By now, Disney’s progressive cultural agenda is well known and hardly hidden. And given the company’s massive reach and proven knack for enchanting young audiences and shaping their worldviews over time, Christian parents are right to be concerned.
I’m less worried about “obvious” offenders like last year’s Lightyear and Strange World, which bombed at the box office after audiences rejected their overt LGBT+ content. What’s more concerning are the highly popular and beloved films, like The Little Mermaid, which may seem morally neutral and wholesome for otherwise cautious parents.
Yet Disney’s new live-action remake of The Little Mermaid—even more than the 1989 original—advocates a message that should give us pause. On one hand, it’s just more of the same for Disney: be true to yourself; follow your heart; don’t let anyone stand in your way; “my body, my choice.” But especially against the backdrop of our current cultural moment, the 2023 Mermaid takes it one step further.
What’s Commendable
The “live-action” remake (much of it is so heavily CGI as to appear animated) is generally faithful to the 1989 version. Directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Mary Poppins Returns), the film features most of the beloved songs from the 1989 version, plus a few underwhelming new tunes cowritten by Lin-Manuel Miranda and original composer Alan Menken.
The story follows young mermaid Ariel (Halle Bailey) as she defies her protective father, King Triton (Javier Bardem), in seeking to be part of the above-water world of love interest Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). Whimsical, engaging, and nostalgic for those who grew up watching the animated version, Marshall’s remake has much to commend it.
Though critiqued by some for its noticeably race-conscious casting, Christians shouldn’t spend pennies attacking the film for that. Though occasionally question-raising (why are all of Triton’s mer-daughters different ethnicities with no resemblance to one another?), the diverse cast is mostly refreshing. Bailey more than lives up to the title role, and I enjoyed Art Malik as Sir Grimsby, Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) as the voice of Sebastian, and Awkwafina as the voice of Scuttle.
Where Christian viewers do have cause for concern, however, is on the subtler level of themes and assumptions that, if not explicitly advocating LGBT+ sexual ethics, at least provide ideological scaffolding for them.
Legacy of 1989 ‘Little Mermaid’
Before we get to the 2023 version, it’s important to note the 1989 Little Mermaid has become a cult classic of the LGBT+ community.
One of the core creatives for that film was openly gay lyricist Howard Ashman, who died of AIDS in 1991. Ashman’s mark on the film includes authoring songs like “Part of Your World,” a classic “I Want” song that has since become an LGBT+ anthem “for anyone whose personal identification might not align with their physical presentation.”
Ashman also played a key role in forming the ostentatious villain Ursula, a character invented for the 1989 film who was inspired by the famous drag queen Divine. Ursula (played in the 2023 version by Melissa McCarthy) “performs femininity the way a drag performer does,” according to one writer. “She accentuates stereotypically feminine assets—her hips, her lips—and drapes her eels Flotsam and Jetsam around her like an underwater feather boa.”
Beyond these connections, The Little Mermaid’s themes have a natural appeal to the LGBT+ community. The movie versions emphasize an isolated young person who is uncomfortable in her given skin, drawn to forbidden love, and more at ease among a ragtag group of outsiders than among her own family. Ariel isn’t satisfied with the boundaries and expectations placed upon her. She seeks transgression and expression on her own terms. She wants to love whomever she pleases and be whatever she pleases, even if it means manipulating her body and disappointing her father. Her desires are more determinative of her identity than her physical embodiment is, so she’s willing to do whatever it takes—however costly—to resolve her inner tension.
2023’s ‘Mermaid’: ‘Don’t Get Left Behind’
The remake contains all the above themes and references—and more. Directed by a gay man (Marshall) and released to coincide with Pride Month, the film leans even more directly into the progressive assumptions that make transgenderism plausible.
Something new in this version is a (slightly) expanded personality for Prince Eric, who’s positioned as a progressive visionary arguing for expanded horizons and breaking rank with tired traditions and fear-based conservatism. He’s constantly saying things like “We have to stay open to what’s out there. That’s the only way we can grow.”
Eric’s adopted mother, Queen Selina (Noma Dumezweni), comes to share that outlook too, encouraging her son to venture into “uncharted waters” and new ideas “so [they] don’t get left behind.” When Ariel (having transitioned from a mermaid tail to legs) and Eric are married, Selina remarks to royal advisor Grimsby, “A mermaid and a man. Whoever would have imagined?”
She might as well have added, “What we once thought transgressive is now normal. Love is love.”
Triton as Undermined Parent, Ursula as Enabling ‘Ally’
The characters of Triton and Ursula also hit me differently in this version, in light of the role adults play in the current transgender revolution.
