Tag: Racism

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Little Mermaid

This review by Ana Mardoll previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 9, 2012. 

 

Disney. The word is so synonymous in my mind with “animated feature films” that it’s like using “Kleenex” for “tissue.” When children come to my house, as they sometimes do, they’re invariably drawn to my huge selection of “Disney movies,” only about 70% of which are actually affiliated with Disney in any way shape or form. I enjoy most of them, or I wouldn’t own them. They each have their own problems, but a good many of them have something truly positive that I treasure. And what better way to start a deconstruction of animated feature films with the one I knew first and loved best: The Little Mermaid?

The Little Mermaid is possibly one of the most contentious movies I’ve ever loved. It was created in 1989, and has been specially beloved by many children in general and by myself in particular since then. I must have watched the movie eighty squintillion times as a child; it was one of the few videos I loved enough to manage to convince my parents to buy, and I watched it until the video literally broke from use. By that point, Disney had locked the reel in their “appreciate for value” vault and when they relaunched the movie in theaters in 1997, I was there to see it on the big screen. I have never been able to watch the movie without sobbing straight through from opening titles to end credits.

I sometimes feel like everyone I meet online has seen this movie at least once. Almost all of them have an opinion on the movie. Most of the opinions are strongly polarized: either Ariel is a free-thinking young woman who bravely rejects racism to forge her own destiny and create a lasting peace between two cultures or she’s an idealized anti-feminist icon, complete with Barbie-doll figure and shell bikini, completely willing to throw away her family, her culture, and her own voice for the sake of a man she’s never even met.

Those who fall between these two views tend to stay out of the flame wars. I don’t blame them.

I like The Little Mermaid. I like a lot of things that are problematic, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with liking problematic things as long as a certain awareness is maintained that Problems Abound Therein. Art is complicated like that. But I like The Little Mermaid and I think it’s compatible with valuable feminist messages. Certainly, it was my first introduction into a feminist narrative and I have always considered the problematic romance storyline to be camouflage for the real story. But we’ll see whether or not you agree.


Please note that everything I say from here on in is just my opinion.

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of an Otherkin girl living in a world that is hostile to Otherkin. Ariel is a human born into a merperson’s body, and in a culture that routinely lambasts humans for the very same things that the underwater world does: eat fish. (Seriously. That shark at the beginning who chases Ariel and Flounder is clearly trying to eat them. These are not Happy Vegetarian Fishes.)

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of a feminist girl living in a world that is hostile to feminist ideals. Ariel is a headstrong young woman who wants knowledge and growth and her own voice, but these things are being systematically denied to her. The only form of learning her father permits is that of patriarchy-approved women’s pursuits: she may study music, but not other cultures.

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of a culture-conscious girl living in a world that mandates insularity. Ariel wants to learn about cultures and peoples and practices and histories different from her own, but she lives in a world that holds even third-hand study of such things to be utterly forbidden because the power structure believes that the populace is safer if they are steeped in fear and ignorance. (Fearful merpeople won’t try to make contact with the humans, and thus fear maintains their secrecy.)


And now I’ll walk through the film and explain why I feel these things.

The opening titles air over singing humans as they work on the local prince’s pleasure ship / wedding ship / fishing ship. Well, there are three ships in the movie, and they all look pretty much the same to me, so I’m going to assume that Prince Eric has a fleet of all-purpose boats and this is one of them. But the sailors are singing while they collect fish in their nets and Eric (and the audience!) is learning, and here are a couple of problematic things up-front. 

One, everyone in this universe is white. (We’re going to be seeing this one a lot in the Disney deconstructions.) Two, this is not a working class universe. Oh, the fishermen are fishing, but this is really the only work you’re going to see in this movie outside of a quick shot of laundry-washing and some cooking. I think Eric’s kingdom is supposed to be one of those picturesque smaller ones where the royalty aren’t far removed from the common folk and don’t mind getting their hands dirty, but it’s kind of a muddled message and it only gets worse when we get to Triton’s kingdom. Let’s just place a big sign over the deconstruction that these are Privileged White People with the inherent issues that inevitably follow. 


We pan down under the sea to the King Triton’s Schmancy Music Hall and Combination Throne Room just in time to see Ariel completely fail to show up for a music gig that was intended largely to glorify her father while his daughters display themselves to the populace and use their vocal talents to praise his name. I can’t imagine why a young woman might think she had better uses of her time than to be a public ornament to her father, nor why she might refuse to come to rehearsals (as Sebastian tells us). And when her father realizes that Ariel has failed to show up for the concert, his eyes literally turn red with rage. Yowza. 

And here is an important point: Ariel’s dad is abusive. Oh, I think he doesn’t try to be, and I even think he doesn’t want to be, but he is. And I really do think it’s a function of The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too. You see this clearly in the scenes with Triton and Sebastian: both men shore up each other’s will to be harsher than they otherwise individually would be inclined to be, and they do this because they think it’s expected of them. When Triton is alone and when no one is looking, his face softens, his expression is sad, and he sighs and weeps for the decaying relationship he has with his daughter. It’s when others are looking — notably, Sebastian, the only other adult male in Triton’s scenes — that Triton is at his most abusively fierce. 

I don’t think this is a coincidence. Triton isn’t monstrous and Sebastian doesn’t callously bring out the worst in him; they both reinforce each other’s commitment to harmful patriarchy ideals, because they’ve been raised to believe the patriarchy expects them to. Neither is it a coincidence that Triton’s final act of redemption comes after he and Sebastian have revisited a previous conversation and they’ve admitted that they were both wrong and that their actions were harmful. But now I’m jumping ahead. 


By giving Triton this characterization, Ariel is immediately given a rich and sympathetic background before she even swims onto the stage. She’s living in a deeply patriarchal and oppressive community where her status as “princess” is largely ornamental and wholly subject to the whims and wishes of her father. While she probably had moments of tenderness between her and her father, particularly when she was younger and could be indulged as a child instead of punished for being a woman, their relationship is strained by his insistence on publicly conforming to aggressive and abusive parenting models whenever anyone is looking. These shifts in emotional tone probably confuse and frustrate Ariel: why is her father so kind at times and yet so harsh at other times? She’s coped with the on-and-off abuse by literally withdrawing. By forgetting rehearsals and the concert and pulling back into her cavern of collections, she’s not passively asserting herself or deliberately catering to the patriarchy; she’s trying to carve out a safe space, mentally and physically. 

We are introduced to Ariel who, at great personal risk to her safety — both from the sharks who seek to eat her and from her father who could severely punish her — she is scavenging human items from old shipwrecks. And this… is amazing! Our protagonist is an explorer. What’s more, she’s a scientist, going to a direct source (albeit a bad source, since the seagull is actually ignorant of human affairs, but Ariel has no way of knowing that) to be educated on the items she finds. She wants to understand the humans, and to study the things they do and the items they create. She has a whole secret museum dedicated to all the things she’s collected over the years. 


Words fail me in describing how incredible I find this. In another movie, or in a book, there would be more time spent on just how incredibly subversive Ariel is being and has been, for literally years and years. This isn’t a trivial hobby or a girlish obsession; she’s the only person in her culture who is both willing and privileged enough (due to the fact that Triton might not blast his own daughter into tiny bits for breaking his laws) to almost single-handedly set up an entire cultural museum of study on a race of people right outside the kingdom’s doorstep. The sheer bravery and gumption and intellectual devotion necessary for Ariel to have done what she’s done is amazing: she’s essentially created her very own Human Studies department right under the king’s nose because studying other cultures is important, dammit. 

I dare you to bring me a Disney heroine who has demonstrated similar levels of bravery, intellect, scientific pursuit, and proactive awesomeness within the first 15 minutes of her own movie. 

Then we cut over to Ursula, and… I have mixed feelings about Ursula. On the one hand, she’s a fat woman and a villain in a movie that has problematic body portrayals. Ariel’s sisters are almost uniform in body type, expect for Adella who kind of sort of maybe looks a little bit bigger than her sisters, in the Lane Bryant model sort of way (i.e., same breast and hip proportions, just slightly bigger all over) and who was promptly slimmed down for the sequel because Disney got the memo that fat people are not sexeh because DEATHFATS. The only other fat women in this movie are the castle servants, who are fat in the non-threatening happy-servant kind of way, and the fat woman in the Ursula song who “this one [is] longing to be thinner.” And — rage! — the fat merwoman’s tail extends up and over her breasts like Ursula’s does, but the thin incarnation of the fat woman has the bare-stomach shell-bra combo that Ariel sports. Because nude fat stomachs are obscene and ugly, but thin fat stomachs are normalized and pretty! Grr, Disney. 


