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Little Mermaid Part 1: The Golden Contract · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Hold on, how many kids do you have?
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: I have two boys.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, so your kids are how old at this point?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: They were young.
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: I mean this was before you know, you can call
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: up anything on all of Disney Plus or whatever.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I'm speaking with Laura Beth Nielsen, law professor, social scientist,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: chair of the Northwestern University Sociology Department.
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: You know, they were VHS tapes and they wanted to
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: watch them. And at some point, you know, as the adult,
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: you just didn't get my numbingly bored and I started
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: thinking about what else they represented.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Were there particular movies that got you thinking along these lines?
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: It was The Little Mermaid.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: It was a Little Mermaid.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: I want to be where the people are. I want
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: to see want to see him dancing, walkin me.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: The Little Mermaid came out in nineteen eighty nine. It's
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: based on the hands Christian Andersen children's story of the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: same name, an animated musical from Walt Disney Pictures written
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: and directed by the team of Ron Clements and John Musker,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: about an adolescent mermaid named Ariel who wants to leave
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the sea and trade in her fins for feet because
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: she's fallen in love with a handsome prince. She rescued
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: him from a shipwreck, and now she can't stop thinking
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: about him.
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: What would I pay to stay here beside you?
• 1:50
  Speaker 6: What would I do to see him smiling at me?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: The Little Mermaid is for kids, specifically, and especially little girls.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: It's a princess movie. When it came out, it rejuvenated
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Disney's animated film business, setting off a spectacular run Beauty
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion, King, Pocahontas. But it
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: isn't just kids who watch Disney movies. It's their parents.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Parents like Laura Beth Nielsen, the lead author, with Nahal
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Patel and Jacob Brosner, of a twenty seventeen Law Journal
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: article called a Head of the Law Men, Law and
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Morality in Disney Animated Films nineteen sixty to nineteen ninety eight.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: If you have a young child, I recommend you read
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: this article before it's too late. I read the paper
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and I rolled my eyes and I I was like,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: seems to be like And then you know, I'd never
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: seen a Little Mermaid. So then I watched The Little
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Mermaid and I was like, oh, you're so right. Yeah, yes,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: you heard that correctly. I had never seen The Little Mermaid.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I was the only person in the English speaking world
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: who could not sing the lyrics to under the Sea.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: In fact, I don't think i'd seen a Disney animated
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: movie at all. And then one day, deep into my
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: adult ears, I discovered Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: It's very dramatic, but it's not.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Just that that's a hugely We're going to come back
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: to this, but that is a hugely problematic movie.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, for a million reasons.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: For a million reasons. Ultimately, this episode is about whether
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: it can be fixed. Wait did I say this episode?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I meant three episodes. Was spending the next three weeks
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: on The Little Mermaid. Revisionist History's take on The Little
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Mermaid is going to go on longer than The Little
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Mermaid itself. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. Sometimes
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: we go high at Revisionist History, sometimes we go sideways.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: This time we're going deep, deep, deep, underwater, to the
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: ocean floor, to the mr world, where men and women
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: and children with fins for feet present the rest of
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: us with a series of vexing Marl conundrums.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: You know, some people say, oh, you're too rough on Disney.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: I'm not rough on Disney at all. I mean I
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: love that movie.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: But it's wait, you love that movie? Are you talking
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: about The Little Mermaid?
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: You still maintain that you love it.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Nobody's ever asked me this before. For I'm thinking, I
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: think I do.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: I mean yes, I think these are opportunities to talk
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: to your children.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see you like it because it gave you
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: a chance to instruct your sons.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: If I really hated it, I wouldn't have had it
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: in my house, right, I mean.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: No, you didn't know until you watched it with them.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: You hadn't watched it yourself before you showed it to them,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: had you?
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: Oh?
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh you had?
• 5:35
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Would you like me to sing the whole store? I
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: assure you the answer is no.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: She sat on the couch with her kids and watched
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: it again and again and again, first with love and
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: only then with alarm.
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: You have to watch it unwillingly many times to get
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: to this level of analysis.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: When do children first encounter fairy tales at the most
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: crucial moments, when they start to form their earliest notions
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: of legality and morality. As Laura beeth Nielsen points out,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: when you ask a two year old to share a toy,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: he'll say, no, it's mine. Ask a four or five
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: year old and they'll say, why do I have to share?
