Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender stereotypes the little mermaid
The little mermaid fairy tale analysis
Little mermaid summary disney
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Gender stereotypes the little mermaid
The Reality Within Fairytales
The Little Mermaid produced by Disney in 1989 portrays a tale of a sixteen year old girl facing the challenges of womanhood. As King Triton, Ariel’s father, forbids her from leaving the ocean she rebels and swims to the surface. In doing so Ariel meets the love of her life. The young mermaid overcomes many obstacles in order to take her life into her own hands and become a human. While Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid depicts a vibrant young woman facing the challenges of an unknown world the original version proves to be much different. In 1836 Hans Christian Andersen wrote a melancholic tale of a young, depressed, and scrawny unnamed woman who changes her appearance for a prince. The storylines are fairly similar, but in Andersen’s version the young girl is put through tremendous pain and suffering. Depression and pain are often associated with Andersen’s original work while Disney focuses on a more cheerful and joyous aspect.
Throughout Andersen’s tale of The Little Mermaid an unnamed ten year old mermaid is caught in mental and physical turmoil. The young girl must marry her true love or else she will die broken hearted and dissolve in the sea foam in the waves. The mermaid takes it upon
…show more content…
In Hans Christian Andersen’s story there are many elements of torture and depression. The mermaid experiences extreme pain in growing legs and she feels as if she’s being cut each time she puts pressure on her legs. Yet in the Disney version Ariel painlessly is given legs, she just has to give up her voice to Ursula. Disney had taken most of the depressing parts out of Andersen’s story. In Andersen’s version Prince Eric marries another woman and leaves Ariel heartbroken, causing her to go to the ocean and disintegrate. While in Disney’s movie Ariel wins over Prince Eric, marries him, and lives happily ever
Throughout the years, the story of Cinderella has changed as different authors, including the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney have weaved their perspectives, morals, and agendas into their retellings. Just as varying rhetors can ha...
Did you know Walt Disney changed the lives of so many people? These are two characters that are either changed those lives or not. Mulan is a female character that changed into a man to save her father from joining the army. She has appeared in 36th animated feature film Mulan, as well as its sequel Mulan II. Ariel is a mermaid who thought she did not belong under the sea. She is from the Disney Pictures' 28th animated film The Little Mermaid. She is all so from The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning. Mulan is a better role model than Ariel. Mulan is a better role model because she doesn't trust strangers, she would die for her family, and she follows her instincts.
The first reason why Ariel is most like myself is because of her love for adventure. In the film, The Little Mermaid, Ariel wonders off to ship wrecks and swims up to the surface to speak to birds to identify human objects. She is always on the run for an adventure, much like myself. If I am not at home taking care of my family, we are out at the Kermit sand hills, taking last minute trips to Indiana, or spending the weekend at my families’ lake house. Like the quote in The Little Mermaid and on “IMDb” says, “If only I could make him understand. I just don't see things the way he does. I just don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad,” I too agree, the world is a beautiful, magnificent place and taking adventures and exploring is something that has always been appealing to me.
Under the sea, in an idyllic and beautiful garden, stands a statue of a young man cut out of cold stone – for the Little Mermaid who knows nothing but the sea, the statue stands as an emblem of the mysterious over-world, a stimulus for imagination and sexual desire, an incentive for expansion of experience, and most predominately, an indication that something great and all-encompassing is missing from her existence. Traces of curiosity and a vague indication of the complexities of adult desires mark the child mermaid; in such a stage of development, the statue will suffice. However, as the Little Mermaid reaches puberty, the statue must allegorically come alive in order to parallel the manifestation of her new-found adult desires – the statue must become a prince in his world of adulthood above the sea. Thus, powered by an insistent and ambiguous longing for self-completion, the Little Mermaid embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and, to her ultimate misfortune, prematurely abandons her child-like self as sexual lust and the lust for an adult life takes hold of her.
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)
Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” tells the story of a young mermaid Ariel, who wishes to live on land with her love, Prince Eric. She learns from a sea witch, Ursula that the only way she will be able to do that is if she is given legs. (Livingston18) In return for her voice, Ursula agrees to grant her legs but ultimately tricks Ariel by telling her if she does not kiss the prince after three days then she will belong to Ursula. (Livingston18) In the end, Prince Eric kills Ursula and marries Ariel. Unlike Euripides’ Medea, the director’s of the Disney movie chose to create a physical appearance that failed to comply with society’s expectations in order to create the ideal image of a woman. In the movie,...
