IDODP: The Little Mermaid

Movie: The Little Mermaid (1989)

Age: 16

Common Complaint: Ariel is a girl so obsessed with a boy that she is hoarding his garbage like a crazy person and is willing to trade her identity and mutilate her body to be with a boy she thinks is cute. Your standard, psycho stalker/hoarder scenario.

The Little Mermaid marks only the 4th Disney Princess in the first 52 years of Disney feature animation and arrived 30 years after Sleeping Beauty. In between Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid, Disney experienced roughly 20 years of quality decline following the death of Walt Disney. The Little Mermaid would turn out to be the first step in restoring Disney to it's former glory and arguably surpassing it.

After a brief prologue, we are introduced the the world of the Merpeople as they gather for a concert to act as Ariel's musical debut. Alas, Ariel is nowhere to be found as she is off exploring. In the first 6 minutes of the movie, we learn that Ariel, who is already a beloved princess, has no real interest in being the center of attention as she is too busy exploring an alien civilization. She doesn't have time for fancy costumes and parties, she's a scholar and explorer. She spends her days exploring shipwrecks and evading sharks, looking for artifacts for her private museum. She's basically Princess Ariel: Tomb Raider. She has a passion for knowledge, even if most of her information comes from a seagull who doesn't know what he's talking about. Because we have knowledge of our own day to day existence, it is easy to laugh at Ariel's mistakes, but it is not a condemnation of her intellect. She is making an effort to learn and become an expert about a world she is passionate about, using the best sources she can find. By even communicating with Scuttle, she is violating the laws of her people, so she is clearly willing to go after what she wants, no matter the cost.

When she returns home, she is confronted by her father, King Triton, who is a severe racist and isolationist. While we can certainly empathize with Triton's concerns, calling an entire race of people barbarians is pretty racist. After Ariel tries unsuccessfully to counter her father's ignorance, she retreats to her museum, where she sings one of the best songs in the Disney canon. "Part of Your World" is sung prior to Ariel having any contact with Prince Eric, meaning her song is not a song about boys, but a song about a woman who longs to be free to explore and pursue knowledge. She wants to leave her one seahorse town and lead her own life. While the title of the song is "Part of Your World", The actual lyric is "Part of THAT world." She is not a hoarder pining after a boy, she is an anthropologist trapped in an insular world that rejects any knowledge of outsiders.

When she finally sees Prince Eric, her fascination with him is an extension of her love of the human world, not the other way around. A well worn trope of the adventure story is of the hero falling in love with a native of the land the hero is exploring (see Pocahontas, Avatar, Ferngully, etc.) In the case of the Little Mermaid, this trope is inverted when the explorer is a mermaid, and the exotic land is Denmark in the 1800s. It is shortly after her first close examination of the humans that a storm arises and she ends up saving Prince Eric from drowning, and sings a song about wanting to be with him. I must admit my bias at this point, because I have direct experience that being involved in a water related accident and being helped by a pretty girl is a great way to woo said pretty girl, just ask my wife (who also said that the Florence Nightingale effect is a real thing). So now our leading princess has heroically saved a very pretty boy of the world and culture she is obsessed with, and has a shared traumatic experience with him. This is the part where I try to remind people that stories happen in a particular order, and given circumstances can change as the plot unfolds, but it is unfair to attribute intentions to characters using information they themselves do not yet have. Sure, Ariel is smitten with a boy she just met and sings a song about wanting to be with him. But at this point in the story, she has no knowledge that becoming human is even a possibility. Her desire to literally become human is still idle fantasy, similar to any teenager daydreaming about being magically united with their favorite celebrity. As a bonus, Ariel, the fighter of sharks and fearless explorer, now has a story about the time she saved a prince from drowning. If she wasn't later caught up in a power grab by a deposed tyrant, this would likely have been the extent of it. Even if her plans to see him again had worked, her best case scenario would have been for her to be a friend and improve human/merpeople relations once the anatomical realities kicked in. She would have eventually phased out of her crush and moved on with her life.

Unfortunately for Ariel, her father is told of her love for a human and goes completely nuts when he catches her in the midst of a romantic daydream. Rather than try to patiently have a discussion with her about the realities and dangers of becoming too attached to someone she can never be with, he goes full fundamentalist and destroys her entire life's work. While the human value of her collection may have been minimal, these were priceless artifacts to her. Imagine if you were 16 and your Father stormed into your room, tore every poster off your wall, smashed your collectibles and burned all of your books because they didn't like who you were associating with. Oh, and your mother is not in the picture so you have no backup parental figure to save you or offer solace. All this happens when 30 seconds earlier, you were happily daydreaming and enjoying being in love. Wouldn't that put you in a slightly emotionally vulnerable state? King Triton does most of Ursula's work for her.

