In Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Ariel is a princess and thus a member of the upper class. As such, she has easy access to all she could possibly want or need. The ocean is her shopping mall and her vice is human “thing-a-ma-bobs” (The Little Mermaid). According to the authors of Deconstructing Disney, Ariel is “the very embodiment of consumer-fetishism and demonstrates this by collecting ‘human stuff’” (Byrne and McQuillan 23).
Her impressive collection of human junk is something she obsesses over to the point of self-detriment: she misses music rehearsals, and misses the all-important concert; and she places herself and Flounder in danger while looking for new treasures (The Little Mermaid). Though one might see her as “the girl who has everything,” Ariel is not satisfied with her treasure trove of human junk; “[she] want[s] more” (The Little Mermaid). There is still something missing in her life; some void that all her stuff will not fill. What she really wants is to be human.When Ariel sees humans for the first time, and more specifically a human man, she fixates on him as her new obsession. He is now the must-have item for her collection, and the thing that she hopes will finally fill that void within her life. At first she must be content with his statue: an idealized image of the prince (and coincidentally an image that Prince Eric is not exactly thrilled about) (The Little Mermaid). Ariel obsesses over the idea of meeting Prince Eric face to face, and uses the statue as the prince’s stand-in for her romantic fantasies. The statue is quickly destroyed by her father, but the damage is done. She cannot rest until she has obtained her man. Upon rescuing Eric from drowning Ariel sings “What would I pay to stay here beside you?” (The Little Mermaid). As it turns out, she’s ready to pay quite a high price; she goes to the extreme of giving up her voice just so she can become human and satisfy her obsessions with the human world and Prince Eric.
This phenomenon of obsession and consumerism is the same phenomenon that is so prevalent in Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction. Ellis’s book is littered with spoiled upper class college students who either have it all or have access to it all, yet are still constantly searching for something more. However, instead of focusing on their collections of stuff (which mainly consist of drugs, alcohol, and rock ‘n’ roll music), The Rules of Attraction draws attention to the characters’ collections of romantic partners (or, if not romantic, at least sexual partners). Each person a character manages to sleep with is like another item checked off his or her shopping list. These are not necessarily the must-have items, but merely items to be consumed and disposed of.
The must-have items come into being as all-consuming obsessions that take over the lives of Ellis’s characters, generally to their own self-detriment. Mary is obsessed with Sean and thus spends her time writing and secretly delivering notes to him. When she wrongly interprets his actions to mean that he is not interested in her, she kills herself (Ellis 173-174). Sean is obsessed with Lauren, whom he believes has been leaving the notes in his box. However, when Lauren turns out to be less than his idealistic perception of her, he becomes depressed and half-heartedly tries to kill himself (Ellis 220-225). (To view this scene, click here). Lauren is obsessed with Victor, but Victor is obsessed with trying to locate Jamie (Ellis 21-27). Throughout the novel, no two people are ever obsessed with each other, and thus each relationship goes wrong because of the imbalance of desires. While The Little Mermaid ends with the traditional happily-ever-after by way of marriage, Ellis’s characters afford no such luxury. Ellis’s novel ends just as it started – mid-sentence, as though this is part of an endless cycle of consume and be consumed.
Though Disney’s film The Little Mermaid and Ellis’s book The Rules of Attraction were released in the late 1980s, they still resonate with today’s world. Though the real world does seem to be a little more optimistic than Ellis’s portrayal of reality in terms of romance and relationships, there is truth in the capitalist consumer culture that is portrayed at Camden University. Even Disney cannot escape without showing how obsessed people are with consuming things and, in a sense, each other. After all, as Madonna put it, they are “living in a material world” (Madonna). It is then almost natural that they should see a potential love interest as yet another item on their shopping list.
Works Cited:
Byrne, Eleanor and Martin McQuillan. Deconstructing Disney. London, Pluto Press, 1999. Print.
Ellis, Bret Easton. The Rules of Attraction. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1998. Print.
The Little Mermaid. Dir. Ron Clements, John Musker. Disney, 1989. Film.
Madonna. “Material Girl.” Like a Virgin. Sire Records, 1985. CD.
