The Little Mermaid

Who hasn’t heard of this movie?  It’s one of Disney’s classics, back from when they were making really awesome animated features during what many call the Disney Renaissance.  I’ve loved this movie since it came out in 1989, and my sister did, too.  We had it on VHS (yes the one with the… inappropriate subliminal castle on the case), and played it so much we both memorized it.  Then we’d act it out, arguing over who got to be Ariel and who had to be everyone else, and singing in “French” when it came time for Chef Louis’s torture of Sebastian.  Ah, such fond memories…

With all of the obsessive fandom – as obsessive as I could get at age 11 with no money anyway – it was only a matter of time before I read the original story.  And… it’s quite different.  Sure there are some elements the same, but it’s got quite a different moral and a depressing ending.  And, of course, Disney had to water that down some (no pun intended.  Or was it?)

The original fairy tale was written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1839, apparently originally as a ballet, and published by C.A. Reitzel the following year in a fairy tale compilation book.  Some literary scholars or whatever speculate over the changing of the titular character from a mermaid to a human to a whatever she is at the end of the story as a reflection of Andersen’s constantly changing identity.  Whether this is a gender swapped self reflection or not, I don’t know and don’t really care; it’s a pretty good story even if the morals are a bit outdated.

We join our unnamed heroine six years before her fifteenth birthday, at which time she will be allowed to go up to the surface and see all the wonders of the world above the water.  She and her older five sisters are doted on by a grandmother who prides herself in being the matriarch of the royal family.  Very proper, very Victorian.  For each year leading up to her big one-five, her sisters get their turn and come back with tales of all they have seen, making their little sister jealous and long for going up.  When she does finally get to go up, she sees the Prince and falls in love, saves him from drowning, and everything.  She obsesses, and visits the Sea Witch to make her a human, has to get him to fall in love with her, etc.

The little mermaid’s main motivation in wanting to be human is not only love – it’s also an insatiable curiosity and a desire for an immortal soul that only marrying a human can grant her.  You see, there is no merperson heaven.  When merpeople die, they become sea foam.  There’s something jolly for you to think about next time you go to the beach: that white stuff that floats on the waves that you’re playing in is dead mermaids.  This soul thing she hears about from her prim grandma is worth more to her than anything, and she is willing to endure quite a bit of pain to get it.  To become human, not only does she have her tongue cut out, but the transformation itself feels like a sword slicing through her fins.  As a human, every step she takes as a human feels like she’s walking on knife tips to the point of making her feet bleed.  In the end, our little mermaid has to make a very difficult decision, knowing the consequences of both choices are a horrible fate.

The sea-witch is a plot device, and little more – merely a way for the mermaid to become human and a chance for an almost happy ending.  I can’t say if she’s evil.  She seems a bit unpleasant but we don’t know much about her to make the call.  The Sea King is also an ancillary character, barely even mentioned in comparison to Grandma and the sisters, each of whom get at least half a page to tell what they did in the human world and why for them the novelty of going up there wears off after about a month.

The prince is who makes me the maddest in this story.  He’s, to put it mildly, an idiot.  And he apparently enjoys emotionally torturing the former mermaid.  See, he had been taken in by a local convent when one of the girls there found him washed on the shore.  He believes that she saved him, and gives absolutely no thought to how the heck he got to the shore from the middle of the sea.  He forgot to ask this convent girl her name though, so he doesn’t know who she is.  There are multiple times throughout the story where he outright tells the mermaid that he’d probably fall in love with her if it wasn’t for his determination to make the girl who “saved him” his bride.  He’s too stupid to realize that far better than any dream girl is one of flesh and blood.  One who’s warm and caring, and right before his friggin’ eyes!

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen Harbor

This tale is so much a part of our culture, that even before Disney got a hold of it, little girls everywhere were fantasizing about being a mermaid who finds true love with a prince.  The tale has been adapted many times, and shows up in many other art forms, including painting and sculpture.  Even Splash, the live action movie also released by Disney (and incidentally, one of the contributing factors to the animated feature's production delay) is another sort of twist on this classic fairy tale.  This is one of those stories that has been in our bedtime story repertoire almost since it was written.

