I chose the movie Mulan to analyze because this movie exhibits many of society’s views on gender. Mulan was written in 1998 during a feminist wave, because of this many people portrayed the movie as an act of empowerment towards women. If you analyze the movie, and think a little deeper you will see that this was not the case. Mulan is filled with gender inequality, gender identity, gender stereo types, and also shows how hard it can be to escape these society ridden expectations, of what it means to be a man or woman. With further analysis of the text, you will see that Mulan is not quite the feminist movie it is first perceived to be.
Mulan was based in China, where alternative gender roles were not acceptable and would often result in death. Women were matched with the man they were supposed to marry by the match maker. Mulan struggled because she had “masculine” traits.
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This reminds me of how women now a days, even young girls are told to be “lady like”. We are told not to fight, not to swear, or do anything out of our gender role. Woman are supposed to cook, take care of the children, and look beautiful. This point is portrayed in the movie when the song “A girl worth fighting for” is sung. The song is about how a girl worth fighting for is a good cook, beautiful, and reinforces a man’s masculinity. This song reinforces what a man looks for in a woman. Mulan tries to counter this argument by saying “What about a woman’s brain?” But Yao and Ling reply “Nah.” This statement shows the stereotypical traits a woman must possess, and what a man looks for. It also shows how it can be very difficult to change people’s minds about how each gender should act. There are certain expectations of you as a man or as a women and it can be very hard to break these
The way M butterfly shows gender can very clearly be seen as the play moves on. When song Liling and Comrade chin are discussing about how men play women parts Liling says” No, its because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act”. A statement that says that the man knows a real women one that is submissive to him and that is what liling gave song take the time when Gillard and song were talking and liling says “ its one of you’re favorite fantasies isn’t it? The submissive oriental women and the cruel white man”. By this Liling is pointing out the gender difference’s between men and women during that time white women were considered more outgoing than Chinese women thus when galliard finds liling he thinks he has found a women of his fantasies a women h can have as a mistress but she will not tell his wife only be submissive to him. Rene Gillard fantasied of being a true man because they did not consider Chinese men, Real men or masculine during the scene when song and the judge are talking songs says “Her eyes say yes but her mouth says no, the west thinks of itself as masculine big guns big industry while the east is feminine weak d...
The most important events of this film all revolve around the female characters. While there are some male charac...
The Disney movie, Mulan, is a fantastic movie that depicts gender-stereotyped roles, socialization of gender roles, and consequences of over stepping one’s gender role. Both males and females have a specific role in the Chinese society that one must follow. Mulan made a brave choice pretending to be a man and going to war against the Huns in place of her father, risking serious consequences if she were to get caught. She broke the socialization of gender roles and could have been faced with very serious consequences of her actions. The Chinese society in Mulan exemplifies the typical gender roles of males and females, the consequences of displaying the opposite gender role, and showed what the society expected in males and females in characteristics and attitudes.
...nist ideas. They suggest that women are good for only household chores and that they are not very intelligent. In fact, Mulan herself refutes these stereotypes through her quick thinking and advanced battle techniques, yet they still insist on carrying though.
Set in the Northern Wei dynasty of China, the gender roles of China were simple as depicted through song in Mulan. “We all must serve our Emperor… a man by bearing arms, a girl by bearing sons.” Mulan’s one and only role in life is to marry a man, who she is deemed fit for and to bear many sons and tend to the home. She is to live a life of homely domesticity. This is perhaps one of the most obvious motifs that don’t shine a nice pretty light on Mulan. Mulan has to go to a beauty salon in order to meet the matchmaker and “bring honor” to her family. At the salon, Mulan is mercilessly soaked in a freezing bath, has her hair tied up neatly, her waist laced up, and is overloaded with excessive make-up and jewels. The potential brides, Mulan included, are thus made to look like “cultured pearls, each a perfect porcelain doll.” According to the beauty specialists, “A girl can bring her family great honor in one way, by striking a good match.” They preach that “Men want girls with good taste, calm, obedient, who work fast-paced, with good breeding and a tiny waist.” This demonstrates heg...
