Mulan Men And Women Essay

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Men and Women: Critical Review of Disney Princess animated film Mulan

Disney is a multinational mass media corporation that is headquartered in America (CA) with a gross revenue of £31.210 billion (2014) being one of best-known studios worldwide. During 2001 Disney Princess line (currently over 25,000 products) has been established as a marketing campaign to target young girls (Orenstein, 2006). The objective of the campaign was to encourage children to classify themselves with the characters in order to sell associated products (Do Rozario, 2004).

Disney’s princess manifestations have been a powerful influence on children’s media and merchandise choice shaping the childhood that the youth experience critically defined by gender (McRobbie, …show more content…

Female characters however have been consistently harmonizing such statements “Men want girls with good taste”. This superiority has been majorly outlined near the end of the movie when Mulan (now known as a female) tried to warn Shang (main male character) of the danger that approaches. Shang and citizens she approached dismissed and ignored Mulan as Mushu concluded “Hey, you’re a girl again, remember?” This prestige that males receive extends to places such as workplace, media and advertising. For example, in advertising voice-overs are more frequent of male characters than female. The implication is that male voice is more credible and authoritative (Walters & Ellis, 1996). It has also been noted that Disney’s male characters are more aggressive, since 47% of their roles are based on somatic violence (Hoerner, cited in Wasko, 2001). Hoerner (cited in Wasko, 2001) also concluded that in Disney films such as Snow White and The Lion King females are represented as “weak, pristine, and incapable of independent action”.

However Mulan has used this male superiority in her advantage by having her companions dressed as concubines in attempt save the Emperor. This is significant in two aspects. Firstly when troops realized that they were women they let their guard down and were unsuspecting (suggesting females are seen as weaker and non-threatening) “Who’s there? Concubines”. Secondly one of the guards pointed out that they were “Ugly concubines” and hit his comrade when he smiled and attempted to flirt with them, emphasising that ugly women should not be

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