The Little Mermaid's Original Story Is Really About Gay Love and Rejection
Disney's live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey, created a lot of buzz from the moment the first trailer dropped. Many seemed focused on the differences between the live-action and cartoon versions. However, Disney's animated movie is itself an adaptation and actually has several differences when compared to the original story, which scholarly interpretations have analyzed may actually be a metaphor for unrequited gay love.
"The Little Mermaid" was originally written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen in the s. While it shares similarities to Disney's cartoon, the original story was much darker and had a different ending. Let's take a look at Andersen's fairy tale and the symbolism embedded in the story, and see how it could very well reflect a gay author feeling out of place in a heterosexual world.
RELATED: Disney Reportedly Permanently Bans Two Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge Stories
Unrequited Queer Love and Rejection Inspired The Little Mer
Diving into the queer legacy of The Little Mermaid
Pride Month is here! David Ho wades into why the tale of The Little Mermaid has long been a siren call to the heart of the queer community
The recent release of Disney’s The Little Mermaid saw it doodle in US$ million (HK$ billion) worldwide over its opening weekend alone. With releases in certain countries like Japan to reach, there is a chance that it could bolster the box office fortunes of the film, made with a reported US$ million (HK$ billion) budget and US$80 million (HK$ million) for marketing.
Yet, the movie is swimming against strong tides. It has been a lightning rod for controversy, with the casting of Halle Bailey in the lead role dividing the Internet. Those who objected have seen it as forced diversity because of “woke culture”.
But our preview of the film reveals to us that yes, Halle IS Ariel. She does an admirable job of conveying the innocence, curiosity, and sass of the titular mermaid, further boosted by her inspired takes on the
This is a guest post fromLeah von Essen. Leah is a novelist and blogger who reads while walking and believes in magic. Follow her on Twitter @reading_while.
There have been a lot of articles recently about the queer-coding of the original animated The Beauty and the Beast, but they’re for some reason ignoring the other Disney film the late, great Howard Ashman worked on: The Adj Mermaid.
Which is puzzling, because the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen is one of the saddest (gay) verb letters of all time.
Scholars agree that Andersen was biromantic, and possibly asexual. He wrote many intimate letters to his friend Collin, but sent only a few of them. One reads: “I long for you, yes, this moment I drawn-out for you as if you were a lovely girl…No one have I wanted to thrash as much as you…but neither has anyone been loved so much by me as you.”
Collin admitted in his own writings that he was unable to return Andersen’s feelings. In , under some pressure from his family, Collin married. Andersen escaped to the island of Fyn at the time of the wedding, where he w
There’s just something inherently queer about mermaids, isn’t there? Hans Christian Anderson’s original tale certainly establish a precedent, but the reality that so many mermaid stories involve pining for a life — and a relationship — that go against the norm also plays a role. Mermaids have long resonated with the trans community, and the fairy tale-esque nature of underwater creatures makes anything seem possible. Not to mention (going back to Anderson’s The Little Mermaid) that the idea that one has to change themself for a chance at love or acceptance is a fear that, historically and presently, the LGBTQ community is very familiar with. So it just makes sense, really, to have queer mermaid books. Whether subtextual, as in The Little Mermaid, or completely overt and out, in the case of these 13 queer mermaid books, mermaids are simply queer icons.
Yep, I’m claiming them right alongside vampires and Babadooks and rainbows.
In these 13 queer mermaid books, representation and relationships of all kinds are at the fore. From people of all genders longing to be mermaids to mermaids l