2023-05-23 08:52:00
Dhe love is impossible. Until one day it’s not anymore. At least Disney treats its languorous ones to a kiss followed by a wedding, and “Arielle, the Mermaid”, the long-awaited live-action adaptation of the animated classic from 1989, doesn’t want to shake up this tradition either.
The waves rush, fall wildly over each other and never let go. The foam that wafts across the surface of the water in the opening scene can be understood as a homage to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale from 1837. In this one, the mermaid, unable to get her prince, ends up turning into tragic sea foam. And as soon as you remember, the Dane’s name appears in large letters above the storm of passions, together with the quote: “But the mermaid has no tears, and that’s why she suffers much more”.
Loves the Country: Halle Bailey as Ariel
Those: DISNEY
Arielle does suffer, but above all in the service of passion. As in the previous Disney version, there is no trace of Anderson’s melancholy sentimentality. The two-time Oscar winner was the most successful Disney film of all time and heralded the studio’s golden age. The fact that it has now been filmed with real actors seems only logical.
But not everyone sees it that way. Political debates quickly overshadowed the announcement of a family film that was possibly only intended to offer well-deserved distraction and entertainment. Some have wondered why such a backwards story still resonates today: that of a girl who gives up her voice to chase after a prince, who first mansplains her using a fork and then dresses her Vertigo-style according to his rules. Furthermore, the sea witch, which has queer connotations, must be excluded from the order so that the heteronormative ideal is preserved.
Others were not bothered by the story, but rather by the cast of Ariel. Since it was announced that 23-year-old actress Halle Bailey would be taking on the role, there has been a lot of excitement gathered under hashtags like #NotMyMermaid. An Ariel without red hair and white skin? Unimaginable for many. Although Anderson’s Danish fairy tale does not name the color of hair or skin (only the mermaid’s eyes are described as blue), that didn’t seem to matter to the fans, who were glued to the animation image like shells to the reef. As is the fact that black mermaids aren’t a woke Disney invention. Legend has it that the children of enslaved African women who fell pregnant while crossing the Atlantic became mermaids.
What both types of criticism fail to recognize is, firstly, that the myth of the mermaid is one of the most adapted and changed myths of all and therefore always reflects the respective time. There are worlds between the first Disney version and Andersen’s – just like between the little mermaid and her relatives, who date back to the Middle Ages, the Sirens, Melusines, Loreleys, Undines and Rhinemaidens. Secondly, the character of the mermaid, who thrives on her changeability and the reflection on her own fictionality that is inscribed in her, always had subversive potential long before the Hollywood studios came around the corner with their diversity rules.
Arguments or abstractions, how does Bailey do as Ariel? It’s clear from the start: Anyone who sees the actress for even a second with her green-blue fishtail, six-pack muscles trained from swimming and reddish-dark hair floating in the waves will forget all her predecessors. And at the very latest, when the singer opens her mouth and the first melody sounds, she bewitches in the best siren tradition, so that no enemy can resist.
logic of renunciation
Let’s briefly remember what it’s about: Ariel, the mermaid, falls in love with Erik, a human. To give her love a chance, she enters into a pact with the sea witch Ursula, who will conjure up her legs in exchange for her voice. If Ariel doesn’t get Erik to kiss her within three days, her soul will belong to Ursula forever.
The film was shot in Italy, but the location of the action remains undetermined. Denmark, Mediterranean or Caribbean? The recently deceased Samuel E. Wright lent a Trinidadian accent to the crab Sebastian in the animated hit. He won an Oscar for his catchy song “Under the Sea”. The new Sebastian (now voiced by Daveed Diggs) is still red (although not quite as gaudy anymore), but no longer a conductor, and the CGI armored animal companions have undergone a rather disappointing development in general. Two of the best animation scenes are missing for no reason: the concert initially conducted by Sebastian, where Ariel’s absence causes upset, and his wild dance around the courtly cooking pot. The animalistic voices are convincing, especially those of the rapper Akwafina, who screeches for the seagull Scuttle.
