Life Lessons Learned from The Little Mermaid

Do not trust someone who pities you, calls you a poor unfortunate soul, and then offers to help you. They will take away your voice.

This is a pretty good metaphor for what happens to people with disabilities a lot, I think.

Unfortunately, such people are harder to spot in real life because they don’t look like scary octopus witches in drag.

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Also, has Ariel been interpreted as autistic before? She wants to be where the “real people” are even though it’s literally another realm where she would function like a fish out of water. This leads her to make “funny” faux pas like using a fork as a comb. In order to be accepted into this new world, she has to lose her voice. The person she goes to to help her fit into the human world, Ursula, pities her, pretends she wants to help, then takes away her voice, leaves her to fend for herself, and later actually sabotages her. Ursula pointedly tells her, “don’t underestimate the importance of body language.” Ariel does eventually get her voice back, defeat Ursula, and find love. But she finds it by becoming a “part of their world” instead of vice versa, and she still gives up the people and way of life that she loves in order to do it. Successfully leaving her native world and becoming part of the human world is her happy ending.