Mulan As The Women Warrior Essay, Research Paper
“Mulan As The Woman Warrior”
Many movies have gotten their theme or content from books and novels.
One of them being the story of Mulan, which originates from the story of a Chinese
girl who grows into a women warrior. In my reading of ” The Woman Warrior”, there
is a tale of a warrior who has the name Fa Mu Lan. The mother tells the story of Fa Mu
Lan to her children , one child stating ” Instantly, I remembered that as a child, I had
followed my mother about the house, the two of us singing about how Fa Mu Lan
fought gloriously and returned alive from afar to settle in the village.” I felt that this story
is being used as important tale in the teaching of the Chinese, and proving to them
that they could be so much more than a man’s slave or even some man’s wife. Many
Chinese families have tales to tell to their kids in their childhood up bringing, and some
of these lessons stick with them throughout their life, shaping them to be the kind of
men and women they would soon become.
These stories and tales can influence children to make the right decisions in life.
In Disney’s version of Mulan, it sets out a clear moral to the children, portrays their
cultural expectations, and changes some of the norms of Chinese history.
The movie of Mulan, depicts Mulan to be a very attractive, but also a clumsy girl,
who always seems to be disappointing her father, no matter how hard she tries not to.
Her family tries to marry her off, but when she goes out to see the woman who matches
the women with the men, she makes a disaster of everything by making the woman fall
flat on her face and even manages to catch the women on fire. When the war starts and
her father gets drafted , she realizes she could that she is afraid to let her father go, in fear
that he may not survive. She steals is suit and goes off in his place pretending to be his
son. This specific part of the story revealed one of the themes to me, which is courage.
This proved to me that women are not made to be slaves, but yet are able to risk their
lives for their fathers, like Mulan did. I see Mulan as being very brave in this movie, and
this picture also enabled her to be a role model for children, by allowing them to
understand that if you mess up it does not mean you are a failure, but just that everything
is not meant for everyone. Mulan proved that she was not ready to get married, instead
wanted to prove herself to her father. She does this by going out, disguised as a man, to
the war, doing a heroic job of saving the emperors’ life. He father was afraid of this
because in China a women could be killed if she portraited herself as a man. Her father
did not want everyone to know in their village that his daughter had run off to war to
fight in a man’s army. That could have gotten them both killed. But the outcome of
Mulan’s story was a successful one. She saved the emperors’ life and came out of
the war unharmed.
Mulan could not go out to the war as herself because of cultural expectations
that were put upon women. Women were expected not to have a voice in the family, to
be more like maids and in
a women of a different stature. She was a very outspoken person who never went
by the book.
In Disney’s version their is quite a significant change from the Kingston novel.
Disney does not discuss the stages of Mulan growing up from a child to an adult, it
starts when she is a teen. Disney also did not have any mention of a bird coming to the
girl while she was in the woods or any old people taking her in and training her to be
a warrior. Disney also changed her having a baby in the story by one of her soldiers.
In the movie everyone thought she was a man, so nothing like that occured in the movie.
The changes in the movie did not effect the reviews of the story. Both the movie and
the book were very interesting but just in different ways. The book showed points that
were real and the movie showed points that were sufficient for children.
Some of the differing culture norms Disney tries to reinforce again are how
the women are treated in their culture, how could they dishonor their family by doing
certain things, like being in a war, or men refusing to go in the war.
The Chinese are very family oriented, if one family member does something
that could cause dishonor, the whole family will feel dishonored.Disney shows this by
when the father is scared and unmask his daughter because he knows they would be
looked down on and they could both get killed for doing something like that. The movie
shows that for women it is harder to gain acception for being strong-minded. They have
to work really hard to get respect from men. Disney also brought out the fact that the
woman being quiet while a man is talking. The father told his daughter that if she would
obey and be quiet she would fail at finding a husband. As in the Kingston novel, the
mother always told her kids to be quiet, there was no talking at the dinner table.
This portion of the book and the movie were very similar, but just conveyed
in different ways.
I found the book and the movie to be very entertaining. I actually prefer the movie
because it gave me illustration instead of just words in a book . The movie had animation,
which was good because it was not strictly a Chinese tale, it was a fun loving movie.
The movie was more realistic than the book, as the story about Fa Mu Lan in the
autobiography had a lot of unrealistic details, such as how she could look in the drinking
gourd to check on her family or how the old people sometimes would become young
just for a second. Mulan was a realisticand funny movie that I really enjoyed.
Disney put on a good production of the movie Mulan. I was very pleased that
they did not change the movie to an American culture type movie because that would
have defeated the purpose of the content of the story and disrespected the Chinese
culture. Kingston brought out a good story of Mulan also but it just seemed to unrealistic
to me, which made the movie somewhat more appealling. The movie portraited good
morals and was very suitable for viewers of all ages. The book and the movie proved
to me that a women can do thing just as good if not better than a man.