Comment: Damn you, Disney! Redux

Okay, I have to admit that my rabid rants about Disney, although based on facts, do tend heavily towards exaggerated and heated invective. (Can you heat invective? I think so.) Where I feel I’ve most been off the mark is with “The Little Mermaid,” an error I wish to correct posthaste.

So we rented the lovely tale of the above-mentioned mermaid, and we watched the whole thing, my kids and I. As I had vaguely remembered it, Ariel, the featured mermaid, gave up her voice so she could go and be with her man, Prince Eric. It actually turns out that although she pays the Sea Witch (to become human)with her voice, in the end, she gets it back. So she doesn’t sacrifice her voice for her man. That would be a hideous and creepy message.

Sidebar: remember the movie, “The Piano,” where Holly Hunter’s character falls in love with the man who essentially prostitutes her out so she gets to play her beloved piano? And then she goes back to “civilization” and marries him? Disturbing. (Apparently, the original intention had been to end it with Holly’s character killing herself on the ocean trip back to the mainland. I guess it wasn’t Hollywood enough and the test audiences didn’t care for the suicidal ending, so it was axed. But it made WAY more sense.)

So you see, I had thought that by showing my kids “The Little Mermaid” it was going to basically be an animated version of “The Piano,” but thankfully, I was wrong. Ariel DOES indeed get her voice back, but she does sacrifice her family for her man (sort of the reverse of Disney’s Pocohontas ). Then again, many of us move away from our childhood homes when we marry. And there is a reconciliation between Ariel and her father, who had initially had a serious hate-on for the detested humans but comes around in the end.

The Little Mermaid as coming-of-age story, of believing in your dreams, and pursuing them relentlessly. Ah, so American. Even though the story of the original little mermaid is a Han Christen Andersen tale, so technically she’s Danish. I don’t think the Danish would make a movie quite like Disney’s. Or if they did, there’d be really good butter and socialized medicine.

Anyway, for the record, “The Little Mermaid” is not the worst offering Disney has out. Cinderella is much worse, but I’m not going to get into how she had no mother, then an evil stepmother, then a fairy godmother, no father, and then a prince who solved ALL her problems. Just pair Prince A with Good Looking Young Woman B and voila, happily ever after.

Sorry, I said I wasn’t going to get into it. Oops.