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: They suddenly want a framework to help them understand that request.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And what do fairy tales do? They supply that framework.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: So this is what I want to do in these
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: episodes about The Little Mermaid. I want to fix the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: frame set askew by Disney a generation ago. Now as
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I lead you on this journey of aquatic discovery? Am
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I a little worried? Of course, I'm worried because this
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: is Disney. We're talking about the magic Kingdom, the litigious
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: magic Kingdom. I hinted at this worry of mine in
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: the least helpful place possible on The Jimmy Kimmel Show,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: which runs on ABC, owned by Disney. I know you're
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: part of the Disney Empire.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Jimmy, where you are.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: They're upstairs watching this right now. They're probably trying to
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: cut me off. You'll be their fingers on the button.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: I'll be lucky to be alive by morning.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: That's for sure.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Jimmy sounds like he's kidding. He's not kidding. Have you
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: ever heard of the infamous case Walt Disney Productions versus
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: the Air Pirates. An underground cartoonist named Dan O'Neill got
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: together with a group of his hippie friends in San
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Francisco in nineteen seventy one and wrote two issues of
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: a Mickey and Minnie Mouse parody. Their first cover showed
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Mickey flying a prop plane with two bags of dope
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: hanging from the fuselage. We're talking about most forty thousand
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: copies of an indie comic book written by some counter
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: culture cartoonist. Did Disney laugh? Ignore it? No? Disney sued.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: They brought in a battalion of high priced legal talent
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: and rained fire on little Dan O'Neill. The case stracked
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: on for over nine years. Let me just quote to
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: you from the completely nuts account of the saga from
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: the writer Bob Levin. In nineteen seventy nine, O'Neill stood
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: before the bar, thirty eight years old, unemployed, with total
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: assets of seven dollars, a nineteen sixty three Mercury convertible,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: a banjo, and the baggy gray suit he was wearing. Disney,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: which already had a hundred and ninety thousand dollars judgment
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: against him, sought to have him find another ten thousand
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: dollars and imprisoned for six months. You read a line
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: like that and you think, there, but for the grace
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: of God go I that could be me up there,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: standing before the court, broken and forlorn, besieged by Disney's
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: pack of legal attack jackals. But are we at Revision's
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: History afraid to give the story of Ariel a makeover. No,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: we're not, because somewhere out there is a little mermaid
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: imprisoned in script that does not do her justice. And Disney,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: if you're listening before the preliminary injunction start flying around,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: be advised that although we will be critical of certain
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: sea creatures within the Magic Kingdom, this is criticism that
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: comes from a place of affection.
• 9:34
  Speaker 7: Why have not we an immortal soul, asked the little
• 9:37
  Speaker 7: Mermaid mournfully, I would gladly give all the hundreds of
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: years that I have to live to be a human
• 9:42
  Speaker 7: being only for one day, and to have the hope
• 9:45
  Speaker 7: of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: The Little Mermaid began as a short story by the
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: great Danish storyteller Hans Christian Anderson. You probably know some
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: hands Christian andersen tales The Princess and the pa The
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Emperor's New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, the snow Queen. Anderson
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: was born into poverty in the early nineteenth century. He
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: was desperately insecure, here, self absorbed, probably a virgin his
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: entire life. There's some evidence that he might have been
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: gay or bisexual at a time and place in history
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: when making public either of those preferences could land you
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: in prison. What Anderson had was his talent, which was immeasurable.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: He also had a beautiful singing voice, which he used
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: to gain entree into the homes of the wealthy. He
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: was the ugly duckling. In fact, when Anderson was once
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: asked whether he would ever write his autobiography, his response was, I.
• 10:41
  Speaker 9: Already have almost every tale. He wrote. They were grounded
• 10:47
  Speaker 9: in the reality of his life. That was a dirt, poor, uncultivated,
• 10:55
  Speaker 9: ugly young boy became sort of the a schwaz.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: That's Jack Zeipe's one of the leading experts on fairy tales.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Andersen's stories are about transformation, about outsiders longing to be insiders,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: about the struggle for acceptance, and the Little Mermaid is
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: quintessential Andersen. A mermaid saves a handsome prince from drowning
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: and decides that she wants to be human too, because,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: as her grandmother tells her, human beings have immortal souls.
• 11:33
  Speaker 7: You must not think of that, said the old woman.
