Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 1, 21 December 2021
Open
Access | Article
Disney’s Reconstruction of the Traditional Chinese Heroine: a Comparative Analysis of the Three Mulan Movies
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Abstract
The legend of Mulan has been transmitted and remolded throughout China for hundreds of years. In recent years, this motif has also drawn significant attention from the US film industry. Three films are analyzed in this article: the Chinese Yu opera Hua Mulan [1], Disney’s animated version Mulan [2] and the most recent addition, Disney’s live-action version Mulan [3]. Under a cross-culture lens, the analysis compares three versions of the film to examine the transculturation and adaption of the narrative in reconstructing a traditional Chinese heroine. This paper concludes that to resist cultural hegemony and to attract a broader audience, Disney’s 1998 version transforms a typical Confucian heroine into an individualistic American heroine. Finally, it shall be argued that the 2020 version of Mulan espouses and shapes Mulan into a synthesized Asian-American figure.
Keywords
narration, Disney, heroine, Mulan, transculturation, adaption
References
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries (ICEIPI 2021), Part 2
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-915371-02-7
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-915371-03-4
- Published Date
- 21 December 2021
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/1/ICEIPI_174
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited