IMAGE OF CHINESE WOMAN WARRIOR IN MULAN FILM POSTERS: BETWEEN WOMEN’S POWER AND PATRIARCHAL DOMINATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21009/ISLLAE.07101Keywords:
Chinese culture, patriarchal domination, western perspective, woman warrior, women’s powerAbstract
Abstract
This paper aimed at examining the way women's power and patriarchal domination intertwined in the image of the woman warrior in Disney’s Mulan film posters. To study Mulan film posters as a text, mise-en-scene and staging approaches in cinematographic theory were used to analyze the visual text, while Naomi Wolf's power feminism theory was applied to interpret the image of the Chinese woman warrior. Posters from two versions of Mulan films, the animated (1998) and live-action versions (2020), were chosen to observe the depiction of woman warrior that reflected the negotiation between women's power and patriarchal domination. The results of this study indicated a shift in the way woman warrior was depicted in the two posters representing two different eras. In the earlier film poster, the patriarchal domination was implicitly portrayed through women’s efforts to assert power by borrowing and/or adopting masculine identity. In contrast, the portrayal of woman warrior in the latest poster showed that women can still maintain their power by presenting feminine identity. Furthermore, the depiction of the Chinese woman warrior in the two posters could be seen more as voicing Western feminism than promoting feminist values in Chinese culture.
