The Comparative Analytical Assignment

Many children grow up watching Disney films and admiring Disney princesses and princes, some parents even seeing them as appropriate role models for their children. However others may have different views on them. Representation of gender can therefore be interpreted differently. The first film, The Little Mermaid (1989), is a story of a teenage mermaid, Ariel, who dreams of becoming human and falling in love. She has to trade her voice for legs but ends up being tricked. The second film, Brave (2012), is about a Scottish princess, Merida, who disagrees with her parents wish to marry her to a local prince. Like in The Little Mermaid, Merida is tricked by an ‘evil’ female figure and her mother is turned into a bear.

An interesting scene in The Little Mermaid is when Ariel is on the beach attempting to make the prince fall in love with her. Ariel’s colour palette is very girly with use of pinks and reds. The use of her red hair and lips represent the focus in the film on love. Stereotypically we know in Disney films, she will marry the prince. The prince and Ariel are portraying the stereotypical heterosexual white couple. This presents her as being more focused on looks than on less shallow things. In the scene, a close up on Eric (the prince) shows the typical tall, dark and handsome man, attracting the audience in a very conventional way. The close up shot of him looking surprised and interested when he sees Ariel is read by the audience to mean he is smitten. After this, a two person wide shot showing Eric’s legs, fully clothed, with a half-naked Ariel in the background connotes his strength and dominance. She looks weaker and is scared of the dog and needs his help, representing her as the weaker sex.

The gentle, positive music in the background with Eric’s deep, manly voice in the foreground shows he is in charge. Eric later repeats twice ‘you’re the one’ reinforcing the attraction they have for each other. At the beginning the seagull whistles and says ‘you look sexy’ this shows she can use her sexuality.

The next shot, a zoom in on her face, shows their attraction towards each other. Her positioning is very sexual as she uses body language as she has no voice. Ariel then falls off the rock and is caught by Eric showing she is weak and needs a man. This then cuts to their bodies close together showing their sexual attraction.

The first clip from Brave is where the king and queen have organized for princes to compete for Merida’s hand. However, Merida turns up and competes for her own hand, as she does not want to marry. This represents her as stubborn and strong. Unlike Ariel and other, similar archetypes, her main focus isn’t marriage. She doesn’t need a prince to feel good about herself. Merida’s mother gets angry with her and tells her to stop. Merida begins to shoot her first arrow but the dress that accentuates her figure is so tight, she rips the back and sides, which connotes the ripping of tradition and entrapment. Merida shoots all three arrows and gets a perfect shot on all three. During this Merida is wearing a dark green cape over a tight blue formal dress. This shows Merida anti-stereotypically as you would not expect a Disney princess to act and behave as she does in this situation. Her colour palette contains reds, blues and greens which represents her wildness. This shows a new balance where she doesn’t marry a prince and breaks Disney’s conventions. In this clip we see the hegemonic control over women being broken.

A close up on Merida and her mother shows clear oppositions and conflict between them. A medium shot shows her parents higher than her, looking down. This shows that Merida is below her parents and they have power over her. Another medium shot shows Merida with a very unsympathetic toward the competitors. Unconventionally, she is uninterested in men.The Scottish music shows the location and where it is set and adds an atmosphere to the film for the audience. This supports the masculine, hierarchical system. The boy crying when he fails show he is immature and Merida is not impressed as she says ‘oh that’s attractive’ in a sarcastic tone. The sound of the wrap of the dress symbolises her physically breaking away from the hegemonic values.A slow motion shot of her cutting her cheek with the arrow shows the sacrifice she’s makes taking this risk. The shot reverse shot of the prince having a tantrum to Merida showing she is unimpressed and knows she can do better supports the preferred reading that girls are now empowered in new Disney movies.

A zoom in on her mother as she stands to stop Merida shows her face which looks worried and concerned for what Merida is about to do. The mother represents the old, traditional ways that Merida is defying.Similarly though, Ariel defies her father, Triton, who gets angry at her for saving the human and being in love with the prince. This is similar to Brave because it shows the father is in charge but the storyline is still conventional as Ariel, unlike Merida, wants a man.

