$\"Splash!$ <\/a>

Splash!, 1984<\/p><\/div>\n

The Disney studio had been considering Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s\u00a0The Little Mermaid\u00a0<\/b>for adaptation as early as the Snow White<\/strong> years, but it was not until the late Eighties that the time finally seemed right. Even then, there was concern it might too closely duplicate\u00a0Splash<\/b>, which Disney had produced in 1984.<\/p>\n

Splash<\/strong> itself had been rushed through production because there were rumours of another mermaid film in the pipeline elsewhere \u2013 a Warren Beatty vehicle that eventually fell through. Why exactly mermaids were suddenly in the ascendant during this particular period of the late twentieth century is open to speculation; at any rate, the nudity and adult content in\u00a0Splash<\/strong>\u00a0led directly to the creation of Touchstone Pictures, Disney\u2019s \u2018older audiences\u2019 label. Mermaids (particularly Darryl Hannah’s mermaid) were too sexual for the family studio in 1984.<\/p>\n

Ironically, of course,\u00a0mermaid<\/em> – \u201cmaiden of the sea\u201d \u2013 suggests that these aquatic women are rather more virginal than \u2018Touchstone Pictures\u2019 thought. Traditional (cisnormative) misogynistic popular wisdom holds women in general to be \u2018leaky vessels\u2019, because of the amount of \u2018moisture\u2019 they produce, but though mermaids live in the water, they have no apparent human genitalia, making them, by contrast, vessels that are rather neatly sealed.<\/p>\n

In this, they link with the Virgin Mary, who appears in Catholic symbolism as a \u2018fountain forever sealed\u2019 in the middle of an enclosed garden, representing the Immaculate Conception. Mary\u2019s homonymic (and virginal) association with mermaids, and the link between the sea (mer<\/em>) and the mother (mere<\/em>) introduces an additional layer to this.<\/p>\n

Alongside this, there is also a parallel virgin\/whore tradition of the mermaid as prostitute and even embodied vagina (since, famously, vaginas are often described as smelling like fish).<\/p>\n

$\"Starbucks$ <\/a>
The Starbucks logo, not abandoned until 1987.<\/p><\/div>\n

This opposing strand presumably comes from sailors\u2019 fear of the Siren-figure and the unknowns out in the sea, but it\u2019s also connected with a different type of mermaid altogether \u2013 the\u00a0 melusine<\/a>. A\u00a0double-tailed half-woman, half-fish, her intrinsic, though hidden, fishiness only emerges when she takes a bath. Even then, the double tail leaves her human genitalia open to the world in what\u00a0 some have claimed<\/a>\u00a0is an appropriation of older symbols of female fertility, such as the\u00a0 Sheela na gig<\/a>\u00a0or even the goddess Venus (an alternative \u2018mother\u2019 connection).<\/p>\n

Incidentally the melusine, not the mermaid, is the figure in the (now closely cropped) logo for Starbucks coffee, the first branch of which opened – logo blazing proud, bare-breasted and double-tailed – in 1971, a decade before\u00a0Splash<\/strong> went into production.<\/p>\n
The coffee-shop melusine was maintained in her full glory until 1987 (although she was ‘sealed’ at the point where the tails meet,\u00a0as her original had not been<\/a>); the first of several censoring crops came into effect around the time Disney bosses turned their attention to Andersen.<\/p>\n

For a modern contrast to the ‘sealed off’ melusine, have a look at one of the\u00a0 mermaids commissioned by men’s deodorant brand Lynx for an early Noughties advertising campaign<\/a>, whose posterior is beginning to resurface through her scales, soft porn-like.<\/p>\n

Planning The Little Mermaid<\/h2>\n
Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s original\u00a0Little Mermaid<\/strong> tale was serviceable, but \u2013 much like Starbucks\u2019 logo \u2013 it had to be sanitised before Disney could take it to a Disney audience. Tellingly, the changes proposed during this period of pre-production were substantially same as the ones suggested during the preliminary work in the Thirties.<\/p>\n
$\"Hans$ <\/a>
Hans Christian Andersen, photographed by Thora Hallager<\/p><\/div>\n
The first thing to do was give it a happy ending, since in Andersen\u2019s version the Prince\u2019s indifference to the mermaid results in her annihilation<\/a> and transformation to \u2018a daughter of the air\u2019.<\/p>\n

