"Is there anything I can do to win an immortal soul?": Andersen's The Little Mermaid

Since it was written in 1837, Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid has baffled and frustrated analysts. On first glance, it seems considerably more violent and pessimistic than the classic film that rebirthed Disney animation. For example, the little mermaid loses her voice by having her tongue cut out. The sea witch in the story is just a disgusting old crone, not the emblem of voluptuous female sexuality that is Ursula (ironically based on drag performer Divine).

Though having sanitized the original story, as they are wont to do, Disney's film still has unique qualities of its own. Unlike most of Disney's Princesses, Ariel is a flawed character. She is a teenager, rebelling against her upbringing and existential nature to forge her own identity, generally making bad decisions all along the way. It is only the love she has been able to inspire in others that redeems her choices and grants a happy outcome. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that she is also somewhat controversial.

This is not the theme of the original story, however. The little mermaid does become obsessed with the surface world - she had five sisters visit it and come back with marvellous stories about it for half a decade before she was finally able to see it for herself - and there is a prince that becomes the object of her obsessions. What really troubles her, though, is the fact that mermaids lack an immortal soul. It is this puzzle that mermaids should live for 300 years and then dissolve into sea foam while humans should only live for 70 years on Earth but inherit Heaven that draws her to make the choices she does.

In the Western European lore inherited by Andersen, mermaids were not believed to have immortal souls. Rather, they took considerable delight in luring men to their deaths, ostensibly to rip their souls from them. Much of mermaid mythology developed out of Greek Sirens, who would lure ships only to have them dashed upon the rocks. Richard Wagner's four-part epic opera Ring of the Nibelung, composed between 1848 and 1874, begins and ends with the aquatic Rhinemaidens who are morally innocent. Not morally pure... they still lure and seduce men... but almost pre-moral in their childlike innocence. The playwright George Bernard Shaw described the Rhinemaidens as "thoughtless, elemental, only half-real things," adding the dated punchline "very much like modern young ladies."  

Andersen's mermaids are very similar. They live and frolic in the oceans as moral innocents, free of want but also free of souls. They live for a very long time in the Sea but eventually dissolve into nothingness. Being creatures of the Sea, they have a sense of the primordial about them, like Adam and Eve before the fateful fruit. Much like them, the little mermaid suddenly gains moral awareness and her childlike, pre-moral happiness is taken from her. She cannot be content knowing that humans have immortal souls and she does not. Finding no answers from her grandmother except to accept this fact and be content, the little mermaid makes the decision to visit the sea witch.

The deal that the little mermaid makes with the sea witch appears Faustian. She must allow her tongue to be cut out, her every step on Earth will feel like knives against her feet, and she must wed the prince to gain her immortal soul or dissolve into sea foam on the morning after he weds another. This superficially Faustian arrangement betrays a fundamental fact, much like Adam and Eve's punishment for eating the fruit: with an immortal soul comes moral awareness, and with moral awareness comes personal sacrifice.

Moral systems are ultimately extensions of metaphysical beliefs. They are, in a sense, optimal performance parameters based on how one thinks the universe actually operates. The metaphysical beliefs of the Modern Era have largely resembled those of the mermaids, in that belief in God and an immortal soul have been punted to the wayside, humanity having moved "beyond good and evil" to an infantile, primordial, pre-moral state where the concept of personal sacrifice is anathema. "If it feels good, do it." With belief in God and an immortal soul comes the idea that humanity is imbued with higher moral obligation to God and to one another that requires sacrifice of one's own ambitions, effort, affluence, and temporal happiness. The exchange is the paradoxical promise that by giving up these things on Earth, we gain back something infinitely more fulfilling in the Hereafter. "Store up treasure in Heaven."

Even then, this exchange and even our immortal soul is contingent on the will of God. Andersen metaphorically represents this by the little mermaid's immortal soul being dependent not on her sacrifice, but on how the prince responds to it. Her own deeds will not earn her a soul. She is dependent on another. I can sympathize with feminist readings of the text that might interpret this as women being dependent on men for a soul, but I would argue that this is missing its rich metaphorical, theological layering. The little mermaid, who has risen out of the primordial, pre-moral state is still dependent on the Son of the King for her immortality. Even if we do not go so far as to interpret the prince as a Christ-figure (what happens at the end of the novel makes this a more uncomfortable analogy), it still recognizes that as humans we do not live unto ourselves but in relationship to others.

