Revisionist History Little Mermaid Part 1: The Golden Contract

Malcolm Gladwell

Hold on, how many kids do you have?

Laura Beth Nielson

I have two boys.

Malcolm Gladwell

Okay, so your kids are how old at this point?

Laura Beth Nielson

They were young. This was before you can call up anything on all of Disney Plus, or whatever.

Malcolm Gladwell

I'm speaking with Laura Beth Nielsen, law professor, social scientist, chair of the Northwestern University Sociology Department.

Laura Beth Nielson

They were VHS tapes, and they wanted to watch them. At some point, as the adult, you just get mind-numbingly bored, and I started thinking about what else they represented.

Malcolm Gladwell

Were there particular movies that got you thinking along these lines?

Laura Beth Nielson

It was "The Little Mermaid."

Malcolm Gladwell

It was "The Little Mermaid."

Disney's Ariel (singing)

I want to be where the people are. I want to see, want to see them dancing, walking around.

Malcolm Gladwell

"The Little Mermaid" came out in 1989. It's based on the Hans Christian Anderson children's story of the same name, an animated musical from Walt Disney Pictures written and directed by the team of Ron Clements and John Musker, about an adolescent mermaid named Ariel who wants to leave the sea and trade in her fins for feet, because she's fallen in love with a handsome prince. She rescued him from a shipwreck, and now she can't stop thinking about him.

Disney's Ariel (singing)

What would I pay to stay here beside you? What I do to see you smiling at me?

Malcolm Gladwell

"The Little Mermaid" is for kids specifically, and especially little girls. It's a princess movie. When it came out, it rejuvenated Disney's animated film business, setting off a spectacular run, "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," "Pocahontas." It isn't just kids who watch Disney movies, it's their parents. Parents like Laura Beth Nielsen, the lead author with Nehal Patel and Jacob Rosner of a 2017 Law Journal article called "Ahead of the Lawmen: Law and Morality in Disney Animated Films, 1960 to 1998." If you have a young child, I recommend you read this article before it's too late.

I read the paper, and I rolled my eyes. I was like, "It seems to be like, hmm." I'd never seen "The Little Mermaid," so then I watched "The Little Mermaid," and I was like, "Oh, you're so right."

Yes, you heard that correctly. I had never seen "The Little Mermaid." I was the only person in the English-speaking world who could not sing the lyrics to "Under The Sea." In fact, I don't think I'd seen a Disney animated movie at all. One day deep into my adult ears, I discovered Walt Disney's "The Little Mermaid."

Laura Beth Nielson

It's very dramatic.

Malcolm Gladwell

It's not just that. We'll come back to this, but that is a hugely problematic movie.

Laura Beth Nielson

Oh, for a million reasons, yes.

Malcolm Gladwell

For a million reasons. Ultimately, this episode is about whether it can be fixed.

Wait, did I say this episode? I meant three episodes. We're spending the next three weeks on "The Little Mermaid." Revisionist History's take on "The Little Mermaid" is going to go on longer than "The Little Mermaid" itself.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to "Revisionist History," my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. Sometimes we go high at "Revisionist History," sometimes we go sideways. This time we're going deep underwater, to the ocean floor, to the mer world, where men and women and children with fins for feet present the rest of us with a series of vexing moral conundrums.

Laura Beth Nielson

Some people say, "You're too rough on Disney." I'm not rough on Disney at all. I love that movie, but-

Malcolm Gladwell

Wait, you love that movie? Are you talking about "The Little Mermaid?"

Laura Beth Nielson

Yeah.

Malcolm Gladwell

You still maintain that you love it?

Laura Beth Nielson

Nobody's ever asked me this before. I'm thinking. I think I do, yes. I think these are opportunities to talk to your children.

Malcolm Gladwell

Oh, I see. You like it because it gave you a chance to instruct your sons.

Laura Beth Nielson

Right. If I really hated it, I wouldn't have had it in my house.

Malcolm Gladwell

Well, you didn't know until you watched it with him. You hadn't watched it yourself before you showed it to him, had you?

Laura Beth Nielson

Oh yeah.

Malcolm Gladwell

Oh, you had?

