Viewed from behind the safety of anxious fingertips, a certain Disney Renaissance classic has charmed and scarred audiences since its theatrical release. Disney’s The Little Mermaid (Disney, 1989) was everything I expected it to be and more. It was magical, romantic, silly, and of course, musical. The danger and horror were things that came later on. After a shark attack distracts the lead heroine, Ariel, all is well within her underwater world, except for the concert she so totally forgot about for the sake of a fork and a pipe.
While watching Ariel claim independence and persevere despite her shortcomings of a semi-fish status and muteness, I began to romanticize this mermaid and her struggle, resenting her inhibiting father in the way only a child can. But enter Ursula, the cecaelia (human-octopus-hybrid/monstrosity), and a nefarious plot ensues. I held resentment for Ursula, with an added flavor of fear. She was different from Triton in that, instead of blazing off in heated exchanges of power play, she played a long game. She lured you in, made you comfortable and then squeezed you for all you’re worth, much like the movie itself squeezed the fright out of me. She was careful, stealthy, and deadly.
When the final battle begins with Ariel’s turning back into a piscine pumpkin, so did my childlike fright. “You’re too late!” cackled Ursula, and it was true: the scene that unfolded before my eyes seconds later was petrifying, apart from the solace afforded to me from the tears blurring my vision. My body tensed, and it felt as though Ursula’s vendetta was for me, as well as Ariel. Ursula’s transformation from Vanessa back to Ursula remains one of the most singularly disturbing images of my childhood, next to my mother’s nakedness and the dark.
Ripping through a wedding gown, Ursula’s tentacles spill onto the deck of the wedding cruise ship as she crawls menacingly to snatch Ariel back into her clutches. And then Disney wasn’t finished; after the final battle came Ursula’s impalement. Ursula’s skeleton flashes through her large form in the midst of a storming sea, as the broken tip of the bowsprit peeks at the audience from the other side of her body. The happy ending at the end for Ariel and Eric did little to smooth over this prior nightmare.
Out of nostalgia, I’ve watched The Little Mermaid countless times. I learned the power of consequences while watching Ariel naively claim her independence by wasting her talent, willfully ignoring danger and rejecting her identity for a man she’d never met or spoken to. However, I was never completely turned off from her character’s foolish bravery. There were parts of her world that I admired: her belief in love, in fate, and in agency. Ariel standing up to her father, saying she was 16 and not a “little girl anymore”, was poignant. It’s something all children and teenagers yearn to state, and stamp their foot to.
The music was charming and memorable. The songs along with the characters who sang them were thrilling, invoking chills. I found myself humming the music and quoting the creatures in the film, often without immediately recognizing what I was quoting. The themes in the film evolved as I grew, and the film went from entertainment to rhetoric.
While arguments about women’s sexuality, social status and politics glossed over the heads of children and the parents that were trying to console them, I was picking up lessons left, wrong, and right. Disney either accomplished all of this or got away with it. Regardless of its nature, The Little Mermaid, along with many Disney films, exemplified what animation can display that live action cannot, especially to children. As an adult, the jokes are bawdier and the plot is thinner. The characters are canonized, in history and in my mind. While I’d caution any parent showing the film to a child, there is merit in the growth in interpretation for the audience (provided they can make it past the tentacles).
Philip Runia 