Triton then destroys all the human possessions she has been collecting which leaves Ariel distraught and her angry father shows little remorse for what he has done. These items are visual codes for a different or alien culture that threatens the status quo and foreshadows the disequilibrium come to shatter the kingdom’s happiness. Like in Brave, relationships between children and their parents are shown here to be stormy. Ariel then rebels against the patriarchy structure as represented by her father, challenging him thus subverting the structure of her society. In the film Ariel has animal friends which represents her as kind. This confirms audience previous expectations as they know animals represent nature and trust. The preferred reading here is to see a poor sweet princess who wants love rather than a princess disobeying her father, breaking the rules and running away.A mid shot of Ariel’s excited, surprised face when she sees the statue of the prince, shows she loves him even though she’s never met him. This representation of love being a shallow, physical attraction is typical.

The happy music in the background with Ariel giggling in the foreground shows the situation she is in that moment is happy and connotes that it will all end well. Ariel’s use of the word ‘Daddy’ shows she is still young and innocent and possibly isn’t ready for real life. Triton’s deep voice over the music reinforces his anger towards her. His representation of the middle aged white father who loves his daughter but is worried about the ‘big wide world’ is very stereotypical.A shot reverse shot between Ariel and her father shows their conflict and the division between them. The use of a zoom on her father’s face going red shows his anger building. The part where her dad is angry and destroys everything is fast-paced, emphasizing the anger. Resolution through violence from a male character is another typical male trope.Another key scene from Brave shows Merida in her bedroom with her mother. They are arguing about Merida getting married. Merida then tears the tapestry Merida’s mother is creating for the family, representing her mother’s faith in Merida being torn. Merida is wearing a tight blue dress and has a bow and arrow slung across her back. The dress represents the constrictions of femininity that her mother wants to impose on her. The bow and arrow signifies her adoption of masculine qualities, which is in contrast with her tight blue dress, represents entrapment. While they are arguing about tradition and what Merida needs to do Merida says,“I’ll never be like you!”

Merida tears the tapestry with Merida and her mother on separate sides of the torn tapestry. This represents the division between them and tapestry is tradition connoting Merida is trying to break with tradition. In doing this Merida alienates herself from her mother and also from her family as she is challenging tradition, her country and her family and what humanity expects from her. This scene shows us the breaking of hegemonic values and ideological values seen in previous Disney stories.

The shot reverse shot between Merida and her mother is very fast pace showing the conflict and heated argument their clear binary oppositions. Merida’s mother saying ‘ I am the queen you must listen to me’ shows Merida as weaker in this situation and not in control with her mother overpowering her, making her subvert society’s conventions on how she should act and what she should do. We then see a high angle showing Merida’s face is scared showing she is weak and her mother is above her and in control.

In a final scene from The Little Mermaid, Ariel goes to Ursula to ask her how to marry the prince and be with him. In doing this she must become human. She tells Ursula she has fallen in love with the prince but cannot be with him because she cannot live on land and then asks for help. Even though she has only seen the prince twice she insists she loves him which represents her as shallow. She describes him as “Beautiful” when she firsts see him. Ursula offers her legs in return for her voice, which turns out to be a trick (for Ursula to marry the prince instead of Ariel) Ursula says, “I help mermaids like you poor unfortunate soul with no one to turn to.”

By believing this, Ariel shows teenagers to be trusting, gullible and inexperienced. As for Ursula, she is the archetypal Disney villain, a woman with witchlike powers, the type we see in nearly all movies, even more modern ones like Brave.

The witch in Brave lives deep in a cottage which is stereotypical for witches, but Merida doesn’t realize and enters the cottage. The cottage is disguised as a wood work shop with the old lady insisting she is not a witch just an old wood carver. Like Ursula, she promises to help the heroic protagonist but at a price. Merida asks the old witch to change her mum, meaning her mother’s ideological values on marriage and tradition but the witch changes her mum’s physical appearance into a bear. This again represents Merida as foolish as she was tricked like Ariel despite being stronger. The bear transformation represents that before her mother was strong about tradition on the inside but now is strong on the outside.

The Little Mermaid represents females as rather shallow and males as traditional and turn to anger. Ariel’s relationship with her father is not particularly good as they don’t agree on what Ariel wants to do with her life but by the end she proves it can work. However, Brave tells a very different story about the struggles of a mother and daughter relationship. Merida is forced into an arranged marriage but is disgusted by the idea, preferring freedom. Disobeying her mother allows a witch to cast a spell on her mother. However Merida fixes the problem on her own and stands up to her country’s traditions and overcomes all the problems with her mother through strength, love and bravery.