In The Year 2017 Morals Have Changed All Around The World

In current society today, technology is advancing at a rapid rate and with so much exposure to the media it is difficult to control what is being seen by children. Disney is one of the largest and most successful companies in the film industry. From children 4 years old to adults and every age in between, Disney has found a way to create films that entertain all ages. The seemingly innocent content of Disney movies are enjoyed from a very young age; however, behind the colorful and lighthearted storylines of many Disney films lies many unreasonable social ideologies that children may be subconsciously becoming accustomed to. In her work, “Where Do the Mermaids Stand,” Laura Sells discusses the hidden messages in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Sells explains how this movie expresses a hierarchy of gender and exaggerated femininity by demeaning the role of women in society. Susan Jeffords, author of “The Curse of Masculinity,” discusses similar ideologies in her article. This article looks at Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and focuses primarily the role of men and the how they perform to fit into this white male system by means of upholding hegemonic masculinity. The two articles “Where do the Mermaids stand” and “The curse of Masculinity,” bring to attention the reinforcement of the white male system, the racialization in the white male system, and the reinforcement of hegemonic masculinity in beloved childhood Disney movies.

Orenstein begins by using her daughter as an example of a typical girl who is fond of princesses, categorizing her with the many girls influenced by the “princess craze”. Then she continues to analyze how industries use the fixation and further promote it to secure large amounts of money for their company. Subsequently, she returns the argument to her real life experiences, describing a time when her daughter goes to dress up like a princess, saying, “I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her.” Not only does this statement show how her opinions as a feminist are displayed in her opinion of her daughter, but also introduces her argument of the negative impacts this craze promotes from a parental point of view. The author’s ability to balance her opinions with valid evidence and her relatable worry as a parent, allows her to state her strong opinions openly.

The Little Mermaid is an example of how woman were seen in society. In the fairy tale, women are characterized by appearance rather than personality by both men and women. The little mermaid mentions “But if you take my voice, what shall I have left?” (Anderson 226). In this quote, the little mermaid believes that she cannot just be herself to win the prince’s heart. The prince also looks at women the same way because of how he talks to the little mermaid. He asks her, “You’ve no fear of the sea, have you, my dumb child?” (Anderson 229). He treats her as if she is still a small child just because she cannot speak. The tone helps shape the whole story into a feminist piece. Anderson relays the moral of

Disney directly exposes the idea that young girls should make their main goal in life to find their prince charming, fall madly in love, and live happily ever after. Making young girls’ aspiration in life revolve around finding a man of their dreams “transfix[es the] audience and divert[s] their potential utopian dreams and hopes through the false promises of the images [Disney] cast[s] upon the screen” (22). Disney tells the audience that women need a man to be happy. Disney presents the idea that women are dependent on me. Just like in The Little Mermaid, Ariel goes as far as surrendering her voice, to a witch named Ursula, and abandoning her family in order to be with her prince. Ariel also trades in her life as a mermaid, drastically changes her body, and sacrifices her greatest talent all in order to win her prince. Disney sends the message that girls need to give up their talents and lives in order to be with a man. Disney suggests that a woman’s main priority is her lover, no one or nothing else. Disney effectively portrays women in a negative way, depicting them as weak and needy. No attempt to break the stereotypical gender roles of women are evident however, these stereotypes are growing as Disney instills this image of women in the minds of viewers.

The little mermaid, born into royalty as a princess, not only as the most beautiful voice on land and in the water, but posses a strong curiosity about life on land. Her infatuation with life on land is characterized by the rose garden she grew around a statue of a prince. Her “desire to leave the female dominated mer-world is already anticipated in her garden, which has as its center a male statue resembling the prince. The desire of the little mermaid to leave the mer-world, the work of the pre-Oepida mother, dominates the initial part of the story.” Despite the innocent and privileged life she lived as a mermaid in a matriarchal world, she longed to grow into adulthood, get married, and experience sexuality on land, where patriarchy was

In the film The Little Mermaid by John Musker and Ron Clements, a theme that continually portrays itself is how woman are seen in society. In this film, women are defined by their appearance instead of their inner-self or personality by men and women. It also displays that woman are not treated fair. This is expressed in the film through multiple song lyrics and scenes. Ariel, the little mermaid, experiences many occasions where woman in a society are seen differently than men. In the film, Ariel was given an option to live under the sea and live life under the rule of her father, or be on land with her Prince Eric. Although this is clearly not laid out, a man figure is always above Ariel and could convey an idea that

By acknowledging its sexist, gendered iconography, Hans Christian Anderson’s, The Little Mermaid (1836) subsequently establishes itself as a particularly damaging fairy tale to impressionable child readers. Through the use of recurring images of dehumanization, sacrifice, and the tension of naturality versus artificiality, Anderson’s text promotes the deprivation of female individuality, in favor of a domineering male power. The work ultimately serves to degrade the readers’ abilities to develop the “necessary skills for equality” that contemporary Feminism advocates (OED).

Growing up watching Disney movies you never notice how sexist they really are. I always watched The Little Mermaid, but watching it now is very different. When you are younger you just watch things because you like them, you do not necessarily understand them. As you get older you realize what you were really being taught. Walt Disney’s movie The Little Mermaid displays a lot of sexism and displays how society should see women and how women should act.

