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Ariel's Identity In Walt Disney Film The Little Mermaid

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Relationships are extremely important in the media for how they are portrayed and what they teach. Beginning in 1991, television executives knowingly and deliberately implemented a policy of having dominant male characters in all Saturday morning children’s programming (Taylor 2003). Women are constantly exhibited as dependant on men, while the male characters are depicted as independent. An incredible example of this is the Walt Disney film The Little Mermaid. Ariel vividly embodies the females’ dependence on a man for her identity. The character Ariel quite literally gives up her identity as a mermaid in hopes to be accepted in human form by her love interest Eric. Ariel is shown to have many material possessions and is easily identified …show more content…

Children’s literature vividly implements this theme by casting females as helpless and incompetent and males as coming to their rescue. Sleeping Beauty and Snow Whites resurrection is solely dependant on their prince charming’s kiss. Another key example of how the media is advertising girl’s incompetence and dependence on men is clear in The Jetsons. Judy Jetson is shown constantly complaining, waiting for others to help her with her problems. She uses flattery to help her get what she wants and win men’s attention. The woman is predominantly shown to play hard to get and teaches that men will come running after her. It also personifies that every girl has a prince charming that will come rescue her from her woes and they shall live happily ever after. This gives a false representation of how relationships actually work and can also create a false sense of identity for females. Relationships established in children’s literature can also have a negative impact on males; making boys think they must ‘save the damaged’ and rescue women of their horrors when in fact, that is not always

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Every once in awhile, shows such as Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best come up while surfing the tv guide. While these are two examples of remarkably popular television shows of the mid 1900’s, they also portray the gender normalities of the time period. Gender roles were simply and precisely defined. Men went to work and made the money, while the women stayed home to take care of the house and kids. However, as humanity enters the sixteenth year of the twenty first century, this precision begins to blur.

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The Han dynasty and Roman Empire developed approximately around 300 B.C.E- 400 C.E. They both faced a similar issue; they had to figure out a way to govern a vast land. The Han Dynasty’s political authority were highly influenced by their religion. The Roman Empire however were highly influenced by an emperor highly selected by the people.

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The Little Mermaid: Hegemonic Femininity The transition from a girl to a woman is created by the socially constructed ideals of femininity often depicted in commercials, books, and mainly films. One of the famous animated princess Disney films, The Little Mermaid can be easily added to yet another Disney film portraying hegemonic femininity. In the 1989 film The Little Mermaid, (Ron Clements, John Musker) a beautiful, young mermaid is willing to make a risky deal with an evil sea-witch because she yearns to walk on land and fall in love with a Prince, while secretly the sea-witch wishes for the mermaid to lose the deal. Ultimately, mermaid ends up achieving her dream of marrying the Prince, although the evil sea-witch tries to destroy the plan.

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The 2001 film Spy Kids is about two children Carmen and Juni Cortez who must save their parents who are spies captured by a children’s television star by the name of Floop. Carmen and Juni are often at odds with each other with their contrasting personalities. Carmen is an independent and confident older sister while Juni is the scared and younger brother who makes frequent mistakes. Compared to the analyzes of children’s books done by Lenore Weitzman in her journal Sex-Role Socialization in Picture Books for Preschool Children and the release of Spy Kids it is apparent that great progress has been made over the years in the dynamics of gender roles shown in the media.

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The characters in The Little Mermaid are stragetically designed in a way that conveniently adheres to stereotypical ideas of how males and females should behave, value, and appear according to their gender roles in a patriarchal society that demeans women. In order to do this, the main male characters, including King Triton and Prince Eric, must depict hypermasculinity to dramatically contrast from the creation of their fragile and inferior female counterparts. This is to also exhibit the men’s hypothetical ownership over these women, and using their displayed incompetence as justification of their assumed possession of Ariel. Ariel, the central female character, is depicted as beautiful, because she meets stereotypical standards of beauty

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The Little Mermaid is all about coming of age. In other words Ariel the main character of the story believes that she is old enough to do as she pleases. Ariel loves going to the surface. On the other hand her dad didn’t want any humans to lay eyes on her, as a result of him thinking that they are barbarians. All Ariel wants is to do what she wants when she wants.