Development for the animated Disney film actually started waaaaaay back in the 1930’s as part of a collection of animated shorts based on Has Christian Anderson’s tales (a la the Uncle Remus Tales as presented in Song of the South, but possibly without the awkward racial stuff).  The project was delayed for various reasons, and eventually shelved.  Later, Jeffery Katzenburg picked up the tale and developed it, then found the first adaptation while their animation department was moving into a different out-of-the-way building, when they noticed that a lot of the changes were similar.  So, the new animation studio at Disney got The Little Mermaid greenlit as its second project (the first being Oliver and Company.)

The biggest change from the source material is the obvious one: Grandma Victorian Old Lady is replaced by King Triton, single father of six girls.  At least I assume he’s a single father since we never see nor hear anything about their mother.  Instead of a grandmother instilling the value of superficial beauty and vanity our heroine has an overprotective and authoritarian father.  And a crab.  And a fish that looks nothing like a flounder.  And a seagull.  You ever notice how Disney heroines have lots of animal friends and not so many human (or I suppose in this movie, merperson) ones?

Family friendly cover...

Anyway, King Triton hates humans because they eat fish.  And the merpeople eat… what?  Shrimp if Ursula is to be believed, but then do the shrimp demonize the merpeople?  I kinda hate this sort of message: a predator is evil for eating its prey.  I guess the merpeople are all just vegetarians or something, like apparently every other living thing in the sea.  Actually, his overreaction to Ariel going to the surface and running the risk of being “snared by some fisheater’s hook” has always seemed odd to me – do humans eat merpeople in this universe?  Has there been some sort of dark incident in the past that makes his fear founded?  Is that, perhaps, how Mrs. Triton died?  If there is no precedent for merpeople being killed by humans, then why does Triton forbid his people from going to the surface?  And why does he not protect his people from the enemies in the sea that probably do eat merperson every now and then?

The little mermaid, named Ariel in the movie, has the same curiosity as her original but is more of a typical rebellious teenager, as teens are nowadays.  Her motivation is simplified from a desire for both the prince and the soul marrying him could bring her, to just love at first sight.  She obsesses about the world which her father tells her is evil, and questions why he thinks so.  She goes to the surface even though it’s strictly forbidden, and allows herself to be convinced to go to Ursula, the sea which, for help even though she knows Ursula means trouble.   In fact, she needs at least a little bit of convincing for everything that she does in regard to becoming human: Who needs a voice?  Getting him to kiss you in three days will be easy-peezy!    And, since it’s Disney, she experiences none of the physical pain that the original mermaid did.

Ursula is my all-time favorite Disney villain.  Her role in the story is upgraded from plot device to catalyst for the events that land Ariel on… land.  Her motivation for helping Ariel while making it nearly impossible for the mermaid to get what she wants is a rather simple revenge plot.  King Trition kicked her out of the mer-kingdom – what for we never find out – and she not only wants back in, but she wants total mer-world domination.  Way to think big, octo-lady.  The three-day ticking clock that Ursula offers was a device of the Disney writers as well, to give a sort of suspense.  This actually annoys me, though, this “find true love in a matter of days” idea that seems to be so prevalent in movies nowadays.  Love at first sight is romantic and all, but what happens next?

"Let's eat before this crab wanders off my plate."

The Prince, given the name Eric, is thankfully smarter, and has an advisor that is both comic relief and a good advice giver named Grimsby.  He is at first determined to find and marry the girl that saved him, and indeed this time it really is the mermaid he’s looking for.  But, with Grim’s help, he does realize that this mute girl that he’s falling for might be better for him than wasting his life away chasing a dream.

All of the added characters, with only the exception of Scuttle, exist basically for comic relief and have next to no impact on the story.  Sebastian has High School Musical syndrome: wherever he is, things burst into song without warning or rehearsal if he has a message to tell.  Maybe that almost makes things happen but not anything that really wouldn’t have happened left alone, and he seems to exist only to up the musical number count in the movie.  Flounder… I really don’t know why Flounder is even in here, to be honest.  He adds nothing , makes nothing happen, and doesn’t even add too much comic relief.  Scuttle, Ariel’s overworld informant, fuels her curiosity and has the plot-useful tasks of discovering Ursula in disguise and essentially giving Ariel her voice back (something that never happened in the story).