Laura Beth Nielson

Yes. Would you like me to sing the whole score? I assure you, the answer is no.

Malcolm Gladwell

She sat on the couch with her kids and watched it again and again and again, first with love, and only then with alarm.

Laura Beth Nielson

You have to watch it unwillingly many times to get to this level of analysis, I think.

Malcolm Gladwell

When do children first encounter fairy tales? At the most crucial of moments, when they start to form their earliest notions of legality and morality. As Laura Beth Nielsen points out, when you ask a two-year old to share a toy, he'll say, "No, it's mine." Ask a four or five year old and they'll say, "Why do I have to share?" They suddenly want a framework to help them understand that request. What do fairytales do? They supply that framework. This is what I want to do in these episodes about "The Little Mermaid." I want to fix the frame set askew by Disney a generation ago.

Now, as I lead you on this journey of aquatic discovery, am I a little worried? Of course I'm worried, because this is Disney we're talking about, The Magic Kingdom, the litigious Magic Kingdom. I hinted at this worry of mine in the least helpful place possible, on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, which runs on ABC, owned by Disney.

Malcolm (on TV)

I know you're - you're part of the Disney Empire, Jimmy. I know you are.

Jimmy Kimmel

I am.

Malcolm Gladwell

They're upstairs watching this right now. They're probably trying to cut me off. Their finger's on the button.

Jimmy Kimmel

You'll be lucky to be alive by morning, that's for sure.

Malcolm Gladwell

Jimmy sounds like he's kidding. He's not kidding. Have you ever heard of the infamous case, Walt Disney Productions versus the Air Pirates? An underground cartoonist named Dan O'Neill got together with a group of his hippie friends in San Francisco in 1971 and wrote two issues of a Mickey and Minnie Mouse parody. Their first cover showed Mickey flying a prop plane with two bags of dope hanging from the fuselage. We're talking about, at most, 40,000 copies of an indie comic book written by some counterculture cartoonist. Did Disney laugh? Ignore it? No, Disney sued. They brought in an Italian of high price legal talent and rained fire on little Dan O'Neill. The case dragged on for over nine years. Let me just quote to you from the completely nuts account of the saga from the writer Bob Levin. "In 1979, O'Neill stood before the bar, 38 years old, unemployed, with total assets of $7, a 1963 mercury convertible, a banjo, and the baggy gray suit he was wearing. Disney, which already had $190,000 judgment against him, sought to have him fined another $10,000, and imprisoned for six months."

You read a line like that and you think, there but for the grace of God go I. That could be me up there standing before the court, broken and forlorn, besieged by Disney's pack of legal attack jackals. Are we at "Revisionist History" afraid to give the story of Ariel a makeover? No, we're not, because somewhere out there is a little mermaid imprisoned in a script that does not do her justice. Disney, if you're listening, before the preliminary injunctions start flying around, be advised that although we will be critical of certain sea creatures within the Magic Kingdom, this is criticism that comes from a place of affection.

Voice Actor (reading)

"Why have not we an immortal soul," asked the Little Mermaid mournfully. "I would gladly give all the hundreds of years that I have to live to be a human being only for one day, and to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars."

Malcolm Gladwell

"The Little Mermaid" began as a short story by the great Danish storyteller Hans Christian Anderson. You probably know some Hans Christian Anderson tales, "The Princess and the Pea," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Snow Queen." Anderson was born into poverty in the early 19th century. He was desperately insecure, self-absorbed, probably a virgin his entire life. There's some evidence that he might have been gay or bisexual, at a time and place in history when making public either of those preferences could land you in prison. What Anderson had was his talent, which was immeasurable. He also had a beautiful singing voice, which he used to gain entree into the homes of the wealthy. He was the ugly duckling. In fact, when Anderson was once asked whether he would ever write his autobiography, his response was, "I already have."

Jack Zipes

Almost every tale he wrote, they were grounded in the reality of his life that was a dirt poor, uncultivated, ugly young boy that became the swan, so to speak.

