Perverts!
Question: are Ariel and/or Eric from The Little Mermaid sexual perverts? They both have serious cross-species romantic feelings, and Eric can't even get it up for Ariel when she's temporarily tranformed into a human (although he gets over this by the end of the movie). There is definitely a worry that he's just after a piece of tail, and that she is far to impressed with his ability to walk upright.
Part of what matters here is what the categories of "merperson" and "human" are, in the world of the movie. Is the Ariel-Eric relationship the equivalent of me having a relationship with a chimpanzee (i.e. perverted)? Or is it more like "jungle fever" (i.e. not perverted)? If the latter, I'm vaguely disgusted by the film's ending: Ariel permanently abandoning her mermaid identity to join up with the race of land-lubbers. I never was sure why Eric couldn't be transformed into a merman, which seemed a lot cooler than being human, given the compelling arguments presented in "Under the Sea".
Conclusion: Ariel (who yearns to not be something "of the sea") is the anti-Lorre (who defies his landed origins and yearns to be "of the sea"), in other words, she is pure evil!
Part of what matters here is what the categories of "merperson" and "human" are, in the world of the movie. Is the Ariel-Eric relationship the equivalent of me having a relationship with a chimpanzee (i.e. perverted)? Or is it more like "jungle fever" (i.e. not perverted)? If the latter, I'm vaguely disgusted by the film's ending: Ariel permanently abandoning her mermaid identity to join up with the race of land-lubbers. I never was sure why Eric couldn't be transformed into a merman, which seemed a lot cooler than being human, given the compelling arguments presented in "Under the Sea".
Conclusion: Ariel (who yearns to not be something "of the sea") is the anti-Lorre (who defies his landed origins and yearns to be "of the sea"), in other words, she is pure evil!
posted by Allan Hazlett | 10:42 PM
2 Comments:
I remember, when this movie came out, my dad and aunt eviscerating the romantic conceit at the dinner table to the obvious trauma of the younger kids -- even though I, myself, have harbored a kind of obsession with it since it appeared, I admit my aunt's point that "And now Ariel, giving up all her family and friends, gets to live happily ever after, until she catches bubonic plague or is killed in a violent peasant revolt!"
And while I'm afraid I have to give more thought to the question of mer/human sexual relations (I've always been stuck on the question of how merpeople do it at all -- my mom never explained it to my satisfaction), I would like to share the following upsetting experience I had recently over an old NYTimes crossword puzzle. The clue was "Sea creature of legend." The answer -- I maintain! -- is obviously "Kraken." But the dim-witted and sea-traitorous crossword editor insisted it was "Merman."
I refused to change my answer, and just made up other words around it to make it fit. In protest.
A Merman isn't a "creature." That's racist. I've had it with this country.
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