But! Ursula is sexy. Her breasts! Her butt! The way she moves! Her voice! I don’t honestly remember really… noticing this as a child, but it’s there and it’s largely treated as… normal. Ursula isn’t evil because she’s sexy, nor does she seem really to be evil because she’s fat. She’s just evil and fat and sexy, all in the same package, and I guess that’s kind of cool? I’m not sure. But then when I noticed that in this viewing, I realized that this movie is actually VERY filled with women’s bodies. Can we say that about any other Disney movie? 

I don’t just mean the bikinis and the tummies; the women’s bodies here move. Ursula struts realistically around her cave and gods but those breasts and butt are there and they move. And — skipping forward a bit to Ariel’s “I Want” song — Ariel shakes her hips when she sings about “strolling along” the street; she undulates her whole body sensually when she imagines being “warm on the sand.” There are bodies in this movie! And… while they are sexy bodies, I don’t feel like I’m being clubbed with Male Gaze. I like it. I like how it seems to normalize women’s bodies as real, as things that come in different sizes, as things that can be uncovered and sexy and yet not objectified into T&A without a head or a personality needed. I’m just sorry that we have to leave the 1980s in this regard. 


Coming back to the movie, Triton yells at Ariel for missing rehearsal. He cuts her off multiple times in this scene, and calls humans “barbarians” which is a nice bit of othering to throw onto the pile of objections to Triton’s character. He then tosses a tone argument at Ariel, which effectively cuts off not only what she was going to say but also punishes her for reacting realistically and legitimately to his bullying. Then Triton tells her that as long as she lives under “my ocean,” she’ll obey “my rules,” which is totally not controlling or an abusive conflation of kingly privilege and parental privilege. And then Triton and Sebastian decide that Ariel, who is a young woman budding into her sexual awakening, needs “constant supervision.” Patriarchy for the win. 

And then we have Ariel’s “I Want” song and it still gives me shivers. The opening lines — “If only I could make him understand. I just don’t see things the way he does. I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.” — reinforce that Ariel is not only longing to be human already, but she’s also inherently more open-minded than her close-minded and prejudice liege-father. Her fantasies of being human conflate with her fantasies of living in a feminist-friendly society where she can speak her mind freely and grow intellectually: “Betcha on land, they understand; bet they don’t reprimand their daughters. Bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand. And ready to know what the people know; asking my questions and get some answers.” 

MORE WOMEN! The picture of fire and the wind up toy that shows dancing both have women in them. The parallel is obvious in that Ariel wants to be these women, but I’m still blown away looking at how many women are in this film in places where I frankly think nowadays they’d be edited out. Maybe it helps that this movie wasn’t made or marketed with the All Important Male Demographic in mind, I don’t know. 

Sebastian tumbles out and informs Ariel of what she already knows: her father would be furious if he found out about the museum. Which makes so much sense, really, that his racial hatred of humans extends so far that he would deny his subjects the ability to even study them, if only to come up with more effective ways of avoiding the humans, because studying leads to understanding and understanding leads to compassion and compassion doesn’t mesh well with racial hatred. And, yes, I know they’ve woobied him up with two decades’ worth of backstories and personal tragedy, but I think that waters down the message that sometimes even people we love can be racist assholes. 

We zip up to the surface for Ariel to see Prince Eric and for some character establishing shots. And I have to say that Eric is probably my favorite Disney prince. He’s hanging out with his working class and while that could be seen as slumming, he doesn’t seem to mind getting rope burn on his hands and he knows how to steer the boat, so he’s at least not adverse to learning. And he goes back to a fiery burning ship to save his dog. 


Ariel saves his life. 

They didn’t have to do it this way. They could have had Ariel and Eric catch a glimpse of one another and fall in love that way. Ariel could have been singing in a quiet grotto and Eric could have been drawn to the sound and seen her for a split moment before she disappeared. It would have been pretty and feminine and sweet. But they didn’t do that. They had her proactively search the burning wreckage of a ship, and drag an unconscious man to safety on the shore. And that tells me two things. One, in 1989, being saved from death by a woman didn’t emasculate you forever in the eyes of the (probably) male screenwriters. Two, in 1989, saving a handsome man from drowning was considered an acceptable female fantasy with all the strength, verve, and determination that accompanies that.

Haha, no, there’s totally not a backlash against feminism today in 2012. IT’S ALL YOUR IMAGINATION. 

Sebastian tries to convince Ariel that life under the sea is better than life as a human. He has a jazzy musical number and Ariel gives him quirky yeah-I’m-not-buying-it looks before it becomes clear that she’s not really needed for this song routine and goes off with Flounder. And here is a big ol’ world-building mess because apparently the fish neither work nor eat, and they all live off of plankton delivered to their doorstep every morning by magic. Or so Sebastian seems to think from his position of Privilege? I dunno. This is why deconstructing movies with talking animals is hard. 

Triton calls Sebastian into his throne room and interrogates Sebastian while cheerily pointing his weaponized triton at the little crab. Haha, that is not scary at all! Sebastian breaks down and tells Triton about Ariel’s museum, and Triton shows up and brutally destroys it all while she weeps and begs him to stop. And this scene? Wrecks me every time. The bit with Triton building himself into a rage — “One less human to worry about! … I don’t have to know them — they’re all the same. Spineless, savage, harpooning fish-eaters, incapable of any feeling…” — is both horrifying and priceless because it really gets through how xenophobic and racist Triton truly is. He doesn’t care that he’s frightening his daughter; the rage has built in him to a point where terrorizing her makes more sense to him than actually talking to her or doing anything other than abusing his position as both king and father. 


And this scene is so utterly valuable. Because now Ariel will go to the sea witch and trade her entire life away (and her voice) to go chase after a man she’s never met. Remember that anti-feminist message referenced way back up there at the beginning? But that’s not what she’s doing, not really. As much as Ariel laments in a moment that “If I become human, I’ll never be with my father or sisters again,” her father has driven her away. Ariel isn’t safe under the sea, not emotionally or psychologically. Her life’s obsession with studying and understanding and educating herself on human culture will never be accepted — and if she persists in trying to do so clandestinely, it will only be a matter of time before someone discovers her secret, betrays her to the king, and all her work is destroyed. She knows that fate is inevitable, because it’s just happened not ten minutes ago. 

Ariel can either go home and be a good mermaid and play with her hair and go to voice rehearsal and marry a merman who will never share her interests or understand her and she can live and die frustrated and unfulfilled. Or she can take a chance and become everything she’s ever wanted: a human. And she can become that human by finding true love — “Not just any kiss,” Ursula cautions. “The kiss of True Love.” — with the first human she’s ever met, a man who attracts her with his courage and bravery and adventurous spirit. It’s a gamble, and possibly not a good one, but it must seem like the one hope for happiness left available to her. 

Human! Ariel washes up on Prince Eric’s beach and is taken for a traumatized survivor of a shipwreck, which seems plausible enough. And while I’m not 100% sure I like Grim pressing Eric to woo the traumatized survivor of a shipwreck rather than, say, provide for her education and psychological care and place her in the best possible position to choose how she wants to live the rest of her life, I do love that Eric is shown as being highly reluctant to treat Ariel with anything less than courtesy and respect. A privileged man who doesn’t react to a pretty half-naked woman washing up on his beach like Christmas has come early? Yes, please. 


There’s a scene with a French chef that is so heavy on the cultural stereotypes that I don’t even know what to say. I was going to say that this was one of the only animated feature film songs that features a foreign language, but then I remembered the Charo song in Thumbelina, which is also heavy on cultural stereotypes. *sigh* 

Then Eric and Ariel go on a tour of “his kingdom,” which seems to basically be this one decent-sized town, and Ariel is in complete Manic Pixie Dream Girl mode, but for once this makes sense because everything she sees is literally new and exciting and amazing and a dream come true. And then he lets her drive the carriage and she loves it and clears an oddly-placed death-defying jump and once the panic passes, Eric settles back like this is the good life and Ariel is clearly having a ball. I think that’s sweet, frankly. 

And then there’s a lot of singing and near-kissing and Ursula showing up to ruin things and Ariel being towed out to the ship which is not nearly as awesome as her swimming out there under her own power, and I get that it makes sense that swimming-with-legs would be something she’s not mastered, but still it feels like the Feminism Power has run out, and then Ariel and Eric reunite just in time for it to be TOO LATE and Ariel is a merperson and Eric does not care even a little bit because Eric is not a racist asshole like Triton. And then Eric saves Ariel’s life with a harpoon while Triton watches, and this is hilarious given Triton’s earlier rant about humans-who-wield-harpoons. 

