The Difference Between Two Tails Often times people forget that Walt Disney got many of his ideas for movies from previous fairy-tales and folklore. Since I was young my personal favorite Disney movie has been The Little Mermaid.. However, it scarcely crossed my mind as I grew older that there was a different story contradicting almost everything in the film. Despite bearing some similarities, the striking differences between Hans Christian Andersen’s and Walt Disney’s tales of The Little Mermaid have just furthered my love for Disney’s version. Andersen’s tale of “The Little Mermaid”, originally published in 1837, features a nameless mermaid who is referred to, simply, as the Little Mermaid. She is ten years old at the beginning of the story
In this adaptation, she is sixteen years old at the start of the film and the youngest of King Triton’s (The Sea King) seven daughters. In this film, Ariel is portrayed much different from how Andersen described his Little Mermaid. Ariel is a very joyful character who has an adventurous and vibrant personality. She has a mind of her own and does much of what she wants to, whether it’s against her father’s rules or not. Showing her independence, Ariel often says things along the lines of “I 'm not a child anymore!” to her father, the Sea King, and her mentor figure, Sebastian the
Readers know that he is sixteen years old and that the mermaid is infatuated with him (and much of humankind in general). The Prince does not know that he had been saved by the Little Mermaid, but instead thinks that the person who saved his life is the girl at the convent who found him on the shoreline. After finding the Little Mermaid he treats her much like a little girl. He says to the Little Mermaid “Yes, you are dear to me… for you have the best heart, and you are the most devoted to me… [but] she is the only one in the world whom I could love; but you are like her, and you have driven her image out of my mind.” (Andersen 10) By saying this to her, the Prince is expressing to the Little Mermaid that he has busied himself with her so much, since she is devoted to him, that he has nearly forgotten the girl he saw outside the convent. In this light, the Prince very much seems like he is just using the
Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Little Mermaid.” Folk and Fairy Tales. 3rd ed. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. Toronto: Broadview, 2002.
Although Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” published in 1837, contains many patronizing nineteenth-century attitudes towards women, a value system that at least acknowledges the legitimacy of femininity shapes the fairytale. Unfortunately, Walt Disney’s 1989 film version of “The Little Mermaid” eliminates the values that affirm femininity in the original story (Trites 145)
If Cinderella were to act like the perfect housewife, she’ll have a chance at being royalty. Her mother, although dead, strives to do anything she can for Cinderella to win the battle. As Panttaja mentions, “ Cinderella’s triumph at the ball has less to do with her innate goodness and more to do with her loyalty to the dead mother and a string of subversive acts: she disobeys the stepmother, enlists forbidden helpers, uses magic powers, lies, hides, dissembles, disguises herself, and evades pursuit.” This is surely not being good or pious. In the end, Cinderella’s mother has formed Cinderella into a bad person just to marry the prince. The prince claims to not want to marry someone he does not love, but was it truly love between him and Cinderella? The prince is “enchanted by the sight of her in her magical clothes”(Panttaja 288), but who provided that clothing is her mother; once again. Possibly using magic to create fake love is a severe invasion of not only privacy but also character. Panttaja mentions that her mother's magic brings the desired outcome, which is obviously true; but it may have also been possible that the prince was under her spell of some sorts. The prince had a very obsessive behavior towards tracking down his bride, and in Grimms’ version, the prince is found repeating, “she’s my partner”, three times. This shows with further evidence that magic, not love, is at work
When the word “fairytale” is mentioned, nearly everyone thinks of light-hearted stories with friendly characters and happy endings. However, these are not the ideas that classic fairytales originally sparked. In fact, numerous modern Disney movies were based off stories that were not so sugar coated. In the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm were responsible for multiple of these popular children’s tales. The Disney remakes of classic fairytales such as Cinderella, Tangled, and Snow White exclude the dark, twisted themes that are significant in the Brothers Grimm fairytales, because society tendencies continue to evolve toward sheltering and overprotecting young children.
“The Little Mermaid,” by Hans Christian Andersen is about a mermaid who goes to the surface, meets a prince who she saves and falls in love, and goes to a sea witch to temporarily become human, even though she was told she might die. Once she became human, she almost married the prince, however the prince married someone else and she ended up becoming an airy spirit. In the animated version, the prince’s wedding was interrupted and they fell in love again. While the two versions of The Little Mermaid share a common theme, the Disney animated film version is by far a more interesting story because of the characters.
...depicts human love as a product of maturity, whereas Disney depicts it as a cause of maturity” (Trites 4). This fundamental change of maturity in Disney’s version is where the problem rests, teaching audiences that seeking a mate is the path to maturity and independence for women, when in reality love is complicated and ever changing. The “disneyfication” of The Little Mermaid perpetuates negative aspects of American cultural ideals, losing the moral integrity and lessons intended to be taught from the original fairytale.
