Exploring The Role Of Feminism In The Disney Film 'Mulan'

The Disney movies Mulan(1998) and Moana(2016) are both about a girl who sets out on a quest to save her people. Mulan dresses like a boy to take her father’s place in the Chinese army. She trains and fights alongside male soldiers and impresses them with her skill. Mulan’s gender gets exposed after she is injured and she gets kicked out of the army. She perseveres and ends up saving the whole country and getting honored by the emperor. After the emperor offers her a position on his council, she declines and returns to her home and womanly duties.

The movie Society has placed this norm on women insisting that the only way to bring honor to the family is to marry off and live a life in the constant shadows of their prearranged husband. As Mulan fails this test of bridal readiness, she realizes that she does not fit the typical gender role that society has placed upon her. Her life was predestined to be simple just as Lieberman states, “the beautiful girl does not have to do anything to merit being chosen; she does not have to show pluck, resourcefulness, or wit; she is chosen because she is beautiful,” but this lifestyle does not fit with who Mulan is as a person.

Gender Roles in Ancient China The idea of feminism has not always been common. The term “feminism” wasn’t introduced until the 1970s. This shows how society didn’t allow anything that had to due with everyone being equal because of the standards that society constructed. In all the versions of Mulan, I think that Disney’s Mulan was the most strict on her having Ancient China’s role of being a woman. This would be having kids, helping clean around the house and not working for money, but working for her husband and kids. In Disney’s Mulan, her family is more hard on her to be a lady and for her to be the proper role of a women. This is because they went to a “matchmaker” to find her husband, and after saving everyone several times, she was still looked down upon because she was a woman.

Mulan is a story about a brave girl who goes into the war acting like her father's oldest daughter. What the wars fail to realize is that she is a woman and not a male. The story of Mulan was told in two different ways, the original story, The Ballad of Mulan, and then there’s Disney's version of it. Disney’s version of Mulan is told as a love story, as the original one is told how she just wants to take her father's place in the war so he doesn't have to go with it. Both of the stories start out the same. China gets attacked and they need one man from each family to fight in the war. Mulan doesn't want her father to go with it because he is older, and he is already injured from a previous war. In the original story, she has 2 siblings a little brother and a little sister. In Disney's version, she is the only child. Since in both stories she's the oldest siblings, she decides to act like the oldest son in the family so she can go to war instead of her father. In the original story, she has to go out and buy all the supplies she needs in the war, while in Disney's version she takes everything she needs from her father. In both stories, she leaves her parents without turning back. She travels a long distance to get here. In Disney’s version, she has a little dragon named Mushu, who helps her stay safe.

In Mulan, the stereotype of an obedient women, good housewife, and beautiful women who are married off is presented. When I see the heroine of the movie she conforms to the Asian race appearance, she has the common sexual identity of heterosexual, she is able-bodied and young. Mulan goes against her Asian culture of how women are supposed to be, a terrible housewife, clumsy, and has a hard time being obedient. She tries to fit into the stereotype in order to appease her parents. When her father is drafted into the military, however, Mulan confronts the gender box. She cuts her hair short, joins the military, becomes a strong woman who is capable of fighting, develops a sense of independence, and learns how to follow her own beliefs as opposed

In Mulan, Chinese traditional women are prepared to be these perfect women who go through training to be declared marriageable and to be declared marriageable they must pass a certain test to become the perfect wife in the eye of the matchmaker. Mulan’s mother and grandmother shared their experiences with the matchmaker. Mulan is expected to be a beautiful woman and a good wife but nothing else which is the way her family pressure her to conform to social norms. Throughout Mulan and other women entire life they are taught to be feminine, sweet, tender hearted, emotional, empathetic, focused on physical appearances, and bear children. These women grow-up believing their gender role is to get marry and bear children if they don’t then they will bring shame upon their family. Being marry is the only way a girl can bring her family great honor but this culture tradition doesn’t fit Mulan self-image. Mulan acknowledge that she can’t be herself, if she must live up to

In the old day and in many cultures, women have been seen as submissive to men and also voiceless and helpless. Their life had to depend on men, so they have been treated unequally in the society. Some cultures such as the ancient Greek saw women as the possession of men. When they were young or unmarried, they were the possession of her father. Additionally, when they were married, they would be considered as the possession of her husband. Therefore, they had no rights or voice, and they could not make any decision or path for their own life. As well as, in India, there are many stories or epics which taught women that an ideal woman or a good woman is the woman who treats her husband nicely. In other words, a woman would not be purely considered as a good woman by their behavior, but they would be considered as a good woman by the way they treat their husband. Because of these conditions of the society, there is a group of women who call themselves “Feminist”, and require the society to see women as equal as men. Nowadays the idea of feminism is spread worldwide, and there are many concepts or theories about feminism conducted and developed since 1870s. For this film, X-Men: The Last Stand, can be criticized with feminism theory as this film seems to convey the idea about women that “women with the great power, especially the women who

