#LOYAL BRAVE TRUE IN CHINESE MULAN MOVIE#

Mulan is rewarded for knowing her place and for her xiao: by working within the dominant patriarchal system, she is a woman who “can have it all.” A 17th century band of sisters Because her love interest, Honghui, is an imperial soldier, it is implied she will fulfil her romantic desires as well. This creature has been her guide and its reappearance signals her acceptance of the offer. The film ends with the phoenix, Mulan’s ancestral guardian, circling above her. The men urge her to reconsider the Emperor’s offer and join the guard. In addition to the three qualities, the new sword is engraved with a fourth virtue, xiao (“filial piety,” translated in the film as “devotion to family”). The Emperor sends his men to offer Mulan a new sword. Mulan puts her family and her Emperor ahead of herself, and is rewarded for this. Taking his place, she leaves home in the middle of the night with the sword.Īs a reward for her courage and leadership in saving the Emperor, he bestows her an official position in the imperial guard, but Mulan rejects the offer in order to return home. Mulan knows her crippled father will die in battle if he is conscripted into the army. However, Mulan ultimately brings honour to her family by demonstrating that she is “loyal, brave and true” – qualities engraved on her father’s sword.

#LOYAL BRAVE TRUE IN CHINESE MULAN MOVIE#

The only way she can honour her family is through marriage.Ī booming international movie market is transforming Hollywood This masculine power has no place in a girl’s life. Mulan fails to embody these long-held virtues of an ideal Chinese girl, and her father exhorts Mulan to hide her special qi. ‘Know your place’Įarly in the new film, the village matchmaker tells 16-year-old Mulan (Liu Yifei) a good wife is “composed, graceful, polite” and “when a wife serves her husband, she must be silent, invisible.” In these retellings, Mulan had fully transformed into a defender of the state. Disney’s 1998 animation was the first major non-Chinese adaptation of the Mulan story. Similar themes were explored in Lady General Hua Mu-lan (1964) and Mulan: Rise of a Warrior (2009).

In Mulan Joins the Army (1939), Mulan’s filial piety was emphasised as a service to the country.

Chen Yunshang played Mulan in the 1939 film.

Loyal brave true in chinese mulan