In both Hans Christian Andersons “The Little Mermaid,” and Disney’s version of the story, the main character— a young and beautiful mermaid— waits anxiously for her fifteenth birthday to venture from her father’s underwater castle to the world above the water. As the story carries on the mermaids priorities change; her modest and selfless nature is revealed towards the end in Andersen’s version. However, Disney’s version encompasses a rather shallow ending and plot throughout. The theme found in comparing the two versions reveal that Andersen’s substance trumps Disney’s entertainment factor in fairy tales.
Epic heroes are described as a brave and noble character in a story. Being a hero or villain is not easy, it takes many struggles along the way but in the end, they are admired for their noble births, supernatural abilities, quests, and valorous deeds. In many ways Ursula is a villain and Beowulf are their own epic hero through comparing and contrasting these characters.
Mermaids have always been very popular in literature for many years. They're known for being beautiful seductresses with long, flowing hair and skinny torso's attached to a gorgeous tail. Hans Christian Andersen's personal life and interest in mermaids led to his fairytale, "The Little Mermaid," which was published in 1837. "The Little Mermaid" is a disturbing tale about a mermaid who gives up her voice and tail for a Prince she barely has come to know. Two of the main characters in the tale, The Little Mermaid and the Sea Witch display many aspects of sexuality. With the help of an experienced Sea Witch, the mermaid is able to enter her state of sexuality. Andersen uses sexuality through the little mermaid to fit the female standards in the eighteenth century.
...aves Princess Jasmine multiple times and falling in love at first sight. They also live happily ever-after together, just as every other Disney prince and princess in every other Disney movie. Parents should be aware of the subliminal messages that their children view in the Disney movies they are watching, and grow up to believe that is how life goes. The children that are growing up watching Disney movies with such strong gender stereotypes are learning things they may factor into their own futures, and think that acting the way of the Disney roles is the only way for them to live their life in a happy manner. The way Disney animated films assign gender roles to their characters effect young children’s views of right and wrong in society. It is wrong, and they should not be exposed to such material growing up because it is harmful to their future expectations.
The Little Mermaid is an animated movie about Ariel, a mermaid, who disobeys her father, King Triton, to meet the love of her life, Eric. Ariel beings to feel love for a human. Their love is not accepted, because King Triton views humans as undesirable creatures. There is an allusion of my life within this movie, because I fell in love with someone my dad prohibited me to be with, Victor Chicas, due to a family feud between our families. The Little Mermaid and my love story with Victor are similar in showing that love changed my perspective over the Chicas family.
Over the years, fairytales have been distorted in order to make them more family friendly. Once these changes occur, the moral and purpose of the stories begin to disappear. The tales featured in the many Disney movies - beloved by so many - have much more malignant and meaningful origins that often served to scare children into obeying their parents or learning valuable life lessons.
In Walt Disney’s adaptation of the story, she defies her father, which correlates to there being a sense of wanting to be independent going against a patriarchal society, yet her reasons behind doing so are not what they should be. Her father, Triton, who eventually hands her over to Prince Eric to get married, controls her every move. After her whole struggle of leaving the sea to be free, she is never really free; she is simply transferred from one male to another. This idea comes from the American wedding ritual in which the father escorts his daughter down the church aisle (Dundes 120). Moreover, this protagonist highly relies on her friends who are all male. This shows that her depiction is simply a woman who cannot think or speak for herself. This rendition of the story is altered to conform to male ideology (120). Even in Andersen’s original version, the idea that the Little Mermaid has to conform to the Prince’s ideals and depend on him to not die is simply a generalization of women being oppressed by the male gender: “One might venture to say that H.C. Andersen’s tale thus thematizes the suppression of female and maternal subjectivity in the patriarchal order” (Dahlerup 146). It is important to note that in the original version, Andersen uses the female figure as the bad sea witch. Perhaps this is to aim towards the patriarchal society in which the mermaid
In many fairy tales, there is always a damsel in distress that is beautiful and the male character always falls in love with her. In Rapunzel the short story, Rapunzel is put into a tower and lives there most of her young life by her ‘mother’ before her prince comes to recuse her. The difference between Tangled and Rapunzel the short story is that, Rapunzel is the princess and her prince is actually a thief, which ends up falling in love with her. Tangled illustrates how a naïve and beautiful heroine, evil mother figure, and a shallow egotistical hero can make a fairy tale story end with love and marriage.
The purpose of this essay is to apply the feminist framework to the film The Little Mermaid (1989) in order to deconstruct Disney. First, I will provide a textual description of The Little Mermaid (1989), explaining the film's plot line. Then, I will describe my analytical framework, the feminist framework, using Ott and Mack (2010) and additional media related studies. Next, I will give an in depth analysis of The Little Mermaid (1989), using the feminist framework and several additional sources. Finally, I will give a brief conclusion, providing an...