Mulan’s “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For” Songs (Feminist Critique)

Mulan is a movie produced by Disney about a girl named Fa Mulan who poses as a boy in order to replace her grandfather, Soon-Tek Oh, for recruitment in the war. The themes of the movie Mulan deal primarily with the boundaries of gender roles, which is why feminist critique is the most effective way to analyse the songs within. Even at first glance it is noticeable that both, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For”, deal with the stereotypes of gender. To make a man out of someone is nothing more than a saying, as it has no biological merit. It suggests helping someone go from being weak and unfocused to attaining the ultimate strength and balance of a man. In the song, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” there is the lyric, “Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons?” By making a link between weakness and women, the movie insults an entire gender, which is inexcusable even coming from a pre-transitioned character.

As a text with the goal of spreading equality amongst sexes, Mulan wavers in providing responsible character development for the characters. After all of the warriors “become men”, the movie follows with the song “A Girl Worth Fighting For”. This song has each of the warriors confessing the kind of woman they would like to come home to after their victory in war. The responses the men give depict them as shallow and insensitive animals, who only care about women liking them and less about who that woman is inside. Mulan makes it apparent with the line “How 'bout a girl who's got a brain, who always speaks her mind?” to which the men respond “Nah!” The only man who does not care about appearances, Chein-Po, still has faults in the form of his desire only for a woman who can cook well. The song is supposed to be light-hearted, and takes place before they absorb the reality of death and war, before they mature as men. In that sense, the movie shows understanding that to be a man one must be more than “mysterious as the dark side of the moon”, that they must bear certain responsibilities. While this does not fully forgive them for their lack of compassion during the song, the men show understanding during the dark time of the film.

Both “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For” play their roles in the movie to advance the plot and define characters. However, the backlash they get through negatively depicting both men and women is ultimately hurtful to the audience believing in the development of the characters. While these two songs are important in transitioning the group from the individual to the collective, they don’t seem to take into account that Mulan is acting like a man on purpose to fit in. They do not provide gender redemption for the movie. When Mulan reveals her identity to Li Shang, he abandons her. It is not until she has thoroughly saved the day that Li Shang approves of her as a warrior. The message of this may be “it is not who you are, but what you do that defines you as a person”, but that undermines the use of conscription and the basis of the plot. Even at the end of the movie gender stereotypes are still being used, as he falls head over heels in love with her, and this strong warrior is rendered speechless. Mulan fails in representing genders appropriately, regardless of whether or not they are used to exemplify the changing ideologies of the characters.