THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical, psychological*

Under the sea


Under the sea
Nobody beat us
Fry us and eat us
In fricassee

Yeah, yeah, everyone's all "THE LITTLE MERMAID, beginning of the Disney Renaissamce." I see "The Little Mermaid, Sellout." "The Little Mermaid, Species-Traitor!"

I exaggerate for effect, but not by much. Fetching mermaid Ariel is both an accomplished songstress and the apple of her father Triton's eye. She often hears, from both her father and her crustacean music-teacher Sebastian, that the humans from the surface-world have a marked propensity to devour the denizens of Triton's subsea domain Atlantica. Yet from the movie's beginnings-- long before Ariel has her "love at first sight" moment with human Prince Eric-- this fish-girl is as nuts for surface-world detritus as a Zoomer for the latest K-pop fad. The script never says why Ariel is such a human-lover, though theoretically one could chalk up her diffidence toward her own world to the seeming absence of virile young mermen. (Maybe Ursula ate 'em all up?) Ariel seems pretty indifferent to the fact that Eric's people would gleefully chow down on her buddies Sebastian and Flounder. Yet in terms of exogamous mating, one must admit that the seaweed looks literally greener in the surface-dwellers' "lake."

The fear of being eaten naturally exists "under the sea" as well as on land, not to mention the fear's prevalence in animated cartoons since the medium's origins. Carnophobia is also a big part of Disney gag-humor, making its presence in MERMAID one of two big divergences from the Hans Christian Andersen story on which the MERMAID writers riffed. The other big change from the source-material is the injection of diabolism. Andersen's Sea Witch has no Satanic propensities; she just tells the Mermaid: "you want to change your nature; here's what it'll cost you." Ursula though is a Tempter who takes sadistic pleasure in the misery of others; Lucifer as sardonic drag-queen. When Triton rages at Ariel for wanting to date outside her species, Ursula sees the chance to up her game. By securing Ariel's soul, Ursula can pull off a Satanic version of an Imitatio Dei, becoming the new ruler of the ocean-domain, the ultimate Big Fish that eats all smaller prey.

Happily, MERMAID's suggestion of heavy themes is more than counterbalanced by all the fun, light-hearted stuff that made Classic Disney possible from the beginning. When Prince Eric meets the voiceless Ariel, he can't believe she's related to the haunting mer-girl who saved his life, and she can only try to draw his love to her through the power of her fundamentally innocent sexuality. "Kiss the Girl" is the sort of musical number that would have been impossible in the days of Raging Feminism: the Awfuls would have been railing that in their world women didn't have to wait for the guys to make the first move. But underneath all the singing birds and frogs in the background dwells a priority older than humankind: if the male can't summon the mojo to make the first move, he might as well be sitting on the sidelines and watching the parade go by.

I recall one discordant note voiced back when MERMAID was new to movie-screens: some ultra-Feminist critic didn't like it when Prince Eric, who didn't do much of anything for the entire story, received the honor of killing Ursula by stabbing her with the "phallic" prow of his ship. There's not much one can say to that sort of dumbass thinking beyond, "sometimes a prow is just a prow." But even if some Disney scripter was actively thinking "prow=penis," who in the audience really cares who cares who kills the Sea Bitch, as long as she's sung her last note?

So, okay. expected happy ending, and maybe when Eric and Ariel ascend to the throne of Wherever, the ex-Mermaid enjoins the whole kingdom to lay off the marine delicacies. Buth human and merman realms are implicitly improved by the joining of houses and the expulsion of the Principle of Evil-- not counting the lesser evils of sequels, prequels, and live-action remakes.