Response to The Little Mermaid

Re-watching The Little Mermaid this week, I was constantly frustrated with the message being portrayed.  The movie is overtly sexist and superficial.  Ariel, an innocent and unsuspecting girl, is constantly controlled by others, such as her father, the witch, and the prince.  Similar to Rapunzel in Tangled, and every other Disney princess, she has physical features that are meant to seem desirable, even though they are unattainable for any female.  She falls in love with a human after seeing him once, and wants to be with him even before she knows anything about him.  She is willing to give up one of her best features, her voice, in order to change her tail into a pair of legs and hopefully get the prince to fall in love with her.  To make things worse, he must fall in love with just her body because she cannot even speak to him.  All of this portrays how shallow Ariel is as a character, who cannot find happiness within herself.

Another very shallow character is the prince, who also falls in love after hearing the mermaid sing.  He is only in love with her external features, her voice and body, representing how two-dimensional he is as a person.  This is why he is so quick to fall for Ursula when she changes herself to look like Ariel, since all he remembers is a vague vision of her face and her voice.  Although the film degrades females in multiple ways, it also does very little to advance the personality of one of the main male characters, who ends up being the “good guy.”

This film portrays some very conservative and “traditional” American ideals that have been argued to influence girls negatively, but I also wonder how a film like this would affect boys.  As a child, I remember watching this movie, and although it is not a go-to favorite for most boys, it is still one that many of them end up watching while growing up.  What messages is it giving them?  For one, I feel like its biggest issue is that it instills ideals into boys about what girls should act and look like.  Ariel, with her high-pitched voice, is very emotional and does not think for herself.  She even requires the eels to convince her to see Ursula, instead of deciding to rebel by herself.  This makes boys think that girls are susceptible to doing what they want, and need the protection of a man.  At the same time, the two main roles of benevolent power in the film, her father and the prince, are both male, reaffirming the role of men being in charge.  All in all, watching this movie as an informed individual really opened my eyes to all of the issues in the film.