Industry legend Dan Haskett talks about cultural "disrespect" to original "Mulan" production
While Disney's live-action remake of Mulan fights his own controversies, an artist involved in the 1998 animated original spoke about the cultural insensitivity he noticed in that project.
Dan Haskett, an animator and designer with half a century of experience, has worked on many Disney Renaissance classics, as well as on series ranging from The Simpsons e Batman: The Animated Series the recent awakening of Looney Tunes to Warner Bros. He is often called upon to contribute to the early stages of animation projects, and one of these projects he worked on was Mulan.
In a Youtube interview with Deborah Anderson, aka BlkWmnAnimator, Haskett recalls an exchange with one of the film's directors: "Speaking of Chinese, he was saying, 'You know, they're not like us.' "Later, the designer of the film's key characters told Haskett that he would become" the de facto expert on all things Chinese for the rest of the staff. Haskett says, “I completely understood how he felt; it was not a joyful experience. "
