“Yellow Skin, White Masks”: A Post-colonial Study of Disney Live-action Movie Mulan

The live-action movie Mulan is Disney’s latest masterpiece in 2020. Previous scholars mainly studied “The Ballad of Mulan” and the animated film Mulan (1998) from the theme, narration, film art, feminist theories and other aspects. Based on Postcolonial theory and Orientalism, this paper takes the latest live-action movie Mulan (2020) as the research object and makes a comparative study of Mulan’s adapted image in the movie and the original Mulan image in “The Balled of Mulan”. Reconstruction of the ancient Oriental empire China and major characters around Mulan are further discussed. It is found that creators of the movie adopt Chinese elements and characters to convey American ideology and values and thus the implication of this study is evident: to arouse readers’ awareness of cultural invasion through media like movies and of the significance of rebuilding China’s international image in the new era.