The message of this story is… you know I’m not even sure there is really a message.  Ariel eventually gets what she wants with little consequence.  Her little adventure has even had the happy side effect of patching up human-merperson relations, since there’s a whole lot of them at the wedding.  Instead of giving up everything for intrinsic rewards of love and a soul, the lesson is disobey your parents, run away from home, date that fellow that your know your parents don’t like, and in the end your dad forgives you and gives you everything you want anyway and rearranges his whole prejudice against an entire race of beings.  Ariel’s the perfect role model for young, impressionable little girls.

I gotta admit, it’s hard watching this movie with an analytical lens after knowing all of the songs, lines, movements, bubbles, etc for the past 20 years.  Heck, I still call a fork with one bent prong a dinglehopper.  If only for nostalgic purposes, I still love this movie, even if it has its shortcomings.  The music is enjoyable and, even though the plot and characters are modernized, it makes for a more well-flushed story.  This is a movie that I continue to enjoy, even if it only basally loyal to its source material, with a much lighter tone and a happier ending.

Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the most beautiful cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass.

My translation is from a book I have that's simply called "Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen" published by Weatherbane Books, and does not credit a translator.

Hiatus returned

Um…  uh… ok… so, uh, I got really busy and ended up sort of taking a hiatus, unintentionally.  I actually did have something lined up and read in time, but then a lot of stuff happened all at once and so here I am, six months later, with no new posts.  Well, I have a new one coming, and yeah it’s the one I was doing before the hiatus.  I wanted to let my four readers know that I have not given up on this project, and still want to go on.  I was thinking of occasionally doing video post, but that may end up taking more time, so if I do end up doing that it will be a little while off when I am much less busy with school.  Let me know what you think of the idea (if no one says anything, I’ll assume you all think it’s a totally AWESOME idea.)  And all of you who tell me in person how much you like stuff on here – I could totally use the ego boost… I mean encouragement on the site itself.  Let other people who stumble onto my corner of the interwebz that you like this blog by leaving a comment on the posts.  Ok, so that’s it.  I’m back, The Little Mermaid is on the way, and I think I’ll add a new panel thingie to show what I plan on doing next.  Hopefully that will keep me on track.

Guidelines Remake

So, I know I don’t have many readers and have gotten only one suggestion, but I still wanted to address this.  After rereading my guidelines regarding suggestions, I realized that it is very negative, outlining what I would not do and stuff you should not suggest.  Apparently, I’ve already forgotten Rule #1 of rule making: Keep the list positive.  Maybe it’s just a teacher thing, but I think it’s good advice for any list of things that should/should not be done.  So, here’s my new list of guidelines, and while it might say basically the same things, see how much more shiny it is!

1)      Regarding comments: While students (aged somewhere between five and nine) have yet to start visiting my blog, they may in the future.  I prefer to write with clean fingers, see no real point in cursing when I can get my idea across just fine without, and expect you to extend the same respect.  Comments, good or bad, where you need to unload your f-bombs can be e-mailed to me. And yes, I will read them.

2)     Any book is fair game if the movie is a direct adaptation.  The name can be different, even.  Example: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH/The Secret of NIMH.

3)     Plays are ok – if you would like to see what I think of a play that is read at least as much as it is performed and has been turned into a movie (anything by Shakespeare seems to be fair game for this) then I have no problem reviewing it.

4)     Movies on DVD/VHS are easier for me to review – and cheaper.  These are my preferred formats, but honestly, if you really want to me to see a movie that’s in the theaters, it won’t hurt to suggest it anyway.  I could always save it for later.

5)     Comics/graphic novels are pretty cool, and the teacher in me even sees their value as a literacy building device.  And they’re easy to turn into movies because they’re pre-storyboarded.  I may do a few of these sometime; in the meantime, take a look at the other stuff I do.

6)      I may occasionally talk about other forms of entertainment that I enjoy, even the focus of the blog is on books and their movies.  If it’s got a storyline, and I notice something that I’d like to address, I’ll make the decision if I want to say something on here about it.

