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Little Mermaid Part 2: The Fairytale Twist · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: In his best known work The Uses of Enchantment, the
0:24
Speaker 2: late Austrian psychoanalyst Bruno Bedelheim asks us to consider the
0:29
Speaker 2: genius of the children's tail. Three little pigs. You remember,
0:36
Speaker 2: three little pigs.
0:37
Speaker 3: The first little pig was very lazy. He didn't want
0:41
Speaker 3: to work at all, and he built his house out
0:44
Speaker 3: of straw. The second little pig worked a little bit harder,
0:48
Speaker 3: but he was somewhat lazy too, and he built his
0:51
Speaker 3: house out of sticks. Then they sang and danced and
0:55
Speaker 3: played together the rest of the day. The third little
0:59
Speaker 3: pig worked hard all day and built his house with bricks.
1:03
Speaker 3: It was a sturdy house, complete with a fine fireplace
1:07
Speaker 3: and chimney. It looked like it could withstand the strongest winds.
1:14
Speaker 2: The wicked wolf visits the first pig with the straw
1:17
Speaker 2: house and says he's going to eat him. Not by
1:21
Speaker 2: the hair on my chinny chin chin, the little pig says.
1:24
Speaker 2: The wolf replies, I'll huff and i'll puff, and I'll
1:28
Speaker 2: blow your house down, And so he does easily. The
1:32
Speaker 2: little pig escapes to his brother's house, the house built
1:35
Speaker 2: of sticks. The wolf gives chase blows that one down too.
1:39
Speaker 2: Then the two little pigs escaped to their big brother's house,
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Speaker 2: the one made of bricks, and this stam the wicked
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Speaker 2: wolf can't blow it down.
1:47
Speaker 3: The wolf danced about with rage and swore he would
1:51
Speaker 3: come down the chimney and eat up the little pig
1:54
Speaker 3: for his supper. But while he was climbing onto the roof,
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Speaker 3: the little pig made up a blazing fire and put
2:01
Speaker 3: on a big pot full of water to boil. Then,
2:05
Speaker 3: just as the wolf was coming down the chimney the
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Speaker 3: little piggy he pulled off the lid and plump in
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Speaker 3: fell the wolf into the scolding water.
2:18
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the three little pigs. I'll huff and I'll puff.
2:22
Speaker 2: Everyone knows the story of the three little Pigs. Bruno
2:26
Speaker 2: Bettelheim's question was what works in a fairy tale the
2:30
Speaker 2: three little pigs works, and what doesn't work? The fable
2:35
Speaker 2: of the Ants and the Grasshopper. Do you even remember it?
2:38
Speaker 2: I don't think you do. Here's the story. The ants
2:44
Speaker 2: spend the summer working NonStop, preparing for winter. Meanwhile, the
2:48
Speaker 2: grasshopper fretters away his summer entertaining himself, and now he's hungry.
2:55
Speaker 3: What cried the ants?
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Speaker 4: In surprise.
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Speaker 3: Haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in
3:02
Speaker 3: the world were you doing or last summer? I didn't
3:06
Speaker 3: have time to store up any food, wine, the grasshopper.
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Speaker 3: I was so busy making music that before I knew it,
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Speaker 3: the summer was gone. The ants shrug their shoulders in disgust.
3:21
Speaker 3: Making music?
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Speaker 5: Were you?
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Speaker 3: They cried very well, Now dance and they turned their
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Speaker 3: backs on the grasshopper and went on with their work.
3:33
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the end of the story. Now, this
3:37
Speaker 2: one has the same basic lesson as three little pigs.
3:41
Speaker 2: Life favors the hard working and the prepared. Both stories
3:44
Speaker 2: have cute animals who just want to have fun. Little
3:47
Speaker 2: pigs grasshoppers playing music. And the story of the Ants
3:51
Speaker 2: and the Grasshopper should be lodged in our memories because
3:55
Speaker 2: it was written by Aesop of Aesop's Fables, the same
3:58
Speaker 2: legend who brought us the Tortoise and the hair pedigreed storytelling.
4:04
Speaker 2: But we don't remember it. Why because we love the
4:07
Speaker 2: grasshopper and the ASoP just throws them to the ants.
4:16
Speaker 2: Deep into my investigation of the Little Mermaid, I realized
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Speaker 2: that we make Asop's mistake all the time. We don't
4:23
Speaker 2: understand how seriously children take their fairy tales. We think
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Speaker 2: we can satisfy them with a few sternly worded lessons.
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Speaker 2: Oh but we can't. Think of the three little pigs.
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Speaker 2: There's a chase scene, some trash talking, not by the
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Speaker 2: hair of my chinny chin chin, no fewer than three
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Speaker 2: home invasions, and a brilliant plot twist with the vat
4:43
Speaker 2: of boiling water at the bottom of the chimney, just
4:45
Speaker 2: waiting for the impetuous wolf.