After the exciting showdown scene, Eric recovers slowly on the shore while Ariel watches from her rock. Triton and Sebastian watch from further out, with Triton realizing that she really does love him and that this hasn’t all been About Him and her special butterfly rebellion. Gee, ya think? Sebastian tells him “children got to be free to lead their own lives” and Triton references as earlier conversation where Sebastian said the opposite. And this is the moment where everything is unspoken, but for me it seems like they’re saying yeah, this whole Patriarchy thing is garbage and we were wrong. And then Triton gives Ariel her legs back, she marries Eric, and there’s a new era of peace for both kingdoms, and it is awesome. 

And… yeah. It ends in a 16 year old marrying a guy she’s known all of three days. (Assuming we don’t go with the standard handwave that between cuts there could have been years and years of dating that we didn’t see. Because movies don’t work like that.) And, devoid of context, that is Very Problematic. Hell, even with context, it’s not something that gives me warm fuzzies. I do not like the Mandatory Marriage at the ends of these movies, or the implication that it’s not a Happy Ending without one. And I like the Mandatory Marriage even less when it happens to two teenagers (or one teenager and one guy in his early twenties) who’ve known each other only over the course of a few adrenaline-packed and hormone-driven days. I don’t feel like this is a healthy formula. So there’s that.

But it’s also one of the few movies I can think of where an Otherkin protagonist gets the form she’s always felt was really hers. And it’s a movie where a brave young woman defied the racist and xenophobic laws of her homeland in order to create a greater understanding between two cultures and almost single-handedly engineer a peace between both kingdoms. And she did all this while she was sixteen, as a young woman in an abusive family where she was only valued for her ornamental status. She held on to her inner essential self and managed to forge her own path without ever once beating herself up for the abusive things that others did to her. Throughout the movie, the entire narrative seems to scream that being strong-while-female is not a bad thing: it’s okay to defy your racist asshole dad, it’s okay to save the life of the handsome guy who won’t then turn around and act all emasculated and shun you, it’s okay to own your “acceptably feminine” talents in ways that make you happy, social expectations be damned. And for a movie that is now over twenty years old, that seems kind of awesome. 


Ana’s Happy Feminism Fuzzies Scorecard 
– Otherkin narrative where protagonist proactively gains the form she wants 
– Feminist narrative where protagonist longs to be taken seriously as a cultural researcher 
– Intellectual narrative where protagonist values museums and cultural study 
– Racial/Cultural narrative where protagonist demonstrates that Racism Is Bad 
– Body Positive (with caveats) narrative where women characters abound of different body sizes 
– Patriarchy Hurts Men narrative where good men are abusive because of patriarchal expectations 

Ana’s Sad Epic Fail Scorecard 
– Narrative that is entirely cast with white people and has a Angry French Chef stereotype 
– Narrative that contains muddled class portrayal and is largely about privileged people 
– Narrative that contains no openly QUILTBAG characters 
– Narrative that ends with a teen marriage between two almost-strangers  

Final Thoughts: The Little Mermaid is — like most Disney movies — rife with issues of class, race, hetereonormity, and body portrayal. But in my opinion it’s ironically one of the least problematic movies in the set (“ironic” because the current cultural narrative is that we’re now BETTER at those things than we were in the 1980s), and if you’re a white heterosexual class-privileged girl living in an oppressive patriarchy — as I was when I came to the movie — it may just resonate with you. Maybe.

As a final link, here is a picture of Disney Princesses dressed as the villains in their movies. I like the Ariel/Ursula swap so very much.

———-
Ana Mardoll is an avid reader and writer. She loves cats, fairy tales, and intense navel gazing. She blogs on a near daily basis from an undisclosed location in the wild, untamed, and astonishingly dusty Texas wilderness. Her photo-realistic avatars are a gift from best friend and invaluable writing buddy, J.D. Montague.

To read more of Ana’s writings, including her snarktastic literary deconstructions, visit her website at www.AnaMardoll.com.