There.  Isn’t that better?  Not a “do not” or “will not” among them.  Use these from now on, or until I decide to update them again, because they look and feel better anyway.  And I added a little.  Tell your friends to come check me out, too, because I could totally use more readers.  Also, let me know if you think I can improve, because I need to know what people want to read in order to be able to give it to them.  That’s it!  I’ll have another post up soon.  Maybe I’ll even start to schedule these things so I’m not frantically looking around for a book to read at the last minute.

♥ Monkeeshrines

Where the Wild Things Are

I’m not gonna lie to you.  My entire motivation for doing this one at this time is because the book is short.  I was gonna do a longer book, Beezus and Ramona, but I realized after reading the entire thing and then watching the movie, Ramona and Beezus, that the movie was not based on the book I read, but on other books in the series.  Well, maybe I’ll do those another time.  Where the Wild Things Are is still a book I had on my list of to-do’s though, so I’m not cheating.  …Much.

Where the Wild Things Are was written by Maurice Sendak and published by Harper Trophy (now HarperCollins) in 1963.  The story is very short and sweet with very beautifully illustrated pictures that in addition to telling half the story (it’s a picture book, ya know) won the Caldecott Medal in 1964.  That’s like a Pulitzer, but for picture book art.  Because the story is so simple, I really can’t do too much of a synopsis of it without telling the whole story.  So sorry for spoiling the 37 page book (16 of which are just pictures).

Max is in a funny mood the night he wears his wolf suit.  Maybe there’s a full moon or something.  He causes all kinds of trouble, chases the dog around with a fork like he’s gonna eat the poor thing, and when his mom points out that he’s being a nuisance he says he’ll eat her up.  So she sends him to his room without supper.   

Now, the book is ambiguous as to how a forest grows in his room.  Is Max imagining the whole thing?  Did he fall asleep and dream it?  Is it some sort of strange full moon magic?  I guess that’s left up to the reader.  But soon Max makes his way through the forest, across an ocean, and to the island where the Wild Things are (get it?).  The Wild Things try to scare him, but he wins a staring contest or something and they make him their king.  So they have loads of fun hopping and climbing and generally being wild, until Max sends them to bed without any dinner.  But he feels lonely, so retires from being a ruler and goes back across the ocean and the forest and back to his room where dinner is waiting for him, still hot.

And that’s it.  Not a whole heck of a lot to the story; even with the pictures there’s not much more that can be turned into a movie.  But, I suppose if it can be adapted to an opera, then might as well give a movie a chance.  Yeah, there’s an opera.  In the 80’s Maurice Sendak actually worked with composer Oliver Knussen to write an opera based on his book.  According to the synopsis on Wikipedia, it followed the book pretty faithfully, focusing on the wild rumpus that is the first order/coronation ceremony of King Max, and I reckon that opened itself up to plenty of singing and dancing and stuff that operas are all about.

Anyway, the movie was directed by Spike Jonze in 2009.  Wait.  Spike Jonze?  The same Spike Jonze that directed Being John Malcovich and Adaptation?  Uh huh.  A kids’ book fits right into that repertoire doesn’t it?  It had the some of the same tasks ahead of it that Grinch did: it needed to develop back stories and deeper character development and more story arcs to make a movie that was more than 20 minutes long and worth seeing.

The movie opens with Max being generally a monster.  He growls at everyone and does the chasing the dog with a fork thing.  He has a big sister in the movie, although there is no mention of or against siblings in the book, so I suppose artistic license?  Anyway, it doesn’t matter since she is never seen, mentioned, or alluded to after the first two scenes.  The main family member focus is on Max’s relationship with his mom (played by Maxine from Being John Malcovich), who for the most part is very kind and sympathetic toward Max.  

At some point about ten or so minutes in, I start to think that movie Max may be emotionally disturbed.  When his sister tells him to go play with his friends, he goes and orders a fence around, and kicks it when it “talks back” to him.  After her friends smash his igloo and she exits stage left for the rest of the movie, he throws a tantrum in her bedroom, breaking her stuff and screaming.  Why is this kid acting like this?  A mere trouble maker or overactive imagination isn’t this insane.  We never really get an explanation.  Oh, his sister doesn’t listen to him and his mom is dating someone.  That’s it?  So, is that why he bites his mom?  Oh, he threatens to eat her up first, like he did in the book, but then he takes a big ol’ bite out of her shoulder before running away into the woods.  This kid is not stable.

