How to watch the Disney villains: abjection and heteronormativity in “The Little Mermaid”

Abstract

Understanding media culture as one of the main fields where processes of (re)production of meanings attributed to various aspects of social life take place, from which are structured procedures of control and exclusion of bodies, ideas and behaviors, this study aims to unveil and critically analyze the subtle discursive strategy recurrently used in Disney Studios animated films, strategy that consists in reiterating the normality status of hegemonic forms of gender identification by attaching negativity content to deviant identities. Therefore, we undertake a socio-cultural analysis - freely mobilizing methodological aspects of semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis - of the gender performances of Ursula, the villain of The Little Mermaid (1989). We observe that the representation pattern mobilized in the animation conveys an implicit evaluation of the ways of being and acting that frustrate the binary gender norms, unequivocally associating them with cruelty and greed.