‘Phantom of the Opera’: Great Music, Terrible Feminism

Phantom of the Opera Movie Poster (Source: Wikipedia.org)
The Phantom of the Opera was my first musical; I saw it for the first time when I was 4 years old during its now legendary decade-long run in Toronto. I remember very little from that event (though the shaking chandelier during the Overture stayed with me), but I’ve been a huge fan of the soundtrack ever since. Premiering in 1986, the musical adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic Romance novel was written specifically for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s then-wife Sarah Brightman. It’s easily one of the most popular stage musicals ever; after the early 2000s revival of the musical film genre, it was a natural choice for a feature film adaptation in 2004 (though it had languished in development hell since the 80s), directed by Joel Schumacher.
Superhero film fans know Schumacher’s name simply by reputation; it is no exaggeration that he is known for cheesy, schlocky and silly films. The fourth Batman film, Batman and Robin, was so poorly received it single-handedly killed the Batman franchise for a decade and still carries a tremendous amount of infamy. So is it any surprise that his adaptation of Phantom is astoundingly cheesy, even for musical standards? We have a cast of mostly inexperienced singers talking in implausibly varied accents. Some of the actors attempt fake accents (Minnie Driver and Miranda Richardson put on exaggerated Italian and French accents, respectively) and others don’t even try (I have a hard time believing that someone whose title is Vicomte de Chagny would have a modern American accent in Victorian Paris). Some of the directing choices are bizarre, too; The Phantom conjures a horse out of nowhere when leading Christine to his lair, and several scenes have honest-to-god “dramatic” slow motion in them.
But the really big problem with Phantom of the Opera isn’t its cheesiness, but its total lack of feminism. Honestly, if the music wasn’t so good I’d never watch Phantom again, but I don’t know if I should blame its film adaptation, Broadway version, or original novel, since I haven’t seen the stage version in 20+ years, nor have I read Leroux’s novel. Emmy Rossum’s Christine Daae is a lovely young woman with a pretty (if not exactly operatic) voice, and possibly the most spineless personality I’ve ever seen from a female protagonist. The love triangle between herself, the Phantom and Raoul is the central conflict of the story. Her preference for Raoul, her childhood sweetheart, is one of only two personal choices she makes throughout the entire story.  Neither The Phantom nor Raoul ever seem to take Christine’s wants into account. I know I’m supposed to root for her to end up with at least one of the suitors, (the 26-year shipping wars notwithstanding) but honestly? Run away, Christine. RUN AWAY.
Gerard Butler as The Phantom (Source: Fanpop.com)
The Phantom is a fairly archetypal Byronic hero; brooding, moody, dangerous, and artistically talented. Whether it’s because he grew up in isolation or because he’s a dangerous lunatic, he is incredibly controlling over Christine. He exploits her grief over her father’s death to pretend that he is the Angel of Music that her dying father said he would send to her; he has been giving Christine vocal lessons at least since she was a child. He then expects total submission and romantic affection from her for his helping her launch her professional career. Hmm, now, where have I heard “Guy volunteers favors for girl he is attracted to, then flies into a rage when she doesn’t return his romantic attention” before? Can we say Nice Guy Syndrome?
The extent of The Phantom’s control over Christine is very disturbing and often hypocritical. He explodes with anger when she takes off his mask and exposes his facial deformity; apparently he can violate Christine’s privacy all he wants by following and watching her everywhere around the Opera House, but he damns and curses her for violating his privacy. He repeatedly attempts to force Christine into marriage, (to the point where he builds a dummy of her and dresses it up in a bridal gown) and it is even implied near the end of the film that he intends to force her into sex. His power over Christine is such that he can hypnotize her; he may be shown seducing Christine during the “Music of the Night” sequence, but I have to seriously question the amount of consent Christine is offering. It’s kind of abhorrent that so many fans seem to prefer the Phantom to Raoul, even to the point that the sequel musical, Love Never Dies, invents some ridiculous contrivances to have Christine end up with the Phantom (and let us never speak of the sequel again). It’s like they’ve forgotten that the Phantom has committed at least three murders, two kidnappings, arson, and has threatened physical and sexual violence against Christine. There’s sympathizing for the isolation and discrimination the Phantom faced throughout his life, and then there’s excusing him entirely.
Unfortunately, the winning suitor, Raoul, is only preferable in that he isn’t violent like The Phantom is. He controls Christine in a much less forceful but still very paternalistic way. When they reunite, he does not ask her to come to dinner with him, he says, “And now, we go to supper.” How much of this is “I’m the rich guy so I get to decide what you do” and how much of this is “I’m the man so I get to tell you what to do?” He also dismisses Christine’s very real fears of the Phantom, saying that there is no Phantom despite the fact that he knows she has already been kidnapped once, he has received letters from the Phantom, he has heard the Phantom’s voice, and has even seen a stagehand murdered (though perhaps he assumes the murder was an accident). He later tries to force Christine to show affection for him publicly by questioning why she is hiding their engagement, while still dismissing her fears. After finally seeing the Phantom, Raoul becomes so overly protective of her that Christine must sneak by him while he’s asleep in order to visit her father’s mausoleum (the second personal choice she makes, and predictably, it’s one that lands her in danger). Really, one especially creepy thing about this “love” story is that there is an Electra Complex issue going on with both suitors; the Phantom pretends he is the spirit of Christine’s father, and Raoul acts like a father. Both are very possessive over Christine.
Raoul (Patrick Wilson) and Christine (Emmy Rossum) waltzing (Source: Fanpop.com)
Raoul is supposed to be the suitor whose love for Christine is pure, but it bothered me that at the end when he’s pleading for her freedom, it’s because he loves her, not because he wants her to be happy. When the Phantom overwhelms Raoul, he forces Christine to either choose to become his lover, or watch as he strangles Raoul. Christine wills herself to stay with the Phantom – a choice she must make that is really no choice at all. The Phantom then releases both of them after finally feeling guilt over her sacrifice, and Christine inexplicably gives the Phantom her engagement ring. Why is it supposed to be touching that she gave him a symbol of her choosing someone else? Why does a serial murderer get given a memento just because he taught her how to sing? At the end of the film, which takes place in the 1930s, an elderly Raoul purchases the Phantom’s music box and places it on Christine’s grave. A red rose with the engagement ring on it is already on the headstone. Even after death, Christine is still subject to her suitors’ whims, and is “gifted” with an eternal reminder of her kidnapping.
As for Christine herself, because there isn’t really much to her personality besides her spinelessness, I took notice that there’s a lot of symbolic and sexist meaning in the clothes she wears. Her rival, Carlotta (more about her in a minute) wears brightly and brashly coloured outfits, but Christine is always clad in whites, soft pinks, and the occasional red. Christine’s outfits are so unlike Carlotta’s that, when she becomes Carlotta’s understudy, it didn’t even look like they were playing the same part. When the Phantom kidnaps her for the first time, she’s wearing a lacy white nightgown that is both low cut and slit up to her thigh. Pretty sure that wasn’t the fashion in Victorian Paris! But after he returns her, she’s never in pure white again, leading to the unfortunate subtextual conclusion that she might not be so virginal anymore. The Phantom himself wears bright red in one scene, so I can only conclude that Christine’s switch from white to pink is a sign that the Phantom has “tainted” her.
Besides Christine, there are three other named female characters. Carlotta, the literal prima donna, Madame Giry, the ballet instructor, and Meg Giry, her daughter and Christine’s best friend. Unfortunately, the script does not get a full Bechdel Test pass; the few times that the female characters talk to each other, it is always about the Phantom. There is also some rather nasty pitting of the women against each other. Christine and Carlotta follow a pretty rigid virgin/whore dichotomy, though while Carlotta is not shown as being promiscuous, she is contrasted with Christine through her vanity, short temper, jealousy, supposed lack of talent (though she actually does sound like an opera vocalist, whereas Christine does not), and general brash demeanour. There is also a contrasting of a young woman versus an “old” woman; both the Opera House owners and the Phantom strongly want to emphasize Christine’s youth. The Phantom even says that Carlotta is “seasons past her prime” when she can’t be older than her late 30s. Christine is also pitted against her best friend, and this one I find particularly loathsome. Madame Giry was the one who brought the Phantom to the Opera House in the first place; as such, she knows not only about his deformity, but also about his artistic talents and his obsession with Christine. She excuses the Phantom’s crimes both out of pity and admiration for him, which is pretty sickening because Christine is supposed to be like an adoptive daughter to her. It’s quite obvious which young woman Madame Giry cares about and which one she doesn’t, as twice she goes out of her way to keep Meg away from the Phantom and never once does she try to protect Christine.
Unmasked Phantom (Gerard Butler) holding a struggling Christine (Emmy Rossum) (Source: Fanpop.com)
Lastly, though it is unfortunately not surprising for a film taking place in 1870 Paris, there are zero people of colour in the major cast. The only people of colour in the film at all are supposed to be Romani (and they’re, of course, called “gypsies” here). They are in a single flashback scene to the Phantom and Madame Giry’s childhoods, where she finds him cruelly caged and used as a sideshow freak act in a traveling caravan. The scene is incredibly racist, as the “Gypsies” are shown to be filthy, violent, strange and cruel. They are always photographed in the darkest lighting possible to emphasize their (what I’m guessing is supposed to be) “evil swarthiness.” The child Phantom’s subsequent strangulation of his keeper is presented as sympathetically as possible. I have never been able to keep a straight face through the sequence where the Phantom’s first murder is discovered, as it depicts another “Gypsy” coming across the keeper’s body and incredulously shouting “Murder!” in slow motion.
All in all, what a mess. It’s still better than Batman and Robin, but that’s not saying much. Awful acting, mediocre singing and cheesy directing choices are the least of the film’s problems. At its core, Phantom of the Opera is the supposedly romantic story of two controlling men fighting over a spineless and personality-devoid woman. Hmm…sounds like Twilight. Christine is given absolutely no agency throughout the entire story, and can’t seem to do anything without a man to tell her what to do. She’s symbolically valued solely for her virginity, and other women in the cast are considered inferior to her, except when Madame Giry values her own daughter’s safety vastly more than Christine’s. For a musical I love this much, it’s quite shocking how anti-feminist the story is. With all things considered, I think I’ll just stick to listening to the soundtrack.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

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Guest Writer Wednesday: Disney: The Little Mermaid

This piece by Ana Mardoll is cross-posted with permission from her site Ana Mardoll’s Ramblings.

Disney. The word is so synonymous in my mind with “animated feature films” that it’s like using “Kleenex” for “tissue.” When children come to my house, as they sometimes do, they’re invariably drawn to my huge selection of “Disney movies,” only about 70% of which are actually affiliated with Disney in any way shape or form. I enjoy most of them, or I wouldn’t own them. They each have their own problems, but a good many of them have something truly positive that I treasure. And what better way to start a deconstruction of animated feature films with the one I knew first and loved best: The Little Mermaid?


The Little Mermaid is possibly one of the most contentious movies I’ve ever loved. It was created in 1989, and has been specially beloved by many children in general and by myself in particular since then. I must have watched the movie eighty squintillion times as a child; it was one of the few videos I loved enough to manage to convince my parents to buy, and I watched it until the video literally broke from use. By that point, Disney had locked the reel in their “appreciate for value” vault and when they relaunched the movie in theaters in 1997, I was there to see it on the big screen. I have never been able to watch the movie without sobbing straight through from opening titles to end credits.

I sometimes feel like everyone I meet online has seen this movie at least once. Almost all of them have an opinion on the movie. Most of the opinions are strongly polarized: either Ariel is a free-thinking young woman who bravely rejects racism to forge her own destiny and create a lasting peace between two cultures or she’s an idealized anti-feminist icon, complete with Barbie-doll figure and shell bikini, completely willing to throw away her family, her culture, and her own voice for the sake of a man she’s never even met.

Those who fall between these two views tend to stay out of the flame wars. I don’t blame them.

I like The Little Mermaid. I like a lot of things that are problematic, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with liking problematic things as long as a certain awareness is maintained that Problems Abound Therein. Art is complicated like that. But I like The Little Mermaid and I think it’s compatible with valuable feminist messages. Certainly, it was my first introduction into a feminist narrative and I have always considered the problematic romance storyline to be camouflage for the real story. But we’ll see whether or not you agree.

Please note that everything I say from here on in is just my opinion.

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of an Otherkin girl living in a world that is hostile to Otherkin. Ariel is a human born into a merperson’s body, and in a culture that routinely lambasts humans for the very same things that the underwater world does: eat fish. (Seriously. That shark at the beginning who chases Ariel and Flounder is clearly trying to eat them. These are not Happy Vegetarian Fishes.)

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of a feminist girl living in a world that is hostile to feminist ideals. Ariel is a headstrong young woman who wants knowledge and growth and her own voice, but these things are being systematically denied to her. The only form of learning her father permits is that of patriarchy-approved women’s pursuits: she may study music, but not other cultures.

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of a culture-conscious girl living in a world that mandates insularity. Ariel wants to learn about cultures and peoples and practices and histories different from her own, but she lives in a world that holds even third-hand study of such things to be utterly forbidden because the power structure believes that the populace is safer if they are steeped in fear and ignorance. (Fearful merpeople won’t try to make contact with the humans, and thus fear maintains their secrecy.)

And now I’ll walk through the film and explain why I feel these things.

The opening titles air over singing humans as they work on the local prince’s pleasure ship / wedding ship / fishing ship. Well, there are three ships in the movie, and they all look pretty much the same to me, so I’m going to assume that Prince Eric has a fleet of all-purpose boats and this is one of them. But the sailors are singing while they collect fish in their nets and Eric (and the audience!) is learning, and here are a couple of problematic things up-front. 

