Through the looking-glass: Part of Your World

Did any of you really think you’d get away with only one musical blogpost? Thought not! My last blogpost on mermaids throughout history and Melusinian narratives exists at least in part to provide some context for this one: I am obsessed with Melusinian narratives, to the point where I named this blog after them. Melusinian narratives are, in essence, stories about a supernatural being who wants to live in the human world, the most famous pop-culture example being our girl Ariel.

I could definitely make an argument for Ariel as an autistic icon. She’s socially awkward both among humans and other merpeople, repeatedly skips out on any kind of social gathering, and even has her own special interest: humans. She’s also far from an unproblematic favourite: she’s frequently polarised as a terrible example, an anti-feminist icon who gives up her identity for a man she barely knows. I’m not going to argue that these criticisms of the movie are unfounded, but from the perspective of someone who was once an (undiagnosed) autistic little girl, Ariel is the most hopeful example I had (which is probably why the original story read for me as a personal betrayal.)

When I was growing up, there were very few autistic-coded characters in the media I was exposed to, and I don’t remember any autistic-coded girls at all. Ariel, however, was intensely relatable. Like me, she had a fixation that consumed her, that she devoted all her time and energy into researching and studying and collecting to the point where she arguably has her own museum dedicated to studying humans as a species, a culture, and a civilisation. This interest is all-consuming, yes, but it’s also productive and makes her happy in a way that her ‘normal’ father and sisters cannot understand.

Part of Your World is Ariel’s ode to her “special interest” in humans before she ever runs into the prince she allegedly gives up her voice for. Ariel wants to know everything about humans, including elements of their culture that have no place in her underwater world. She also reveals a key element for her fascination with humanity – she believes that in human society, she would ‘belong’ in a way she doesn’t among other merpeople. Ariel’s not looking for a boy as much as she is a world in which she ‘fits’, a feeling many neurodivergent people can relate to.

To stretch my metaphor a little further, the turning point in Ariel’s decision to try and become human isn’t actually her interaction with Eric. It’s an argument with her father in which he destroys her collection of artefacts relating to her special interest. Triton believes that by distancing his daughter from an interest he views as dangerous and unhealthy, he is protecting her, helping her become more ‘normal’. In reality, he is confirming her belief that she will never fit into his world, and driving her away.

So, we come to the biggest problem in a feminist reading of the film: Ariel gives up her voice for the chance to belong. And honestly, this plot element hits something close to the bone from my perspective. Because, like a lot of autistic young women, particularly those who pass as ‘high functioning’, the chance to belong always comes with the cost of “pretending to be normal.” (Yes, that’s a book by an autistic woman, go read it, Liane Holliday Willey is a genius.) According to Professor Tony Attwood:

“The girls [on the autistic spectrum] will go: “Wow, I don’t get it, I don’t understand it, but who does get it? Who’s popular?Rachel? How does she move, how does she talk? I’ll talk like Rachel, I’ll move like Rachel. What’s popular? Pink? I’ll make sure I wear pink. What are they playing with? Barbies? I’ll get a hundred Barbies. And so what she does is observe, analyse, and imitate, to ‘fake it ’til you make it’. She has a mask, a facade, that makes her highly successful in what she does, but it’s a fake. It’s done by intellect, not intuition.”

Pretending to be normal means sacrificing the ability to express thoughts, experiences, and emotions that place you outside that narrow category. If you’re pretending to be Rachel, pretending to be human, you aren’t being yourself. In essence, you give up your voice. And, like a lot of autistic young women, Ariel decides her voice is a small price to pay.

My identification with Ariel runs along metaphorical lines, but there are other autists who relate to her on a more literal level. Owen Suskind, the autistic screenwriter behind Life, Animated, was non-verbal as a child but identified heavily with Disney characters, communicating through echolaliac quoting from the movies to express an emotion, concept, or desire, and particularly identified with Ariel’s lack of voice (TW: ableism).

Skipping ahead in the movie, Ariel, unlike Andersen’s Little Mermaid, gets her happy ending. In spite of her naivety and lack of social skills both in human and mermaid form, Eric loves and accepts her with and without her physical voice. This stands in sharp contrast to the ending of the original Andersen story, in which the prince chooses to marry a princess, the mermaid being too different to be an acceptable bride. This change to me is an optimistic one, not because it provides a saccharine “happy ending” to an originally poignant fairytale, but because of the context in which Andersen published this particular story.

Published in 1836, The Little Mermaid has frequently been read as a response to the marriage of Edvard Collin, the Duke of Weimar, which occurred in the same year. A number of love-letters written by Andersen to the Duke survive. Both class and societal disapproval of homosexuality separated Andersen and Collin, and thus, Andersen’s mermaid is similarly divided from her prince. In the nineteenth century context of her origins, she stands as a cautionary tale for longing for a life you cannot have, as Andersen could not have his prince. As an autistic queer girl, this story could never be a comforting one.

Ariel, on the other hand, does get her happy ending, even if she has to give up her voice for it. Disney’s Little Mermaid promises a happy ending – love, freedom to obsess, and a place to belong – is out there, if you’re willing to pretend to be normal first. It’s not the ending I’d choose for myself or any other autistic girl, but it’s significantly preferable to turning to sea foam.

But Ariel still faces dangers in the unaccepting world under the sea: Ursula is able to take advantage of her because her family alienate her rather than attempt to understand her, and because of her feelings of exclusion, she allows her self-expression to be taken from her. So, to my fellow mermaids: you get to choose how much of your voice you give up. You have the right to decide that for yourself, and nobody should take it from you for the price of ‘being normal’. And, to the rest of you in Fairyland: make a space for the mermaids in your life where they feel safe to use that voice. Do what you can to create a little corner of the world that they want to be a part of, and that is safe for them. Draw your world a little closer to theirs. Let’s make the next Little Mermaid a happier one again.