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Analysis essay of the little mermaid
Analysis essay of the little mermaid
Essay on the little mermaid and feminism
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Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings written by Helene Boudreau is about a typical thirteen year old girl named Jade. The day she gets her period she comes home and takes an Epsom salt bath but the unimaginable happens; her legs turn into a mermaid tail. Jades father explains to her that her mother was also a mermaid so she must be one as well. Which makes her mother’s death the previous summer even more confusing; Jade wondered how her mother could have drowned when she is a mermaid. Soon after she finds out her mother is still alive and has to figure out how to save her from the mermaids called Freshies that pulled her into the water in the first place.
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.
The topic of self confidence is a subject that is heavily discussed when it comes to girls of all ages. Journalist, Stephanie Hanes, examines the current trend of sexualization amongst young girls. In the article “Little Girls or Little Women: The Disney Princess Effect”, Hanes examines the current trend of sexualization amongst girls. She addresses the issue of desiring to become a women too soon. Hanes develops her article by using the literary techniques of pathos and logos to describe the emotions young girls feel when they see images of women with unattainable features.
The central idea of Symbolic interactionism is symbols are the key to understanding how we view the world and communicate with one another (page 13). In The Little Mermaid, the human artifacts that Ariel collects are symbols of how she views their world. Scuttle is symbol of how she communicates with the world above her. The Disney movie also helps children establish an explanation about relationships. This guides kids to discover how society defines relationships.
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
Across cultures and civilizations, the sea has always been an important figure both in the benefits it provides in daily life and its presence in storytelling. In consequence, sea monsters have been important figures in myths and stories whether it be in 1000 BCE Babylonian culture, or in 20th century America. The Babylonian Enuma Elish and Disney’s 1989 The Little Mermaid both feature a powerful female antagonist, Tiamat and Ursula, respectively, and these two figures bear many similarities. In both stories, the female antagonist holds strong relationship to the sea, and has supernatural abilities that aid her in her quest to defeat the heroic characters in the story.
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.
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
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).
She searches for eternal life through good deeds and sacrificing herself. “The Shadow” is a story about a learned man who tells his shadow to go snoop on another balcony and the shadow returns years later, wealthy and powerful. The man returns home and tries to write stories about good, truth, and beauty. These stories are culturally significant because they provide universal lessons to many different cultures, especially Danish culture. “The Little Mermaid” shows the trials of the youngest mermaid of a Sea King who has six daughters.
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.
The Disney princess movies had a great deal of influence on many young girls watching princesses represent what royalty looked like. The princesses are always beautiful, polite and seeking the love of their Prince Charming. This plays a strong role in perpetuating the idea that being a princess means seeking only love from a man, and a man who contains all the stereotypical masculine qualities; handsome, powerful and rich. For example, in The Little Mermaid, Ariel had to give up who she was in order to win over the affection of her prince charming. She traded in her voice in order to have real legs and near Prince Eric.
In the story, she demands her husband to go back to the flounder and wish for “a little cottage...a stone palace...to be king…to become emperor…to become pope…to become like God.” The fisherman feared his wife as she wanted more and in the end when it became too much, the flounder convert all that was done. She was left with what she started with, the moral was that greediness and the thirst for
Other kids were jumping in and out of the water and their bubbly laughter filled the air. I tugged on my father’s arm asking to go play. “Sorry Bean, we have to go wait in line to meet Ariel.” I nodded my head head in understandment, I wanted to go meet the mermaid
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