The sun's gonna blow! Take cover!

Perhaps it’s his teacher’s fault.  I say this because the one day we see him in school, we see his teacher giving a lecture about the sun (is a mass of incandescent gas… sorry.)  They and we are treated to a five minute detailed explanation about how someday the sun will die and all the life on Earth will die with it.  Sure, it’s probably true, but seriously, a whole lecture to fourth graders about it?  Doncha think they’re a little young for doomsday prophesies?  Just a side note, I have a beef with the classroom set up.  Hey, movie directors of today, I got an FYI for you.  Elementary school classrooms are not set up in rows with the teacher lecturing at the front any more.  Maybe high school might be, but it’s not a functional learning environment for grade school.  Ok, off my soapbox.

So Max runs into the woods, which leads to the ocean, where he climbs on a boat and sails to the island of the Wild Things.  Same as the book, except that he ran away from home rather than be sent to his room with no supper.  There is more confusion as to whether the woods and ocean and island and Wild Things are real, magic, or imagined, although we can be reasonably assured he didn’t dream it.  Sure, as adults we can rationalize that it’s all in Max’s head, but I can see it being at least a little confusing to a kid.  On the island he subdues the Wild Things not by a magic trick that he would imagine himself to be able to perform, but by lying to them about being a king and having powers that could blow up their heads.  In fact, a lot of the things King Max says in this movie are overly violent, adding to my whole emotionally disturbed theory. 

The Wild Things are each given a name and a personality that expresses a certain psyche of Max’s mind.  The striped one named Carol is his anger id, KW sort of reflects his innocent nice kid who is frustrated and a bit ashamed of his anger, the goat looking one Alex is his feeling of being invisible, and so on.  They elect Max as their king because he’s been king of the Vikings before, proving that even in a kid’s imagination experience is everything when trying to get a job.  I didn’t really have too much to say about Max’s time as King of the Wild Things since in the book that part is told almost exclusively through the pictures.  Who am I to say this stuff didn’t happen?

There are a lot of “I’ll eat you up” connections, although I don’t think it’s too overdone.  Just that it’s a lot more literal.  First, Max bites his mom, then the Wild Things greet him with a conversation about if they should eat him, then Carol threatens to eat him when he finds out Max lied about being a Viking king.  The symbolic eating is replaced by literal eating, and it made the movie scary for many kids who went to see it in the theaters and spurring critics to advise against taking young children to see the movie.

I guess I kind of agree.  It is a scary movie, and if a young child sees it in the mindset that it’s like the book, that kid will be scared to death by the Carol’s anger toward KW and eventually Max.  As a movie in general, it’s not bad, but there are so many ambiguous or arbitrary scenes that I don’t know if it could be called a good movie either.  The cinematography’s pretty good, though, so that parallels to the book being visually awesome.

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him "WILD THING!" and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

History vs Horror

So, while I was reading/listening to Beloved, the following thought occurred to me: what really is the difference between a historic-esque war epic and a slasher?

I suppose this thought requires a little explanation.  In the book there are a few, shall we say, graphic descriptions of violence.  Some of the torturous punishments the Sethe flashes back to, and the actual torture that Paul D flashes back to, got kind of bloody at times.  While nowhere near the type of gore that is present in horror stories, it did remind me of the war movies produced for today’s bloodlusty audiences.  I’m not talking about the tactical war stories like Full Metal Jacket, but more like the

"I like blood, but damn."

armies-at-opposite-ends-of-a-field-screaming-war-cries­-and-waving-their-swords-in-the-air-as-they-charge-each-other kind of epics.  The sheer amount of gore in historical fiction battle epics like 300 could put Jason Voorhees to shame.  The same can be true for literature: much as I love The Hunger Games, there is a significant deal of bloody battles once the Games start, lovingly descripted for our impressionable young minds.  I know people who refuse to watch Halloween but don’t mind Braveheart.  So why do we regard those battle epics as more prestigious and serious movie fare (albeit maybe only a little) than slasher flicks?

