Essay On Mulan

Mulan, a Disney Fantasy/Comedy film made in 1998, revolves around a young daughter who valiantly takes her father’s place in the Chinese Imperial draft. Mulan must prepare for battle to save all of China as the Huns invade her country. Mulan goes to war despite knowing that it will bring her family great dishonor if she is found out and decides to go against traditional Chinese values and strong gender roles. Along the way, she works with her sidekicks, Mushu and Cricket, and befriends a couple of soldiers and a love interest, General Shang, from the Imperial Army to defeat the Huns. In the Imperial Army’s first showdown with the Huns, Mulan goes through hand to hand combat with the Huns’ leader, Shan Yu. He slices through her abdomen, but she manages to fend him off by launching a rocket towards a mountain peak, causing an avalanche. The avalanche kills most of the Huns, but drags her friends along with it. She manages to save
The tale of Hua Mulan originated from the “Ballad of Mulan,” which was written around the 11th century. In the ballad, Hua Mulan is a skilled woman who takes her father’s place in the army. After fighting for twelve years in the army, Hua Mulan is finally allowed to go home, but declines all her rewards and humbly asks for a single horse to ride home instead. She also wears her old clothes, surprising her comrades who did not know she was a woman the entire time. Mulan challenges cultural norms by having the main character break past the traditional norms set by society. Multiple times in the movie, Mulan is told that “she’s a woman, she’ll never be worth anything.” Mulan is extremely brave to risk all the honor her family and her ancestors have spent their lives building up and must make an important choice to risk this honor or let her father go to war and possibly die