• 11:37
  Speaker 7: We feel ourselves to be much happier and much better
• 11:40
  Speaker 7: off than human beings. So I shall die, said the
• 11:44
  Speaker 7: little mermaid, And as the foam of the sea, I
• 11:47
  Speaker 7: shall be driven about, never again to hear the music
• 11:50
  Speaker 7: of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers, nor
• 11:52
  Speaker 7: the red sun? Is there anything I can do to
• 11:56
  Speaker 7: win an immortal soul?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: The Mermaid's desire to leave the water becomes overwhelming, so
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: she goes to a sea witch, who gives her a
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: potion and tells her that when she drinks it, her
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: fins will turn into legs. All who see you will
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: say that you are the prettiest little human they ever saw.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: But every step she takes will be filled with pain,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: as if she were treading upon sharp knives. If the
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: prince marries her, she can stay a human if she
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: fails to win his heart, she will die. Oh, and
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: the witch extracts the most horrible down payment.
• 12:35
  Speaker 7: When at last the magic draft was ready, it looked
• 12:38
  Speaker 7: like the clearest water. There it is for you, said
• 12:42
  Speaker 7: the witch. Then she cut off the Mermaid's tongue so
• 12:46
  Speaker 7: that she would become dumb and would never again speak
• 12:49
  Speaker 7: or sing.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Oh. Man. And yet does Anderson's mermaid get to marry
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: the prince. No, she doesn't. The prince ends up marrying
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: another woman, and the Mermaid melts into foam. Classic Andersen.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: As Jack Zipes puts it, most of Anderson's characters wind
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: up his metaphors for his own suffering.
• 13:14
  Speaker 9: He never felt, at least for him, what he would
• 13:17
  Speaker 9: consider true happiness, and that was the motor of all
• 13:21
  Speaker 9: of his tales. The frustration he felt comes out in
• 13:26
  Speaker 9: most of the tales that he wrote.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: A lot of the scholarship on Hans Christian Anderson dwells
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: on this point about the connection between his fairy tales
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: and his own life. There's a wonderful essay by Gabrielle
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Bellot where she points out that just before Anderson wrote
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: The Little Mermaid, he'd been embroiled in a passionate completely
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: unrequited romance with a handsome young Dane. Let me just
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: read to you from Bellot's essay, where she cites a
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: poem that Anderson wrote about his love. It goes, Rosebud,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: so firm and round, lovely as a young girl's mouth.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I kiss you as my bride. The amateur poem continues
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: with further kisses and an exhortation, too, feel my fire.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: What does the object of Anderson's love do? He rejects
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Anderson for a woman. The author is plunged into despair
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: and writes The Little Mermaid, a story about a creature
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: from another world who must give up her beautiful voice,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: her identity to be accepted by the greater world, only
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: to be rejected for a woman. And there The Little
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Mermaid remained a sad story from a tortured soul until
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: one day she got.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: A new life.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: A sentry passes and along comes Disney. In the nineteen eighties,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: the Disney animated franchise was in trouble. Its greatest hits,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Snow White Ko Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty were all in the past.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: They wanted us all to go out and find new ideas.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: This is Ron Clemens, longtime writer and director at Disney,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: speaking a few years ago at the Big Animation Conference
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Industry Giants.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I read the Hans Christian Andersen's story in a bookstore,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: and as I was reading it, I thought it seemed
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: like this is great, this is so cool. But as
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I continue to read it, it's very very sad.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, it is very very sad, all the way
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: to the bitter end, where the Little Mermaid is reduced
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: to a clump of ceaphone. The little girls of America
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: are not yet ready. Clemens feels for an aquatic allegory
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: of unrequirded homosexual longing.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: They gets sadder and sadder and sadder, and then she
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: dies in the end. So it was almost depressing in
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: a way, but I thought it had a lot of potential,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: so I made it a little more of a good
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: against evil story and a left triumphs solve story.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Clemens and his co director John Musker gave the Little
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Mare made a name. Ariel the Sea Witch became Ursula,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: a campy octopus based on the legendary drag queen divine
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: and Joan Collins villainous of one hundred nineteen seventies b movies.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Ariel's father, the leader of the Muhr World, is a big,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: white haired giant named King Triton, who looks a little
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: like Santa Claus if Santa Claus had spent the off
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: season lifting weights, and Ariel gets a few sidekicks. Sebastian,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: a crab with a Jamaican accent and love of Calypso,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: is a fish named Flounder, and a ditsy seagull named Scuttle.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: The prince Ariel falls in love with is named Prince Eric.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: He's a dashingly handsome aristocrat with a sheep dog. Howard
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Ashman and Alan Menkin, the creators of Little Shop of Horrors,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: were brought in to write the music. Everyone loved the result.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: John Musker remembers opening his front door on Halloween night
