all these subliminal messages being crammed into my head without even knowing it...

{[BY THE WAY... I actually do like Mulan... I am just dissecting it cruelly and callously to prove my point.]}

We watched bits and pieces of Mulan today in class today, to try and analyze how media affects the way we see the world (media, by the way, is a way of communicating to a wide audience. Think magazine ads, billboards, pictures, movies, books, poetry... the possibilities are endless!). Before I begin, let us stop and think about what Mulan is: a Disney film- created in America. A form of media.
Throughout the movie, different aspects of- not the Chinese culture, per say, but what Disney WANTS us to think of the Chinese culture- are portrayed, such as honor, masculine dominance, the beautiful and obedient child-bearing (movie says "bear sons," actually) slaves the men want their women to be, their strict obedience to superiors, their fear of invasion. We unknowingly take this little slice of "China" and believe it to be true. For every bit of China put into it, there is something else left out- footbinding, for instance. It was a sign of highest wealth to deform your daughter's feet to be "small and dainty like the lotus blossom" so that she was unable to walk, to work. Disney never mentions any of that, and I was very unpleasantly surprised to learn the more gruesome details of the culture in later years, when I had watched Mulan as a young, impressionable child.
Yet we never wonder why things are called "the Disney version." Did you know that the evil queen in Snow White sent out a huntsman to cut out Snow White's heart? Feeling pity for the child, he instead returned with the heart of a boar (which the Queen ate, thinking it belonged to Snow White). As a reader of Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, I find little inconsistencies throughout the little girl's world of princesses and fables. Heh- media fooled them with edited tales of princesses, added color, and sound, thus fooling all but those who tackle the daunting, thick volume of the true ones on later years.

Have I convinced you of the power of media? Take a look at an average diamond commercial- boy likes hot chick, boy buys hot chick shiny rock, hot chick tackles boy and smothers with kisses.
Subliminal message: if I buy her these diamond-things, I get sex.
Even the whole diamond industry is manipulated- a company called Zales fooled people into making these things of higher value than they otherwise would be (diamonds are very common stones, dear). And, after all, Diamonds_Are_a_Girl's_Best_Friend, no? Music is media, too.

Wow.
All these subliminal messages being crammed into my head without even knowing it...