Malcolm Gladwell

That's Jack Zipes, one of the leading experts on fairy tales. Anderson's stories are about transformation, about outsiders longing to be insiders about the struggle for acceptance, and "The Little Mermaid" is quintessential Anderson. A mermaid saves a handsome prince from drowning, and decides that she wants to be human too, because as her grandmother tells her, human beings have immortal souls.

Voice Actor (reading)

"You must not think of that," said the old woman. "We feel ourselves to be much happier and much better off than human beings."

"So I shall die," said the Little Mermaid. "And as the foam of the sea, I shall be driven about, never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun. Is there anything I can do to win in immortal soul?"

Malcolm Gladwell

The mermaid's desire to leave the water becomes overwhelming, so she goes to a sea witch who gives her a potion, and tells her that when she drinks it, her fins will turn into legs. "All who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human they ever saw." But every step she takes will be filled with pain, as if she were treading upon sharp knives. If the prince marries her, she can stay a human. If she fails to win his heart, she will die. Oh, and the witch extracts the most horrible down payment.

Voice Actor (reading)

When at last the magic draft was ready, it looked like the clearest water. "There it is for you" said the witch. Then she cut off the mermaid's tongue so that she would become dumb, and would never again speak or sing.

Malcolm Gladwell

Oh, man. And yet, does Anderson's mermaid get to marry the prince? No, she doesn't. The prince ends up marrying another woman, and the mermaid melts into foam. Classic Anderson. As Jack Zipes puts it, most of Anderson's characters wind up as metaphors for his own suffering.

Jack Zipes

He never felt, at least for him, what he would consider true happiness, and that was the motor of all of his tales. The frustration he felt comes out in most of the tales that he wrote.

Malcolm Gladwell

A lot of the scholarship on Hans Christian Anderson dwells on this point, about the connection between his fairy tales and his own life. There's a wonderful essay by Gabrielle Bellot, where she points out that just before Anderson wrote "The Little Mermaid," he'd been embroiled in a passionate, completely unrequited romance with a handsome young Dane. Let me just read to you from Bellot's essay, where she cites a poem that Anderson wrote about his love.

It goes, "Rosebud, so firm and round, lovely as a young girl's mouth, I kiss you as my bride." The amative poem continues with further kisses, and an exhortation to, "Feel my fire." What does the object of Anderson's love do? He rejects Anderson for a woman. The author is plunged into despair and writes "The Little Mermaid," a story about a creature from another world who must give up her beautiful voice, her identity, to be accepted by the greater world, only to be rejected for a woman.

There "The Little Mermaid" remained, a sad story from a tortured soul. Until one day, she got a new life. A century passes, and along comes Disney. In the 1980s, the Disney animated franchise was in trouble. Its greatest hits, "Snow White," "Pinocchio," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty" were all in the past.

Ron Clements

They wanted us all to go out and find new ideas.

Malcolm Gladwell

This is Ron Clements, longtime writer and director at Disney, speaking a few years ago at the big animation conference, Industry Giants.

Ron Clements

I read the Hans Christian Anderson story in a bookstore, and as I was reading it, I thought, "This is great, this is so cool." As I continued to read it, it's very sad.

Malcolm Gladwell

Oh, yes, it is very sad all the way to the bitter end, where the little mermaid is reduced to a clump of sea foam. The little girls of America are not yet ready, Clements feels, for an aquatic allegory of unrequited, homosexual longing.

Ron Clements

It gets sadder and sadder and sadder, and then she dies in the end.

Interviewer

Yeah.

Ron Clements

It was almost depressing in a way, but I thought it had a lot of potential, so I made a little more of a good against evil story, and a love triumphs all story.

Malcolm Gladwell

Clements and his co-director, John Musker, gave the Little Mermaid a name: Ariel.

The Sea Witch became Ursula, campy octopus, based on the legendary drag queen Divine, and Joan Collins, villainess of 100 1970s B movies. Ariel's father, the leader of the Mer world, is a big, white-haired giant named King Triton, who looks a little like Santa Claus if Santa Claus had spent the off-season lifting weights. Ariel gets a few sidekicks: Sebastian, a crab with a Jamaican accent and love of calypso. There's a fish named Flounder, and a ditzy seagull named Scuttle. The prince Ariel falls in love with is named Prince Eric. He's a dashingly handsome aristocrat with a sheep dog. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, the creators of "Little Shop of Horrors" were brought in to write the music.