The progression of feminism has been documented throughout literature for centuries. While women have come far in the fight for their rights, it is evident that there is a lot of fight left. Today, male politicians debate on bills that do not affect them, but only the women that these bills hurt. This patriarchal society has been built on hundreds of years of female oppression that have been normalized through movies, social media and fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid (1837) has been retold as Disney’s The Little Mermaid(1989); while the storyline has been adapted to fit it’s time’s stance on feminism, it falls short of today’s expectations.

The Disney Renaissance era from 1989 to 1999 (Kearns) was the time when Walt Disney Animation Studious produced successful well-known stories into animated films that brought a lot of critical and public interest to the Walt Disney Company. One example is the article written by Laura Sells “Where Do the Mermaids Stand?” In the article she quarrels and critiques the narrowness of the representation of women in society and how they are assigned value based on the traditional practices of women and not accepting change or new ideas of new acceptable positions for women in the American culture (Sells, 176). She based the article on the Disney movie The Little Mermaid. Susan Jeffords focuses on another Disney movie “Beauty and the Beast” in her article “Curse of Masculinity”. Jeffords says that for a man to change into a good guy they must lose their hyper masculinity and transform their masculine heroisms. They need kindness, love and affection from loved ones to motivate change in a man (Jeffords, 163). After careful reading and analyzing these two movies, Walt Disney has a powerful force to send a message across about representation of gender roles and gender stereotypes on men and women depending on their looks, education and power in a form of entertainment that is fun to watch and never needs to be questioned. Children are raised on Disney and learn from these Walt Disney films how they should think, act, dress, speak... how to

At the end of September, I watched a play, “The Little Mermaid”, by Linda Daugherty, and it was directed by Tim Matheny. This play was used as a proscenium arch stage, and it was an educational theatre from Mississippi State University. Overall, the play was well written and entertaining. It was also short and simple for the audience to understand and enjoy. It was mainly based on a different version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” due violences and the tragic ending of Andresen’s original version because the kids were the target audience. For example, they didn’t want to show the Sea Witch cut the little mermaid’s tongue, but they showed how Disney did it. Another example was they did a happy ending with the little mermaid getting the prince instead of the prince marries a princess whom he believed that she saved him from the storm, and the little mermaid dies. The play had some strengths, but there were also a few flaws.

A little girl sits on the floor with her gaze fixed on the television screen in front of her, watching magical images dance before her eyes and catchy songs flow through her ears. Even though she had seen it at least twenty times before, she still loved The Little Mermaid just as much as she did the first time she watched it. As she watched it, she longed to be a beautiful mermaid with a curvy body and wonderful singing voice like Ariel. She longed to be saved by the handsome Prince Eric, and fall in love and live happily ever-after like Ariel did. In today’s society, women strive to achieve equality between the sexes. Despite the tremendous steps that have been taken towards reaching gender equality, mainstream media contradicts these

The first of these problematic circumstances is the breeding of feelings of discontent in one's own company as Ariel finds that life in her underwater kingdom is simply not enough if she cannot have the love of a practical stranger. This idea encourages women to lower their standards for men in their romantic endeavors simply to make themselves feel as though they are desirable. This behavior results in toxic relationships, low self-esteem, and overall dissatisfaction in matters which transcend the relationship itself. However, if the audience is made aware of the flaws in the design of the main character's ideals of what makes a positive and functioning relationship, the film presents an opportunity for the audience to elaborate on the detriment brought upon the main character by her own disregard for self-preservation and lacking consideration for thoughts beyond that of hasty, misguided affection or preventable sacrifice; regrettably, young children are often incapable of grasping this complex this complex approach to the film. Instead they take what is presented to them at face-value and apply it to themselves in that respect alone; had The Little Mermaid been intended for older audiences, this approach would appear more logical, but since its target audience is young children, the effect of inverting the messages in the film to acknowledge societal flaws is lost, and the results left upon young viewers is less

Walt Disney’s movies have been thrilling young children, most especially young girls, around the world for years. One specific movie, The Little Mermaid, had young girls wanting to be just like Ariel and buying any paraphernalia they could after the movie came out. But have you ever wondered where these stories have come from? Or why they always end with a “happily ever after”? The famous, Danish, children’s writer Hans Christian Andersen is the father of the tale of “The Little Mermaid”. Andersen’s original is quite different than Walt Disney’s “happily ever after” tale. With differences in imagery, theme, and storyline in Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid, there is a lot to be said for Andersen’s emphasis on the female character of the Little Mermaid as well as her struggle in finding her sexuality through various different events and aspects of her life.

My research paper focuses on how the 1989 Disney film, The Little Mermaid, objectifies the female characters' value and bodies within the film's music, rhetoric, and imagery. I analyze direct examples in which the male characters, King Triton and Prince Eric, impose misogynistic and sexist attitudes towards the female characters, Ariel and Ursula, which may ultimately idealize women as weak, submissive, and objects of sex. This is a problematic theme to perpetuate within classic films viewed by all ages simply because these ideas are vital in sustaining women’s social maltreatment and demonization within society. Because the audience of this paper includes my fellow colleagues and highly skilled and trained professor, I present it in an academic