One, everyone in this universe is white. (We’re going to be seeing this one a lot in the Disney deconstructions.) Two, this is not a working class universe. Oh, the fishermen are fishing, but this is really the only work you’re going to see in this movie outside of a quick shot of laundry-washing and some cooking. I think Eric’s kingdom is supposed to be one of those picturesque smaller ones where the royalty aren’t far removed from the common folk and don’t mind getting their hands dirty, but it’s kind of a muddled message and it only gets worse when we get to Triton’s kingdom. Let’s just place a big sign over the deconstruction that these are Privileged White People with the inherent issues that inevitably follow. 

We pan down under the sea to the King Triton’s Schmancy Music Hall and Combination Throne Room just in time to see Ariel completely fail to show up for a music gig that was intended largely to glorify her father while his daughters display themselves to the populace and use their vocal talents to praise his name. I can’t imagine why a young woman might think she had better uses of her time than to be a public ornament to her father, nor why she might refuse to come to rehearsals (as Sebastian tells us). And when her father realizes that Ariel has failed to show up for the concert, his eyes literally turn red with rage. Yowza. 

And here is an important point: Ariel’s dad is abusive. Oh, I think he doesn’t try to be, and I even think he doesn’t want to be, but he is. And I really do think it’s a function of The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too. You see this clearly in the scenes with Triton and Sebastian: both men shore up each other’s will to be harsher than they otherwise individually would be inclined to be, and they do this because they think it’s expected of them. When Triton is alone and when no one is looking, his face softens, his expression is sad, and he sighs and weeps for the decaying relationship he has with his daughter. It’s when others are looking — notably, Sebastian, the only other adult male in Triton’s scenes — that Triton is at his most abusively fierce. 

I don’t think this is a coincidence. Triton isn’t monstrous and Sebastian doesn’t callously bring out the worst in him; they both reinforce each other’s commitment to harmful patriarchy ideals, because they’ve been raised to believe the patriarchy expects them to. Neither is it a coincidence that Triton’s final act of redemption comes after he and Sebastian have revisited a previous conversation and they’ve admitted that they were both wrong and that their actions were harmful. But now I’m jumping ahead. 

By giving Triton this characterization, Ariel is immediately given a rich and sympathetic background before she even swims onto the stage. She’s living in a deeply patriarchal and oppressive community where her status as “princess” is largely ornamental and wholly subject to the whims and wishes of her father. While she probably had moments of tenderness between her and her father, particularly when she was younger and could be indulged as a child instead of punished for being a woman, their relationship is strained by his insistence on publicly conforming to aggressive and abusive parenting models whenever anyone is looking. These shifts in emotional tone probably confuse and frustrate Ariel: why is her father so kind at times and yet so harsh at other times? She’s coped with the on-and-off abuse by literally withdrawing. By forgetting rehearsals and the concert and pulling back into her cavern of collections, she’s not passively asserting herself or deliberately catering to the patriarchy; she’s trying to carve out a safe space, mentally and physically. 

We are introduced to Ariel who, at great personal risk to her safety — both from the sharks who seek to eat her and from her father who could severely punish her — she is scavenging human items from old shipwrecks. And this… is amazing! Our protagonist is an explorer. What’s more, she’s a scientist, going to a direct source (albeit a bad source, since the seagull is actually ignorant of human affairs, but Ariel has no way of knowing that) to be educated on the items she finds. She wants to understand the humans, and to study the things they do and the items they create. She has a whole secret museum dedicated to all the things she’s collected over the years. 

Words fail me in describing how incredible I find this. In another movie, or in a book, there would be more time spent on just how incredibly subversive Ariel is being and has been, for literally years and years. This isn’t a trivial hobby or a girlish obsession; she’s the only person in her culture who is both willing and privileged enough (due to the fact that Triton might not blast his own daughter into tiny bits for breaking his laws) to almost single-handedly set up an entire cultural museum of study on a race of people right outside the kingdom’s doorstep. The sheer bravery and gumption and intellectual devotion necessary for Ariel to have done what she’s done is amazing: she’s essentially created her very own Human Studies department right under the king’s nose because studying other cultures is important, dammit. 

I dare you to bring me a Disney heroine who has demonstrated similar levels of bravery, intellect, scientific pursuit, and proactive awesomeness within the first 15 minutes of her own movie. 

Then we cut over to Ursula, and… I have mixed feelings about Ursula. On the one hand, she’s a fat woman and a villain in a movie that has problematic body portrayals. Ariel’s sisters are almost uniform in body type, expect for Adella who kind of sort of maybe looks a little bit bigger than her sisters, in the Lane Bryant model sort of way (i.e., same breast and hip proportions, just slightly bigger all over) and who was promptly slimmed down for the sequel because Disney got the memo that fat people are not sexeh because DEATHFATS. The only other fat women in this movie are the castle servants, who are fat in the non-threatening happy-servant kind of way, and the fat woman in the Ursula song who “this one [is] longing to be thinner.” And — rage! — the fat merwoman’s tail extends up and over her breasts like Ursula’s does, but the thin incarnation of the fat woman has the bare-stomach shell-bra combo that Ariel sports. Because nude fat stomachs are obscene and ugly, but thin fat stomachs are normalized and pretty! Grr, Disney. 

But! Ursula is sexy. Her breasts! Her butt! The way she moves! Her voice! I don’t honestly remember really… noticing this as a child, but it’s there and it’s largely treated as… normal. Ursula isn’t evil because she’s sexy, nor does she seem really to be evil because she’s fat. She’s just evil and fat and sexy, all in the same package, and I guess that’s kind of cool? I’m not sure. But then when I noticed that in this viewing, I realized that this movie is actually VERY filled with women’s bodies. Can we say that about any other Disney movie? 

I don’t just mean the bikinis and the tummies; the women’s bodies here move. Ursula struts realistically around her cave and gods but those breasts and butt are there and they move. And — skipping forward a bit to Ariel’s “I Want” song — Ariel shakes her hips when she sings about “strolling along” the street; she undulates her whole body sensually when she imagines being “warm on the sand.” There are bodies in this movie! And… while they are sexy bodies, I don’t feel like I’m being clubbed with Male Gaze. I like it. I like how it seems to normalize women’s bodies as real, as things that come in different sizes, as things that can be uncovered and sexy and yet not objectified into T&A without a head or a personality needed. I’m just sorry that we have to leave the 1980s in this regard. 

Coming back to the movie, Triton yells at Ariel for missing rehearsal. He cuts her off multiple times in this scene, and calls humans “barbarians” which is a nice bit of othering to throw onto the pile of objections to Triton’s character. He then tosses a tone argument at Ariel, which effectively cuts off not only what she was going to say but also punishes her for reacting realistically and legitimately to his bullying. Then Triton tells her that as long as she lives under “my ocean,” she’ll obey “my rules,” which is totally not controlling or an abusive conflation of kingly privilege and parental privilege. And then Triton and Sebastian decide that Ariel, who is a young woman budding into her sexual awakening, needs “constant supervision.” Patriarchy for the win. 

And then we have Ariel’s “I Want” song and it still gives me shivers. The opening lines — “If only I could make him understand. I just don’t see things the way he does. I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.” — reinforce that Ariel is not only longing to be human already, but she’s also inherently more open-minded than her close-minded and prejudice liege-father. Her fantasies of being human conflate with her fantasies of living in a feminist-friendly society where she can speak her mind freely and grow intellectually: “Betcha on land, they understand; bet they don’t reprimand their daughters. Bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand. And ready to know what the people know; asking my questions and get some answers.” 

MORE WOMEN! The picture of fire and the wind up toy that shows dancing both have women in them. The parallel is obvious in that Ariel wants to be these women, but I’m still blown away looking at how many women are in this film in places where I frankly think nowadays they’d be edited out. Maybe it helps that this movie wasn’t made or marketed with the All Important Male Demographic in mind, I don’t know. 

Sebastian tumbles out and informs Ariel of what she already knows: her father would be furious if he found out about the museum. Which makes so much sense, really, that his racial hatred of humans extends so far that he would deny his subjects the ability to even study them, if only to come up with more effective ways of avoiding the humans, because studying leads to understanding and understanding leads to compassion and compassion doesn’t mesh well with racial hatred. And, yes, I know they’ve woobied him up with two decades’ worth of backstories and personal tragedy, but I think that waters down the message that sometimes even people we love can be racist assholes. 

We zip up to the surface for Ariel to see Prince Eric and for some character establishing shots. And I have to say that Eric is probably my favorite Disney prince. He’s hanging out with his working class and while that could be seen as slumming, he doesn’t seem to mind getting rope burn on his hands and he knows how to steer the boat, so he’s at least not adverse to learning. And he goes back to a fiery burning ship to save his dog. 