Everyone loved the result. John Musker remembers opening his front door on Halloween night after the movie came out and seeing a little girl dressed as Ariel, and he realized, "We made it. We're in the culture."

Clements and Musker would go on to do some of Disney's most memorable animated movies, "Aladdin," "Princess and the Frog," "Moana." They're now the grandfathers of Hollywood animation. John and Ron should be proud, but let's keep listening to Ron Clements as he talks about "The Little Mermaid."

Ron Clements

I never really felt any guilt so much about changing the sad ending to a happy ending.

Malcolm Gladwell

Where did that come from? Who said anything about guilt? Is there something here weighing on Ron Clements' conscience?

Ron Clements

I never felt any guilt until I was doing publicity in Copenhagen, for the European premiere of the film. That's where Hans Christian Anderson lived, and that's where the statue of the Little Mermaid is. They were not so happy about it. They were giving me a hard time about changing the ending, and even one interviewer said, "It would be as if we took "Gone With the Wind," and we changed the ending so that Scarlet O'Hara stayed with Rhett Butler in the end."

Malcolm Gladwell

Not all Danes appreciated what Disney did with "The Little Mermaid," but my beef is not Danish. My beef comes from the scholar Laura Beth Nielsen.

Do you remember what specific thing in that movie got you thinking, "Wait a minute?"

Laura Beth Nielson

It's that moment where Triton shoots his trident at Ursula to try to save his daughter from this, what every viewer knows is an extremely immoral arrangement.

Malcolm Gladwell

The extremely immoral arrangement she's talking about, it's the contract aerial signs with Ursula. In the original fairytale version of "The Little Mermaid," the Mermaid made a handshake deal with the sea witch. She got the potion that made her a human. In exchange, the sea witch cut off her tongue. In the Disney version, they bring in lawyers. Of course they do. Ursula, the Disney diva, won't make any magic deals without a signed contract. Ariel signs the scroll. She now has three days to get Eric to kiss her. If she fails, she has to return underwater and become Ursula's slave. Now, if you've watched the movie, you know what happens next. Ariel comes close to kissing Eric, but gets foiled. Ursula acquires Ariel's voice, transforms herself into a beautiful young woman, and steals Eric away, whereupon King Triton confronts Ursula to get his daughter back.

King Triton

Let her go.

Ursula

Not a chance, Triton. She's mine Now. We made a deal.

Malcolm Gladwell

That's when Triton tries to destroy the contract with his Trident. It doesn't work. Then Ursula says, and this is the key phrase-

Ursula

You see? The contract's, legal, binding and completely unbreakable, even for you.

Laura Beth Nielson

She holds up the contract, it's gold, and it was that unbreakable, golden contract that was ruling this whole situation. It was, from a law professor perspective, clearly illegal under the law.

Malcolm Gladwell

It's a contract involving a minor and the sale of body parts!

Laura Beth Nielson

I believe in law. I'm skeptical about a lot of claims, and I think we need to empirically study them, and all of those things, but fundamentally, I want my students and my children to understand that law embodies, or should embody, and we have to strive to make it always be so, true justice. A piece of paper, or in this case, gold whatever it is, doesn't win out over a just outcome.

Malcolm Gladwell

That's the argument of Nielsen's paper, the one published in 2017. When I ran across it, I'll admit, my first thought was, "This is some academic with way too much time on her hands. Do we really need to overthink animated movies of fairy tales?" But then I realized, actually, we do. There are lots of things we overthink in our society. I overthink everything all the time, and most of the things I overthink are not nearly as important as the narratives we tell children.

Oprah WInfrey

Finally, we get to sit down and have this conversation.

Malcolm Gladwell

Did you watch Oprah's famous interview with Meghan Markle? A young woman marries a prince, and finds herself thwarted by the royal family, suppressed, silenced. What did Meghan Markle reference as a parallel for her predicament? Not "A Theory of Justice," by John Rawls. No, "The Little Mermaid."

