Comparing the Ways in Which Women are Presented in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Mulan

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Comparing the Ways in Which Women are Presented in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Mulan

Mulan is a family film, animation, fantasy, adventure, comedy, and

musical. It tells the story of a young Chinese girl who decides to

take her fathers place who, is ill and defends her country. Only men

can go into battle but she disguises herself as her father. The

tagline is: “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and

beautiful of them all.”

Sleeping Beauty is a Fairytale, family film, musical, animation and

romance. It tells the story of a young girl, who has been put asleep

by a fairy. The spell cannot be broken until a prince kisses her.

The tagline is: “Wondrous to see, glorious to hear and magnificent new

motion picture.”

Sleeping Beauty was made and produced in the 1950’s at this time of

life, society was recognised in Disney films to be where the girl is

blonde and wants to be saved by the strong prince and that is what the

majority of girls wanted to be like at the time.

However Mulan is modern and it turns out that she is the heroine.

This proves how much society has changed and shows the different ways

that women are presented during that period of time. Cross-dressing

is also the case in this film. In the Chinese culture women are not

allowed to go to war for their country so Mulan disguises herself as a

man and makes herself look like a man with her features and clothing.

There is no way this would happen in films like sleeping beauty.

If danger occurs during the film Mulan would battle and act more

heroically, whereas sleeping Beauty would be scared and need some

heroic man to save her. This would be seen as sexism nowadays as it

is the man who does all the battling and not the women.

According to Vladimir Propp, Mulan is a heroine and Sleeping Beauty

isn’t Mulan fights battles.

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