Melissa McCarthy as a scapegoat, tyrant and octopus with drag queen airs exudes inky malice. The principle of color blindness known from “Bridgerton” dominates both the underwater world and the rural royal court: Ariel’s father Triton (Javier Bardem) is white, her sisters shimmer in all imaginable colors, Erik (Jonah Hauer-King), who is white, has again a black mother (Noma Dumezweni). It sparkles just as colorfully above as it does below, and there is joy and laughter everywhere. With the transition from the sea to the land, there is no turning away from the lively fairy tale in favor of mute reality, from colorful poetry to gray prose, but everything appears harmoniously united.
On foot: Arielle (Halle Bailey) and Erik (Jonah Hauer-King)
What: Disney/Giles Keyte
The new casts allow less conclusions about the impossibility of love between different ethnic groups or cultures – a problem that is fundamentally inherent in the Ariel story, as the difference between water and land, but is not explored any further here – than they unite them Heave generational conflict to the center. The young people want to get out, away from the narrow confines of family and homeland, to explore far away places.
Parents, on the other hand, feel a stronger need for security and convention. Arielle, the only Triton daughter who does not end in “a” and whose name refers to the celestial sphere, wants to know everything about humans, she builds her own museum with human objects and reads their books while her father reminds that her mother died while swimming to the surface.
Erik goes out on the ship to get to know foreign cultures so as not to be left behind, as he attests to his mother, who warns him of shipwrecks with Triton-like severity. The fact that the violent overthrow of the tyrant Ursula is still chosen as the only way to wriggle out of the unfavorable deal, testifies to political revolutionary spirit and makes the Disney fairy tale look less harmless than one might think at first glance.
The mermaid logic is one of renunciation—she can’t cry, she can’t walk, she can’t sing later, she can’t speak, she can barely remember—which makes her a treasure trove of ambitious interpretations. Early on, the Piscean’s inability to articulate and act out her own love was linked to Andersen’s own homosexuality.
The literary scholar Andreas Krass interprets the story of the mermaids, which follows the traditional pattern of the disturbed Marten marriage, i.e. the tragic relationship between man and fairy, as a symbol of love (of the gender differences between man and woman, the incompatibility of passion and bourgeois life), but also as symbol of literature. If you want, you can also find poetic allusions behind every coral at Disney.
It is a paradigm of seeing that “Arielle” designs, a kind of meta-reflection on making and watching films. The first thing Ariel sees of people are her legs. Her head emerges from the water, exactly at the level where the sailors’ feet stamp in time. The men, on the other hand, see their shadow first – or is it a dolphin? Everywhere visual axes, observation scenarios, interpretation traps.
In a generation conflict: Arielle (Halle Bailey) and Triton (Javier Bardem)
Those: DISNEY
It is no coincidence that the first item that falls into the water and enters Ariel’s collection of human objects is a telescope. From the signed contract, which sealed the deal with the devil in 1989, director Rob Marshall makes a scale that Arielle has to rip out – and thus locates the act firstly closer to the violence of the torn-out tongue of Anders’ original and secondly in an age of image instead of writing.
Ariel watches life in the country as if it were a theatre. Underwater she yearns for a statue of Erik, and unlike him, who falls in love with her voice, her desire is visual. In this way, the cinema-goer becomes Odysseus, who is tied to his chair and can enjoy, listen and watch spellbound without letting the temptations on the screen tear him to his tragedy.
A warning
“Don’t let what should be holding you back. Just think about what is”, Erik receives this advice from a loyal friend. Only: The competition between fiction and fact that has been established here cannot be maintained, because the priority of reality over desire is a decision for and against Ariel at the same time. After all, she is what is, that is, the mute woman who is physically present so that her lover no longer has to yearn for the singing woman of his dreams. on the other hand is she is also the mermaid, the figure from Erik’s dreams. A dilemma, but a beautiful one.
And who would grant it to the loyal, stupid prince and his naive, swarming beloved? They stumble through life barefoot and want to see a reward for so much careless trust.
Ultimately, however, the central question is: Do we really need this film, regardless of the misguided skin color debate, do we really need a new Ariel? As early as 1836, Heinrich Heine expressed his dissatisfaction with the mermaid boom: “But our time rejects all such air and water formations, even the most beautiful ones, it demands real figures of life, and least of all it demands mermaids who fall in love with noble knights The new film is enchanting and, despite the transformation, remains almost as unbroken in loyalty to the animated version as the mermaid is to the prince. Luckily nobody listened to Heine.
In cinemas from May 25th.
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