As a sequel with no wide release and no connection to any original story, the writers felt free to indulge in traditional sappy American kid tropes. Mulan, as emissary of Western emancipation from traditional Chinese values like collectivism and duty, personally undermines the diplomatic efforts of the Emperor by convincing the three princesses that they should marry the bizzare trio of soldiers from the first movie.

At first the princesses, who are supposed to wed the leaders of another kingdom to unite their bloodlines and bring peace between them and China, declare themselves happy to perform their duty. But that was before they met Harvey Firestein’s little ball of machismo.

Now, obviously the ways of the heart are often hard to predict. And who could have predicted that all three princesses would fall for these three radically different soldiers that they spent a few days with? They feel something, so they’re ready to cast aside an entire lifetime of enculturation and privilege and duty and risk the destruction of their country for the sake of those feelings.

Obviously, things turn out OK, thanks to some intervention from Mushu, who makes up for the fact he’s been the main antagonist for most of the movie. Anyway, the moral of the story, if I had to pick one, is “your duty is to your heart”. That’s the lesson Mulan teaches the princesses that makes them abandon their mission, and the line is repeated to emphasize it. “My duty is to my heart.”

I think any reasonable observer would note that, in life as in society, individualism and collectivism exist at opposite ends of a spectrum, and you can take both of them too far. China is probably a good example of a society that takes collectivism, the good of the group, a little too far and doesn’t respect or value the individual enough. But they still believe in it as a strategy, and it has kept them as one of the most powerful nations throughout history. Their message is, do your part (and everyone will benefit).

America, on the other hand, is the epitome worldwide of individualism. We worship and treasure freedom and the individual and autonomy. Sometimes too much. Our enormous levels of alcohol and drug abuse and our sky high divorce and incarceration rates are certainly indicative of something. Our message is, follow your heart. Are we as extreme in our pursuit of our value as China is in the pursuit of theirs? Are we as decadent as they are repressive? Some cultures would agree that we are. I think overall it depends. America is a very diverse country with many subcultures. But still, overall we value individualism as a group far more than most countries do.

All social groups are a negotiation between the individual and their needs and desires and those of the group. We want to allow for as much personal freedom and expression as possible, but when you’re in a group you also have to take into account how your actions might affect others and and often have to put restrictions on them in order to share space with them, or make tradeoffs to secure some higher purpose. In a cooperative effort, when the group needs to get from point A to point B, it’s important that everyone works together.

Even in a family, you run into these problems. There is a lot that needs to get done in a household, and if you’re trying to get somewhere together you all have to accept some limitations to achieve it and to maintain peace between everyone. We do it because there are a lot of advantages and compensations that the group provides. As I often tell my daughter, she might not be able to sing at the top of her lungs when she’s in the car with her whole family, but if she can restrain herself her dad will be able to drive her safely without distraction, her mom will be able to maintain her sanity so she can provide care and fun and energy when we arrive, and her sister won’t try to shout over her or attack her to make herself heard.

That’s an example of negotiation between the individual and the group in a nutshell. And it scales up into whole societies. So where do you draw the line? That’s something we’re constantly renegotiating. China would argue that the proper line is over here, and America would argue that the proper line is over there.

In Mulan 2, we see the triumph of (admittedly shallow and stereotypical) American individualism and feelings over the Chinese values of tradition and duty. Its a pretty extreme example. The princesses are willing to throw their whole country under the bus. It’s not, after all, as if they knew that their new lives (as princesses) in their new country would be particularly bad, especially compared to most people’s lives in that time and place. And they did know what was being accomplished by their weddings, what goods were being secured and what evils were being avoided.

In the scale of deciding whether or not to follow your heart about a crush, this isn’t the best situation to pick to explain a reasonable negotiation between individual inclination and social need. It’s not as if no one else will be affected by their choice. This isn’t a simple matter of an arranged marriage being refused in favor of a more preferable one. China is at risk of war. In this sort of situation, the sudden desire of the princesses not to marry the foreign princes (and to marry three dopes they just met) must be weighed against the desire of millions of Chinese citizens and soldiers not to die in a horrific war.

