A little background on my memory of The Little Mermaid: I do not remember anything. It has been so long since I have seen this movie and I do not remember the plot at all. I am excited to watch it with a set of objective eyes and see what I notice.
This movie is so dated. 1989 to be exact. The graphics here at the beginning are like someone drew into a picture book and flipped the pages. Wow. It is amazing to see how far technology has advanced if you think about all of the new movies like Frozen and Brave.
The movie opens with a song and the opening credits roll with Ariel's "Part of that World" in the background, a little foreshadowing of the saddest song in the movie. I feel so bad for this girl! She just wants to go on land!
When the sisters are singing and dancing at the beginning it is hard not to notice how feminine they are. They all wear girly colors and dance around singing with high pitch voices. This is a huge contrast with how Ursula is introduced. Ursula is first shown as just a pair of eyes, a common way to show villains in Disney movies and cartoons. She takes on very confusing masculine and feminine traits. For example, she is overweight, large, and has a manly voice, yet she is very sexualized and wears a lot of makeup. I think this makes sense because powerful men are seen as manly and big and powerful women are seen as beautiful, put together, and sometimes sexual. She possesses both genders' powerful traits making her a terrifying villain.
Flounder is a great character. He is portrayed as a naive, young little guppy, but ends up being a helpful, loyal friend.
King Triton starts as a strict, protective father, but his sensitivity gets in the way at the end when he converts his daughter's tail to legs in the name of love. This would be another example to add on to my post about parents in Disney movies, as the father is the sensitive one in this movie.
When Ariel first sings "Part of that World" she sings, "bright young women, sick of swimming," suggesting that she knows her worth, yet when she falls in love with Prince Eric, she completely turns into a typical crushing girl with nothing else on her mind besides a boy. The stereotype bothers me because she was okay without him before, but when he comes into her life she all of the sudden needs him. A lot of Disney movies unfortunately suggest that women need a man, and I do not like this mentality.
One really thought out moment in this movie is how all of the creatures are dancing in "Under the Sea," yet Ariel originally said in her song that they could not dance without feet. This issue continues to bother me. Someone should have checked that.
Another evil figure in the movie is the eel. The eels have one white eye and one yellow eye, suggesting villainy. They do not play a huge role in the movie but they do intervene to stop the kiss between Ariel and Prince Eric once.
When Ariel is making her deal with Ursula, it hurts me that she chooses a boy over her family. I do not think that is a good example to set for children. In Ursula's song, Ursula says, "She who holds her tongue gets the man." That is an unacceptable line in a children's movie. These movies should be teaching children to stand up for themselves and ask for what they want, yet instead this movie suggests that going with the flow is the better way to go.
When Ursula is at her highest peak of villainy (when she gets the trident), she grows very large, her voice gets deeper, and her eyes turn red. These are more extreme examples of her already extreme characteristics.
Ultimately, the dad saves the day and his sensitivity leads him to give Ariel her legs back. I like that the father was the hero instead of Prince Eric. With the deal with Ursula we expect Prince Eric's true love kiss to break the spell and give her legs but instead her family came to the rescue. While there were problems in the movie, Here we see the idea developing in Disney of an outsider solving the problem rather than the boy saving the day, which is a popular theme in Frozen that is often discussed.
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