The finale of Andersen's tale is what has provoked the most consternation for critics. It appears so out of place that many scholars have felt that it was simply tacked on to render a happy ending, or an end that is at least not as dire, pessimistic, and cynical as what it appeared to be leading up to. In order not to spoil it further, I will resume discussion of The Little Mermaid after the text presented below. The following version was translated by Susannah Mary Paull for the 1872 anthology, Fairy Tales of Andersen. Illustrations are by Bertall from an 1889 French edition.

Feminism and the Disney Princesses - Part II: Tropes vs. Men in Disney

In my original article Feminism and the Disney Princesses, I set out to address specific claims about how the canon of Disney fairy tale films represents its female protagonists. My approach was academic, engaging in a close viewing of the films to determine if these claims had any justifiable basis. While that article examined – and, I believe, ultimately refuted – claims that Disney's animated films present a negative image of women, the other side of the coin is whether they carry an otherwise patriarchal message.

Just as my previous analysis attempted to examine the films without intending to ignite a debate about feminism as a social construct, my discussion of male image in Disney is not intended to ignite debate about male advocacy and men's rights movements. I am a proponent of women's rights, freedoms, and social and economic justice, as well as unequivocally denouncing misogyny, violence towards and oppression of women, and thus am not throwing my fedora into the ring on any particular side. My goal is to employ academic analysis to answer the academic question of how male image is represented in Disney films. Do they reinforce a positive image of male domination and patriarchal power relationships? And more particularly, can the same lens of negative interpretation be brought to bear on them that is frequently brought to bear on Disney's representation of female characters?

Corrections to the Disney Timeline

Recently, Tumblr user Aish's (disneynewsgroove)  historical timeline of Disney animated films made its way around social media. For the most part it was a very good attempt and it is easy to see where they opted several times to place the film either when the original story was published or the original film released. Of course, there are a few exceptions that we noted and wanted to point out in good fun, because we're a nitpicking blog dedicated to the real historical influences behind Disney films and that's what we do.

"YOU FORGOT ABOUT US!!!"
Rite of Spring, 4,500,000,000 to 65,000,000 BC

20,000 Leagues Unda' Da' Sea

So apparently I had some free time on the weekend... Perhaps a bit too much... Either way, I hope you enjoy my little D-TV style tribute to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Little Mermaid.

Feminism and the Disney Princesses

As such a significant cultural force, Disney and their Princesses franchise serve as a touchstone for gender issues that more often than not reach far beyond the actual content of the films upon which the franchise rests. Perhaps you have seen images like the one above before, or read certain feminist analyses of the Disney Princess films that arrive at similarly negative conclusions. Unfortunately, when such analyses present themselves as being "feminist," the resulting debate tends to focus on the nature and reach of feminism rather than more pedestrian concerns like whether the analysis is actually accurate to the source material. I am a proponent of women's rights, freedoms and social and economic justice, so I do not intend to make a criticism of feminism as such. It does seem to me that, sometimes, the legitimate concerns of feminism can override clear-thinking and sound research when analyzing works of art like Disney's animated films. What I hope to do by wading in with this article is nothing more than engage in the academic practice of closely and carefully summarizing the source documents - in this case the films - to determine whether these accusations are accurate without troubling to ignite a debate over feminism in-and-of itself.

The easiest accusations to dispense with are those which apparently missed the entire message of the film and arrived at a conclusion opposite to that message. For example, the above image states that the theme of Aladdin is that Jasmine's political worth is determined by her marriageability, which is true insofar as we're talking only of her political worth and even then it is only true up to the denouement. The overarching and (what one would think of as the) unmistakable theme of the film is that one's personal worth is determined by their character and not their economic, social or political rank. The Sultan does attempt to marry Jasmine off against her wishes, in accordance with the law of the land, which she actively rebels against. Jasmine goes so far as to flee the palace, whereupon she meets Aladdin, the thief who dreams of nothing more than being able to rise above his poverty and be afforded at least minimal human courtesies (though living in the palace would be awfully nice, he believes). After Jasmine is recovered and Aladdin comes across the magical lamp, he adopts the persona of Prince Ali Ababwa to woo her. For her part, Jasmine rebuffs his showiness and expresses absolute outrage at her father, Ababwa and Jafar discussing her fate without her consultation. It is only when she realizes that Ababwa is the same thief in the market that she softens to him. Jafar, the villain, also seeks the hand of Jasmine, but only for her political worth and her physical beauty. The villain is the one who degrades Jasmine, first figuratively and then literally after he acquires the lamp. In the end, when the villain is dispensed with, the Sultan realizes the error of his ways and changes the law to suit Jasmine. He recognizes the folly and disgrace of making his daughter act against her wishes, thus exercising his political power to enable Jasmine to marry the man of her own choosing, who himself has demonstrated that good character supersedes the merits of wealth and power.