When "The Little Mermaid" was released in 1989, Disney received praise because after decades of meek and uninteresting princesses, the studio has finally created a fully-realized character. However, nearly three decades later, researchers have found a major problem that has set a pattern to the five films that followed the under-the-sea adventure.
According to The Washinton Post, "The Little Mermaid" is the first Disney Princess film where the central character, who is female, is significantly "outspoken" by male characters. The animated film, which was heralded by critics and the audience as progressive in terms of character development, Ariel actually represents a step backward in the princess genre.
One can argue that Ariel lost her voice halfway through the film, so, of course she is going to have fewer spoken lines despite the fact that she is the main character. However, Ariel is only the first princess to "lose her voice" in the genre. A string of female characters that came after the fiery-haired royalty also "lost their voices."
Prior to Ariel, Disney Princesses often spoke as much as or even more than the male characters. "Snow White," for example, had half of the spoken dialogue. In "Sleeping Beauty," women had 70 percent lines while the men only had 30 percent.
Meanwhile, from 1989-1999, Disney films became male-dominated.Men spoke 68 percent of the dialogue in "The Little Mermaid," 71 percent in "Beauty and the Beast," 90 percent in "Aladdin," 76 percent in "Pocahontas," and 77 percent in "Mulan". Note that Mulan was considered female even when she was under the guise of Ping.
Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer, two linguists, looked at the dialogue of the "Disney Princesses franchise and found that on average, men have three times more lines than women. This is extremely troubling considering that children of all ages are still watching these films on repeat and incorporating their values into daily life.
Take this three-year-old girl, for example. Elite Daily featured a Disney fan named Claire, who became an overnight singing sensation after her cover of "Part of Your World" went viral.
Fought and Eisenhauer explained that it is important for everyone to analyze films from Disney because these princess stories have a hand on how children will turn out to be in the future. Because so many girls especially watch and idolize Ariel, Cinderella, and Snow White, the gender roles presented in the films are worth looking at.
"We don't believe that little girls naturally play a certain way or speak a certain way," explained Fought. "They're not born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls."
