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Page 184 versions differ greatly, however, in large part because the filmmakers splice a Shakespearean structure and characterizations into Andersen’s plot. The characters of “A Little Mermaid” inhabit a female-dominated world. While the Mer-King is barely mentioned, the mermaids are founts of inspiration and independence for the heroine; the enticing stories of the human world that she hears, for instance, come from a grandmother. Mer-women, however, are also the source of destructive powers. The witch, who gives the Mermaid feet at the cost of her tongue, doubles the grandmother or the absent mother. Both promote separation, but independence is also associated with danger: the grandmother talks of the forest and the witch lives in one (Soracco 1990:409). Andersen therefore presents female independence as threatening, and ultimately praises the Little Mermaid for letting her body dissolve into sea foam. While in the end Disney’s Little Mermaid is equally conservative on the subject of female empowerment, the film complicates its puritan message by restructuring Andersen’s fairy tale according to the logic of Shakespearean comedy, in which the younger generation triumphs over the older. In Andersen’s tale, swimming up to the ocean surface is a female rite of passage that each mermaid sister undergoes when she turns fifteen. In Disney, this ritual becomes a more generalized romance quest in which the adolescent heroine must overcome blocks to her happiness. First, she must act against the wishes of her father, who opposes relationships with humans. Then, she must compete with a displaced version of the father, the vindictive sea witch Ursula, who wants her voice and her Prince. The two most important changes to “The Little Mermaid” story are to the characters of the mermaid’s father and the witch, both of them barriers to Ariel’s happiness. The Mer-King gains a vastly increased presence and a name: he is King Triton, who, like Shakespeare’s powerful father Prospero, wields storm and tempest to manage his realm. (The film begins with a scene that is not found in Andersen, but resembles closely the first scene of The Tempest, which opens with an argument—while a storm is sinking the ship— about whether a prominent ducal counselor or the sailors themselves should decide nautical conduct. In a similar vein, before the credits of The Little Mermaid appear, a dark boat tosses violently on stormy seas, while its occupants engage in a class-inflected discussion. Sailors attribute their problems to King Triton, and are surly when the Prince and his trusted advisor say that they have never heard of him.) Ursula the sea witch has also grown in presence and |
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