Even in this state, Ariel initially refuses to even go to Ursula until the eel knocks over a piece of Eric's statue. While the traditional reading is that Ariel swims off to be with a boy, the manner in which she leaves and the way she shuts down Sebastian is one of anger and defiance. Her father has just tried to dominate and control her, taking away her ability to make her own choices, so she makes the one choice still available to her. She refuses to be bullied into submission and is running away to live her own life. This is the essence of many Disney stories. They are about the yearning for freedom, adventure, and independence that most children have. The lack of good parenting role models is a great way to allow these characters to get themselves into dramatically interesting situations. Ariel needs to learn from active experience, something that is utterly denied to her at home. Her move isn't a great choice, but it is HER choice.

The scene in Ursula's lair is a classic devil's bargain sequence in which Ursula applies numerous manipulation and sales techniques to trick Ariel into an impossible situation. Ursula starts with an otherwise reasonably intelligent person caught in a highly emotional state and offers her the very thing Ariel most desires, something she never imagined would even be possible. Step two is to tell Ariel that if she can win the heart of the man she loves in three days, she gets to stay human forever. She then gives the consequence of failure, eternal slavery, which, given Ariel's current state of mind, is not much worse off than she perceives she is right now. Only after Ariel has had a few moments to realize the lure of getting her heart's desire does the cost come up. Sales 101: The price comes at the end of the sales pitch because if they can get you emotionally invested in the value of what they are selling, you are less likely to care about the price. Go to any timeshare presentation to see this in action. Ursula is a very good salesman, and so she immediately downplays the price as well, but telling her that in the human world, talk is overrated. So her simplified pitch is basically, "I will give you everything you've ever wanted for a song! Literally!" Then, to seal the deal, Ursula demands and immediate decision, preventing Ariel the time to come to her senses. Step by step, Ursula seduces an intelligent woman into a stupid decision by playing her like a fiddle. This also the same technique Palpatine uses to turn Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, except in Star Wars, it is referred to as tragic, but with Ariel, she is often accused of being stupid. What I'm attempting to show is that while Ariel makes an extremely poor choice, it is not because she's just a boy crazy bimbo. The movie just spent half it's run time showing us that she is independent, intelligent and heroic. She is simply caught up in a moment of weakness and tricked into an impossible situation.

Now we come to the part of the movie where Ariel has to woo the prince without being able to speak. This is where jaded adults who grew up with this movie go, "WHY DOESN'T SHE JUST WRITE DOWN WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?! PROBLEM SOLVED!!!" This is where I try to remind folks to review what the given circumstances of the movie are. First, Merfolk are only a myth to the humans. Second, there is no magic that we know of in the human world. Third, despite her best efforts, she has very little working knowledge of human culture and customs. So what exactly is Ariel supposed to write? "Hi, I'm Ariel. I used to be a mermaid, but I saw you and fell in love with you and then my dad blew up my secret room because I saved your life, so I sold my soul to a witch who made me a human but took my voice. Please fall in love with me and kiss me so I don't get turned into a creepy worm thing for all eternity" Yes, that should go over well. Also, her initial attempts to explain come off as random flailing about, so she reverts to simply being herself as best as she can. Even without her voice, her passion for life, and eagerness for new experiences charms everyone she meets. Yes Ariel is in love with a boy and has made one massively ill advised choice under duress, but she has otherwise remained true to herself throughout. She wanted to live in the human world before she fell in love with a boy, and once she was there, she kept her same personality. She does not spend her finite time as a human throwing herself at a boy. She explores the country and tries to experience as much of the human world as possible. Her zest for life is what draws Eric to her. It is her male sidekick characters that try to get her to shamelessly flirt and throw herself at him. But Ariel never tries to force the issue, even after she learns that Eric will marry someone else. However, when she learns that Eric is about to marry Ursula in disguise, she immediately rushes off to save him. She doesn't even hesitate, almost drowning in the attempt (don't swim in a dress kids). The man who just broke her heart is in mortal peril, and she rushes to save him without a second thought because it is the right thing to do. Call it what you will, but I see this as an act of real love.

In the climactic fight against Mega Ursula, Ariel does appear to just be a victim who needs to be saved by a man. But if you think about it for a second, Ariel has actually been rushing to save those she cares about throughout the movie, so she is not so much a damsel in distress as she is a person who is in a situation that has finally become too big for her to handle alone. Also, she already saved Eric's life, and stopped him from marrying a sea witch so he kind of owes her one if he's going to pull his own weight in their relationship. In all of the excitement, it is easy to forget that there is no magical true love's kiss to save the day. Because we are watching a fairy tale, we assume that if Ariel and Eric kiss all will be well, but we are never given a deus ex kiss moment, so whether or not Eric is Ariel's true love is up for debate. What we do know is that they seem to be two nice kids who've been through something extraordinary together. And really, if impaling a 100 ft tall octopus lady with a sunken ship isn't a sign of true love, I don't know what is. In the end, Ariel is able to live the life that feels authentic to her, and her fundi dad finally accepts his daughter for who she is, and not who he wanted her to be. This is where I'd say something like stop minimizing Ariel and defining her by her choice of husband, but really, she doesn't need my help. She's probably off curating a museum somewhere when she's not teaching classes about human and merpeople culture or exploring ancient ruins.