...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 versions, the mermaid meets the prince and he falls for her beauty, but he’s already betrothed to another. However, Anderson’s mermaid has to endure not only physical, but also mental and emotional hardships. She is unable to communicate with the prince to reveal she was his true savior, and with every step the mermaid experiences agonizing pain. Andersen’s mermaid has to stand by and watch her love marry another and her chance of an immortal soul slips out of her grasp. Soon after the wedding, the mermaid is approached by her sisters with an opportunity to return to the sea, but she would have to commit a terrible, and selfish act. The story goes like this, “Before the sun rises, you must plunge it [a knife] into the heart of the prince; when his blood sprays on your feet, they will turn into a fishtail and you will be a mermaid again” (Andersen). The mermaid faced a difficult dilemma, one that all individuals face—self betterment or selfless sacrifice. Andersen’s mermaid chooses selfless sacrifice, tosses the knife overboard and cast herself into the ocean. This ending is not what most would call happy, but it reveals some remarkable life lessons and an incredible depiction of selflessness. Not all stories have to have happy endings to satisfy a reader (Whitty); this story for example holds so much more depth, substance, and emotion because it does not have one. Disney chose a happier, predictable ending where Ariel marries the prince in the end; this ending makes it easy to smile, but lacks in allowing the reader to develop much more emotion than
In the Disney version of “The Little Mermaid”, the sisters of Ariel get little screen time and we learn little to nothing about them. However, in the original version, the sisters get nearly three pages worth of detail, explaining each one’s rise to the surface, and what it was like. This helps the reader build a better understanding of the sisters and the world the mercreatures live in. Secondly, the deeper meanings of the original stories almost completely change your perspective on what the true moral of the story was.
No matter how much we try and do everything right, some things just are not meant to be and the mermaid was not meant for the prince (Ingwersen). Love can make people go crazy and they will do anything to receive that same love and passion back from them (Cravens). In this story, the little mermaid is madly in love with the prince and she does everything and anything to gain love back from him. “Stick out your little tongue, and let me cut it off in payment, and you shall have the potion." "Let it happen," whispered the little mermaid” (Andersen).
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.
According to A. Waller Hastings Ariel didn’t have to face her consequences. The movie ends with Ariel’s father trading his life to the sea witch in order to save her. “Once again Disney’s heroine survives to find happiness thanks solely to the heroism and sacrifice of male characters” (O’Brien). Because of this, Ariel doesn’t grow or mature. Instead, everyone lives happily ever after thanks to the men in Ariel’s life (Hastings). Now, there’s nothing wrong with living happily ever after. However, this perpetuates an unrealistic expectation of life for impressionable viewers that abide by Mulvey’s theories on narcissism and how viewers may relate themselves to the object on the screen (Storey, 110). The image of a helpless damsel in distress being saved by men with no further consequences to her life is harmful because it may give viewers a distorted view of reality. The damsel in distress stereotype erases all of Ariel’s prior independence due to the fact that she has to be
The 1950’s Cinderella created by world-renown Disney director, Clyde Geronimi, has been established as the most renown and generic story out of all. In comparison to Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella”, the standard storyline, both have the same concepts. Similarities such as the abuse, the magic, and the happily ever after is present in both exactly. Although, there are also horrifying aspects to discuss about Cinderella and their other versions. Certain acts such as the abuse and mutilation are considered to be unjust and not right, no matter the situation; but perhaps Cinderella was not as virtuous and kind as portrayed in the 1950’s film.
Fairytales, the short stories that most children heard as they went to bed, are actually folktales from previous decades. The fairytales today are primarily adaptations of older versions recreated by Disney— the pioneers of this generation. With that said, the modern versions consistently display good triumphing over evil, a prince charming that constantly came to the rescue, and a happily ever after ending. However, the original folktale version didn’t always come with fortunate events, but often were more violent and gruesome. With the fairytale Cinderella, Disney maintains a similar theme as its Grimm version; however, the conflicts, events, and characters that support this idea are rather different.
Some of the exact differences between the different versions include, the fact that in the story we see that after the mother dies the father is still alive but he stays alive throughout the story and does not love his daughter the same as the other two girls. Whereas in the Disney version the father dies and that is when the stepmother and the two stepdaughters start to treat (Cinderella/ashputtle) differently. In the movie ?Ever After? we see that the father also dies and again that is when the evilness in the family comes out. A few other differences that were discussed include the differences in the prince's portrayal, in one version he was outgoing and honest, and in another he was very shy, and reserved but very dedicated.