They were held to lower standards and believed to be nothing but an object for men. The women were treated very poorly and were treated differently than the men. In many ways the women were shown to be little compared to the men. Since they didn 't have anything important in society the actions that were towards them were as if they 're peasants Woman had no possibility of ever been treated differently since they were ever going to have a better role in society. This movie portrayed how women weren’t held to higher standards but men
In multiple instances throughout the film, female characters violate gender norms by acting as both warriors and leaders because they are adapting typically masculine traits. In the film, women are the majority of the labor force at iron town. The men are merely there to do the labor that needs the most physical power. “Americans oversimplify Japanese women as demure, submissive, and oppressed” (Kyu Hyun, 2002, 38). This quote shows that the stereotype of women in Japanese culture had been just like the western perspective where they were below men. This quote also shows that Princess Mononoke reverses the gender role from being submissive to being above men. Another quote that supports that women were not submissive says that “the young unmarried women in Japan have become a powerful group, demographically and economically” (Kyu Hyun, 2002, 39). The women who were in the upper class society of Japan had time on their hands and we know this because they had time to write literature. “Most of the canonical work from this period was produced by women of the upper social class” (Varner, 2005,
In the article Construction of the Female Self: Feminist Readings Of the Disney Heroine, Jill Birmie Henke, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Nancy J. Smith are looking at the female self and how it was developed based on two theories: Standpoint by Parker Follet and the psychological development of girls by Gilligam. That by examines gender identity especially girls and how media exposure affects them through analyzing five of Disney movies: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas. They segmented the article into three titles: The Oxymoron of Power and the Perfect Girl where they introduced the two theories in which they built their critic on, Construction of the Female Self where they talk about the evolution in the female character from Cinderella to Pocahontas, and Construction of Self in Relation to Others where they talk about the evolution of the self in relation to others from power-over to power-with until power-to. Finally they concluded that even if the female character in Disney’s movies was changing to become more
Movies are a big part of people’s lives; everyone has a favorite movie, or set of movies. They have impacted people’s lives since they were first made, and continue to do so today. In recent years, movies have cast women to play the roles of heroes. Although women have been playing heroic roles recently, they have always been role models in movies, which have set examples for future generations, empowered women, and have shed light on the feminist movement in the U.S.
The films message to viewers about gender and power is that women are meant to take care of the home and play the supportive role, while men go out to their jobs and provide. Men are strong and burly and women are naïve and domesticated. Women need men and men always come to the rescue to save women and give them a happy ending. Power is portrayed in the film both visually and through the film’s script and dialogue. The common idea that women are inferior to men is placed subtly in this movie throughout the plot and how these charac...
The biological differences that set apart the male and female gender throughout any culture remain eminent. Men are perceived as the stronger and dominant gender; women play the role of the weaker. In each culture the expectation of the manner in which men and women behave are influenced by the ideals and customs of that culture. In most predominant cultures, the man undertakes the role as a leader, and the woman devotes her life to the husband. Throughout history, traditions and literature provide a template to the identities of various cultures. Sleeping Beauty’s classic tale of a beautiful princess takes a central precept that previous patriarchal archetypes dominated during the 17th Century. The archetypal perceptions of women resulted from conscious and unconscious literature influenced by male-dominated perspectives and social standards.
The symbolic interactionism is a theory concerned with the ability of humans to see themselves through the eyes of others and to enact social roles based on others’ expectations. In the film, Mulan’s abilities as a woman were not be accepted and recognized before she joined the army. For example, at that time, she was defined as a weak woman and helpless daughter. Although she worried about her old father, no one thought that she could help her father, and no one respected her thoughts. Her label made her only needs to obey and wait the results of war. However, when she came home after the war ends, her label also changed. This is because she met other’ expectations and played men’s role successfully. She mastered more capability like fighting a battle. Her label also became a hero and her family guardian. From the beginning to the end of the film, Mulan’s identity and label changed a lot because of her changing
Mulan pushes gender inequality by reinforcing masculine and feminine stereotypes through the songs that it presents throughout the movie. The roles of what it means to be a man is simply laid out within the influential song, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You.” This song occurred when the fresh new soldiers appeared to be very weak and unfit, so Captain Shang sang of how they must become strong like real men should be. Captain Shang asks the question, “did they send me daughters, when I asked for sons?” (Mulan), implying that women are unfit for the conditions of
Mulan reinforces the traditional ideas of masculinity in the song, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” (Mulan 1998). The lyrics, “Let’s get down to business, to defeat the Huns. Did they send me daughters, when I asked for sons?”(Mulan, 1998) portrays the traditional gender roles of men; it claims that male is the only sex that is able to fight. The goal of this scene is to “make a man” out of the new recruits. The movie Mulan asserts that being feminine is detrimental to the war effort. Instead, the docile, feminine recruits have to be transformed into men. This song in Mulan argues that one should strive towards being a "man";
Feminist theory was derived from the social movement of feminism where political women fight for the right of females in general and argue in depth about the unequality we face today. In the aspect of cinema, feminists notice the fictitious representations of females and also, machismo. In 1974, a book written by Molly Haskell "From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of Women in Movies" argues about how women almost always play only passive roles while men are always awarded with active, heroic roles. Moreover, how women are portrayed in movies are very important as it plays a big role to the audience on how to look at a woman and how to treat her in real life due to the illusionism that cinema offers. These images of women created in the cinema shapes what an ideal woman is. This can be further explained through an article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' written by a feminist named Laura Mulvey in 1975. She uses psychoanalysis theories by Sigmund Freud to analyze 'Scopophilia' which is the desire to see. This explains how the audience is hooked to the screen when a sexy woman is present. In a bigger picture, where Scopophilia derives from, 'Voyeurism' is also known as feeling visual pleasure when looking at another. Narcissism on the other hand means identifying one's self with the role played. It is not hard to notice that in classical cinema, men often play the active role while the women are always the object of desire for the male leads, displayed as a sexual object and frequently the damsels in distress. Therefore, the obvious imbalance of power in classical cinema shows how men are accountable to moving the narratives along. Subconsciously, narcissism occurs in the audience as they ...