The Balancing Acts of Mary Poppins and Mulan

In her chapter on sexuation, Karen Coats explains that  “a person has a masculine or a feminine structure according to how he or she is situated with respect to the Name of the Father” (99). Lacanian theory suggests that we are sexed by society not through biological determinants, but rather through a third term, the Name of the Father. This third term, according to Lacan, separates the Symbolic and the Imaginary worlds of a child in their psychological development, which “effectively bars the mother’s desire, inaugurating a chain of substitutions that come to signify and replace the mother’s desire” (20). Essentially, the Name of the Father, which is Law, separates the child from the imagined, but non-existent relationship with the mother, which lies within the Imaginary, and propels them into the Symbolic order, or society.

This perceived separation creates a hole of desire within the child that they wish to fill. According to Lacan, both sexes experience this separation, however men, because the Symbolic is a masculine structure (100), men cannot escape from the loss and subsequent hole created by the separation of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. A woman, on the other hand, can see this lack and “can fill the hole if she wants to, that is, she can act as if the problem of incompleteness can be solved. But-and this is the important distinction – she doesn’t have to” (100). Because of this, women are more capable of balancing between the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

To demonstrate this balancing act, Coats uses the example of Mary Poppins, the loveable, extraordinary, word-jumbling nanny of the Banks children. Poppins acts as foil for George Banks, the father of the children she nannies, challenging his role within the Symbolic, as a man who adheres and subscribes to the Law of the Father. As she rejects masculine structure, she must also, to an extent, reject the feminine role within that masculine structure. Mr. Bank’s wife and his children, act as his symptom, as do past nannies of the Banks children, but Poppins, because she is aware of the fact that the Symbolic “performs what it purports to describe,” she can choose to obey or not to obey the Law of the Father (107). By both challenging and using the Symbolic to her advantage, she is able to change the lives of the Banks family.

Disney has the propensity to support the image of women like Mary Poppins, who transcend gender roles, but also tends to support the Symbolic order. Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, for instance, must change herself for Prince Eric and ascribe to the role of lover, wife and symptom. However, Disney’s interpretation of the legend of Mulan, a story of a woman, set in the 6^th century, who joins the all-male Chinese army, supports the Lacanian theory that “the feminine position…has closer affinities with the Real than with the Symbolic” (101). Although the Mulan does support and strengthen the Law of the Father in some cases, it rejects it in others. In the beginning of the film, Mulan’s father is called to war and, although he is old and disabled, he dutifully accepts his masculine responsibility.

However, Mulan speaks up and disagrees with this law, disgracing her father in the eyes of society, but rejecting that society all the same. In secret, Mulan steals her father’s armor and his summon to war, cuts off her hair and dresses like a man, and joins the army. In doing so, she walks the line between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, not only emotionally, but physically. Much like Poppins, Mulan also uses the Symbolic to her advantage. Knowing that she would not be accepted as a woman, she dresses and attempts to act like a man, convincing her comrades that she is equal to them. She is successful at this, however, because she uses, unbeknownst to them, her knowledge of the feminine structure within the male structure. Eventually, she is able to save her father, her fellow soldiers and even China by rejecting her role as the symptom and creating a new role for herself within, but separate from the Symbolic.