The Movie ' Mulan '

The Disney princess films are some of the most common in the world today. Because of their popularity, these works speak and evaluate, in significant detail, by various scholars. Numerous people disapprove these films for their seemingly sexist and oppressive gender messages. They find fault with the princesses serving as role models for young girls. Though, when one attentively scrutinizes the movies and compares the individualities of the princesses to the progressive woman of their time, one may obviously see the positive messages.

In the past years, Disney/Pixar has revolutionized the premise of their movies by shifting away from princesses and portraying resilient male characters as the protagonists of their highly successful animated feature films. From 1995 to 2008, Disney/Pixar released eight films, all of which included a male lead, yet these characters are arguably unlike any other protagonist in early Disney animated films. In their essay, “Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar,” Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden call attention to the new manner Disney/Pixar use to depict their heroic male characters in their movies. Gillam and Wooden claim that Pixar is using their movies to promote the acceptance of a new standard of masculinity capable of embracing feminine traits, as conveyed by the male characters within the films. As a viewer, it is easy to recognize the emasculation of the male protagonists within Pixar movies, however, the authors’ claim is faulty; they fail to acknowledge that society now has room for a new sympathetic man because it is straying way from a patriarchal beliefs of the past.

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

As a child I had often enjoyed playing pretend, emulating my favorite characters from television and film. In particular, I had often imagined myself as the heroes from popular Disney films and often looked to them as role models and inspiration. Disney movies played a large role in mine and millions of others children’s development, imbedding there themes and lessons into our personalities and conscious. The problem however, laid in the fact that the majority of these classic Disney films themes and lessons are from an era that promoted sexism and negative gender roles. Disney’s misrepresentation of the role of males and females portrayed in their popular films coupled with the rapid increase of digital media and merchandise sales has distorted

The song “Honor to Us All’ supports Mulan’s lack of free will. In these controversial lyrics, the townspeople can be heard singing “A girl can bring her family, Great honor in one way, By striking a good match, And this could be the day”. Here it is viewed that she is expected to bring honor to her family by marrying a man that matches her social standing. Before Mulan could find a suitable mate however, she had to look and act the part. According to these lyrics found later in the song, “Men want girls with good taste, Calm, Obedient, Who work fast-paced, With good breeding, And a tiny waist” this is what men found most attractive in a female

Mulan goes off on her own, knowing the consequences she will have to face if she is caught attending the war as a woman. The ancestors awaken and they all argue about the situation that Mulan is in and how she has went off alone. They explain how Mulan, going to the war, will dishonor the Fa family, even further than she has done when she was meeting the matchmaker. The very scene of them discussing has a very dark and gray color to it, representing the despair that the ancestors all feel about Mulan participating in the war. They do not agree with the attitude and decisions of Mulan. One of the ancestors even said that she did not like Mulan from the moment she was born and told the other that she was a child full of trouble. This depicts

“Disney’s Mulan” is a movie about the Huns invading China and a woman who disguises herself as a man to join the army so her elderly father does not have to. In the film she “defies all odds” by being a women and saving all of china from the Huns. Mulan represents an attempt to include minority groups into Disney children's films, it is harmful in that it promotes racist depictions of Asian people by white American standards, and it constantly enforces both male AND female stereotypes. The racism in this film is hard to go unnoticed, almost everyone in the movie looks very similar bearing the alike facial features.

The social constructs that have always been the backbone of society are being brought into the light more and more each day. Ideologies such as gender roles and stereotypes are two of the main focuses now being debated. The culture surrounding gender has always been incredibly concrete, the line between what was feminine and what was masculine always prominent. However, more often than ever, people are beginning to fight the norms that individuals are being forced to comply with. Some individuals, such as Monika Bartyzel, freelance writer and creator of the weekly feature “Girls on Film”, believe that representation of the princess culture is creating a stigma and a mold that young girl are being forced into accepting. On the opposing side,

From the minute one is born the division between genders is placed. The phrases “act like a lady” or “be a man” become everyday practices and lifelong slogans. Fairy tales are always focused on women who play the beautiful damsel in distress persona and on men who play the handsome knight coming in to save them. Whether you are female or male, it is important to remember that these fixed characteristics placed on genders are never to be reinforced. In a world full of gender stereotypes, the Disney movie Mulan challenges the societal construct of masculinity and femininity by proving that gender roles are not fixed traits, but socially constructed views that can be changed.

What does it mean to be a man or woman, girl or boy? Who creates these gender constraints and reinforces these roles within a society? Gender is a social construct that is manufactured by the media in order to guide the masses towards thinking and behaving in a way that is perceived to be accurate. “Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do—something we perform” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1). “[It] is the very process of creating a dichotomy by effacing similarity and elaborating on difference” (5). In essence, society believes men and women are to act a certain way and deviating from these societal norms is unacceptable. Traditionally, women were to be docile, domestic, beautiful, frail, and submissive beings in need of protection and guidance from their strong, intelligent, powerful, and dominating male counterparts. Women are groomed to be housewives. Men are destined to be providers and soldiers. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which the animated Disney film Mulan represents conventional gender roles, yet also features a heroine who opposes this categorization by rejecting the typical female stereotype and demonstrating that women are equal to men—she sets a powerful example for women that resonates with me to this day.  Disney’s Mulan is the tale of one woman’s quest to save her handicapped father from dying at war by

When we typically think of a cross-gender performance we often don’t look towards animated G-rated movies, however, the Walt Disney film Mulan produced in 1998 and directed by Tony Bancroft and Berry Cook, is a perfect example of a cross-gender performance. Mulan was one of the first examples in a Disney film, of a cross-gender performance and gender coded behaviors. Based off of the fifth-century Chinese poem “the Ballad of Mu-lan” the animated film takes place in China during the Han Dynasty, after the Huns have invaded China. Mulan is a young woman who decides to disguise herself as a man so that she can go to war instead of her elderly father. With no visual reference to base the character off of, Mark Hann, the primary animator on the team, struggled with creating a character that was an “outcast tomboy”. Primarily the struggle was to create this image of a lovable outcast without referring to the disjunction of her manly

My research paper focuses on how the 1989 Disney film, The Little Mermaid, objectifies the female characters' value and bodies within the film's music, rhetoric, and imagery. I analyze direct examples in which the male characters, King Triton and Prince Eric, impose misogynistic and sexist attitudes towards the female characters, Ariel and Ursula, which may ultimately idealize women as weak, submissive, and objects of sex. This is a problematic theme to perpetuate within classic films viewed by all ages simply because these ideas are vital in sustaining women’s social maltreatment and demonization within society. Because the audience of this paper includes my fellow colleagues and highly skilled and trained professor, I present it in an academic

Mulan was a legendary warrior, who disguises herself as a man to fight during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (386-589).1 China was separated into North and South. Where North China was under the control of the Tuoba Clan, a Mongol people not of Han descent.2 While the Southern Kingdom was under the control of the Chinese people.3 It was during these time the legend of Mulan can be interpreted in many different many ways across history. The earliest record is the “Poem of Mulan” and “Song of Mulan”, who both referenced the heroine in the times of the Northern Wei period (386-533). 4 These poems described Mulan as a heroine who disguise as a man to go fight in a war in the North. A further descriptive tale of

In the Disney movie Mulan, the heroine is a brave young woman who saves all of China thanks to her courage, wits, and strength. Despite all this, in her own movie, females only have about 23% of the lines in the entire movie. Even though this percentage is spoken lines, not songs, it is still a crazy percentage. The movie Mulan shows how gender differences and discrimination can even show up in children’s movies, that are supposedly supposed to be all about the “princess”, or woman.

“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.