A representação do feminino no caminhar da(s) história(s): uma análise dos filmes Mulan 1998 e Mulan 2020

Abstract

For many centuries, the role of women in patriarchal society was to aspire to marriage—“a stable family environment, a welcoming home, well-behaved children, and a wife devoted to her husband.” (D’Incao, 2004, p. 187). Thus, the female subject was constructed and shaped by patriarchal society with a single purpose: to be a wife. Thus, the overall objective of this research is to examine the discourses about women that circulated in the 1990s, beginning with the 1998 film Mulan, and that continue to circulate well into the 21st century with its new live-action version, Mulan, released in 2020. The films tell the story of a young Chinese woman who disguises herself as a man and goes to war in place of her sick father. Mulan’s primary duty is to bring honor to her family through marriage and to fulfill her role in society as a woman. In the 1998 film Mulan, the main character saves the emperor from invaders, becomes a war heroine, and, upon returning home, becomes engaged to Captain Lee Shang, thereby fulfilling her goal of bringing honor to her family through marriage. However, the 2020 film Mulan introduces significant changes to its narrative, such as replacing Mushu with the Phoenix, the introduction of new female characters, female leadership, and the fact that—without Captain Lee Shang—Mulan’s goal of returning home and getting married remains unfulfilled, and the honor she brings home is that of having saved the emperor. Thus, as a specific objective, we aim to analyze discourses on women through the linguistic and visual materiality of Disney films that circulate and have circulated in society. To this end, we will draw on the concepts of the discursive subject, utterance, and discourse from the perspective of French-school Discourse Analysis and the fruitful discussions within Discourse Analysis in Brazil. This study concludes that although Mulan 1998 and Mulan 2020 share the same underlying principles regarding the concepts of honor, femininity, and social status, the live-action film, in turn, shifts and challenges these concepts by introducing different possibilities for the representation of women. In the 1998 animated film, it is evident that Mulan must break with standards of femininity and prove her ability to occupy spaces traditionally reserved for male characters. The live-action film, on the other hand, by presenting women who occupy different social positions, thereby produces meanings of greater autonomy and multiplicity in the representation of women.