Ariel saves his life. 

They didn’t have to do it this way. They could have had Ariel and Eric catch a glimpse of one another and fall in love that way. Ariel could have been singing in a quiet grotto and Eric could have been drawn to the sound and seen her for a split moment before she disappeared. It would have been pretty and feminine and sweet. But they didn’t do that. They had her proactively search the burning wreckage of a ship, and drag an unconscious man to safety on the shore. And that tells me two things. One, in 1989, being saved from death by a woman didn’t emasculate you forever in the eyes of the (probably) male screenwriters. Two, in 1989, saving a handsome man from drowning was considered an acceptable female fantasy with all the strength, verve, and determination that accompanies that.

Haha, no, there’s totally not a backlash against feminism today in 2012. IT’S ALL YOUR IMAGINATION. 

Sebastian tries to convince Ariel that life under the sea is better than life as a human. He has a jazzy musical number and Ariel gives him quirky yeah-I’m-not-buying-it looks before it becomes clear that she’s not really needed for this song routine and goes off with Flounder. And here is a big ol’ world-building mess because apparently the fish neither work nor eat, and they all live off of plankton delivered to their doorstep every morning by magic. Or so Sebastian seems to think from his position of Privilege? I dunno. This is why deconstructing movies with talking animals is hard. 

Triton calls Sebastian into his throne room and interrogates Sebastian while cheerily pointing his weaponized triton at the little crab. Haha, that is not scary at all! Sebastian breaks down and tells Triton about Ariel’s museum, and Triton shows up and brutally destroys it all while she weeps and begs him to stop. And this scene? Wrecks me every time. The bit with Triton building himself into a rage — “One less human to worry about! … I don’t have to know them — they’re all the same. Spineless, savage, harpooning fish-eaters, incapable of any feeling…” — is both horrifying and priceless because it really gets through how xenophobic and racist Triton truly is. He doesn’t care that he’s frightening his daughter; the rage has built in him to a point where terrorizing her makes more sense to him than actually talking to her or doing anything other than abusing his position as both king and father. 

And this scene is so utterly valuable. Because now Ariel will go to the sea witch and trade her entire life away (and her voice) to go chase after a man she’s never met. Remember that anti-feminist message referenced way back up there at the beginning? But that’s not what she’s doing, not really. As much as Ariel laments in a moment that “If I become human, I’ll never be with my father or sisters again,” her father has driven her away. Ariel isn’t safe under the sea, not emotionally or psychologically. Her life’s obsession with studying and understanding and educating herself on human culture will never be accepted — and if she persists in trying to do so clandestinely, it will only be a matter of time before someone discovers her secret, betrays her to the king, and all her work is destroyed. She knows that fate is inevitable, because it’s just happened not ten minutes ago. 

Ariel can either go home and be a good mermaid and play with her hair and go to voice rehearsal and marry a merman who will never share her interests or understand her and she can live and die frustrated and unfulfilled. Or she can take a chance and become everything she’s ever wanted: a human. And she can become that human by finding true love — “Not just any kiss,” Ursula cautions. “The kiss of True Love.” — with the first human she’s ever met, a man who attracts her with his courage and bravery and adventurous spirit. It’s a gamble, and possibly not a good one, but it must seem like the one hope for happiness left available to her. 

Human! Ariel washes up on Prince Eric’s beach and is taken for a traumatized survivor of a shipwreck, which seems plausible enough. And while I’m not 100% sure I like Grim pressing Eric to woo the traumatized survivor of a shipwreck rather than, say, provide for her education and psychological care and place her in the best possible position to choose how she wants to live the rest of her life, I do love that Eric is shown as being highly reluctant to treat Ariel with anything less than courtesy and respect. A privileged man who doesn’t react to a pretty half-naked woman washing up on his beach like Christmas has come early? Yes, please. 

There’s a scene with a French chef that is so heavy on the cultural stereotypes that I don’t even know what to say. I was going to say that this was one of the only animated feature film songs that features a foreign language, but then I remembered the Charo song in Thumbelina, which is also heavy on cultural stereotypes. *sigh* 

Then Eric and Ariel go on a tour of “his kingdom,” which seems to basically be this one decent-sized town, and Ariel is in complete Manic Pixie Dream Girl mode, but for once this makes sense because everything she sees is literally new and exciting and amazing and a dream come true. And then he lets her drive the carriage and she loves it and clears an oddly-placed death-defying jump and once the panic passes, Eric settles back like this is the good life and Ariel is clearly having a ball. I think that’s sweet, frankly. 

And then there’s a lot of singing and near-kissing and Ursula showing up to ruin things and Ariel being towed out to the ship which is not nearly as awesome as her swimming out there under her own power, and I get that it makes sense that swimming-with-legs would be something she’s not mastered, but still it feels like the Feminism Power has run out, and then Ariel and Eric reunite just in time for it to be TOO LATE and Ariel is a merperson and Eric does not care even a little bit because Eric is not a racist asshole like Triton. And then Eric saves Ariel’s life with a harpoon while Triton watches, and this is hilarious given Triton’s earlier rant about humans-who-wield-harpoons. 

After the exciting showdown scene, Eric recovers slowly on the shore while Ariel watches from her rock. Triton and Sebastian watch from further out, with Triton realizing that she really does love him and that this hasn’t all been About Him and her special butterfly rebellion. Gee, ya think? Sebastian tells him “children got to be free to lead their own lives” and Triton references as earlier conversation where Sebastian said the opposite. And this is the moment where everything is unspoken, but for me it seems like they’re saying yeah, this whole Patriarchy thing is garbage and we were wrong. And then Triton gives Ariel her legs back, she marries Eric, and there’s a new era of peace for both kingdoms, and it is awesome. 

And… yeah. It ends in a 16 year old marrying a guy she’s known all of three days. (Assuming we don’t go with the standard handwave that between cuts there could have been years and years of dating that we didn’t see. Because movies don’t work like that.) And, devoid of context, that is Very Problematic. Hell, even with context, it’s not something that gives me warm fuzzies. I do not like the Mandatory Marriage at the ends of these movies, or the implication that it’s not a Happy Ending without one. And I like the Mandatory Marriage even less when it happens to two teenagers (or one teenager and one guy in his early twenties) who’ve known each other only over the course of a few adrenaline-packed and hormone-driven days. I don’t feel like this is a healthy formula. So there’s that.

But it’s also one of the few movies I can think of where an Otherkin protagonist gets the form she’s always felt was really hers. And it’s a movie where a brave young woman defied the racist and xenophobic laws of her homeland in order to create a greater understanding between two cultures and almost single-handedly engineer a peace between both kingdoms. And she did all this while she was sixteen, as a young woman in an abusive family where she was only valued for her ornamental status. She held on to her inner essential self and managed to forge her own path without ever once beating herself up for the abusive things that others did to her. Throughout the movie, the entire narrative seems to scream that being strong-while-female is not a bad thing: it’s okay to defy your racist asshole dad, it’s okay to save the life of the handsome guy who won’t then turn around and act all emasculated and shun you, it’s okay to own your “acceptably feminine” talents in ways that make you happy, social expectations be damned. And for a movie that is now over twenty years old, that seems kind of awesome. 

Ana’s Happy Feminism Fuzzies Scorecard 
– Otherkin narrative where protagonist proactively gains the form she wants 
– Feminist narrative where protagonist longs to be taken seriously as a cultural researcher 
– Intellectual narrative where protagonist values museums and cultural study 
– Racial/Cultural narrative where protagonist demonstrates that Racism Is Bad 
– Body Positive (with caveats) narrative where women characters abound of different body sizes 
– Patriarchy Hurts Men narrative where good men are abusive because of patriarchal expectations 

Ana’s Sad Epic Fail Scorecard 
– Narrative that is entirely cast with white people and has a Angry French Chef stereotype 
– Narrative that contains muddled class portrayal and is largely about privileged people 
– Narrative that contains no openly QUILTBAG characters 
– Narrative that ends with a teen marriage between two almost-strangers  

Final Thoughts: The Little Mermaid is — like most Disney movies — rife with issues of class, race, hetereonormity, and body portrayal. But in my opinion it’s ironically one of the least problematic movies in the set (“ironic” because the current cultural narrative is that we’re now BETTER at those things than we were in the 1980s), and if you’re a white heterosexual class-privileged girl living in an oppressive patriarchy — as I was when I came to the movie — it may just resonate with you. Maybe.

As a final link, here is a picture of Disney Princesses dressed as the villains in their movies. I like the Ariel/Ursula swap so very much.



