Who Is The Sexist In The Little Mermaid

How Could Disney Be So Sexist? Have you ever taken notice to the changes that Disney makes to the fairytales from which they base their movies? In Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”, the mermaid is made to be more dependent on males, more materialistic, and more ungrateful than she had been in the original tale. Many authors such as Roberta Trites, Gwendolyn L. Hofmann, and L. Dundes and A. Dundes agree with the fact that Disney completely changed the moral of the story and made it much more sexist than it had previously been. These authors have written articles examining the sexism in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”. The mermaid in Disney’s rendition of Andersen’s tale is extremely dependent on everyone else for her needs. Trites says, “Children, especially girls, can gain an identity independent from their parents by becoming dependent on someone else” (Trites 2). This holds true, due to the fact that the only way Ariel can get away from her father is to be with Eric. She needs him to be independent from her father. She will do anything to be with him since she thinks he is the perfect being. This causes her to go to Ursula for help, the sea witch then takes her voice from her, preventing her from communicating with Eric. She is dependent on Eric …show more content…
She is always under somebody’s rule. In the beginning, she is under her father’s control, King Triton of the sea. Throughout the movie, as Ariel goes on her journey for the prince, we see him start to lose control. Although, in the end, Triton finally “hands off” his own daughter to Eric, the prince of her dreams. In this case, many feminists see it as a “continuation of a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women enslaved” (Dundes 120). Not only do we see this in the movie, but in real life traditions, the daughter getting married is walked down the aisle by her father, suggesting a “tradeoff”. Such things have been around for centuries. But it does not make the movie any less