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: after the movie came out and seeing a little girl
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: dressed as Ariel, and he realized, we made it. We're
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: in the culture. Clemens and Musker would go on to
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: do some of Disney's most memorable animated movies, Aladdin, Princess
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: and the Frog Moanna. They're now the grandfathers of Hollywood animation.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: John and Ron should be proud, but let's keep listening
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: to Ron Clemens as he talks about The Little Mermaid.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I never really felt any guilt so much about changing
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the sad ending to a happy inding.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Hm, where did that come from? Who said anything about guilt?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Is there something here weighing on Ron Clemens's conscience.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I never felt any guilt until I was doing publicity
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: in Copenhagen for the European premiere of the film, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: that's where hence Christian Andersen lived and that's where the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: statue of the Little Mermaid is. They were not so
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: happy about it. They were giving me a hard time
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: about changing the Indian and even one interview said it
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: would be as if we took go on with the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Wind and we changed the ending. Scarlett O'Hara stayed with
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Red Butler in the end.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: So not all Danes appreciated what Disney did with a
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Little Mermaid. But my beef is not Danish. My beef
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: comes from the scholar Laura beth Nielsen. Do you remember
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: what specific thing in that movie got you think it?
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute, Oh, it's.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: That moment where Triton shoots his.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: Trident at Ursula to try to save his daughter from
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: this what every viewer knows is an extremely immoral arrangement.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: The extremely immoral arrangement she's talking about, it's the contract
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Aerial signs with Ursula. In the original fairy Tale version
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: of Little Mermaid, the Mermaid made a handshake deal with
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: the Sea Witch. She got the potion that made her
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: a human. In exchange, the sea Witch cut off her tongue.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: In the Disney version, they bring in lawyers. Of course
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: they do. Ursula, the Disney diva, won't make any magic
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: deals without a signed contract. Ariel signs the scroll. She
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: now has three days to get Eric to kiss her.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: If she fails, she has to return underwater and become
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Ursula's slave. Now, if you've watched the movie, you know
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: what happens next. Ariel comes close to kissing Eric but
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: gets foiled. Ursula acquires Ariel's voice, transforms herself into a
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: beautiful young woman, and steals Eric away, whereupon King Triton
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: confronts Ursula to get his daughter back.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Let her go, Not a chance, Triton, She's mine. Now,
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: really you need to deal.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: That's when Triton tries to destroy the contract with his trident.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: It doesn't work. Then Ursula says, and this is the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: key phrase.
• 20:06
  Speaker 9: You see, the contracts legal binding and completely unbreakable even
• 20:12
  Speaker 9: for you.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: She holds up the contract, it's gold.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: And it was that unbreakable golden contract that was ruling
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: this whole situation. And it was, I mean, from you know,
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: a law professor perspective, clearly illegal under the law.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: I mean it's a contract involving a minor and the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: sale of body parts.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: I believe in law.
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm skeptical about a lot of claims, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: I think we need to empirically study them and all
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: of those sorts of things. But fundamentally, I want my
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: students and my children to understand that law embodies.
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: Or should embody, and we have to strive to make
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: it always be so true justice and a piece of
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: paper or in this case gold, whatever it is, doesn't
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: win out over a just outcome.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: That's the argument of Nielsen's paper, the one published in
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. When I ran across it, I'll admit my
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: first thought was, this is some academic with way too
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: much time on her hands. Do we really need to
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: overthink animated movies of fairy tales? But then I realized,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: actually we do. There are lots of things we overthink
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: in our society. I overthink everything all the time, and
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: most of the things I overthink are not nearly as
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: important as the narratives we tell children.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: And finally we get to sit down and have this conversation.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Did you watch Oprah's famous interview with Megan Markle? A
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: young woman marries a prince and finds herself thwarted by
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: the royal family, suppressed, silenced, And what did Megan Markle
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: reference as a parallel for her predicament? Not a theory
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: of justice by John Rawls. No, the Little Mermaid, who.
