Chinese Elements in Film Mulan (2020) and Its Intercultural Transmission

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze Chinese elements and their intercultural transmission in the film Mulan. Disney's live-action film Mulan set off a global craze after its release in 2020. A large quantity of Chinese elements appeared in the film have aroused foreign audiences’ interest, attention and heated discussion, thus spreading Chinese culture worldwide. Based on Stuart Hall's Encoding and Decoding theory, this paper finds that the film reflects both material and spiritual cultural elements of China, such as tulou architecture (the earthen buildings constructed in Fujian province in southern China), traditional clothing, kung fu. However, the results of the study reveal that the film encodes and decodes these elements at various levels so that it produces different cultural psychology for the target language audience. Therefore, in the process of intercultural transmission, appropriate methods, including in-depth exploration of Chinese elements and correct encoding and decoding, must be adopted.