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Page 182

Simba from the onrush of animals, Scar throws the King down to his death, then blames Simba. Stricken by guilt, Simba flees the pridelands and grows up under the influence of the meercat Timon, who teaches him to avoid all cares and worries. When Nala, Simba’s childhood fiancée, rediscovers Simba, she shames him for avoiding responsibility. After seeing the image of his father in the stars and facing the past, Simba returns to defeat his uncle, now the King, marry Nala, and ascend Mufasa’s mountain triumphantly with his own child.

The heroine of The Little Mermaid goes after her desires from the film’s start and never wavers in the disciplined pursuit of her goals. Ariel the mermaid yearns to experience the human world that her father, King Triton, has forbidden her to enter. She rescues the drowning Prince Eric after his boat breaks up in a storm, but leaves him before he fully revives; he, however, remembers the mysterious song she had sung to him. Eager to join Eric, Ariel trades her voice to the sea witch, Ursula, for a pair of legs. But if Ariel cannot win a kiss from the Prince before the end of three days, she will become one of Ursula’s eternal prisoners. Before Ariel can succeed, Ursula transforms herself into a woman named Vanessa and, using Ariel’s voice and song, wins the Prince. With the help of friends, Ariel stops the Prince’s wedding, an elaborate sea battle ensues, the witch is destroyed, and finally, King Triton drops his opposition and blesses his daughter’s wedding to Prince Eric.

Although not the first animated feature from the new Disney corporate culture created by Eisner and Katzenberg, The Little Mermaid (1989) was its largest success before The Lion King (1994). Mermaid took in $84 million at the box office and sold 9 million videos, making it second in sales only to E.T. Perhaps most importantly, The Little Mermaid gave Disney its first successful promotional character for spin-off products (Grover 1991:132). Figures from The Lion King were developed and marketed just as profitably. By studying the corporation’s two most successful films, or product launches, that draw on Shakespeare, we can expose its recent strategies for standardizing the consumption patterns of the largest possible public in order to dominate the marketplace. When Disney appropriates Shakespeare, we are reminded of the uncomfortably easy fit between Shakespeare and corporate objectives, and perhaps of Shakespeare’s own role in the scientific, mechanistic project critiqued by Adorno in his complaints about Bacon.

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