A Short Critical Essay I Wrote about the Little Mermaid for a Class

Ariel and Ability: An Unexplored Theme Running through Disney’s The Little Mermaid

(Amazon)

The Little Mermaid begins with a boat nonchalantly speeding past dolphins, illustrating a tension between the surface and the sea. Against that anthropocentric prelude, the ocean is depicted as serene and dark blue penetrated by patches of light. Then the viewer is introduced to the proudly masculine King Triton and his sensual daughters. They feature fair skin, flowing long hair, thin and properly proportioned bodies, and fins. Ariel is implied to share these characteristics but, as the movie reveals, she is not present. In the next scene the viewer learns that she indeed physically resembles her sisters. Instead, her and Flounder are investigating a shipwreck, an action defiant of typical gender expectations; they brave a shark attack and manage to return back to the kingdom.  Triton scolds Ariel for adventuring into the unknown, asserting his power over her. Ariel returns to being his submissive daughter as a result. Drawing from these events in the beginning of the film, Disney’s Ariel coin bank features the mermaid sitting on a rock with her fins in the water, smiling at the owner.  The Ariel coin bank’s retaining her fins creates an empowering message that there is no ideal body (The Little Mermaid).

The opening of the film depicts humans as having a more powerful culture than the sea-dwellers; their superior technology makes their actions right. To them, the sea is a fantastical place that should be subjugated.  Sells writes, “The Little Mermaid establishes the world on land and the world under the sea as two contrasting spaces, one factual and one fictive, one real and the other imaginary. In this dualistic and hierarchical construction, the human world can be aligned with the white male system and the water world situated outside that system” (Sells 177).  The beginning of the film supports a dichotomy between the sea and the surface, suggesting that the human culture – aligned with the real – is superior to sea-dweller culture. Conquering a new land goes beyond physical means; cultural encroachment occurs instead of an outright invasion of the sea depicted in the film. Through the force of a dominant culture, identities can be melded towards that dominance. Suddenly, “normal” in a society is transformed under a completely different standard.  Giroux writes, “Culture constitutes a pivotal force in the struggle over meaning, identity, social practices, and institutional machineries of power” (Giroux 59).  Human culture extends from the surface and into the sea, impressing its expectations of identity on the sea-dwellers. The mermaid daughters of Triton, despite being denizens of the sea, reflect conventional Caucasian human beauty standards well; the framing of the animation creates  sexualized focus on the mermaids by focusing on their whole upper body, suggesting that their presence is not intellectual. At the same time, the mermaids do not completely fit human gender expectations due to their fins.

Fins replace legs, resulting in the loss of an ability to walk; instead, fins optimize swimming. In the film, however, the human culture is emphasized, meaning that fins are crippling. Their apparent lack of function makes mermaids strange in human eyes. Thus they lose attractiveness when viewed holistically by a person from the surface. Prince Eric, who falls in love with Ariel, never has a chance to see her fins. Instead, Eric notes that she has a beautiful voice and voluminous red hair.  Ariel is never exposed as a mermaid, so she remains a beauty in his eyes. Through this manner, The Little Mermaid maintains the status quo.

The Ariel coin bank, despite being a product of Disney pedagogy, does not follow the movie entirely; rather it focuses on the Ariel in the beginning of the film. Though Eric does not see Ariel’s fin, the owner of this coin bank certainly does, breaking immersion for the human viewer. Even a young child can tell that humans do not have fins – instead they have legs on which they walk.  Children can interpret the products they own in multiple ways but at least initially such an object would seem strange even within context of the movie. Through the process of role-playing, children can subvert or even forget the original contexts of the toy; thus the item may have a completely different meaning than intended (Wohlwend 598). This coin bank is intended for decorative use instead of for play, meaning that it would be viewed statically and not necessarily take on an entirely new meaning.

The difference between Ariel’s upper half and lower half is that one obeys conventional beauty standards and that the other defies them. The juxtaposition raises her fins to be beautiful as well, forcing the standard to become more inclusive. Ariel’s body is thus not disfigured but instead beautiful in its own way. In particular, fins on a mermaid can be accepted the same way that legs on a human can. This message on body image is empowering because it suggests that all body types can be valued not just ideal ones. Thus, young children, who are developing their own identities, can feel socially included and worthwhile. The Ariel coin bank serves to unwind oppressive messages resulting from the unattainable beauty standard.

            Instead of being a vehicle for oppression, the Ariel coin bank suggests that the conventional body image is wrong. Ariel matches some aspects of the beauty standard but disobeys others, especially due to her fins. The Little Mermaid posits that human culture reigns supreme to sea culture but in this children’s product the sea culture is on display to the owner. Ultimately the coin bank is empowering by not outright accepting or rejecting the beauty standard and instead suggesting that people can fall outside of it without being abnormal

Works Cited

“Durable Plastic Disney Princess Ariel Little Mermaid Coin Bank.” Amazon.
            Amazon.com, Inc, n.d. Web. 16 Oct 2014.

The Little Mermaid. Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Walt Disney Pictures, 1989. Film.

Giroux, Henry A. and Grace Pollock. The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence.       Lanham, Maryland: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2010. Print.

Sells, Laura. "Where Do the Mermaids Stand?: Voice and Body in The Little Mermaid."

From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Ed.  Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995. 175-192. Print.

Wohlwend, Karen E.

“The boys who would be princesses: playing with gender identity intertexts in Disney Princess transmedia.” Gender and Education. 24.6 (2012): 593-610. Web.