The live-action remake of “Mulan” has not been the wide success anyone expected, especially Disney. Not only did the film get a lukewarm critical reception, but the film was met with political controversy nearly as soon as “Mulan” debuted on Disney+ last month, when viewers noticed the end credits included “special thanks” to several government entities in the Xinjiang region in China, which has been the site of several human rights abuses. Now, Disney has come out to defend this choice.
The president of film production at Disney, Sean Bailey, addressed the “Mulan” controversy in a letter, which British parliament member Iain Duncan Smith posted on Thursday. In the letter, on official Disney letterhead, Bailey wrote: “It is standard practice across the film industry worldwide to acknowledge in a film’s credits the cooperation, approvals, and assistance provided by various entities and individuals over the course of a film’s production. In this case, the production company Beijing Shadow Times provided our production team with the list of acknowledgements to be included in the credits for ‘Mulan.’”
Bailey also tries to justify the decision to film in the region at all because it was “in the interest of authenticity,” even if he does notice that the filming in the Xinjiang region comprises “78 seconds of the one-hour and 55 minute film.” He also includes “examples of credits from other films shot in international locations,” arguing that they are not the only ones doing this type of thing, so it must be fine.
Though Bailey notes in his letter that the process for securing permission to shoot in the Xinjiang region began in 2017, when “neither the U.K. nor the U.S. government had issued a risk advisory for businesses nor made any relevant policy rulings specific to the region,” by the time “Mulan” began filming in August 2018 there were already reports of “reeducation camps” in Xinjiang as well as human rights abuse by Chinese government entities against the mostly Muslim ethnic minority, the Uighurs.
In his tweet where he posted the letter, Duncan Smith argued “Disney’s corporate policy does not appear to care about the human rights issues affecting the #Uighurs,” he added. “It seems human rights come second to the corporate policy of not upsetting China.”