Both genres have people killing other people in creative, gory, and often physically impossible ways.  The motivation for the killing may be revenge, those fighting or killing having a superiority or god complex, trying to prevent the other side from gaining too much power or knowledge, or just trying to make a point.  Killers often use tactical strategies, increasingly creative killing methods, and often convoluted schemes in which there are so many holes that they only work because the plot says so.  The weapons, although each genre has its standard type, still vary from movie to movie.  And in neither is victory assured for the protagonists, although the audience is supposed to hope for it.  The big surprise twist ending?  Everyone dies!

A movie based on a book...

The most obvious difference is the amount of people killing, the amount of people being killed, and the attention certain characters get be it in screen time or page, um, ink.  In war epics, the aforementioned armies battle other armies, and only a small group among them, sometimes only on one side and sometimes on both, have any real character development or attention given to them.  We as an audience only know who belongs to a relative little bit of the blood that splatters the face of the assailant, and when we do the death is usually poignant and tragic.  The protagonists are the ones usually doing most of the killing, although death is a shared responsibility of the heroes and their enemies.  In slashers, most of the characters killed have at least a little time with us and we usually can identify at least one characteristic of each character killed – although often it is only one characteristic.  One mysterious and usually psychotic individual, or in a few cases a group of people, do almost all of the killing.  We know little of the killer in this instance and therefore the one characteristic we know of our victim makes us identify with him/her more.  Alternatively, sometimes we know the killer we just don’t know that he’s the killer. 

Ok, so the different characters involved are all well and good, but what about the less visible differences, the sort of things that make us think?  Slashers, with their use of mystery, are much more psychological (or try to be) than war epics, which are more philosophical (or try to be).  The main emotion being sought by a slasher writer is fear – obviously.  Maybe a feeling of pity for the victims and lately the killer – more on that later – is an emotional goal as well.  For war epics, the emotions are more complex.  Usually some sort of pride or patriotism is the main emotion, and generally you feel sympathy for the characters that get killed – in the event that they have been given development time – instead of just kind of grossed out.

Dude, an Agatha Christie GAME!

The way the in-story characters react to the killing going on around them is stronger generally in slashers, where the characters (usually) react to each person who dies and possibly has a connection to each of them.  This spurs the main protagonist(s) into fighting back against the mysterious insane killers.  Characters in an ancient epic accept the gore as a fact of war and only react to their own special friend getting killed, ignoring the fact that their enemies also theoretically have special friends of their own who will seek revenge.  Sometimes they are even proud of how many orcs or whatever they’ve killed and boast about their kill count to their elf friend.  In war epics, though, killing comes in little spurts, with all the drama between battle scenes, of which there might only be two or three or just at the climax.  Murder is more of a focus of slasher stories, being a constant element to the story, usually.

While slasher stories seem to be a relatively new genre of storytelling, arguably emerging with the introduction of slasher films, bloody battles are not only not new, but as old as storytelling itself.  That’s right, there were gory, death filled battle scenes in ancient times.  Think of the Iliad or Mahabharata.  Three thousand years ago people were singing graphically violent stories to each other, and writing them down almost as soon as writing was invented.  This is possibly why the battle epic usually takes place in pre-modern warfare settings, although arguably World War II and Vietnam stories may be just as graphic even if on a more focused scale.  But therein lies an even closer resemblance to slashers than war epics – a small group kills another small group in sometimes bloody ways to help prove a (political) point.

Well, they both have blood and death, but the message and feeling are what make a war epic exciting and a slasher flick (or book) suspenseful.  If they're done right, which often isn't the case (therefore all of my "usually"s).  If all you want is decapitations and bloodspray, well then either of these will work.

...

Hey!  Awesome!  A post where I have no additional notes!  Hura... oh.  Uh, oops.  Well, since I'm here I may as well thank my boyfriend for helping me with the research and offering this hilarious title, although I ultimately went with something a bit less evident.  "Running at each other screaming OR running away screaming."

Yeah, I did a Venn diagram.  I did not include everything on it in the post, but I tried at least to get most.  There's also an idea for my & my bf's own slasher flick if you care to see...