Mulan and Mulvey

In the film, Mulan, we see a Chinese girl who is very different than the rest of the women around her. She does not seem to fit the mold of a “good bride” and even fails to impress the matchmaker at the beginning of the movie (the matchmaker is even keen to say that Mulan is a “disgrace.”) However, though Mulan seems quirky and different, going off to fight the Huns in place of her father, in the end she chooses to leave a position of power usually given to men to go home to her family and be a “good daughter.” In Mulvey’s piece she argues that we need to make films that will undermine the idea of giving men the power and making women the objects that are merely looked at and ultimately bow down to giving men the power. Even in the movie, Chi Fu (when he is told that Mulan saved China and is a hero), says, “Tis a woman,” meaning, she most certainly could not have any authority. Another issue with the movie that Mulvey would point out is the fact that at the end of the movie, Shang, Mulan’s love interest, comes to her house. We are not certain why he is there, but before he sees Mulan, Shang addresses her father as “The Honorable Fa Zhou,” meaning, it can be deduced that he is probably there to ask for Mulan’s hang in marriage. Mulvey says that even movies that have a female protagonist, such as Mulan, have the women “trapped” at the end of the movie in a man’s world. In this case, Mulan will probably get married to Shang and fulfill her “place” as a woman, even though she had a different fire about her throughout the entire movie.

-Christiana