———-

Ana Mardoll is an avid reader and writer. She loves cats, fairy tales, and intense navel gazing. She blogs on a near daily basis from an undisclosed location in the wild, untamed, and astonishingly dusty Texas wilderness. Her photo-realistic avatars are a gift from best friend and invaluable writing buddy, J.D. Montague.

To read more of Ana’s writings, including her snarktastic literary deconstructions, visit her website at www.AnaMardoll.com.

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When ‘Art’ Goes Wrong: Black Women’s Pain Is Not a Prop by Jamilah Lemieux for Ebony

Why We Need to Keep Talking About the White Girls on Girls by Dodai Stewart for Jezebel

Film Women Shining at Tribeca Fest by Associated Press for My San Antonio

Girls Just Want to Change the Needle On a Tired Media Record: Stop Telling Us We’re Fat by Roth Cornet for Hit Fix

The Other Girls and Diversity Goals for Pop Culture by Alyssa Rosenberg for Think Progress

Yes, I’m Buying the Katniss Everdeen Barbie For My Daughter by Hayley Krischer for Ms. Magazine 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Amber‘s Picks:

White Until Proven Black: Imagining Race in Hunger Games by Anna Holmes for The New Yorker

Hollywood’s Female Trouble: Part 1, The Writers by Xaque Gruber for The Huffington Post

What’s Wrong with this Picture Illustrating Vanity Fair’s Women in Television Article? by Alyssa Rosenberg for ThinkProgress

5 Movie Characters that Changed the Way We View Women by Thelma Adams for AMC’s filmcritic.com

Social media: Is it too feminine? by Chelsea Sheasley for The Christian Science Monitor

5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women by David Wong for Cracked

Stephanie‘s Picks:

“Top 20 Fierce Women, Numbers 15-11” from Down With Film

“Future of Feminism: Girls and Women, Don’t Be Camera-Shy!” by Aviva Dove-Viebahn for Ms. Magazine

“Women on Film: How to Rebel” by Katherine Butler for Ecosalon

“Sexist TV: A Spotter’s Guide” by Clem Bastow for Daily Life

“Geena Davis: If Girls Can See It, They Can Be It” from the Microsoft Blog

Megan‘s Picks:

I See White People: Hunger Games and a Brief History of Cultural Whitewashing by Lindy West for Jezebel

’16 and Pregnant’ Brings Abortion to Primetime by Michelle Kinsey Bruns for Women’s Media Center

Racist Hunger Games Fans Illustrate All that’s Wrong with the World by Maya for Feministing

‘Two and a Half Men’ Co-Creator is Rebuked for Remarks About Women by Dave Itzkoff for NY Times

Hollywood’s Female Trouble: Part 2, The Directors by Xaque Gruber for The Huffington Post

Transgender Women in Puerto Rico Featured in New Documentary by Joseph Pedro for Passport Magazine

 Two and a Half Men Creator Says Too Many Women on TV – Numbers Show Otherwise by Amy Tennery for The Jane Dough

Where Are the Women? National Magazine Award Edition by Maya for Feministing

What have you been reading this week?

Biopic and Documentary Week: The Blind Side, Take 2: The Most Insulting Movie Ever Made

This piece on The Blind Side, by Nine Deuce, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 23, 2011.

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The Blind Side movie poster

 

Davetavius and I consider ourselves the world’s foremost authorities on watching movies for reasons other than those intended by their producers. As such, we go way beyond just watching “cheesy” (whatever that means) movies, 80s movies, or kung fu movies (which I refuse to watch but which every dork on Earth has been pretending to like in some attempt at letting everyone know how “weird” they are since Quentin Tarantino’s ridiculous ass popularized kung fu movie fandom as the #1 route to instant eccentricity cred in True Romance) to focus our attention on recently-released romantic comedies, those obnoxious movies in which two assholes just sit around and talk to each other for 98 minutes, and “serious” movies for which people have been given gold-plated statuettes. One can learn an awful lot about the faults and failings of our social system and corporate entertainment’s attempts to sell us its version of culture by watching movies created by and for the anti-intelligentsia, and if one were to try hard enough, I’m sure one could find the string that, if tugged, would unravel the modern world system buried somewhere in a melodramatic Best Picture Oscar contender intended to make people who refer to beers as “cold ones” feel like they’re considering The Big Issues. There was no way we were going to miss The Blind Side.
Spoiler alert: this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to spoil your desire to see it yourself by writing this post. Also, I may, if I can manage to give a fuck, divulge important plot elements. But it’s based on a true story that everyone has already heard anyway, so who cares.

Let me say up front that I’m aware that I’m supposed to feel sorry for Sandra Bullock this week. She’s purported to be “America’s sweetheart” and all, she has always seemed like a fairly decent person (for an actor), and I think her husband deserves to get his wang run over by one of his customized asshole conveyance vehicles, but I’m finding it difficult to feel too bad. I mean, who marries a guy who named himself after a figure from the Old West, has more tattoos than IQ points, and is known for his penchant for rockabilly strippers? Normally I’d absolve Bullock of all responsibility for what has occurred and spend nine paragraphs illustrating the many reasons Jesse James doesn’t deserve to live, but I’ve just received proof in the form of a movie called The Blind Side that Sandra Bullock is in cahoots with Satan, Ronald Reagan’s cryogenically preserved head, the country music industry, and E! in their plot to take over the world by turning us all into (or helping some of us to remain) smug, racist imbeciles.

Click here to read the full piece on The Blind Side.

Biopic and Documentary Week: The Blind Side, Take 1

This piece on The Blind Side, by Stephanie Rogers, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 3, 2010.

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The Blind Side movie poster

No. No to the over-abundant racial stereotypes showcased throughout the film. No to the kind-hearted southern woman as the Black man’s White Savior. No to the shallow, embarrassing, surface-level portrayal of class issues. No to the constant heavy-handed references to God and prayer and sexual morality. No to falling back on the tired tropes of wives as mommies and women as over-bearing and emasculating ball-busters. No to this film’s best picture nomination. Just … no.

imdb synopsis, as composed by Anonymous:

The Blind Side depicts the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher’s presence in the Touhys’ lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own.

Living in his new environment, the teen faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome. As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.

The real synopsis, as composed by me:

The Blind Side depicts the story of a white woman who sees a Black man walking down the street in the rain. She tells her husband to stop the car, and he obliges—oh, his wife is just so crazy sometimes!—then, out of the goodness of her white heart, she allows him to spend the night in their offensively enormous home.

Unfortunately, she can’t sleep very well—the Black man might steal some of their very important shit! But the next day, when she sees that he’s folded his blankets and sheets nicely on the couch, she realizes that, hey, maybe all Black men really aren’t thieving thugs.

Then she saves his life.

There’s a way to tell a true story, and there’s a way to completely botch the shit out of a true story. Shit-botching, in this instance, might include basing the entire film around an upper-class white woman’s struggle to essentially reform a young Black man by taking him in, buying him clothes, getting him a tutor, teaching him how to tackle, and threatening to kill a group of young Black men he used to hang out with.

Click here to read the full piece on The Blind Side.

Guest Writer Wednesday: ‘2 Broke Girls:’ How NOT to Respond to Criticism that Your Show is Racist

(L-R): Kat Dennings, Matthew Moy, Beth Behrs; ‘2 Broke Girls’ still frame

Written by Lady T. Originally published at The Funny Feminist. Cross-posted with permission.
I watch 2 Broke Girls. Do you watch 2 Broke Girls?
Watching that show from a social justice perspective is a bizarre experiment in emotional whiplash. On the one hand, it’s a show about a complementary friendship between two smart, hardworking young women, whose storylines do not revolve around dating or shopping, but about their entrepreneurship and growing bond. It’s one of the few shows in my recent memory that frequently passes the Bechdel test.
On the other hand, it’s a show about two white girls who work at a diner with a supporting cast of racial stereotypes that make the crows from Dumbo cringe in secondhand embarrassment.
That’s really the problem with 2 Broke Girls right there. Max and Caroline are allowed to be fairly complex (at least for a sitcom), but Earl, Oleg, and Han seem like they’re on a completely different program. They have very few (if any) character traits that exist outside their designated stereotypes.
Fans and critics (not that those two things are mutually exclusive) asked questions about the ethnic/racial jokes and stereotypes at the press tour, to which Michael Patrick King (co-creator of the show) essentially said, “I’m gay so that makes it okay for me to make fun of other marginalized people!”
That’s not an exaggeration. Read more here.

