Roberta Trites, Your Argument is Unpleasant

In this piece by Roberta Trites, it was clear from the start that she is not a fan of Disney's "The Little Mermaid". She claims that although the original story by Hans Christian Andersen has a patriarchal feel about it that looks down on women condescendingly, Disney's version is worse.

In the beginning of Trite's argument, I could see where she was coming from, I found that many of her points seemed similar to the thoughts that I'd had when reading the original version. Hers was just written better. However, it was easy to pick up her bias for the original and bias against the remake which I think took away from her argument by making it weaker and less professional. Her facts were usually right but she would twist them to fit her view. For example, she made it seem as if the original mermaid only wanted to be human to gain a soul. She makes it seems as if the original mermaid never acted obsessed with the prince, as if Ariel was the only one with an obsession. However, the original mermaid constantly goes to watch the prince even after saving him, thinking about how handsome he is and such. I feel like Trites became so engrossed in her disapproval of Ariel that she began to subconsciously glorify the original mermaid. While I agreed with Trites that the original mermaid had a more noble goal at the end of her story with her quest for a soul, her piece became more of a bashing of Ariel which left me annoyed and unwilling to give her argument a chance. 

Either way, I kept on reading to see what she had to say and it just did not get any better. I don't understand why some critics insist on putting a Freudian spin on their analysis! Trites complains about Disney's version teaching children sexist values yet how is she doing any better by pointing out all these so-called attempts of producing "gynophobic" images and comparing everything to a phallus? Honestly, I find Trites' argument more disturbing than the movie. I think the only argument I agreed with her over was at the very beginning which was that "If children are needlessly repressed, they may rebel by developing obsessive behaviors". However, she used that to describe Triton's behavior which I don't think was too overboard because he genuinely believes that humans are dangerous and he was just trying to take care of Ariel. I think Ariel's own stupidity as a teenager is more to blame for her obsession with humans, including Eric. Her claim that females are dependent on males, and that fathers don't grant their daughters independence , actually seems believable but again, I don't think that's the lesson that children take away from the movie. The fact that Ariel was able to rebel against her father to be with Eric shows she could have easily rebelled for her independence.

I may not have agreed with Trites' argument but I do give her credit for sticking to what she believed and that she found enough examples and scenes to support her argument to a reasonably believable level.