 There's recently been a boom of The Little Mermaid retellings. However, many “adaptations” of The Little Mermaid seem more inspired by Disney than Andersen. This is part of the way Disney adaptations have swallowed and replaced the tales and traditions they're based on. I remember browsing reviews for a Little Mermaid retelling and seeing one baffled reader ask where Flounder was.
For a quick rundown: in Andersen, the little mermaid is a withdrawn, introspective girl fascinated by the human world. Unlike other mermaids, she isn’t interested in collecting human trinkets. She is motivated by her love for the prince and her desire for an immortal soul like humans. Her appearance is left fairly vague, but she’s pale with long hair and blue eyes. The sea witch is a fairly neutral character, ominous but apparently fair-dealing. The mermaid's tongue is cut out as price for her transformation, and she also experiences agony whenever she walks, but she has no time limit for winning the prince. The mermaid's most important family relationships are with her grandmother and sisters. In the end, the prince marries someone else and the mermaid is doomed by the terms of her bargain; given the chance to survive by killing the prince, she refuses. Due to her noble actions, she is resurrected as an air spirit with a new chance at Heaven. In Disney, Ariel is an adventurous mermaid fascinated by the human world. Unlike other mermaids, she’s obsessed with collecting human trinkets. She’s motivated by her love for the prince and her desire to explore. As an animated film, the characters have colorful appearances and there are talking fish and animals. The sea witch and the other girl are combined into the villainous, octopus-tentacled Ursula, who wants to take over the ocean. Ariel must give up her voice in a mystical bargain and has a short timeframe in which to win her prince's heart. Her most important family relationship is with her stern and controlling father. In the end, Ursula is defeated in a huge battle, and Ariel reconciles with her father and marries her prince in a huge wedding attended by both humans and merfolk. Overall, Andersen has an intense internal battle with the mermaid weighing her own survival against that of the man she loves. Ariel’s dilemma is more straightforward and external. Both versions have received criticism as a story about a girl who silences and changes herself for a man. Despite their flaws, there are also things to defend. I like Andersen’s tale as a story of sacrificial love, and the mermaid earning her own salvation is a plot twist which went against CENTURIES of pagan mythology being demonized by Christian authorities. Likewise, Disney’s adaptation was a landmark moment in how they wrote their movie heroines, with Ariel much more active and independent than their previous animated princesses, and setting the stage for their movies today. Her motivations go beyond winning Eric, to exploring and gaining knowledge. For many people, Disney today is synonymous with fairy tales and their versions have eclipsed any other. In modern retellings of The Little Mermaid, heroines are not infrequently given names similar to Ariel, and fiery red hair is common. (Before Ariel, the mermaid was more often depicted as blonde - as in Rankin-Bass's stop-motion The Daydreamer (1966), an animated Soviet adaptation from 1968, and the 1975 Japanese anime.) Julia Ember’s The Seafarer’s Kiss (2017) and Sarah Henning’s Sea Witch (2018) are both origin stories for the Sea Witch which include explaining why she has tentacles - a detail originated by Disney. To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo (2018) shows a Disney influence despite its gritty, action-oriented tone, with a red-haired mermaid battling a tentacled sea sorceress and winning happiness with her prince. Granted, there is some cultural awareness that Andersen’s original is the “dark” version. But even this is frequently oversimplified. I’ve encountered many people thinking that Andersen’s tale ends with the mermaid dying or even committing suicide. This isn’t helped by adaptations which mimic Andersen but change the ending to be more tragic; one egregious example is the pointedly titled "The Story of a Mermaid Who Should Have Left Well Enough Alone" in Alex Flinn's Bewitching (2013). Disney itself has recently been publishing a lot of retellings, with some new takes on The Little Mermaid being Poor Unfortunate Soul by Serena Valentino (2016), Part of Your World by Liz Braswell (2018, with a 2023 graphic novel edition), Prince of Song and Sea by Linsey Miller (2022) and Kiss the Girl by Zoraida Córdova (2023). The live-action remake, released in May 2023, came with its own tie-in books. So a person browsing the shelves of a bookstore or library will be encountering Andersen-inspired books, Disney- published and licensed books, and books that draw on Disney without being officially licensed. It’s harder for me to think of adaptations which stay away from Disney’s ubiquitous influence. One example is Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (2021) , which shows a few traces of inspiration from Andersen but weaves a new and original story based in West African mythology. (Although I am still iffy about whether yumboes are from folklore.) One case that I want to touch on is the Japanese animated film Ponyo (2008) in which a goldfish named Ponyo transforms into a human to find Sosuke, the human boy she’s smitten with. There’s the threat of Ponyo possibly turning into sea foam, but it’s a very gentle, child-friendly film. The Studio Ghibli website described it as “Andersen's 'The Little Mermaid' transferred into the setting of Japan today, with the Christian coloring wiped away” (Fraser). At the same time, Ponyo has red hair and controlling father. Not influenced outright by Disney - Miyazaki intentionally avoided watching The Little Mermaid while working on Ponyo - but certainly existing in the same sphere. Ponyo was, at least in part, inspired by creator Hayao Miyazaki’s memories of reading Andersen at age nine: "when he read that the little mermaid "didn't have a soul, and would turn to sea foam," he "couldn't accept it," and in fact, has not "accepted it to this day"" (Cavallaro 103). Personally, I agree with Miyazaki! Other authors as early as Oscar Wilde with “The Fisherman and His Soul” (1891) also pushed back against the soul theme. But it’s vital to remember that Andersen was also pushing back against a long tradition: Christian medieval thought’s “fairies and mythical creatures are demons or fallen angels and can never reach Heaven”. That eventually led to Paracelsus's “well, they can go to Heaven by marrying a human." Andersen effectively said "Screw that, they can earn their own redemption." Thus, it’s frustrating to read writings on Miyazaki's Ponyo which blame Andersen for writing “a moralizing tale about the metaphysics of the Christian soul” (Oziewicz). I do want to take a moment to also express my appreciation for Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which is a classic. I grew up with this film so I have a lot of fondness for it. I love the animation, the songs, the characters. Ariel sharing a name with the air spirit in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a very clever touch. Andersen’s story is beautiful and heartbreaking, Disney’s story is joyful and fun, and I like both of them a lot. Yet at the same time, I’m frustrated by the way Disney more or less replaces every fairy tale it touches. The Little Mermaid is so iconic that it’s deeply ingrained in any related storytelling. It seems like any story about a mermaid becoming human will be described at some point as a retelling of the Andersen tale or the Disney movie. But there’s something in the meta and the background of Andersen’s fairytale that I think has gotten lost, and that’s the concept of a siren-mermaid, a soulless and even demonic being who’s supposed to be a deadly temptress luring men to their deaths, who is instead noble and heroic and self-sacrificing. Even The Little Mermaid’s immediate predecessor in Undine (1811) gains a human soul through marriage but is still constrained by her nature to the point of killing her husband; Andersen’s heroine defies her nature, selflessly spares the thoughtlessly cruel prince, and as a result earns her own soul. I think the problem with The Little Mermaid is that it did its job of humanizing the Mermaid so well that we’ve kind of forgotten the genius of the story, that she was a monster who refused to be a monster. OTHER BLOG POSTS
Bibliography
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About
Researching folktales and fairies, with a focus on common tale types. Archives
July 2024
Categories
All
|
Writing in Margins
RSS Feed
