Why I Dislike (Intensely) The Little Mermaid

Why I Dislike (Intensely) the Little Mermaid

I just realized how much I dislike the message of the Little Mermaid.  She sees a man (they do not meet).  She saves a man.  Having had more interaction with the man's dog than him she gives her voice (Her Voice!) to an 'evil witch' in order to see the man again. Yes, she gives up her only way of communicating to see some dude that she doesn't know.  The sorceress who makes the deal tells her that she can use her body instead of her voice to make the strange man fall in love with her.  The lady who doesn't want her to succeed says 'just use your body, your voice doesn't matter'.  The ONLY way for the Little mermaid to get her voice back is to make a man 'love' her.  Excuz-fucking me?  What kind of modern love tale tells Little girls to give away their main, if not only, form of expressing their needs/desires/wants/hopes/dreams/feelings/thoughts/sense of self in order to get an absolute stranger to love you? What society finds it acceptable to tell Little girls that the only way to get this powerful social tool back is to have a man love them?  

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't apply only to people who speak.  The point I'm trying to emphasize is that what the Little mermaid is giving up is her primary means of interaction with other people and her primary means to communicate.  I just deduced that the Little mermaid doesn't know how to use sign language or how to write (given that paper and the ocean don't mix well).  I know some people do not have a physical voice. I am sure they, more than I, understand how difficult it can be to communicate to another person as an equal person without a physical voice.

We (the audience) then discover that the sorceress used the Little mermaids voice to entrap the man.  What kind of messed up message is that?  First, give up your voice.  Second, acknowledge the only way you can have it back is to get a man to love you.  Third, watch helplessly as the thing you gave up is used by another woman to steal the man you were trying to get to love you.  The worst part of this message is that is phrased in such a way as to say "don't trust other woman" not "use your voice and find a man who loves you for it not in spite of it" or "use your power as other woman are using theirs".  Here the blame is not on the man for being so easily lead astray or the Little mermaid for giving up such a powerful part of herself.  The blame is on the woman who used her voice.  Oh, shit, not just that.  The literally black woman who used the stolen voice of a white woman.  That's some fracked up imagery right there.

Then, just to round out the imagery, the 'evil' black woman who dared use her voice to get what she wanted is revealed to be a horrible monster.  Thus the father of the Little mermaid and the man who she lusts after are united in purpose (killing the woman who used her voice).  It is only after the man kills someone that the Little mermaid's father gives her permission to be who she wanted to be all along.  Yeah, you heard that right.  It is only after the woman who used her voice dies that she gains back her voice and the male who owns her permits her to be who she wants while handing her off to some man he has never heard of.  

The moral of the Little mermaid could then be construed as "women shouldn't be allowed to speak until after a man loves them and only if they have a man to control them".

P.S.  You may have noticed the capital L on all my "little"s. Who the fuck are they selling the image of a Little female giving up their voice to?  Should I be concerned about this?

I just wanna keep this forever.

So… um, here. Have a Warehouse 13 vid set to well, the Riff Off from Pitch Perfect

(it mostly makes sense? i think)

Thank you Mom for buying me books like The Paperbag Princess and Angela's Airplane

Mom says "I had to read them to you so I had to like them too."

white het dudes: it's just a joke. you guys have no sense of humor

oppressed person: *tells a joke about privileged people*

white het dudes: I AM SUDDENLY INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING IRONY OR SATIRE AND YOU ARE THE NEXT HITLER

Mostly now I cannot get the mental picture of what "Indulging Snow: The Mostly True Memoirs of an Evil Queen" out of my mind.  I'm thinking primarily social commentary mixed with sass.  I would read it.

I would also read the fic where Regina 'secretly' (by which I mean not so secretly) releases her memoirs and the world thinks she just made it up but the citizens of Storybrooke know it's true and/or remember their perspective of events.  For example: her wedding day, Snow's inauguration,  Leopold's funeral, etc.

"Most brides are excited to face the world on their wedding day.  Well, at least most North American and European brides are.  In places where 'human rights' are more a concept than a reality and women can be 'traded' easier than cattle this isn't always true.  Personally I awoke on my wedding day with a sense of extreme dread.  My mother, bless her heart and burn the rest, had sold me off to a man three times my age whose daughter looked more like my sister than my spawn.  Of course, our enchanting land didn't have anything as fair or good as an age of consent, just 'heroes'.  Mother consented and that was good enough for everybody, including Snow.  Seeing as I was the girl who would bleed on the alter of their superiority I was a little less than pleased.  It truly did not help that the insipid wretch Snow was treating the event like the most wonderful thing in the world instead of what it was, the end of a successful slave purchase."

Whipping Girl (5/?)

Pairing: Emma Swan/Regina Mills Rating: T Warnings: Language, Sexual Situation if you squint Word Count: ~2,000 Chapter: 5/? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Notes: This is based on the words “They will never love me.” Pretty harsh, Regina. Pret-ty harsh. Also, I’m kinda ignoring the canon when it suits me. Preview: 

“Mr. Gold!”

