Lover_of_Fiction: A lot of Disney film’s have subtle backstories in their films though, like in Hunchback when Quasimodo was kidnapped and almost drowned, like in Tarzan when his parents are killed, and so on. Mulan isn’t the first, nor the last. And for the record, I loved it when I saw it…when I was about 5.
Honor To Us All, see, the whole thing is pretty ironic if you look at it. Mulan clearly does not want to be there. But as e-j-e pointed out, these things happened. Same with Hunchback. Even Disney aren’t going to turn around and say "we’re going to water this down so much, we’re going to take the entire plot out in the fear of offending a minority audience).
Looking back, film’s I watched at that age-Mulan, Tarzan, A Bug’s Life, The Lion King, and my goodness, Antz-all have “dark” undertones, but they’re not really things you pick up properly until you’re older. Have you ever been almost emotionally void of a film as a child, simply because you didn’t “get” why it was sad? I had that with Finding Nemo. I didn’t cry as a 9 year old in the cinema, because the concept of “his whole family has been brutally murdered and there is sad Thomas Newman music playing” hadn’t been fully grasped . But when I saw it again at 15, I bawled.
And as for “dirty jokes”, well, they’re again subtle. You don’t have to read into them, and the chances are most children won’t. If you hate dirty jokes, lust, anything in a slightly sexual or crude manner, well, you’re effectiveley eliminating yourself from 99% of films. And at the end of the day, all these things happen in real life. I commend Pixar for tackling issues they do, because they’re not mollycoddling their audience. Kid’s will one day learn that you may lose a loved one, grow old, have to stand on your own two feet and make decisions, and what better way to do it than incorperating these morals into these films?