"Mulan" Ending Credits Spark Backlash, Calls to Boycott

After months of delays due to the novel coronavirus, Disney’s live-action Mulan remake debuted on its streaming platform, Disney+, on September 4. Almost immediately, viewers noticed a concerning slide in the film’s end credits.

As writer Jeannette Ng pointed out in a now-viral tweet, Disney “specifically thank[ed] the publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Committee in the credits. You know, the place where the cultural genocide is happening.” She added that the film’s subtitles call the scenes located in Xinjiang “Northwest China” in the film. As the Washington Post and the New York Times also noted, the thank-yous extend to government organizations, including the police bureau for Turpan, a city in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government has reportedly been detaining over a million Uighurs, a predominately Muslim people, and other minorities in at least 85 camps across the Xinjiang region, according to PBS NewsHour. In 2018, the Chinese government denied the existence of the camps; later that same year, they claimed the camps were for “vocational training.” Leaked documents and testimonies from those subjected to the camps tell another story; as The Guardian noted, government documents that were leaked in 2019 reported that camp officials are to keep people interred for at least a year, and “preventing escape” is a top priority.

“Students are not allowed to participate in labor outside of class, and may not contact the outside world apart from during prescribed activities,” the memo reads. The Chinese government has since called the memo “fabricated.” In 2019, Turkey said that China’s “reintroduction of concentration camps in the 21st century and the policy of systematic assimilation” was “a great shame for humanity” and a “human tragedy,” per the Times.

It is not clear why Disney decided to film in Xinjiang above any other location. In September 2017, Mulan’s director, Niki Caro, posted an Instagram of a sand dune in a location she geotagged as Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. People have since noted their frustration in the comments to the image, urging people to #BoycottMulan; the hashtag has also gained traction on Twitter.

Though Disney clearly meant for its sweeping epic to be a box office hit, would-be viewers have called the studio out on plenty of their decisions. In 2016, the studio was slammed for hiring Alex Graves, a white man, to direct the film; Caro later replaced him and defended her hiring by pointing to what she perceived as the importance of paying tribute to the “culture of Disney” in addition to Chinese culture, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. As writer Alexander Chee noted on Twitter, the majority of the film’s primary leadership is white. In March, costume designer Bina Daigeler, a white German woman, drew criticism for the way she categorized her research process for the historical costumes.

“Daigeler’s method speaks volumes about how much Hollywood values Chinese culture, especially if research boils down to museum trips and less than a month in the actual country,” writer Sara Li noted in an op-ed for Teen Vogue at the time. “While no one is disputing Daigeler’s talent, it feels like a missed opportunity to bring a deeper level of authenticity to Mulan.”

And in August 2019, star Liu Yifei used her social media to show support for the Hong Kong police, who have used tear gas, rubber bullets, and other tactics in an effort to suppress young demonstrators. Shortly after her post, people in Hong Kong and the United States began using the #BoycottMulan hashtag to note their frustration. When asked about the backlash by the Hollywood Reporter in February, Yifei called the unrest in Hong Kong “obviously a very complicated situation and I'm not an expert. I just really hope this gets resolved soon.”

On September 6, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong urged followers to consider all of this before renting or attending a screening of Mulan. “It just keeps getting worse! Now, when you watch #Mulan, not only are you turning a blind eye to police brutality and racial injustice (due to what the lead actors stand for), you're also potentially complicit in the mass incarceration of Muslim Uyghurs,” he wrote alongside the #BoycottMulan hashtag.

Teen Vogue has reached out to Disney for comment.

Related: Disney’s Mulan Is Being Boycotted After Liu Yifei Shared Support for Hong Kong Police