Pat Robertson, an American media mogul and CEO of Regent University, states in an interview that “feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Robertson’s closed-minded anti-feminist views are very extreme and are hardly the consensus. However, one can see that Robertson does not stand alone completely with his view towards feminism and has many other advocates, such as the Walt Disney Company, who share similar ideals towards womanly power. Maria Tatar, an American academic writer who is an expert on children literature and folklore, discusses the notion of the “monstrosity of feminine power” and its correlation to both Disney films and fairy tales, in which women who seek to gain power are almost always depicted as being cold-hearted, and maliciously evil.

Once upon a time, the princess doesn’t get saved, the villain isn’t an older woman and prince charming just wants to be left alone. It’s not usual to see a connection between feminism and fairy tales, but there’s a reason they both start with ‘F’. I grew up in a time where my baby pink bedroom walls were filled with VHS tapes of classic fairytale stories like Beauty and The Beast, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. Yet even though I was born in the late 1990’s it wasn’t until December 11th, 2009 that I was able to see a representation of myself and my skin tone. In the release of The Princess and the Frog, Disney revealed their very first African-American princess allowing me to become even more aware of the inequality facing me, my race and my gender through media at the young age of twelve. From damsels in distress, to oversexualized drawings, to displayed over-masculinity in princes; there’s no part of fairytales that does not have a lasting effect on our youth, society and morality. In a world filled with inequality, the experiences I have had and the fairytale culture I have grown up watching and reading is why I chose to be an intersectional feminist. As an intersectional feminist, I believe in advocating and fighting for equality of the sexes while taking into account “how women's overlapping identities — including race, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation — impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination” (Crenshaw). And with my

Throughout the movie Mulan, there are many Confucian beliefs, religion, and ideas that can be defined. Although Mulan follows Chinese and Confucian beliefs, there are some pieces of information that are historically incorrect such as the things used in battle, the Forbidden building, and who truly was emperor during the times of Mulan.

Mulan was an actual person not just a character in the Disney film. Her last name was Hua. She was born in a small rural village in northern China, and she lived from 581 to 618 AD during the Sui Dynasty. Mulan’s father was a soldier and raised Mulan like a boy. She not only learned weaving and embroidery from her mother, but also practiced martial arts, equitation, archery, and fencing with her father. In her spare time, she liked to read her father’s manuals on military strategy. Mulan took her fathers place in the war as her father was to old. Mulan went to war for 12 years, but she went as a man not a woman. She was not discovered as a woman until after the war.

Feminism in the purest form is defined as the belief that men and women are equal in all aspects of life- socially, economically, and politically. As times have evolved, society has come to recognize the feminist movement as a credible and truthfully real social issue. Yet, women are still

Disney Film: Mulan This one of a kind Disney film “Mulan” (Bancrofty and Cook, 1998) draws an innovative path for Disney's animation studio. It mixes the traditional elements such as with a brave heroine and those cute animal sidekicks. The material appears to be more adventuresome and grown up. Similar to Fox's “Anastasia,” Mulan is known as a film from which not just children but also adults can enjoy on their own, devoid of feeling an obligation in taking along with their children.

In the movie Mulan by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook the directors show a women named Mulan who pretends to be a man to fight in the chinese war. The war emerges when the Huns invade China. The storyline of the movie takes place in the China during the Hans dynasty. Mulan pretends to be a man so she can take her father’s place since he is to old to fight. Mulan takes her father’s armor and sword and escapes to the camp. Mulan signs up for war and she goes to a training camp. Being a man was difficult for Mulan. However she did obtain help from her two sidekicks Mushu a small dragon and Cricket a lucky cricket. Mulan does get obstacles in the way. Some obstacles Mulan comes

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and beautiful of all” (Emperor in China). Directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook, released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1998, Mulan is an animated movie of a young girl that fears her ailing father will be drafted into the Chinese military. Mulan takes his spot though she is a girl living under a patriarchal regime, meaning she is unqualified to serve. She then impersonates a man and goes off to train with fellow recruits. Mulan strengthens a binary comprehension of gender stereotypes that privilege men over women and how difficult it is to escape stereotypical gender roles.