The Little Mermaid, Deeper Icon Analysis

In this day and age, almost everyone who has been exposed to American pop culture has become very familiar with a prominent set of “princess” movies that ended up shaping Disney into what it is today. First released in 1989, The Little Mermaid has become a long standing proclamation that through the power of an unbreakable will and the act of necessary sacrifice, an endearing end will be met where one will be undoubtedly fulfilled with utmost gratification and supreme happiness. Ariel from The Little Mermaid stands for the American public as a character bubbling to the rim with courage and curiosity; a young and beautiful mermaiden who took her fate into her own hands and entered a new, foreign world before being awarded the gift of love and utmost affection. What the general public has failed to acknowledge though, is the blatant compromise that women must seemingly make in society to find this “true happiness”, from sacrificing her lovely voice and her mermaid tail as a way of conforming to a different world she held no knowledge of. She no longer symbolizes adventure and necessary sacrifice, but instead becomes a figure associated with how feeble women in current society are viewed and how they are not good for anything beyond the physicalities a woman possesses. As it is, The Little Mermaid features Ariel, a young mermaid with unparalleled curiosity of dry land. She is a mythical creature to humans, a long lost tale of beauty at sea and a princess among her homeland of an underwater kingdom. Ariel finds herself comfortable under the depths of the sea, but the satisfaction of this situation is not present. She represents in many ways a voyage to another world, deeply intertwining herself with American culture in the form of immigration. The difficulties that ensue are very parallel to what this theme represents. She then makes the sacrifices she feels she must make to satiate her curiosity of what this other world has to offer, and wishes to make use of this