oh god, that would have been awful. Just endless smugness as far as the eye can see.

Not going out and actually looking for up and coming talents who either aren't white or aren't already in the industry is a general problem and I wasn't really referring to that.

I agree, it's related...but it wasn't my point.

Edited by randomness4 on Feb 14th 2022 at 4:18:51 AM

That would've aged worse than James Woods as Hades.

This reminds me how Mushu's Cut Song contained a reference to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". That would have really aged well. (Not.)

Xiran's latest video

I must admit up front I didn't watch the whole of the Raya video(s), or know much about Raya's plot since I haven't seen the movie either, but it seems clear one of the concerns from the Southeast Asian advocates was that Raya takes place in a fictional land with a fictional culture that doesn't match any one place. Which is a valid criticism, but many of Disney's other films are awash with generic European fantasy kingdoms as well (with notable exceptions, like how Beauty and the Beast is stated as French, and subversions such as Arendelle which doesn't exist but is explicitly based on Norway). It thus doesn't strike me as too odd to not narrow in on one specific culture, although I find it odd the Philippines and Indonesia were included in the influences since I (as an outsider, mind you) always had thought of them as separate (although Malaysia does span both regions so maybe there is more connection?).

That being said, I think Disney made a mistake by trying to market Raya as some sort of authentic or clear expression of Southeast Asian culture. I think they mainly chose Southeast Asia because they wanted to do an Asian-inspired story but wanted to pick a more unusual setting than the typical China/Japan/Korea, hence why most of the actors are of East Asian descent. Of course, this also led to a disconnect from any real culture (a la most "high fantasy" works like Avatar or, say, a JRPG like Dragon Quest) which made it obvious how superficial the cultural elements really were. While those works are largely successful and don't prompt too many complaints of being superficial imitations of the cultures they appropriate, I unfortunately think the Disney brand prevented Raya from marketing itself as that kind of work since Disney always makes a big deal out of their cultural showcases, with Epcot being the most obvious example. But even when Disney's gone with Cultural Chop Suey before it's worked better due to being obviously tied to a real place. Moana had Maui who actually is shared between many Polynesian cultures, and thus felt like it could've easily taken place in a fictional part of the real Pacific. Even in Aladdin, which makes little attempt to be authentic and thus mostly fails at being a cultural showcase (I don't even think Disney tries to pass it off as one), Agrabah has enough clear elements of actual Arabian culture (such as say, mentioning Allah) to be passed off as a fictional country in the real Middle East. I wonder if part of the origin of this superficiality is a fear of offending the cultures by mishandling their traditions, although as Raya and the like show making up similar traditions isn't much better.

It'd also be nice if more films like this were actually co-productions between a studio with a wider reach like Disney and a studio with deeper cultural connections to the film.

Addressing the comments in this thread, while Eddie Murphy being replaced by a white voice double probably wouldn't happen today (and that's not too much of a problem, I'm sure there are plenty of black actors who could've done a good impression), I don't really think it's too problematic since it seems Murphy was OK with him imitating his voice. It's like with Mako and Greg Baldwin, since Mako has just as much of an ethnic accent as Murphy, although there might be some people who object to that as well, which I can understand since even I find it a little off that a non-Japanese person's putting on that thick of an accent.

By the way, you're free to have a different opinion on this, and I have no relevant cultural stake in these issues and thus can't speak for anyone.

More Raya content.

Raya's Queerbaiting of Southeast Asians - The Importance of Cultural Context to Queerness.

Edited by windleopard on Feb 19th 2022 at 5:28:12 PM