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Speaker 3: So the little Piggy puts on the cover again, boil
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Speaker 3: the wolf up, and the three little piggies ate him
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Speaker 3: for supper.
4:57
Speaker 2: You swing at the pigs, you best not miss. My
5:03
Speaker 2: name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my
5:06
Speaker 2: podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part two
5:12
Speaker 2: of my three part forensic analysis of the blockbuster princess
5:16
Speaker 2: movie The Little Mermaid. In part one, we heard from
5:23
Speaker 2: a law professor who argues that the Disney company fumbled
5:26
Speaker 2: the tale of the young mermaid who wanted to trade
5:28
Speaker 2: her fins for feet. In this episode, I want to
5:32
Speaker 2: talk about the theory of fairy tales, why they matter,
5:36
Speaker 2: why they work and why sometimes they don't work at all.
5:44
Speaker 2: The closest modern equivalent we have to Bruno Bettelheim is
5:48
Speaker 2: a literary scholar named Angus Fletcher. Fletcher is not a
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Speaker 2: psychoanalyst like Bettelheim was. He trained as a neuroscientist. Are
5:56
Speaker 2: you the first person in history to leave neuroscience to
5:59
Speaker 2: get a PhD English?
6:00
Speaker 6: Yes? Tragically I went in exactly the opposite direction from
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Speaker 6: everybody else. And this is why I am bankrupts. Everyone's saying,
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Speaker 6: went from English to neuroscience, And yes, I like that.
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Speaker 2: I am somewhere. Your parents are just like crying. This
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Speaker 2: is like definiliating.
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Speaker 6: It's even worse because you can't tell because I've lost
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Speaker 6: my accent. But I'm an immigrant and so you know,
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Speaker 6: like all immigrant families, my parents are just obsessed with science,
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Speaker 6: and they wanted me to be a doctor, and you know,
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Speaker 6: they were disappointed when I only went into science. But
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Speaker 6: they're like, well, I guess that's okay. And then you know, poetry.
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Speaker 6: It's humiliating for them. You know, they've disowned me.
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Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to Fletcher because of a book
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Speaker 2: he wrote called wonder Works. The twenty five most powerful
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Speaker 2: inventions in the history of literature, which is this strange
6:42
Speaker 2: and captivating work, full of twists and turns and fascinating asides.
6:46
Speaker 2: It's the kind of book that makes you want to
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Speaker 2: talk to the author just to make sure there aren't
6:50
Speaker 2: more bits of wisdom out there to be had. Anyway,
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Speaker 2: I'm on the phone with Angus, struggling to understand what
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Speaker 2: went wrong with the Little Mermaid, and Angus, since he's Angus, says, oh,
7:02
Speaker 2: the thing you have to understand is that there's actually
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Speaker 2: two categories of fairy tales, the original kind and the
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Speaker 2: modern kind. And then Angus starts talking about some of
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Speaker 2: the earliest recorded fairy tales, like the stories collected by
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Speaker 2: the sixteenth century Italian writer Giovanni Straparola. Straparola published a
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Speaker 2: two volume set known as The Facetious Knights. Puss in
7:25
Speaker 2: Boots is a Straparola story.
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Speaker 6: So yeah, So there are these two amazing things that
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Speaker 6: we start to see in Straparola's fairy tales, which again
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Speaker 6: are the kind of most ancient ones we have written down.
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Speaker 6: The first is that good luck happens to people who
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Speaker 6: are fools, so a fool might find a lucky fish
7:40
Speaker 6: and by a fool, I mean an actual fool, I
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Speaker 6: mean somebody who is so dense in the story that
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Speaker 6: he says terrible, rude things to everybody he meets. Is
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Speaker 6: an inept fisher person has no apparent positive qualities whatsoever,
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Speaker 6: and then ends up a prince. And it can go
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Speaker 6: even further than that. It can happen to people who
7:56
Speaker 6: are bad.
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Speaker 2: A classic example of this kind of story is an
8:00
Speaker 2: ancient fairy tale about a girl named Adam and Tina.
8:07
Speaker 2: Adam and Tina's family is starving and she's sent by
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Speaker 2: her older sister to buy food at the market.
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Speaker 6: Adamantina goes to the market with the family's last money
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Speaker 6: and does she buy food. No, she makes a whimsical
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Speaker 6: purchase of a doll that she sees because she happens
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Speaker 6: to like this doll, and she takes this doll home
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Speaker 6: with her, and her older sister is so distraught that
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Speaker 6: she has this breakdown. Is oh, my goodness, this is
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Speaker 6: the end of the family. You have ruined the family.
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Speaker 6: It's all over and lo and behold, the doll turns
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Speaker 6: out to be a magic doll, and it spits forth money,
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Speaker 6: and this is the beginning of a series of just bizarre,
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Speaker 6: improbable happenings that occur in the story, and adam Antina
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Speaker 6: does not deserve them at all. She's not virtuous, she's
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Speaker 6: not smart, she's not nice, she's not kind.