Meghan Markle

Who as an adult really watches "The Little Mermaid?" It came on, and I was like, "I'm just here all the time, so I may as well watch this." I went, "Oh my God. She falls in love with the prince, and because of that, she has to lose her voice." By the end, she gets her voice back.

Oprah WInfrey

Gets her voice back. This is what happened here, you feel like you got your voice back.

Malcolm Gladwell

When Oprah said that, did we all roll our eyes? No, we said, "Oh my God, she's so right." Perhaps the most famous book ever written about children's stories is "The Uses of Enchantment," by Bruno Bettelheim. He says that fairy tales teach children that, "A struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence. If one does not shy away but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles, and at the end, emerges victorious." Fairy tales matter, but who tells most of our fairy tales now? Disney. What's the problem with Disney? They've gotten sloppy.

If I were prosecuting Disney for moral sloppiness, here is where I would begin.

Duke

I ain't talking rabbit, and there ain't nothing you can do to make me.

Mr. Big

Ice him.

Malcolm Gladwell

Exhibit A, Disney's "Zootopia," a PG rating family comedy from 2016. "Zootopia" is all about a world of animals, starring a rabbit police officer, Judy Hops. Couldn't be cuter, right? Except for this moment near the end of their movie, where Hops needs to find out a crucial bit of information about a criminal conspiracy. She has a shrew named Mr. Big, use one of his enforcers, a polar bear, to interrogate a weasel named Duke. The polar bear holds Duke over an icy pit and threatens to throw him down the hole to his death if he doesn't confess.

Mr. Big

Ice this weasel.

Duke

All right! Please! I'll talk! I'll talk!

Malcolm Gladwell

That's torture, right? Even worse, the weasel gives up the info right away. The movie is modeling something that isn't even true in the real world. There is no empirical support for the notion that the application of coercive force is the most efficient way to get a confession out of a reluctant party, even if that reluctant party is a weasel.

Okay, exhibit B, "Toy Story 3," family comedy, G rating 2010. Another Disney movie which is full of excruciating scenes of one sort or another, like when Mr. Potato Head gets locked in a sandbox, or another scene, where a plastic rotary phone is viciously beaten to the point where he divulges critical information to the evil Lotso.

Lotso

You're lost little doggy. [toys clammoring] Well, well, look who's back? [phone clicks]

Rotary Phone

I'm sorry Cowboy. They broke me.

Malcolm Gladwell

"They broke me." It's a G rating. It isn't just Disney, by the way. There's a moral sloppiness everywhere in children's entertainment.

Casey Delehanty

One thing I didn't expect was how often torture would be played for humor, which I thought was particularly fascinating.

Malcolm Gladwell

That's the social scientist, Casey Delehanty, who with Erin Kearns, actually made a list of every torture scene that occurs in Hollywood's top grossing movies between 2008 and 2017.

Casey Delehanty

The SpongeBob movie has some really good examples of this, where they have a whole scene where they torture a tire, and it's meant to be played for humor.

Fish

What do we have here? [grunting, punching sounds]

Spongebob

We better hurry. Those guys really hate tires.

Fish

So you won't talk, huh? Let some air out of him. [tires hissing]

Casey Delehanty

Later, they find that they've actually tortured the anthropomorphic computer, but even that scene is all just jokes. What would it be like to torture a computer? It's legitimately funny, but also disconcerting,

Malcolm Gladwell

You think? Back to Laura Beth Nielsen one more time. Her field of study is lay perceptions of the law. How do ordinary people come to understand the law?

Laura Beth Nielson

Not just law, a statute that Congress passes, or a Supreme Court decision, but in general, what do you mean by liberty? Whose concept of liberty? Ordinary people don't say, "It's a combination of John Stuart Mill and Benjamin Franklin's writings." They have these lay conceptions, which aren't right or wrong, but they motivate action, and they make up what we think of as fair and just, and what the appropriate role of the state should be. That's the whole question of law.

Malcolm Gladwell

This is what she studies, and then one day, she's sitting on a couch with her boys at the moment that they are in that critical window of moral development. She watches for the millionth time as Ariel signs the scroll, and Nielsen says, "Wait a minute. The point of the law is that it's supposed to avoid conflict. It's supposed to embody a sense of what's right, not enshrine an outrageously exploitative deal in which a minor gives up a body part, makes themselves liable for a lifetime of underwater slavery, and needs to be bailed out by an armed posse."

