In the film Mulan, when the Huns invade China, the Emperor realizes that he must recruit his male citizens to the Imperial Army. He sends a letter to every household in China requiring every family to send one man to fight with the army. Fa Mulan, a young girl who has proven ineligible for marriage and is worried about the safety of her ill father, decides to disguise herself as a man and take her father’s place in the army.
One huge overarching theme throughout this movie is gender. Mulan, at the start of the film, feels out of place in her society, unable to charm the feminine graces required of her to impress the matchmaker who oversees her fate. In fact, she is rather clumsy and tomboyish, preferring to spend time with her animals and have fun, rather than to study the etiquette required of her as a woman. When Mulan decides to enlist in the army and pretend to be a man to save her ill father from having to enlist, she must embody a completely different gender. Eventually, she proves to be an exceptional soldier, impressing her superior Shang and then, eventually, all of China. It is illegal for her to serve as a woman, but her heroism is so incredible and impressive that no one minds that she is a woman. In Mulan’s story, we see a narrative of female empowerment, and a narrative about the unexpected benefits of not always fitting in with one’s gender.
Another theme that is just as prominent throughout the film is identity. She is a young woman struggling to find her place in the world, and when she sees that she can help her father, she embraces the opportunity to assume a new identity. She addresses the theme of identity after Shang banishes her from the army. She joins the army to learn more about herself and pursue a stronger sense of identity, a goal at which she ends up succeeding by the end of the film. To relate back to the material, we have been discussing in class, our most recent reading, A Small Place, Kincaid has some issues with identity as she will never be truly English because of race and history, yet her intimacy with English culture expands her horizons far beyond the small boundaries of Antigua.