Last night my girlfriend and I watched The Little Mermaid. We’ve both watched it several bajillion times before, but this time it sparked an interesting conversation about possible Feminist aspects of the story/film. A good chunk of this conversation centered around Ursula, and how she is portrayed and acts. Inspired by this, I planned on doing some Ursula fanart, and did a Google image search today for pictures of the crazy octopus lady. One of the pictures it suggested to me linked to the following entry in the blog Fat Feminism:
http://curvature.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/plus-size-princess/
I’d actually never read this blog before (which surprises me, it looks like something I’d enjoy), and I found her entry interesting. She has a lot of good points. I was a very solitary child, and kind of raised myself on fairy tales – mostly of the Disney variety – and as such, a lot of my work as an artist deals with examining and reclaiming fairy tales that have been warped by the media/sexism/sizeism/etc. So I totally understand what she’s getting at. The Disney princesses are scary in their anorexic-looking buildup. I want to give them sandwiches every time I see them. And on a not-size-related note, very few of them can be considered (at least in my opinion) strong female characters. So many of the earlier ones fit the “oh Prince Soandso, please come rescue helpless passive little old me and I shall love and worship you after only knowing you for five minutes” stereotype/trend/whatnot.
So on that note, and with that in mind, I have far fewer problems with Fiona than she does. At least Fiona sticks up for herself and clearly knows what she wants. It does suck that she is not human – if she were a human character, I agree that it would probably be easier for young fat children of any gender to relate to her. But I think the fact that Fiona exists at all is a step in the right direction.
As for Ursula, I think that it is overlooked often that she is a) very powerful b) honest about what she’s doing – she tells Ariel that she has “raked people across the coals” before, and makes it clear what will happen to her if she fails to get the Prince, and c) has a past history with Triton that has made her a bit, well, wonky. She used to live in the palace, and its implied that she held a postion of power there. I think its entirely possible that she wasn’t always crazy, evil, and hell-bent on revenge. We don’t even know for sure if she sabotaged the goals of her previous victims – the only reason she messes with Ariel’s efforts is to get at her father. It is possible that she gave everyone else a fair shot.
I think it would be totally phenomenal if Disney did a Little Mermaid prequel (since every one of their movies is a series now) that showed how Ursula was before and what happened that lead to her downfall. They could show her as a confident, gorgeous fat woman who knows her own strength and power and maybe just gets screwed over and unfairly treated, as fat girls are often unfairly treated.
…Yes, I realize that this will probably never happen, but it sounds awesome in theory. And that fanart I planned on doing that lead to this post will now show her like that.
And to end this entry on a positive note, look what else I found in my Google search:
http://community.thenewstribune.com/node/41376
I don’t know who’s arm that is, but that is fantastic.