• 22:13
  Speaker 10: Is an adult really watches The Little Mermaid. But it
• 22:16
  Speaker 10: came on. I was like, well, I've I'm just here
• 22:18
  Speaker 10: all the times, and may as well watch this, And
• 22:19
  Speaker 10: I went, oh my god. She falls in love with
• 22:23
  Speaker 10: the prince, and because of that she has to lose
• 22:26
  Speaker 10: her voice. But by the end she gets her voice.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Back, gets her voice back, and this is what happened here.
• 22:33
  Speaker 8: You feel like you got your voice back.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: When Oprah said that, did we all roll our eyes? No,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: we said, oh my god, she's so right. Perhaps the
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: most famous book ever written about children's stories is The
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim. He says that fairy
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: tales teach children that quote a struggle against severe difficulties
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: But that if one does not shy away but steadfastly
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: and at the end emerges victorious. End quote. Fairy tales matter.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: But who tells most of our fairy tales? Now? Disney?
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: And what's the problem with Disney? They've gotten sloppy. If
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I were prosecuting Disney for moral sloppiness, here is where
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I would begin.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: I ain't talking rabbit, and there ain't nothing you can
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: do to meet me. Ayesome fuck.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Exhibit A Disney's Zutopia PG rating family comedy from twenty sixteen.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Zutopia is all about a world of animals starring a
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: rabbit police officer Judy Hopps. Couldn't be cute, right except
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: for this moment near the end of that movie where
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Hops needs to find out a crucial bit of information
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: about a criminal conspiracy. She has a shrewd name, mister
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Big use one of his enforcers a polar bear, to
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: interrogate a weasel named Duke. The polar Bear holds Duke
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: over an icy pit and threatens to throw him down
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: the hole to his death if he doesn't confess.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: Is this weasel right all right?
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Directly a talk?
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: A talk that's torture right. Even worse, the weasel gives
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: up the info right away. So the movie is modeling
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: something that isn't even true in the real world. There
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: is no empirical support for the notion that the application
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: of coercive force is the most efficient way to get
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: a confession out of a reluctant party, even if that
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: reluctant party is a weasel. Okay. Exhibit B Toy Story
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: three Family Comedy g Rating twenty ten, another Disney movie
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: which is full of all sorts of excruciating scenes of
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: one sort or another, like when mister potato Head gets
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: locked in a sandbox, or another scene where a plastic
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: rotary phone is viciously beaten to the point where he
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: divulges critical information to the evil lots.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Of you lost little Doggie. Well, well look who's back.
• 25:50
  Speaker 8: I'm sorry cowboy.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Oh they broke me, they broke me. It's a g rating.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: It isn't just Disney by the way, there's a kind
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: of moral sloppiness everywhere in children's entertainment.
• 26:07
  Speaker 8: One thing I didn't expect was how often torture would
• 26:10
  Speaker 8: be played for humor, which I thought was kind of
• 26:12
  Speaker 8: particularly fascinating.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: That's the social scientist Casey de Lahunty, who with Aaron Carnes,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: actually made a list of every torture scene that occurs
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: in Hollywood's top grossing movies between two thousand and eight
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: and twenty seventeen.
• 26:27
  Speaker 8: The SpongeBob movie has some really good examples of this,
• 26:31
  Speaker 8: where like, they have a whole scene where they torture
• 26:34
  Speaker 8: a tire, and like, it's meant to be played for humor.
• 26:37
  Speaker 7: What do we have here?
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: Be better? Hurry those guys really hate tires, so you
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: won't talk.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Let's samor out of them.
• 26:51
  Speaker 8: And then later they find that they've actually tortured the
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: anthropomorphic computer. But even that scene is all just jokes,
• 26:59
  Speaker 8: like what would it be like to torture a computer?
• 27:02
  Speaker 8: And it's legitimately funny but also disconcerting.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: You think. So back to Laura Beth Nielsen one more time.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Her field of study is lay perceptions of the law.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: How do ordinary people come to understand the law.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: So not just law like a statute that Congress passes
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: or a Supreme Court decision, but in general, you know,
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: what do you mean by liberty?
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: Whose concept of liliberty?
