Singing Caribbean crabs named Sebastian, a fish named Flounder as a best friend, and most important, a little princess mermaid called Ariel, these are the images that come to the mind of the millions of people who have enjoyed Disney’s movie entitled The Little Mermaid. I myself have watched this movie with delightful glee repetitively as a child. Again and again the tape of the little mermaid has played until the VCR complained loudly from the abuse, as the video has and continues to do so with an uncountable amount of children across the world. Warm and fuzzy feelings are all that most people now associate with this movie. So when Susan White asserts that Disney’s version of Hans Christian Anderson’s story The Little Mermaid actually perpetuates a negative stereotype of a woman to its viewers she must make a quite an argument to convince any loving fan.

In the article Split Skins, Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid Susan White doesn’t just make the claim that Disney’s The Little Mermaid stereotypes women negatively, she actually assumes the reader knows this (although throughout her article she goes to prove this point also). Her mission of her art

The author is a professor of English whose primary research is in film criticism. So her knowledge does happen to lie in the field she is writing about. But film criticism is just personal opinions from people who have seen a lot of cinematography. So the authors’ credibility for this article must come from more than just her education background in order for her argument to sway the reader, it must rely on pathos and logos.

In order to draw the reader in to her article she creates a startling and intriguing title by using the words “Bodily Mutilation” and the little mermaid in the same line. This sparks the readers’ curiosity for a closer look. She then starts the text by quoting lines from Aristotle and from the original Hans Christian Anderson story of The Little Mermaid, both are very demeaning toward women, which sparks the readers emotion of anger and more curiosity. Then, in the authors introductory paragraphs, she writes “The critical methodology derives from many sources, including Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis…along with semiotics (the study of sign systems), structuralism and Marxism, psychoanalysis is an invaluable aid in understanding just what a film may be “working through”…”(White, 317), giving very good background into which logical research sources she uses to form her conclusions and briefly tells the reader her use of logos in the text.

After the author compare/contrast section of her article she brings her essay down to analyzing Disneys version of The Little Mermaid in full. She goes on to compare it to research done on western society and other western films that are not mermaid based but are image orientated. This again shows how well Susan is studied on the subject herself. However, this section is also loaded with emotional appeal and thus has logical fallacies in it. One of these fallacies was using loaded language designed to evoke negative feelings against Disneys The Little Mermaid. Susan purposefully chooses to call the mermaids father “ violently jealous” (White, 320). I have seen this movie myself many time and never once thought of the father as “violently jealous”. What the author is referring to it the father over-protectiveness of his youngest daughter, who states in the move that he does not want his daughter caught in some “fish-eaters hook”. He of course is referring to humans who eat fish and

Some topics in this essay:
Little Mermaid, Christian Anderson, Goes Movies, Freudian Lacanian, Susan Ad, Susan White, Mermaid Susan, Homeric Siren, Singing Caribbean, little mermaid, Susan Whites’, story little, story little mermaid, hans christian, disney version, negative stereotype, film criticism, susan white, disneys little mermaid, disneys little, mermaid susan, populum fallacy, hans christian anderson, ad populum fallacy, women’s rights activists,