It was five years later that Disney made The Little Mermaid, proving that, when it came to making money, these tailed creatures certainly did have legs. Rated PG, there was some nudity and adult content. It starred a young Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah, was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and made $69.8m (£57m) at the box office. Splash, a 1984 film made by Disney-owned Touchstone Pictures, was both critically and commercially successful. Mermaids were morphing into a lighter type of creature, a fantasy figure of romance, even comedy. It was soon whitewashed over, for she was deemed too dangerous to keep. Picasso drew a mermaid in 1948, on the inside wall of a private home in Warsaw. Many old myths began to be reimagined – including in Hollywood, after it was established as part of Los Angeles in 1853 and was, by 1910, the centre of the motion picture industry, while animation and photography also flourished. The Little Mermaid visits the Old Witch of the Sea, to ask her to transform her into a human being, in an illustration from 1850 (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty)īetween 18, things changed. Distraught, she threw herself into a lake, but the gods saved her and turned her into a mermaid. Indeed, the first mermaid story ever told is 3,000 years old and is that of Atagaris, an Assyrian goddess, who accidentally killed her mortal lover Hadad. Mermen exist too, and there are more tales of black mermaids and mermen than white. Thus mostly, but not exclusively, merfolk are female. Mermaids grew out of this projection of humankind on to nature as female. Water is feminine, and so is nature we talk of Mother Earth, or Gaia, the Greek personification for Earth. Rivers are female too the Ganges, for example, is referred to as Mother Ganga. There’s Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Irma, Tropical Storm Karen. Hurricanes and storms often have female names. In French, for example, the sea is gendered, “la mer”. Water, per se, has always been associated with the feminine principle. But having researched these mythological creatures I have long been fascinated with, I have learnt that mermaids are what is known as pan-iconic: they exist everywhere. The little mermaid learns her lesson and ends up as a kind of air sprite.ĭisney’s American, whimsical, child-friendly mermaid film is a far cry from this poignant story.Īs a child, I thought of mermaids as cute, romantic fantasy figures. Once on land, the act of walking is extremely painful for the little mermaid and the prince sees her as a kind of mute pet in the end, he marries someone else. The witch gets to keep the little mermaid’s sweet singing voice in return. In the book, the nameless mermaid enters into a terrible pact: she allows her tongue to be cut out by the sea witch in exchange for legs. Let’s be clear, Disney has massively altered the original grim, dark fable by Hans Christian Andersen, published in 1837. Halle Bailey will star in the live-action version of The Little Mermaid, which will include songs from the 1989 cartoon as well as new songs (Photo: Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP) Some objected to what they saw as a misinterpretation of the classic mermaid tale (forgive the pun), or the one that they assumed was the original.
Production on the new film has been paused due to the current global pandemic and lockdown.Ī furore broke out last year when news broke of Bailey’s casting. It’s not surprising that a live-action version has been commissioned, starring singer and actor Halle Bailey, and was due to start filming in April 2020. Whatever you do, do not let your children see the cover.Released in 1989, Disney’s The Little Mermaid grossed $233m (£191m) at the global box office. Even though this movie is an all American classic that everybody loves, people are for the most part jerks.so why not take advantage of this plain and simple fact and complain to Disney, even though they banned this cover already. If you do, I suggest you make Disney pay you lots of money as a just settlement on having your life scarred. You must have the classic version of this movie to see. Where is the image you may ask? The image is masked as a tower in the center of the castle. How do I know that? Well for starters, years ago I took a physical education class, and we learned about what this male organ looks like. However, I just realized that the art on this "banned" cover has a male organ on it. As a matter of fact, I believe that my kitty cat also loves this most grand film.
My children love it and my grandparents love it, even my great aunt loves it. Ok, the movie is the greatest movie on this planet.