Is the Original Little Mermaid a Bad Role Model?

Singing Caribbean crabs named Sebastian, a fish named Flounder as a best friend. And most important, a little princess mermaid called Ariel. These are the images that come to the mind of the millions of people. Who have enjoyed Disney's movie entitled The Little Mermaid. I myself have watched this movie with delightful glee repetitively as a child. Again and again the tape of the little mermaid has played until the VCR complained loudly from the abuse. As the video has and continues to do so with an uncountable amount of children across the world. Warm and fuzzy feelings are all that most people now associate with this movie. So when Susan White asserts that Disney's version of Hans Christian Andersons story The Little Mermaid actually perpetuates a negative stereotype of a woman to its viewers she must make a quite an argument to convince any loving fan.

In the article Split Skins, Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid Susan White doesn't just make the claim that Disney's The Little Mermaid stereotypes women negatively, she actually assumes the reader knows this (although throughout her article she goes to prove this point also). Her mission of her article is to explain just what the female spectator may get out of stories that, like Disney's The Little Mermaid, seems in part designed to reinforce negative stereotype about women and girls. (White, 317). What is good about her thesis is that it was clear and concise and she stated it twice, making her argument clear to her audience and also giving a clue as to who her audience is supposed to be.

The author assumes her audience to be a well-educated one based upon her scholarly tone and the high class of her words. She also expects them to have knowledge of the western cultural standards; particularly about women, politics, and psychology. Her audiences background in basic psychology is important because the proof of her argument is based mostly on psychological theories such as Freud's psychoanalysis, structuralism and semiotics. Since the content of the texts is about the viewing of women in a cartoon move the article also appeals to women's rights activists, students (college level and up), and other film critics. Because the article was published in 1993 in and anthology of film criticism called

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Film Theory Goes to the Movies, many of the original audience probably were readers interested in film. The author is a professor of English whose primary research is in film criticism. So her knowledge does happen to lie in the field she is writing about. But film criticism is just personal opinions from people who have seen a lot of cinematography. So the authors credibility for this article must come from more than just her education background in order for her argument to sway the reader, it must rely on pathos and logos.

In order to draw the reader in to her article she creates a startling and intriguing title by using the words Bodily Mutilation and the little mermaid in the same line. This sparks the readers curiosity for a closer look. She then starts the text by quoting lines from Aristotle and from the original Hans Christian Anderson story of The Little Mermaid, both are very demeaning toward women, which sparks the readers emotion of anger and more curiosity. Then, in the authors introductory paragraphs, she writes.

The critical methodology derives from many sources, including Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis along with semiotics (the study of sign systems), structuralism and Marxism, psychoanalysis is an invaluable aid in understanding just what a film may be working through(White, 317), giving very good background into which logical research sources she uses to form her conclusions and briefly tells the reader her use of logos in the text.

Her layout of the text, the way she orders her text, is well thought out in its logic. After her introduction in which she explains her methodology and states her thesis twice in different ways, the author then goes back in the past to the origination of the mythology of the mermaid. She explains the symbolism of the mermaid and shows how the symbols has changed from the beginning to the present.

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