Of course, someone pulled out the “equal opportunity defender” card. Someone always pulls out the “equal opportunity defender” card. We make fun of all groups! FREE SPEECH STOP REPRESSING ME WAAAAH!
I’m so glad Michael Patrick King and his defenders can use the “free speech/equal opportunity” defense for their so-called “irreverent” comedy that “pokes fun at all groups.” Because if there’s something that comedy really needed desperately, it was another sexless Asian male character. Han Lee is a pioneering character in the comedy world, because Michael Patrick King said so.
Reading about this controversy over 2 Broke Girls was oddly refreshing, to tell the truth. King’s butthurt response to the criticism was not refreshing, but the criticism itself was. I was pleasantly surprised to see several members of the mainstream media push forward with the “Seriously, what’s up with all the racist stereotypes?” questions.
In response, King did what any socially responsible or creative person would do: he made a creative decision to add a “hot” Asian male character to his show so people would shut up about the stereotyping in his existing characters.
*facepalm*
This is not an exaggeration, people. Read more at The A.V. Club:

“Keeping CBS’s promises that the future would see 2 Broke Girls creator Michael Patrick King attempt to “dimensionalize” some of its racist stereotypes—this despite King being gay, which means he doesn’t have to—the show recently put out a casting call for a “hot Asian guy” to come and romance Beth Behrs’ character with some of his hot Asianness. The arrival of this hot Asian guy would provide a much-needed balance to the comedy’s Korean caricature Han, demonstrating that there are many colors in the Asian rainbow: hot, hilariously indecipherable, unable to drive, etc. Of course, the blog that first picked up the casting call, Angry Asian Man, argues that showing that Asians can also be hot and worthy of making out with Beth Behrs doesn’t exactly make up for 2 Broke Girls’ egregious, simplistic Asian stereotyping. But then, he’s probably just upset that he’s an angry Asian man instead of one of those hot ones.”

As a feminist and someone who cares about social justice, I feel like I should be outraged. But I don’t have it in me to be outraged because I’m just overwhelmed by the cluelessness behind this P.R. move.
I really need Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler (and Kermit the Frog) to help me with this, because…Really?!
King is criticized because his character Han Lee, the Asian male stereotype, is…well, nothing but an Asian male stereotype. Instead of, I don’t know, fleshing out his existing character, he decides to add a Hot Asian Guy character – like he’ll get EXTRA token points for having TWO Asian characters on the same program, and that it will shut up all those HATERZ who don’t like Han Lee!
Brilliant move, Mr. King. I’m sure Asians will be completely pacified and pleased knowing that you’re throwing in an obligatory Non-Stereotype Character whose sole purpose will be to sex up a white woman and prove that you are TOTALLY NOT RACIST.
I could point out how stereotypical characters just continue to perpetuate stereotypes and how harmful those stereotypes can be, but forget about that for a moment. When you get right down to it, the use of these stereotypes shows a complete lack of imagination.

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

George Lucas Couldn’t Make a Movie with an All-Black Cast

A week ago today, George Lucas appeared on The Daily Show to discuss Red Tails, which opens in theatres this coming weekend. Since Lucas is promoting the film, one might mistakenly call it “his film,” and he certainly seems to claim ownership of it (at least in the interview below). However, Lucas is one of four producers; Anthony Hemingway directs, and John Ridley & Aaron McGruder share writing credits.
Red Tails tells the story (at least a portion of it–Lucas alludes to a prequel and sequel) of the Tuskegee Airmen–a group of heroic Black pilots in World War II–who aren’t really as well known here in the U.S. as they should be. 
An action movie centering on a group of men, and targeted at teenage boys, isn’t typical terrain for Bitch Flicks. However, it’s shocking and remarkable that Lucas claims he couldn’t get this project of the ground because it stars an all-black cast and studios didn’t see a foreign market for the film.
Watch the Daily Show clip:


The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
George Lucas
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Many people in the United States like to imagine that we’re a post-racial society, and are quick to point out our current Black president and a handful of Black celebrities as evidence. But when one of the biggest and most powerful names in Hollywood can’t get a studio interested in a movie about a group of heroic Black military men, we should all be reminded that racism is alive and well, and that it remains institutionally embedded in our culture.
Going to see a movie in the theatre is, in some way, a political act. Where you choose to spend your movie dollars influences the kinds of movies that are greenlighted in the future. And, in our age of hyper-capitalism, the opening weekend means everything. 
Here’s the official movie trailer:

Red Tails opens this Friday, January 20th. Will you go see it?

Who’s the "Hero" of the 2012 Oscar Awards?

Billy Crystal: He’s gilded and swooping in to save the 2012 Oscars

I’m one of those old-fashioned people who enjoys watching the Academy Awards every year. Movies, spectacle, the opportunity to throw a party complete with Oscar Bingo and a contest to see who can best predict the winners — I love it for all of these reasons. Even knowing that the awards are essentially a political campaign, in which the studios/production companies/actors with the most money (and thus the most visibility and power) typically win, and even though the films/performances that I’m rooting for are often not even nominated, there’s still something important about the show (I’ve previously talked about why here): it reminds us of the film industry’s power structure and what kinds of films are supposed to be culturally important.
Let me be more specific. The New York Times ran a piece titled “Billy Crystal Is Gilded as Hero of Oscar Night” which discusses the Governors Awards ceremony, held on Saturday, November 12th, honoring the  Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner and honorary Oscar winners (which were previously part of the televised ceremony, but removed this year to “to speed up the telecast and give more personal attention to their winners). Because we wouldn’t want to take televised time to honor people who have made a significant contribution to film, or anything, am I right?
But what dominated the piece — and the ceremony, if we can trust what Michael Cieply wrote — is the fact that Billy Crystal is now hosting the Oscar Ceremony. Or, as the article states, he “swooped in to save the Academy Awards.” Um, okay. I imagine it was just like that. 
See, you might have missed it (if you don’t closely follow these things), but the person producing the show this year, Brett Ratner, said some pretty awful things, and when he resigned, the person he’d picked to host — Eddie Murphy — decided he would follow suit and pulled out of the gig. A new producer was selected, and he chose Billy Crystal, who has hosted the show eight previous times. 
Am I old-fashioned, or is that simply how I’m made to feel by the Academy?
Now, I have nothing against Billy Crystal. He seems like an overall pretty good guy, and I enjoyed When Harry Met Sally back in 1989, and thought City Slickers was pretty good back when I was eleven years old. I know he’s been in movies since then, but he’s not really on my personal radar as a Current Film Star. (Neither is Eddie Murphy for that matter, though I think he would’ve proven at least an interesting host, and would have improved on the Academy’s abysmal track record of including African Americans — at any capacity — in the program.) 
Back to that “old fashioned” idea. This year, the Academy at least showed its awareness that younger people were often alienated by the show when they shrewdly hired James Franco and Anne Hathaway as hosts, a move that backfired, mostly due to Franco phoning it in (I can’t be the only one sure he was stoned) and Hathaway trying her best to make up for her near-comatose co-host. According to the NYT article,

That it should be Mr. Crystal who saved the day met little disapproval from those who gathered on Saturday night, even if it means that the Academy’s quest for youth and a more diverse audience will yield once more to a neo-vaudevillian who is often compared here to Bob Hope, who holds the record as the 19-time host of the show.

Maybe I’m not old-fashioned; maybe I’m stupid for continuing to tune in to programming that doesn’t give a damn whether I watch or not. Or, even worse, maybe they’re just assuming they have “female viewers” (because we’re a silly monolith) because, you know, OMG Pretty Dresses. 
Oprah Winfrey wins the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
There’s something else, though, that I can’t not notice about the NYT article: In the entire 1,187-word article, only about 200 words (3 paragraphs) were devoted to one of  the highest honors and most controversial moments of the night: Oprah Winfrey winning the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. She’s the first Black woman to win the award (Quincy Jones won in 1995, the only Black man to win it), yet her win has been called “boneheaded” and “a shameless bid for a ratings boost,” largely because her contributions to the film industry are seen by insiders as lacking. Further, according to NWFCC chair Armond White,

Is the Academy kowtowing to the silly complaints that no black actors were nominated this year?” says White. “The Oscars are supposed to be about the works Hollywood admires, not a score-keeping mechanism for ethnic and racial equality. By that standard the Oscars fail Native Americans, Asians, Africans, Scandinavians, and Latin Americans every year. I’m afraid those complaints were just media hype, an attempt by some to hold the Oscars hostage to political correctness.

Yes, the Oscars do fail African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans, and many more marginalized groups every year. But it isn’t “political correctness” at work in pointing out these gross injustices. It’s a privileged group of people (members of The Academy) who willfully ignore contributions in film by people of color–especially women of color–and an industry operating with a severe case of institutionalized racism.
The night’s other two winners, James Earl Jones and Dick Smith, got two paragraphs and one paragraph, respectively, in the NYT piece. Jones has appeared in over 50 films, yet is even more of an afterthought than Winfrey.
So, what does this single article tell us about the Academy, the Oscar Awards, and the New York Times?
Do I really need to spell it out?