They splattered through the muddy woods, the umbrella long since abandoned after it had been reamed by a tree branch. Both of them were soggy and waterlogged, with hair plastered to their necks and clothing cinching uncomfortably at their joints. Regina had wanted to cast a spell to keep herself dry, but Emma was such a pansy.

“If you shout, he will flee.”

Read More

Hey, your post got me thinking so I hope you don't mind if I brainstorm 'aloud'.  If we accept the idea that a sociopath lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience then I agree with your characterization of Snow and Rumple as more sociopathic than Regina.  My agreement is primarily based out of motivating factors.  Snow's and Rumple's motivations both stem from personal desires irregardless of others.  For example in Snow's case "I want Regina to be better like she was before/I don't want Regina to be estranged from her mother like me" versus "Regina deserves to be better for herself/Daughters deserve a relationship with their mothers."  For example in Rumple's case "I want to get Bae back and am going to use Regina to do so" versus "I was responsible for my actions and should do all that I can to get him back".  Complicating this are that Snow wants to appear 'good', displayed by her often ignoring or dismissing other alternatives that are congruent with her desires, and Rumple wishing to appear both blameless and powerful, as displayed by pretty much everything he does.  Regina's motivations, on the other, outwardly appear selfish and, in my opinion, stem from personal safety.  

I think a big key here is how much she wants to be loved yet at the same time has literally no clue how it is to be loved.  Her mother 'loved' her which involved using magic to physically restrain and harm her, emotionally abusing her using words (judging by the stable boy scene), expecting behaviours regardless of Regina's desires, selling her to another person (based on the whole selling her part I'm going to assume that if Leopold was not an abuser he was at least the holder of her agency which, really, I think is abuse anyway), and doing all of this because she loved her.  Imagine what she would have done if she didn't.  Her father's 'love' involved watching her abuse and making excuses for her abuser, watching as she was unwilling sold to a man his age, waiting years before he assisted her in her plan of escape and trying to talk her out of it (he got the snakes for Genie), and not once that I ever saw telling her it wasn't her fault, that the people who used her were wrong, and that she deserved more.  Pretty much everybody in her life continued these two patterns.  Daniel may have loved her. I found his reactions awfully similar to Henry seniors in that he wanted her but wasn't prepared to stand up to her abuser to keep her safe.  Leopold, y'know the guy who married her, restrained her movement, locked her away emotionally, and blamed her for things she had no control over.  Rumplestiltskin stepped neatly into Cora's shoes using magic to gain control over her and making her always aware that she was never enough.  Snow, egocentric little Snow, 'loved' Regina in the midst of all this but (and I found this telling) never really displayed concern for her emotional health.  Genie professed to love her and helped to save her but only when he thought he would get to keep her.

Even as Queen with Leopold dead and Snow on the run Regina was nearly obsessed with wanting the people to love her.  She had been trained her entire life that a) she needed to be loved to be happy, b) no one could really love her, c) it was all her fault, and d) she's responsible for the fact that people can't love her.  Meanwhile, in the background, we have Rumple ensuring she always lost and Snow getting all the love and happiness she never had despite her actions (i.e. without the responsibility  Regina lives with).  

So when you talked about organic personality versus adopted personality I think about the reaction when one of them kills.  Snow kills some person and rides off into the sunset with her lover happy in the knowledge that she has done something 'good' and/or was forced by some 'evil' outside force to do something 'bad' despite her verbal wishes to the contrary allowing her to shrug off blame and bask in being a hero.  Rumple kills some person that did something vaguely offensive to him but cannot be blamed or held responsible for this due to either a) making the actual act have occurred with someone else's hands or b) being too powerful for the surviving/witnessing people to do a damn thing about it.  Regina kills a whole lot of people and is confused when she is fear/reviled/hated and forever held to account for her act.

Also, while I'm thinking off it.  Snow ships her daughter to Maine in a box despite knowing nothing about Maine except that it is somewhere horrible  without happy endings so that twenty eight years later said daughter can come back and free her and her love from a curse.  Rumple lets his son fall all alone into the last portal to a place without magic knowing that Baelfire cannot fight to protect himself because he doesn't want to lose the magic that gives him power over others.  Regina, after knowing the boy she would like as a son (Owen), for all of two days a) let's him go as he wants and b) stays at the border she can't cross for who knows how long on the off chance he might return and in the process is able to see that he is safe.

I think what it comes down to for me is that Snow and Rumple both like being the way they are regardless of how it impacts society (thus displaying a lack of social conscience).  Regina does not like being the way she is just lacks the understanding of how to be any different without becoming unsafe.

eshusplayground — I’m curious about your statement about how Rumple and Snow fit the criteria for psychopathy or sociopathy more than Regina does. Care to elaborate?

Ahhhhh, caught me on a throwaway. This is something I’m still researching, so it’s not quite ready yet,...