An object relations view of The Little Mermaid (1994)

Fairbairnian analysis of the film "The Little Mermaid". Graham Clarke 1994 Introduction I am looking at the film "The Little Mermaid" from a psychoanalytic point of view because the child (female) I am observing has shown a strong identification with the lead character - Ariel, the little mermaid of the title - over a long period. I hope that by seeing what the film represents I might gain some insight into how the child feels and the use she is making of this identification. I have adopted an approach based on Fairbairn's idea of endopsychic structure because it is consistent with an approach to film I have developed elsewhere (Clarke 1994). The story presented by the film In the opening stages of the film Ariel, a mermaid, who is portrayed as a wilful and disobedient child/adolescent, has gone again, from her home in the deep, to the surface in search of humans, with whom she is fascinated. Ariel and her companion Flounder, a fish, discover some human artefacts in a shipwreck and are then chased by a shark. They escape and take the artefacts - a fork and a pipe - to Scooter, a seagull, who acts as if he is an authority on human artefacts and behaviour but in reality gives the fork and pipe funny names and explains their use incorrectly. Ariel and Flounder return to the deep because Ariel remembers that she was supposed to perform in a concert for her father - Triton, King of the deep. When she returns, having spoiled the concert by being absent, and is found to have gone to the surface again, Triton tells her off and forbids her to go to the surface or have anything to do with humans, who he regards as barbarians. Ariel and Flounder go off to a secret cavern, a large, womblike, space, full of interesting human artefacts that Ariel has collected. The entrance to this cavern is at the bottom of the space and the small hole through which they enter is covered. While they are in this space they hear noises from the surface as a ship passes by and Ariel cannot resist going to the surface again. Ariel sees Prince Eric on the passing ship and she falls in love with him. The ship is caught in a storm and Ariel saves Eric as his ship goes down. Back in the mer-kingdom everyone recognises that Ariel is in love and Triton gets to hear of it. He imagines she is in love with a merman and is then furious to discover that it is a human she loves. Triton bursts in upon Ariel in her secret cavern and destroys all the artefacts with his trident. These now include a statue of Eric, saved from the shipwreck by Flounder. Triton forbids her to ever go to the surface again or to have any contact with humans. Ariel lies sobbing at the bottom of the now broken and sullied space where she housed her human artefacts. Meanwhile Eric, who is been encouraged to marry by his advisors, says he will only marry the woman who rescued him. He has only a hazy memory of her face but he remembers that she has a beautiful singing voice. All his friends and advisors think this woman is a figment of his imagination. Ursula the Sea Witch, who at sometime in the past lived in Triton's palace, offers Ariel the possibility of both becoming human and meeting her true love Eric. However the price Ariel has to pay for this is to leave her voice with Ursula. If Ariel hasn't made Eric fall in love with her within three days she will join the rest of the lost souls in Ursula's 'garden'. Ursula is a big, sinister, post-menopausal, woman whose body is that of an octopus. Ursula's 'lair' is another womblike cavern but this one is threatening and filled with nasty bottled up objects (people and things). Ursula practices some magic on Ariel and takes her voice, which she stores in a shell, and then gives her human form. Ariel goes ashore in Prince Eric's town and meets him. He thinks she is the one who saved him but when she can't speak he comes to believe otherwise. However he begins to fall in love with her and Ursula decides that she needs to do more if she is not to lose him to Ariel. Ursula changes herself into an attractive young woman and puts the shell containing Ariel's voice around her neck so that she can appear to sing like Ariel. Ursula hopes to trick Eric into marrying her by making him think she is the one who rescued him. Her trick works and Ursula and Eric are about to marry when Ariel's animal helpers reveal the truth with a little help from Eric's dog who is more perceptive than his master. Although Ursula's plot is revealed, and Eric recognises his mistake, it is too late to save Ariel who is taken away by Ursula to be incarcerated in her garden. It becomes clear that Ursula only wants Ariel as a means of getting at Triton. Triton comes to rescue Ariel and sees that the only way he can do this is to take Ariel's place, surrendering his power, embodied in the trident, to Ursula, which he does. Meanwhile Eric has come looking for Ariel, and as Ursula takes on Triton's powers and consigns him to the garden of lost souls, Eric finds them and attacks Ursula. Ursula becomes huge and powerful in a way Triton never did but she is dispatched by Eric who rams her with his ship, piercing her with the broken bow spit, destroying her. As she is destroyed, Triton and the other lost souls are restored to health, and Triton reluctantly agrees to let Ariel become human and gives her and Eric his blessing. They are married and there is harmony between the creatures of the deep and the human world that both share in. Analysis Some assumptions 1. That the move from mer-person to human is, symbolically, a move from childhood to adulthood. This is most graphically represented by the difference between mer-folk (men and women) and human beings. The lower halves of the mer-folk are smooth and undifferentiated. They cannot open their legs, there is nothing between their legs, they are asexual because they appear to be unisexual. 2. By contrast the move from the mer-home towards the human home is a move into the unconscious. I.e. metaphors of depth are reversed. Depth psychology, for the people of the deep, is surface psychology. 3. That the characters of the film can be treated as personifications of the unconscious endopsychic structure that Fairbairn developed (Fairbairn 1952, Clarke 1994). 4. I will assume that the film represents the internal reality of a person who is passing from an Oedipal to a post Oedipal state. The story is about an Oedipal conflict being overcome. In order to show this simply I will use Fairbairn's endopsychic structure to represent different aspects of the narrative as it develops. 