Mulan In America

    Since the time of the original ballad, Mulan’s story has been retold countless times, with three notable renditions being produced in the United States. Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1975 novel The Woman Warrior is widely credited as being the first adaptation of Mulan for an American audience. Possibly spurred by the popularity of Kingston’s book, Disney picked up the story of Mulan for the first time with its 1998 animated film, Mulan (1998). In the 21st century, Disney released another version of the tale of Mulan, following their own trend of re-producing their animated classics as live-action films to create Mulan (2020). Despite receiving varying degrees of praise from American audiences, however, each American version of Mulan has faced criticism from Chinese audiences. Here, we will analyze which parts of the American Mulan stories were most unsatisfactory to Chinese audiences. 



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