The Little Mermaid: A Feministic Perspective

The children’s classic, The Little Mermaid, as portrayed by Walt Disney Studios is wrought with feministic stereotyping and chauvinistic ideas. Even in animation, there are those that not only strive to push the limits of decency, but also sway the minds of the innocent viewer in the direction of their way of thinking. In watching the animated film in its entirety, the evidence is clear.

The opening sequence begins with the playful world of the sea creatures, and rapidly shifts to a contrasting first impression of humans as sea faring males that like to sing of fairy tales and display wooden women on their ships like a deer head hung on their wall. While singing their macho sailor songs of mermaids and such, they are completely oblivious to what it is like “under the sea.”

Apparently, women are not seen much differently in the world of our heroine, Ariel. The first real glimpse of this under water world introduces the viewer to a world where females are put on display to entertain the king, like a cross between a harem and a Broadway musical. The star of the show, the beautiful, unrealistically proportioned Ariel and her angelic voice were not present. She wante

Ariel did not meet the requirements of her contract with Ursula, so she returns to her mermaid form, and is returned to the ocean. King Triton and the sea witch squabble over ownership of Ariel. Apparently, in the end, Ursula’s taste is not only for ownership over females, but exchanges Ariel for her father, making herself ruler of the sea and the power makes her even more attractive. She verbally revokes the ideas of true love, while being destroyed by the long hard piece of wood wielded by the scorned Eric in an attempt to save Ariel from being zapped by the mean old pitch fork shaped cane of Ursula that had been used previously by her father to destroy her most prized possessions.

In Eric’s kingdom, the human women are portrayed as unattractive servants, gossiping like cackling hens. When Ariel’s male guidance steers her wrong, she turns heads (and almost stomachs) at the dinner table. At the close of the first day, Ariel falls asleep as Sebastian attempts to teach her the proper body language to use to get the all-important kiss of man. The next day, her friends are insistent that the man is supposed to make the first move, and attempt to set the mood with a little song and dance. Meanwhile, the body language preaching sea witch calls the defenseless Ariel a tramp. The second day ends and our heroine remains only temporarily human. As he plays his soft music on the beach, the sea witch ensnares Eric using Ariel’s voice and a conjured body. On the third day, she awakens to the news of a wedding, but soon finds it is not her own. Upon frantically emerging from her roo

Some topics in this essay:
Disney Studios, Prince Eric, King Triton, Apparently Ursula’s, Scuttle Ariel, Disney Corporation, Poor Ariel, Ariel Eric, body language, FEMINISTIC PERSPECTIVE, sea witch, Little Mermaid, king triton, little mermaid, walt disney, prince eric,