5. I will treat the figure of Ariel as the libidinal ego throughout what follows. The dynamic structure of the film In the first section of the film as Ariel goes towards her unconscious (humans, the surface) she is attacked by a shark that represents an anti-libidinal ego. A toothy, savage, devouring, creature that embodies images of oral sadism. The libidinal ego and its object - human being - are attacked by the anti-libidinal ego based on the second infant stage of development, the 'biting' stage (Abraham 1924). This is a form of repression. The ferocity of the shark is turned into comedy in a manic chase that leads to Ariel and Flounder's eventual escape. This is followed by a comic episode as we watch the seagull attach nonsense words to common objects and use them for inappropriate ends like the infant does during its development. The second configuration of characters has Ariel being chastised by her father Triton, as an anti-libidinal ego. In response, Ariel goes to seek solace within the cavern full of exciting (human) objects, which is itself an exciting or libidinal object, and which has many similarities to Klein's view of the inside of the mother's body (Klein 1929). We might conjecture that this cavern is a representation of the (absent) mother's body. It is a large softly curved internal space that is entered via a small hole at the base with a rock covering the entrance. All around inside there are human artefacts of strange design and fascination. Ariel seeks solace within this womb (with this object) until she is attracted by human activity on the surface. In the next section Ariel watches Prince Eric on his ship and falls in love with him, he is her libidinal object. The ship gets caught in a storm and Eric is about to drown when Ariel acts egoically and saves him, returning him to the shore and ensuring that he is alive. Ariel, in love with Eric, goes back to the mother's body space, where Flounder has managed to save a statue of Eric from the wrecked ship and install it with the other human artefacts. This combined internal object now has both the original libidinal object - the mother's body - and the new object - Eric - combined. Triton, who has found out about Ariel loving a human, bursts into the mother's body space and breaks all the artefacts including the statue with his trident. He forbids Ariel any contact with humans and leaves her in the broken down place crying, her exciting internal objects destroyed by this attack from Triton as an antilibidinal ego, again. It is at this time that Ursula, the Sea Witch, appears and offers Ariel the chance to see Eric and be with him as a human. She is frightening and the offer she makes is a hard one but Ariel accepts. From within a Fairbairnian point of view Ursula is the anti-libidinal ego and the anti-libidinal object combined here as an internalisation of a bad mother figure with whom Ariel now reluctantly identifies after the way her father has treated her. Ariel accepts Ursula's offer and gets her wished for transformation but gives up her voice. This is a partial identification with the anti-libidinal ego/object. It is also very clearly the return of a bad object. To prevent Eric falling in love with Ariel, despite the fact that she doesn't have her voice, Ursula has to resort to further trickery, in this case a mirage-like actual identification with the young woman by turning herself into a young woman. The battle between the libidinal and anti-libidinal egos (the rival young women) is mainly carried out by Ariel's animal friends, including Eric's dog, who is a lot more perceptive than his master. The (libidinal) object of this battle is of course Eric. When Ursula is exposed, and her plot revealed, her deeper strategy becomes clear. Now Ursula as antilibidinal ego attacks Triton as libidinal-ego via his libidinal object Ariel. Ursula triumphs and robs Triton of his power. The power of the father has been overcome by the power of the internalised bad mother. Coincident with the waning of the father's power is the waxing of the lover's power as Eric takes up the fight against Ursula for Ariel's life. This also represents a switch from libidinal object to libidinal ego for Eric and visa versa for Ariel. Eric as libidinal ego overcomes Ursula as anti-libidinal ego with Ariel as libidinal object. This essentially male configuration once it has triumphed allows the release of all the poor benighted souls trapped and enthralled by Ursula, including Triton. Ursula is destroyed; Triton has had his powers limited. He owes Eric a debt of gratitude for saving his daughter and releasing him. He is now able to accept the loss of Ariel to the human world and does not have to occupy a strongly anti-libidinal role. The marriage of Eric and Ariel represents an intermingling of the two worlds. The internalised parental figures as parts of a harsh super-ego (anti-libidinal ego/object) have been tamed by Ariel's relationship with Eric. Eric as the loved object and the active egoic libidinal element has allowed a harmony between the inner and outer to belly forth. The internalised figures of good and bad, mothers and fathers - Triton as both good and bad, and the (absent) mother as the good/bad mother's body and the good/bad Ursula - are readily apparent throughout. However, the overall story is about the move from the father to another man, against the continual destructive interference of the bad mother (Ursula). It is about the Oedipal move away from the mother and towards the father, and the move from the father towards another man. Conclusion I have shown that "The Little Mermaid" contains a representation of an Oedipal struggle for a little girl as she changes her allegiances from her father to another man. There are aspects of the film that need further investigation but are not relevant to my purposes here. In particular the attack by Triton on the mother's body and its contents, and the obviously phallic way in which the Sea Witch was dispatched by Eric raise questions about the sorts of pleasures, excitements and messages boys may be getting from this film. The trident as the powerful object is also obviously phallic, so the possession of the phallus is the determinant of power in the film. The aberrant power of the woman with the phallus, which must be overcome if harmony is to be restored, is both an image of the early bad mother of the oral sadistic phase, and a founding image of patriarchal thinking. References Abraham, K. (1924) A short study of the development of the libido, viewed in the light of mental disorders. In Selected papers of Karl Abraham M.D. (1948), London, Hogarth Press. Clarke, G.S. (1994) Notes towards an object-relations view of cinema, London, Free Associations Vol.4 Part.3 No.31 pgs.369-390 Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1952) Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, London, RKP Klein, M. (1929) Infantile anxiety situations reflected in a work of art and in the creative impulse. In Love, guilt and reparation (1988), London, Virago Press.