Triton is positioned as a parent whose love for his daughter—and concern her curiosities will bring her harm—leads him to a misplaced sense of protective authority. In our transgender moment, when parents are intentionally sidelined (their disapproval framed as outright dangerous), Triton stands in for the “well-intentioned but close-minded” parent whose traditional values need to be updated for the modern world.
Indeed, by the end, Triton comes to peace with the fact that Ariel “wants a different life than what [he] planned for her.” In a final speech affirming his daughter’s transition, Triton basically says he should have listened to her all along: “You should never have to give up your voice to be heard.”
Here’s how one writer, who calls The Little Mermaid “an LGBT+ allegory,” sees Triton’s journey into enlightenment:
As he watches his daughter yearning to be human, he finally does the right thing and uses his power to help her transition into the body that will make her happy. His power is sufficient to give her what she wants, and he withheld it from her because of his own misguided notions of the world. Her happiness, though, is more important than his beliefs and he finally grows enough to realize it.
Her happiness is more important than his beliefs. This idea is being sold to parents widely in the West. Your convictions must defer to the desires and wishes of your children, or else you’ll make them miserable and possibly suicidal. It’s powerful rhetoric (who doesn’t want his child to be happy?), but it’s manipulative and wrong. Beliefs in objective truth shouldn’t bend the knee to subjective notions of happiness. Parents who let their adolescent children irreversibly damage their bodies because of their fickle desires are negligent, not loving.
Beliefs in objective truth shouldn’t bend the knee to subjective notions of happiness.
If Triton represents a sort of naive parent, Ursula represents the opportunistic enabler who delights in undermining parental authority and encouraging Ariel in her desired “transition.” Ursula in these films reminds me of the psychiatrists and doctors who, upon hearing a young person express feelings of gender dysphoria, quickly prescribe hormone blockers, surgeries, or other medical interventions to give the “poor unfortunate soul” what he wants.
Though Ursula is clearly a villain, she’s also framed in the film as a rebel outcast who takes Ariel under her wing and listens to her desires when no one else will. One writer recently described Ursula as “an active foil to the (mer)patriarchy that exists within the film. Those confines have stifled Ariel, and Ursula is the only woman to whom she can look as a model of how to break free of those constraints.” Another writer likened Ursula’s lair to the underground spaces where troubled youth can go when no one else will give them the medical help they seek: “In this day and age when politicians ban the proper care from professionals—from trans health care to abortions—those in need of that care will get it wherever they can, safe or not.”
By the film’s end, Ursula is destroyed, but what she set in motion by encouraging Ariel’s transition—when few else would listen—is implicitly celebrated.
Disney’s Siren Song
Can families enjoy The Little Mermaid together as a sweet fairy tale with catchy music, without picking up any explicit promotion of LGBT+ agendas? Yes. But that’s why these movies can be insidious.
Our culture has shifted dramatically on sexual ethics over the last few decades in part because Hollywood storytelling has perpetuated ideas that seem innocuous, or even morally good and inspiring, but that lay the ideological groundwork for things like transgenderism (or at least reinforce its plausibility). For young people raised on stories like Disney’s Little Mermaid—which valorizes Ariel’s sincere desire to “find her true self”—it’s no big jump to valorize anyone’s sincere desire to be not just whoever, but whatever, she wants to be.
This no-limits approach to identity has been Disney’s siren song for decades, beckoning young viewers to embrace their “inner” selves even when they conflict with “outer” dynamics like family expectations and traditional moral norms. It’s a mantra that pitches empowerment and freedom but ultimately shackles young people within the prison of unreliable and oft-dangerous desires.
The no-limits approach to identity has been Disney’s siren song for decades, beckoning young viewers to embrace their ‘inner’ selves even when they conflict with ‘outer’ dynamics like family expectations and traditional moral norms.
Ironically, one of the wisest characters in the film, Grimsby, tells Prince Eric at one point, “Don’t be held back by what you think should be. Think only of what is.” It’s advice in the direction of gratitude for the given and growth within limits. Yet the film at large advocates the opposite: Ariel shouldn’t think only of what is. Instead, she should listen to what her heart says should be—even the impossibility of overcoming her “assigned at birth” biology to become something different.
But Christians know the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick (Jer. 17:9). And we also know limits are for our good, we are not our own, and self-denial (Matt. 16:24)—rather than self-indulgence—is the path to life. In a culture where the opposite values are instilled through subtle, often charming entertainment for children, we must cling to and inculcate biblical truths more resolutely than ever.
The Gospel Coalition