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: You know, ordinary people don't say, oh well, it's a
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: combination of John Stuart Mill and Benjamin Franklin's writings, and
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: they have these sort of lay conceptions which aren't right
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: or wrong, but they motivate action, and they make up
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: what we think of as fair and just and what
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: the appropriate role of the state should be, which is
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's the whole question of law.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: This is what she studies. And then one day she's
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: sitting on the couch with her boys at the moment
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: that they are in that critical window of moral development.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: She watches for the million time as Ariel signs the
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: scroll and Nielsen says, wait a minute. The point of
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: the law is that it's supposed to avoid conflict. It's
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: supposed to embody a sense of what's right, not enshrine
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: an outrageously exploitative deal in which a miner gives up
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: a body part, makes themselves liable for a lifetime of
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: underwater slavery, and needs to be bailed out by an
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: armed posse. Did you intervene? Did you stop the tape
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: and say, look, boys, just sowhare clear?
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: You didn't?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Well wait a minute, why not?
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, we've talked about it since I wouldn't stop
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: it right then they would do you have gids?
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: They would have meltdown.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: The point is, if you're Laurabeth Nielsen and worry about
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: these sorts of things, Disney films are tricky. How quickly
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: after they watched the movie? Did you discuss the movie
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: as a as a problematic narrative with him? But did
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: you wait for yours? Or did you?
• 29:18
  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: No, I know, well no, I talked to them at
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: an age appropriate level at various points in time. I
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: probably said it's too bad that they couldn't work this
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: out another way. I didn't say that's an unconscionable contract.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Don't you remember Botsaikas VI Demosis and from Law SCHOITL
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: You know, I but I you know something like that?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: And then in that moment you describe what the movie
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: is telling the viewer is that the Law is is
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: all powerful, not even Triton, who later in the movie
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: can transform his own daughter from amrmid into a human being.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: That's how powerful. He's basically god.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: He is God.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: But can you overturn any moral contract? Not a chance, right,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: not a chance. Remember, at the end of the movie,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Ariel and Triton and Prince Eric don't erec yes Ursula.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: They don't initiate some kind of formal proceedings against her,
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: They don't try her in court, they don't make use
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: of the same legal mechanisms that Ursula did. In the
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: internal logic of the film, the reason why Triton can't
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: break the contract is that Triton doesn't control the law.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: The law is entirely controlled by this mobster Ursula, and
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: he's outmaneuvered.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, you know, the evil people can take the
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: law and do these things with it, and maybe you
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: could have fought it at some point or another.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: But once the deal is done, it's unbreakable.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: How does this whole thing ultimately get resolved? Eric pursues
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Ursula with his ship and kills her. The Little Mermaid
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: is a vigilante picture. It's an animated, dirty, hairy movie.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: They might as well have had Clint Eastwood play Prince Eric.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: Law is often presented as you are you know, ineffective,
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: completely irrelevant or negative, right or bad, something that the
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: bad guys use.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: And then what tends to solve the problem is violence.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, either mob violence or in this case, you know
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: it's Ursula gets killed by.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: A ship really yeah, impaled.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, she gets impaled by the bow of it all.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: The Freudian scholars writing about Little Mermaid refer to it
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: as a phallic impalement.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, the gender stuff on this movie.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Forever and we will. In upcoming episodes, you'll hear from
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: a neuroscientist turned literary theorist who will help us to
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: code the hidden meaning of the Little Mermaid narrative. A
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: big name Hollywood casting agent will stop by to sort
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: to the show's characters, and best of all, in an
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: act of massive revisionist history, I prevail upon a high
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: end Hollywood screenwriter to reimagine the movie.
• 32:14
  Speaker 6: Malcolm. I used to tie my ankles with like sweat
• 32:19
  Speaker 6: socks and then jump into the pool so that I could,
• 32:22
  Speaker 6: you know, swim with my feet tied together like the
• 32:25
  Speaker 6: Little Mermaid.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Coming up next week, Brent Marlin dives deep deep into
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: the underworld. Revision's History is produced by me LaBelle Leeman
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Gesteu and Jacob Smith with Eloise Linton and on a Nyme.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Our editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Kira,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: mastering by Flon Williams, and engineering by Martin Gonzalez. Fact
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: checking by Amy Gaines. Our voice actor in this episode
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: was Melina Rose. Special thanks to the Pushkin crew had
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: a Fame, Carly Mcglori, Maya Knig, Daniello, Lacan, Maggie Tayler,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Jason Gambrel, and of course Jacob Eisberg.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: I'm Malcolm Blama. Don't forget my latest book, The Bomber Mafia,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: which is an expansion of several episodes from the last
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: season of Revisionist History. You can find it wherever books
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: are sold, but by the audiobook at Bombermafia dot com
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: and you'll get a bonus listener's guide, and you can
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: listen in the podcast app you're using now