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The Disney Motion Picture Mulan

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For young children it is easy to be carefree about your future. It is not until you are an adolescent that you begin to see what is important and what is expected of you. In the Walt Disney motion picture Mulan the title character is being tested by what her traditions and society expects of her. The film touches on numerous concepts on childhood and what society expects of children in China. She has to exist in a community where her gender has expectations set for young females. She has strict traditional expectations set by her family for her age, in which she is to be prepared to seek out a husband. War begins to threaten the community and her father who is aging and ill is expected to go and serve. Her instinct to protect her aging father leads her to make a decision and to begin the journey to find out who she is on inside. Mulan embarks in a self quest to find out who she really is and goes against all the social construction that society has set out for her.
Mulan’s character is a unique Disney heroin that had not yet been portrayed before 1990’s. Most characters had the damisel in distress storyline, such as Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. The femininities movement was beginning to make its way in children 's literature and films. No longer were parents wanting the submissive, passive stereotypical female example for their young children. Mulan is a strong, powerful character that overcomes the gender stereotypes of young females. The actual telling of

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