And I do mean millions. Take a glance sometime at the casualty counts of wars throughout history. Once you get past the world wars, most of the upper entries in the list are from wars in China. Whatever you think of their culture, they have been big and powerful for a long time, and their wars have been equally big and powerful.

It’s obviously great to let people follow their hearts. But if it’s a question of weighing the value of one heart’s desire against another’s (which is the case in this situation), it’s hard to see how the desire of three princesses not to be princesses of another kingdom, uniting their countries by marriage, outweigh the desires of ten million Chinese citizens not to die horrific deaths and of millions more to not suffer the horrors of a protracted war.

All things considered, it might not be such a terrible thing to ask of the princesses. And it might be a pretty terrible thing to ask of all the common soldiers and citizens to die so they can pursue a fling with their guards. Unfortunately, society is built on such trades and compromises and negotiations and tradeoffs. We send soldiers to die so our citizens don’t have to. They have an important duty and preserve the lives of those who shelter behind them, and it’s a very important and valuable role. And we honor them and respect their sacrifice. I’m sure most of our soldiers, if they followed their hearts, would prefer not to die. But they follow their duty because they know what’s at stake and what the submission of their lives to the needs of the group purchases for us all. Safety and security.

Mulan 2 presents us with a very extreme case that, on analysis, doesn’t make a great poster child for reasonable individualism, and instead comes off a bit cheap and shallow. Looked at in a less maudlin and hackneyed way, the lesson Mulan taught the princesses was pretty shocking and extreme. Not only for our society, but especially for Chinese society, which really values duty and honor. And no one in the movie had to pay a price for their choices; the dilemmas that drove the conflicts are just shallowly dissipated without any consequences, rendering them meaningless.

Mulan, for some reason, thinks she can take the princesses’ place and sends them off to whatever sort of life they’re likely to have with their new beaus, despite this not making sense in any way, either personally or diplomatically. And then the whole conflict between the kingdoms just dissolves away, as the foreign kingdom falls for the talking statue trick. Everyone follows their hearts and everyone gets what they wanted. Except, presumably, whoever had the problem that was causing friction between the kingdoms.

Perhaps the “follow your heart” “your duty is to your heart” messaging reached a sort of apogee with Mulan. I don’t think it intended to be ethically ambitious in its scope. If anything, it’s sloppy ethical confines are the result of laziness and recycling of tired tropes and a lack of consideration. But it’s a good example of how far a message can be taken if you don’t critically examine it, and how far a story can stray from its original roots and cultural grounding.

Mulan, the Mulan from the first movie, is a cultural outlier (a female soldier), but she is still a cultural hero because her actions serve the good of society. She’s unconventional, but her intentions and actions are recognized as honorable. She still brought honor to her family and society, she just found an atypical and unexpected way to do so. She didn’t do it all just for herself. So her society was able to recognize how, ultimately, her actions did fit the definition of honorable. The self that she brings to the table is a unique and atypical expression, but that self is still aligned in service of the larger social value, not personal preference or aggrandizement. She does things that are hard for her to do because she believes they need to be done and she has a duty to do them, and she grows as an individual as a result, and China is the better for it. She still plays her part, to benefit everyone, but she surprises and innovates about what that part actually is and should be.

It’s not clear that women in general in China (or China as a whole) would benefit from having their daughters be conscripted into the army to fight a ferocious enemy. Mulan doesn’t really deal with or raise that issue. But it does accomplish what matters, by showing us something larger that lies behind mere men and women that the concept of manhood aspires to: courage to face the enemy and marshal strength to overcome a challenge. That’s a virtue that anyone might need or value. Mulan falls into the well-worn trope of finding that courage and strength in unexpected places. It’s classic.

Mulan in Mulan 2 is a whole different animal. Pursuit of the self has taken the place of pursuit of honor or some common virtue or good. Mushu also spends the whole movie pursuing his own selfish goals, but at least has the decency to be an obvious antagonist. Were the movie taking place in a more realistic or serious world based in real history, things in this story might have gone very differently. But this is clearly a comedy, not a drama. A story about individual happy endings, not a grand opera about a culture hero and a struggle between kingdoms and the price that must be paid for peace and happiness.

I’m not going to side with China on the issue of collectivism vs individualism, but at least in this case America seems to have got things substantially and ironically (considering the historical context) wrong.