MULAN

After watching the present day "Charlie's Angels," it made me think of other movies where women are given power through violence and playing roles that typically men would play. The movie that came to mind was a childhood classic of mine, Mulan. Mulan is about a young Chinese girl who wants to fight for her country. She wants to fight because her father can't and he has no sons to go to war. So already this is extremely stereotypical. This is highlighting the stereotype that women do not go to war and only men were sent to fight for their country while women stayed at home and took care of things around the house.

Mulan wanted to forget about that stereotype and fight because she wanted to prove that women are just as strong as men and they can show bravery too. However, they won't let her go if she is a girl, so she has to make herself look like a boy. She chops all her hair off and changes her voice to be more manly so no one will notice that she is actually a women. She doesn't change in front of anyone, but once they find out that she actually is a woman they are so disappointed and they send her home. Even though she had become one of the best fighters in the group, they made her go home just because of her gender.

Today, that would never happen because women are often encouraged to join the military and fight for our country, but in that time period that is how things were. This movie shows women that they need to stand up for what they believe in and it has brought to the attention that women should be able to fight just as equally as men can and that has led to the change that women can now fight in war.

Charlie's Angels: Empowering?

When we watched "Charlie's Angels" in class it was very interesting to actually analyze how the women were portrayed in the television show. Sabrina, Kelly, and Jill were very sexualized and were shown as these loyal women who worked for a mysterious man named Charlie. No matter when Charlie called, no matter what the women were doing, they would drop everything and run to where Charlie needed them to be. This behavior is shown in the introduction of the first Pilot episode of "Charlie's Angels" in 1976. Here is the beginning of the episode:

In this video clip, it shows how, almost possessive Charlie is over these women. The second he calls them and says they need to come into work, they are there in a heart beat and it isn't even taken as a big deal. They have a smile on their face the entire time they are on the phone. Also I thought there was something very important in this clip. Something that could potentially go unnoticed if you didn't deeply analyze this episode. When the narrator is speaking in the very beginning he says, "Once upon a time there were three little girls." That is extremely demeaning for these women because they are grown women, yet they are being referred to as girls. That is not empowering for women when they are being put down and being spoken to like they are less than what they really are. I find that very shocking. "Charlie's Angels" is meant to empowering but when things like being called girls and being possessed by a man occur, that is not necessarily the case.