Did you intervene? Did you stop the tape and say, "Look boys, just so we're clear," you didn't? Wait a minute, why not?

Laura Beth Nielson

Well, we've talked about it since. I wouldn't stop it right then. Do you have kids? They would have a meltdown.

Malcolm Gladwell

The point is, if you're Laura Beth Nielsen and worry about these things, Disney films are tricky.

How quickly after they watched the movie did you discuss the movie as a problematic narrative with them? Did you wait for yours, or did you-

Laura Beth Nielson

No, I talked to them at an age appropriate level at various points in time. I probably said, "It's too bad that they couldn't work this out another way." I didn't say, "That's an unconscionable contract. Don't you remember Batsakis v Demotsis and from law school?" Something like that, and then-

Malcolm Gladwell

In that moment, you describe what the movie is telling the viewer is that the law is all powerful. Not even Triton, who later in the movie can transform his own daughter from a mermaid into a human being, he's basically God.

Laura Beth Nielson

He is God.

Malcolm Gladwell

Can he overturn any moral contract? Not a chance, right? Not a chance. Remember, at the end of the movie, Ariel and Triton and Prince Eric don't arrest Ursula. They don't initiate formal proceedings against her. They don't try her in court. They don't make use of the same legal mechanisms that Ursula did.

In the internal logic of the film, the reason why Triton can't break the contract is that Triton doesn't control the law. The law is entirely controlled by this mobster, Ursula.

Laura Beth Nielson

He's outmaneuvered.

Malcolm Gladwell

Yeah.

Laura Beth Nielson

The evil people can take the law and do these things with it, and maybe you could have fought it at some point or another, but once the deal is done, it's unbreakable.

Malcolm Gladwell

How does this whole thing ultimately get resolved? Eric pursues Ursula with his ship and kills her. "The Little Mermaid" is a vigilante picture. It's an animated "Dirty Harry" movie. They might as well have had Clint Eastwood play Prince Eric.

Laura Beth Nielson

Law is often presented as either ineffective, completely irrelevant, or bad, something that the bad guys use. What tends to solve the problem is violence.

Malcolm Gladwell

Yeah.

Laura Beth Nielson

Either mob violence, or in this case, Ursula gets killed by a ship, really.

Malcolm Gladwell

Yeah, impaled.

Laura Beth Nielson

Yes, she gets impaled by the bow.

Malcolm Gladwell

All the Freudian scholars writing about "The Little Mermaid" refer to it as a phallic impalement.

Laura Beth Nielson

Yes. Oh my gosh, the gender stuff on this movie, you can read it forever.

Malcolm Gladwell

And we will. In upcoming episodes, you'll hear from a neuroscientist turned literary theorist who will help us decode the hidden meaning of a Little Mermaid narrative. A big name Hollywood casting agent will stop by to sort through the show's characters. Best of all, in an act of massive revisionist history hutzpah, I prevail upon a high-end Hollywood screenwriter to reimagine the movie.

Speaker 23

Malcolm, I used to tie my ankles with sweat socks and then jump into the pool so that I could swim with my feet tied together like the Little Mermaid.

Malcolm Gladwell

Coming up next week, Brit Marling dives deep into the underworld. "Revisionist History" is produced by Mia Lobel, Lee Mengistu, and Jacob Smith, with Eloise Lynton, and Anna Naim. Our editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Guerra, mastering by Flawn Williams, and engineering by Martín Gonzalez. Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Our voice actor in this episode was Melina Rose. Special thanks to the Pushkin crew, Heather Fain, Carly Migliori, Maya Koenig, Daniela Lakhan, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Jason Gambrell, and of course, Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

Don't forget my latest book, "The Bomber Mafia," which is an expansion of several episodes from the last season of "Revisionist History." You can find it wherever books are sold, but buy the audiobook at bombermafia.com, and you'll get a bonus listener's guide, and you can listen in the podcast app you're using now.