Abstract
This chapter explores the long-lasting Western fascination with the legendary mermaid character, focusing on the Disney animation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Little Mermaid (1837). The enduring appeal of the mermaid trope derives from the cultural ambivalences it evokes. On the one hand, it is a subversive trope, destabilising foundational Western binaries such as reason vs. nature/ mind vs. body/ reason vs. matter/ rationality vs. animality/ reason vs. emotion/ man vs. woman, etc. On the other hand, the plot structures in which the mermaid has become implicated in Western narratives effectively neutralise the subversive potential of the mermaid trope. I explore how this tension between subversion and repression plays out in Disney’s animation of Andersen’s tale.
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Notes
- 1.
The 1989 movie was definitely not the first time the Disney corporation tried its hand at the adaptation of Andersen’s tale. There are earlier versions of varying lengths, and after the immense commercial success of the 1989 film, several prequels and sequels were produced. For a complete overview, cf. Hayward 2017, 21–51.
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Wesseling, L. (2022). Curtailment in Mermaid Lore. In: Dettmar, U., Tomkowiak, I. (eds) On Disney. Studien zu Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und -medien, vol 9. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64625-0_3
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