Gender and The Little Mermaid

October 12, 2009

Recently, while giving one of my lectures at the California Institute of the Arts, I ran into some confusion when explaining the structural aspects of a story that come into play based on the gender of the audience member. I had stated unequivocally the difference between a “Guy Movie” and a “Chick Flick” and was feeling pretty good about how things were going. That was until someone brought up the fact that based on my definition, The Little Mermaid was a Guy Movie the likes of Armageddon or 48 Hours. I went with it at the time, but knew that something was horribly wrong about this.

The Need for Boundaries

Ariel and her friends "Under the Sea"

If you were asked to determine what kind of Story Limit The Little Mermaid had, either an Optionlock or a Timelock, what would be your answer?

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the idea is that every complete story must be contained by some sort of limit if its argument is to be effective. Without it, the scope of the message could be infinitely large or infinitely small, and an audience would have no basepoint from which to evaluate the progression of the story. In other words, a story without limits falls into a gelatinous mess of nonsense.

Stories limited by time are probably the easiest to identify and understand. 48 Hours, 83 Minutes, 3:10 to Yuma - all of these are stories constrained by deadlines or duration of time. Stories limited by options are often times harder to define, but for reasons that will be soon explained, happen to be more prevelant than the previous. Se7en, Beauty and the Beast, and National Lampoon’s Vacation are just a few examples of stories that are defined by a slowly diminishing set of options.

So back to The Little Mermaid. Which one is it, Optionlock or Timelock?

If you’re like several of my students you may have answered Timelock. Ariel signs the deal with Ursula and must get Prince Eric to kiss her before “the sun sets on the third day.” Three days and her time is up. Makes sense, right? I tentatively agreed with the initial analysis, in part because by agreeing I was discounting a key understanding I had of story structure and how it relates to an audience.

The Story Limit and Sex

The problem I was having with it was the incongruency surrounding a story limited by time that also happened to be a huge hit with women/girls.

For reasons that are far too detailed to go into right now, a majority of women have difficulty relating to stories limited by time. In short, the reason for this is because most women see time as flexible, or fluid. They don’t see a deadline as something set in stone, because they don’t divide up time into easily definable chunks (hours, minutes, seconds and so on). This is a generalization, but as with most generalizations there is some truth to it. For men, the generalization is different as they have no problem with time limits, they have a bigger problem with Main Characters who don’t solve problems linearly.

If you graph the Main Character’s primary way of problem solving against the Limit imposed by the story, you can get a good idea of what kind of audience will be attracted to the film.

Visualizing the correlation between the problem-solving style of the Main Character and the Story Limit

Basically, men like Main Characters who think like them (linearly rather than holisitcally), and women like stories limited by options (rather than by time). So you can see my consternation with The Little Mermaid falling into the category of “Guy Movie”.

The Real Story

But when you think about it, the notion that The Little Mermaid is limited by time is an erroneous one. By definition when the Story Limit is “up”, the story has to come to an end. Its primary function is to bring about the crisis/climax. Are things really over when Ariel turns back into a mermaid? (Sorry about the spoiler alert there). Not really. There’s the whole business with Ursula stealing Ariel, Eric going after her, and so on. If it was truly limited by Time, then the events that happened after would feel extra, not essential to the telling of the story.

It turns out that the Overall Story Throughline, or the A storyline as it sometimes is referred to, is really limited by options. And this is important when determining the Story Limit, you have to look at it in context of the Overall Story. Sure, Ariel herself has a deadline that she has to meet, but that has more to do with her personal story line. In the context of what everyone is dealing with (above sea and below), the real source of the story’s problems stem from Ursula’s attempts to steal King Triton’s crown.

The final option is dealt when King Triton signs on that dotted line. His signature brings about the climax, and requires that Ursula be dealt with once and for all. For the longest time the sea witch was just allowed to do her own thing, banished into exile and forced to sing to tiny little grubs. But once she wields that Trident and dons the crown, the people of that world have to finally deal with her. That last option brings about the crisis of the story.

More importantly, at least in the context of this article, it correlates nicely with the understanding that a story limited by options is most appealing to a female audience.

Structure and Audience Appeal

Undoubtedly, The Little Mermaid appeals to girls everywhere because it tells a charming story of a headstrong princess who manages to change her father’s way of seeing things. It’s a joyful love story told with great songs. By virtue of its subject matter, of course it would appeal to a largely female audience, it’s a natural fit.

But beneath all of that, deep deep below in the darkest depths of that story, lies a structural explanation as to the popularity. A story limited by options is one that is instantly familiar to women and far more relatable than one imposed by the strict definition of time. When an audience member can empathize with the Main Character’s plight, they become a part of the story and therefore take the story’s events to heart. While it certainly wasn’t a conscious decision on the filmmaker’s part, had it gone the other way and incorporated some kind of deadline, there is no doubt that its appeal would have been remarkably diminished.

The structure of The Little Mermaid guarantees its timelessness.