Sep 4, 2018 · 1 min read
It’s an especially interesting scene for the role that gender layers play here. Ursula is based on a drag queen, Divine. Divine essentially made her name by aping his perception of feminine behavior and exaggerating it. And by basing this character on Divine and having her be played by an actress, abstracted femininity is essentially being captured and interpellated into that which is already feminine. At the same time as that, Ursula is presented as a ‘Devil’ figure to Ariel, attempting to tempt her using Ariel’s fears about what it means to be a woman. So Ursula ultimately becomes the conduit wherein femininity is kind of pulled apart and reconfigured in a couple of interesting ways.