This was typical Andersen: he wrote that \u2018most of what I have written is a reflection of myself\u2019, and he was not a terribly happy man. Unreciprocated love was an ongoing feature of his life, and throughout it he nursed passions for various inappropriate people.<\/p>\n

These included celebrity soprano Jenny Lind (who is said to have inspired\u00a0his story The Nightingale<\/strong> after she put him firmly in the friendzone in 1844) and various straight men, but he also wrote of avoiding actual sexual encounters \u2013 his diary records him visiting prostitutes, talking to them, and then returning home to masturbate alone.<\/p>\n
Many of his \u2018fairy tales\u2019 are characterised by violence, speechlessness and unreciprocated love, often across two different \u2018species\u2019, as with the tin soldier\u2019s love for a paper ballerina in\u00a0The Steadfast Tin Soldier<\/strong>, or indeed the Little Mermaid\u2019s love for the human Prince \u2013 a feature that tends to make them, like their author, rather sexless in approach.<\/p>\n
Although the sad stuff was scrapped, the symbolically significant speechlessness of the Mermaid was maintained in the Disney screenplay. A mermaid\u2019s voice is her primary power, since her singing can lure sailors to their deaths, so its loss is a significant one \u2013 aphonia in a milder form had also been a feature of\u00a0Splash<\/strong>, where Darryl Hannah\u2019s character cannot initially speak English.<\/p>\n
Disney\u2019s Ariel was voiced by Broadway star (and Ashman associate) Jodi Benson, and her voice remains her defining beauty in the film. But the manner of its loss changes: while both Little Mermaids give their voices up to the Sea Witch, in Andersen’s story the unnamed mermaid has her tongue cut out to bring this about.\u00a0Disney cleaned this up, and, in the process, rendered it reversible: Ariel\u2019s voice is depicted as a glowing, ghostly ball that can pass through bodily barriers without drawing blood \u2013 as in traditional artistic representations of the soul.<\/p>\n
Ironically, this is exactly what Andersen\u2019s mermaid is seeking: her love for the prince is the means through which she hopes to win \u2018immortality\u2019 and the chance to share in the joys of paradise. (This rather Romantic notion, albeit gender-inverted, links Andersen\u2019s tale thematically with Friedrich de la Motte\u2019s mermaid\u00a0 Undine<\/strong><\/a> – and also Tchaikovsky\u2019s watery\u00a0Swan Lake<\/strong><\/a>, composed in 1875, the year Andersen died). Disney refocused the mermaid’s longing for a soul to a more secular \u2013 and sexualised \u2013 teenage quest for the love of a handsome prince.<\/p>\n
She sells sea shells<\/h2>\n
But Disney hit a problem when it came to the artwork. Mermaids, of course, are typically bare-breasted, but so too were traditional depictions of Andersen\u2019s \u2018little\u2019 mermaid, including the statue in Copenhagen\u2019s harbour.<\/p>\n
$\"The$ <\/a>
The Little Mermaid loud and proud in Copenhagen’s harbour<\/p><\/div>\n

There is not a single illustration to the fairy tale pre-Disney that shows her wearing anything at all over her chest \u2013 in the case of Heath Robinson,\u00a0 this emphasises the \u2018Little\u2019 part<\/a>, as the mermaid is clearly a child in his illustrations.<\/p>\n

$\"Disney's$ <\/a>The mermaid is fifteen in Andersen\u2019s tale, so her littleness could be argued either way, but in 1989 Disney producers obviously decided they wanted her to be legal (in most states anyway). To make it completely clear, in the course of the film Ariel declares to her father (a familiar refrain) ‘I’m sixteen years old. I’m not a child.’<\/p>\n

But however innocently naked (and animated) the Little Mermaid might be, Disney certainly could not show a sixteen year old\u2019s breasts on screen. Their solution to this problem was the creation of a purple bra made out of shells – a new mermaid first.<\/p>\n

When coupled with the waistband-like arrangement at the top of her tail (another innovation, since traditionally the mermaid\u2019s scales segue gradually from the skin at her waist), this decision had the effect of creating a kind of mermaid bikini that implies she might just be wearing an elaborate two-piece \u2013 one very similar, in fact, to the\u00a0 ensemble worn by Princess Jasmine<\/a>\u00a0in Disney\u2019s next film,\u00a0Aladdin<\/strong>. And, of course, it also has the effect of emphasising breasts and hips either side of a tiny waist.<\/p>\n
The Barbie-style Ariel doll I had as a child had (as modern-day packaging still asserts) ‘removable clothes for costume change<\/a>‘, so it was clear she was a two-legged being with an optional tail.<\/p>\n

