donny osmond sang make a man out of you in mulan.
donny osmond sang make a man out of you in mulan.
who sings make a man out of you in mulan?
donny osmond
captain/general li shang is a chinese army captain. his speaking voice was provided by b.d. wong in all three titles, and his singing vocals were performed by donny osmond (jackie chan in the mandarin version). during his appointment in the first movie, shang is a highly capable leader with a dedication to his cause to match, albeit at times being too "by-the-book" and putting his duty above his feelings, in contrast to mulan. he is exceptionally handsome due to his dashing good looks and strong physique. he is reserved and thoughtful, a more logical and calming influence to mulan's adventurous personality. shortly after his initial introduction in "mulan", shang is appointed newly as an army captain by his father, who is a general. later through the film, he becomes friends with ping (who is fa mulan disguised as a man), after his life is saved. shortly after, however, he finds out she is actually a woman, which is forbidden by the empire's law, punishable by death. shang spares her life, and after helping her save the empire, he falls in love with her and joins her family for dinner.
list of disney's mulan characters
"i'll make a man out of you" is performed by captain li shang during "mulan"s training montage, which has also been identified as the film's "boot camp sequence." the scene explores shang's attempt to train his newly recruited squadron of incompetent soldiers in the hopes of ultimately transforming them into a skilled army. occupying a significant portion of the film's plot, shang promises to turn his team of "rag-tag recruits" into men, implying that they are merely boys unless they learn to fight while entirely unaware that mulan is a woman. the musical number is used to "compress dramatic time or narrate" in a more compelling way than had solely dialogue been used. the scene begins with shang shooting an arrow into the top of a tall pole and challenging all of his soldiers to retrieve it, each of whom fail until mulan eventually succeeds. according to the book" into the closet: cross-dressing and the gendered body in children's literature and film "by victoria flanagan, mulan is successful in retrieving the arrow because she uses "an ingenuity that is based upon her ability to incorporate aspects of femininity into her masculine performance." by the end of the scene, all of the soldiers have improved dramatically and the results of their practice and training are finally revealed. in what "joshua and judges" author athalya brenner called "a humorous reversal toward the end of the movie," mulan and her male comrades disguise themselves as concubines in order to infiltrate the palace and rescue the emperor while "i'll make a man out of you" reprises in the background.critics have observed ways in which the scene explores mulan's growth and transformation as the character evolves from a clumsy, inexperienced recruit into one of the army's most skilled soldiers, in spite of her gender. according to the book "literacy, play and globalization: converging imaginaries in children's critical and cultural performances", the montage depicts mulan's gender as "an obstacle to overcome." author phyllis frus wrote in her book "beyond adaptation: essays on radical transformations of original works", "the need for inexperienced young men to go through a rigorous training results in a sequence common to many films," and that the scene "show's the challenges ping/mulan faces due to her" inexperience. as observed by juanita kwok in the book "film asia: new perspectives on film for english", the irony of the scene lies within the fact that "mulan proves herself more competent than any of the men." the author also observed that the scene's first refrain accompanies shots of shang, while its second "coincides with mulan climbing to the top of the pole." additionally, while the earlier, all-female musical number "honor to us all" "functions as an account of the constructedness of female gender," "i'll make a man out of you" "juxtaposes and makes explicit the contention that gender is a cultural product," according to johnson cheu, author of "diversity in disney films: critical essays on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability". "the representation of gender in walt disney's "mulan" "believes that the song emphasizes desirable masculine traits, namely "discipline ... tranquility, celerity, strength and fearlessness," while shang, according to "putting the grail back into girl power: how a girl saved camelot, and why it matters", "views [femininity] as comparable to weakness." in her article "disney's "mulan"—the "true" deconstructed heroine?", lisa brocklebank argued the song explores themes such as othering, ostracism and abjection. hannah yasharoff, writing for "usa today", believes mulan is used to counter the idea that masculinity is "the only way to become strong enough to win the war".
i'll make a man out of you