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The Disney movie Little Mermaid is an unsuitable movie for the children due to its negative gender representation which overemphasizes physical appearance and stereotypical gender roles through the characters in the film. In the Disney film Little Mermaid, they over-emphasize physical appearance and stereotypical gender roles throughout the movie, which causes negative effects on children for it could discourage them their own self-image, on how they look and may despise their body appearance. Throughout the film, the vast majority of the human-like characters were depicted stereotypically. Many of

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The Little Mermaid which was produced in 1989, was the first Disney movie to challenge the traditional gender roles, for the fact that Ariel wanted to explore, and was more independent and assertive in her desires than the earlier princesses of the 1930’s and 50s films. Also the prince in The Little Mermaid went against traditional gender roles as well, simply because he was more affectionate and loving than his prince counterparts in other Disney films. “Both the male and female roles have changed over time, but overall the male characters evinced less change then the female characters and were more androgynous throughout.” (Descartes & England, pg.566). Disney movies have been for a long time a strong media target for children, and can serve as a way to address stereotypical gender roles (Leaper, 2000).

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As feminism and gender equality are becoming more important to society, the way gender roles are depicted in literature and media are shifting to conform to society’s views. This usage of gender roles can be seen in two popular contemporary animated movies: Frozen and Spirited Away. Both of these films are geared for younger audiences and attempt to teach important life lessons, like friendship and growing up. Through closer examination of how each film portrays gender, however, Frozen appears to not be as egalitarian as many have come to believe. Comparing both films, Frozen is not very feminist as it continues to perpetuate traditional gender roles and fairytale tropes, such as love at first sight and damsels in distress, whereas Spirited

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Putnam explains that when her daughter asks questions about gender norms (boys having long hair, etc...), she knows that this is because of influences like Disney that establish and reestablish ‘correct’ gender standards in many of their films.

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Taking into consideration the first and main version of The Little Mermaid, author Han Christian Andersen’s, Little Mermaid, written in 1837, has different characters than the 2006 interpretation of the short story, Aquamarine. From an addition of two new female characters to the subtraction of the royal titles that each character possessed, Aquamarine is based on a twenty first century setting. The plots between the two also greatly differ and even lead up to different endings. Similarly, both mermaids are searching for love and both mermaids asked to be human. Both mermaids have a due date that forces them back into the ocean if they do not find love.

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While it is decision that reflects the young audience of the play for whom the idea of a soul may be too abstract, the move to change the mermaid’s desire places this helpful change in the tradition of other variation of “The Little Mermaid” that establish the mermaid as a modern female hero who is a person who dies in the name of romantic love. While magnified the cries achieve by Wells and Tesoro may have helped the young audience get the through successfully the possible shock of the un-Disney like ending, the comedy of the harms the terrible event of the mermaid’s

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Analysis Paper #1 Even from a very young age, I had always realized that males and females thought and communicated differently. Within my own family, gender miscommunication plagues my parent's marriage and my relationship with my three sisters. Even so, the dissimilarities between how my girlfriend and I communicate helped me further grasp the importance of understanding gender miscommunication. Through her research, Deborah Tannen has found that males and females see the world through different lenses.

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Despite the fact that The Little Mermaid is an iconic story with memorable characters and is beloved by millions of people, it is still evident that the premise is problematic, especially when its target audience is young, impressionable children (primarily females) who are themselves still trying to form their own identities. Her change from mermaid to human denotes a huge shift in who she is as a character, as she is literally being changed from one being to another, and in doing so she must do away with everything that made her who she was before she met the prince: a mermaid, a princess, a daughter, a sister, a beautiful singer, and more. This may have been considered collateral damage by both Andersen and Disney, but it does not excuse the reality of the impact of the message the story promotes. In the Disney film, Ariel considers what the cost of being human would be as she negotiates with the sea witch, "If I become a human, that means I 'll never be with my father or sisters again" (Clements and Musker), to which the Sea-Witch Ursula replies, "That 's right... But--you 'll have your man.

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