This has the effect of making the transition from mermaid to human much easier: in Andersen\u2019s story, creating two legs out of one fish tail is exactly as vicious as you would expect it to be, and the draught the mermaid drinks to effect this causes the sensation of \u2018a two-edged sword [passing] through her delicate body\u2019 \u2013 so severe she passes out. Throughout her subsequent time on land, each foot she puts to the ground feels like \u2018treading upon the points of needles or sharp knives\u2019.<\/p>\n

Bodily mutilation \u2013 indeed, mortification \u2013 is everywhere in Andersen’s story. After everyone is asleep, the mermaid goes to \u2018sit on the broad marble steps [of the palace] for it eased her burning feet to bathe them in the cold sea-water\u2019. Significantly – and somewhat bizarrely – such mutilation has been an ongoing problem for the Copenhagen representation of Andersen’s mermaid: the statue in the harbour has been blown up, decapitated (twice) and had its arm sawn off, in addition to many\u00a0 petty acts of vandalism<\/a>\u00a0since its erection in 1913.<\/p>\n

Some liberation?<\/h2>\n
By contrast with Andersen’s difficult transition, Ariel\u2019s easy-on, easy-off fish tail and bikini bra combo not only \u2018re-opens\u2019 the traditional closed mermaid vessel, it also sexualises the teenage mermaid in a manner markedly different from anything in Andersen\u2019s original (where the mermaid\u2019s love is increased by knowledge of the prince\u2019s good deeds, and her longing for a soul).<\/p>\n
$\"The$ <\/a>
The Little Mermaid – Disney’s artwork<\/p><\/div>\n

By censoring Ariel, Disney draws attention to her body and breasts, so she resembles a California surfer girl. The nakedness, which in earlier illustrations was straightforward and childlike, takes on an explicitly sexual edge (for more on this, have a look at this piece\u00a0 by Virginia Borges<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The result is that Disney\u2019s\u00a0Little Mermaid<\/strong> becomes the straightforward tale of a sixteen-year-old struggling with her father for the right to explore her burgeoning sexuality and go out with a boy. And because she ultimately uses this right to make a good marriage (wearing\u00a0something strikingly similar<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0 the dress worn by the equally speechless Princess Diana<\/a>\u00a0at her 1981 marriage), Ariel makes good in the end and everyone is happy.<\/p>\n
Like most of the Disney Renaissance heroines, hers is the story of a successful transition from the rule of the father to the rule of the husband.<\/p>\n

Other mermaids<\/h2>\n
But it\u2019s interesting that at the same time the producers were working on a heteronormative middle-class fantasy idea, their musical wunderkind Howard Ashman (despite dying of what, at the time, was popularly cast as a very non-family-friendly disease) was injecting some Broadway pizzazz into the soundtrack. This included the introduction of a deviantly-styled figure like Divine via the character of Ursula, the Sea Witch (though of course she is defeated, as does not happen in Andersen).<\/p>\n

In fact, as the Disney Renaissance got going, the calibre of stars from distinctly non-Disney backgrounds increased:\u00a0The Lion King<\/strong>, the Renaissance nadir, had major Broadway stars alongside A-list Hollywood stars, and the cast included black and Latino actors \u2013 something that had not even been considered back in the Forties (when Uncle Walt wanted some racial-caricature \u2018Jim Crow\u2019 figures in Dumbo<\/strong>, the crows were voiced by white men doing their best \u2018black man\u2019 impression instead). The staff list at the Disney studios was full of Jewish and homosexual figures like Ashman. Yet\u00a0The Little Mermaid<\/strong> ushered in some of the most socially conservative films Disney produced. A strange duality.<\/p>\n
\n Like it says above, Hodge<\/strong> is currently doing a dedicated project on mermaids over at\u00a0Poems Underwater<\/strong><\/a>, which is inviting submissions<\/a>…<\/em><\/li>\n
@PoemsUnderwater<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n
Poems Underwater<\/strong> on Facebook<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

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Like most of the Disney Renaissance heroines, hers is the story of a successful transition from the rule of the father to the rule of the husband. But how did we get to something so squeaky-clean? <\/p>\n

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