FAN ART: How Disney's 'The Little Mermaid' should have ended.....

[brendala]

I love this film as much as any other girl who was raised on a steady diet of Disney princess movies. However, upon watching it as a grown up, it becomes clear that Ariel is a totally stupid, selfish, awful person (er, fish or whatever species she technically is). And I have my doubts that her relationship with Eric would survive the resolution of her "Daddy Issues".

Sorry for ruining your childhood, everybody!

[Deviant Art Link]

Comments

[brendala.livejournal.com]

Look, when I drew this comic, it was just supposed to be a silly joke/parody. I never intended to get into any philosophical debates about the merits of Ariel's character, her relationship with Eric & her dad, or your relationship with your fiancee. So I'm not sure how to respond to all that. And I'm sorry if I hit a nerve or something by poking fun at a dumb fairy tale movie.

As for Triton being "racist"....it seems to me that he had good reasons to distrust humans (humans EAT fish; and mermaids are friends with fish). So it's a bit disingenuous (and, IMO, mildly offensive) to compare his behavior to actual, real-life racism (even if the film-makers did intend for it to be an allegory).

[rezo-eris.livejournal.com]

It was more prejudice than full-on racism, and yeah he did have good reason to distrust humans, but he crossed the line into being completely unreasonable about it. When Ariel says "You don't even know him", as a concerned parent, the PROPER response would have been "Neither do you!". THAT would have won him my respect. Instead, his response is "I don't HAVE to know him: they're all the same!" That is just a very ignorant, generalizing comment that showed me he was being irrational about the whole thing, so he actually lost my respect at that point. He more than made up for it in his later scenes, but still...

Also, people harp on Ariel for trading her whole life for a man she never really met. Well...how else could see "meet" him when her father was forbidding her from getting any closer to the surface world all the time?

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

You didn't hit a nerve at all, but you need to understand that when you put anything out where others can see it, there's going to be a reaction. Maybe good, maybe bad, but a reaction regardless. It's a lesson I learned a while ago, so if I ever post anything that can be taken badly, I prepare for a debate from someone. (But, I tend to like talking to people to learn of differing views, so I'm okay with it.)

Fairy tales, Little Mermaid included, were often morality tales. If one cannot relate it to real life, it has failed to do what it was meant to do. There's plenty of pointless entertainment out there, Disney tends not to be in that category - unless you watch its current t.v. shows. UGH. But, that's something I'm okay not discussing.

[brendala.livejournal.com]

You didn't hit a nerve at all, but you need to understand that when you put anything out where others can see it, there's going to be a reaction.

I understand that. But sometimes it's just impossible to predict how people will react to something. :P

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

If we knew how to predict people's reactions all the time, there would never be any strife. (Unless someone was just being a jerk.) Relevent to this post, I remember reading something from a Disney person talking about people telling them to keep making box office hits like Lion King. The remark was that if Disney knew exactly what caused a movie to be a box office hit, they'd always make them!

So many aspects of life are trial and error. No getting around it.