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Speaker 2: The doll is a lottery ticket.
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Speaker 6: The doll is a lottery ticket. That's exactly right.
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Speaker 2: Yes, Fletcher calls these kinds of stories fairytale twist stories.
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Speaker 2: If you look at all the stories collected by Straparola,
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Speaker 2: they almost always end with fairytale twists. For thousands of years,
9:05
Speaker 2: people sat around the fire and listened to storytellers, And
9:09
Speaker 2: what are the narratives that survived the evolution of centuries
9:12
Speaker 2: Stories in which heroes did not deserve their fate.
9:18
Speaker 6: Audiences wanted to believe that life could suddenly go from
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Speaker 6: bad to good.
9:26
Speaker 2: It's not simply that life could suddenly go from there
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Speaker 2: could be a sudden twist. Is that the twist would
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Speaker 2: be unrelated to the disposition and character of the protagonist.
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Speaker 2: That I didn't have to meet a certain qualification to
9:40
Speaker 2: be eligible for this good fortune. It was bestowed on anyone.
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Speaker 6: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: But then in the seventeenth century, fairy tales took a
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Speaker 2: dramatic turn. The key figure was the French writer Charles Perrault.
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Speaker 2: He read the fairy tales that had been collected by
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Speaker 2: earlier writers and loved them wanted to share them with
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Speaker 2: the world. But Peraut thought they needed a little tweaking.
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Speaker 6: He said, you know what, these tales are so primitive.
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Speaker 6: They were written before the age of reason. They were
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Speaker 6: written before the enlightenments, and reason tells us that all
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Speaker 6: these instances in which good things are coming from bad
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Speaker 6: it can't happen because life follows this logic that's been
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Speaker 6: created by God. And I want these stories to instill that.
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Speaker 6: So I'm just going to make these changes. I'm going
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Speaker 6: to change it so that good things only happen to
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Speaker 6: good people, and bad things happen to bad people, and
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Speaker 6: so there's no more good happening to bad. There's only
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Speaker 6: good happening to good.
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Speaker 2: Fletcher calls these kinds of fairy tales poetic justice stories.
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Speaker 2: The classic example of this second type of story is Cinderella,
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Speaker 2: an ancient tale which Charles Perrault revised.
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Speaker 4: Later.
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Speaker 2: The brothers Grimm did their own version of the tale
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Speaker 2: in Germany. Here's how it begins, with our introduction to Cinderella.
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Speaker 1: The wife of a rich man fell sick, and when
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Speaker 1: she felt that her end drew nigh, she called her
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Speaker 1: only daughter to her bedside and said, always be a
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Speaker 1: good girl, and I will look down from heaven and
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Speaker 1: watch over you. Soon afterwards she shut her eyes and
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Speaker 1: died and was buried in the garden. And the little
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Speaker 1: girl went every day to her grave and wept, and
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Speaker 1: was always good and kind to honor her mother.
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Speaker 2: Cinderella's father remarries. Cinderella gets an evil stepmother and two
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Speaker 2: evil stepsisters, but no matter what they do to her,
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Speaker 2: Cinderella remains pious and good.
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Speaker 1: It happened once that her father was going to the
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Speaker 1: fair and asked his wife's daughters what he should bring
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Speaker 1: to them. Fine clothes, said the first. Pearls and diamonds,
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Speaker 1: said the second. Now child, said he to his own daughter,
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Speaker 1: what will you have the first brig Dear father, that
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Speaker 1: rubs against your hat on your way home, said she.
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Speaker 2: So the father brings the evil stepdaughters all manner of finery,
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Speaker 2: and Cinderella gets as requested.
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Speaker 1: He gave it to his daughter. Then she took it
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Speaker 1: and went to her mother's grave and planted it there,
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Speaker 1: and cried so much that it was watered with her tears,
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Speaker 1: and there it grew and became a fine tree.
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Speaker 2: Oh, come on, Cinderella is an angel. And what happens
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Speaker 2: to this angel? You know the story? A magic bird
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Speaker 2: gives her a beautiful dress, and off she goes to
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Speaker 2: the ball. The handsome prince falls in love with its mysterious,
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Speaker 2: unknown beauty. She leaves behind her slipper. The prince says,
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Speaker 2: whosoever fits into the slipper will be his queen. Her
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Speaker 2: evil stepsisters try to fit and fail. Cinderella tries it on,
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Speaker 2: and it fits perfectly, and she lives happily ever after
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Speaker 2: virtue is rewarded. Meanwhile, what happens to her evil stepsisters?
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Speaker 1: When the wedding with the prince was to be held,
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Speaker 1: the two false sisters came, wanting to gain favor with
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Speaker 1: Cinderella to share her good fortune.
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Speaker 2: But they get attacked by pigeons that peck out their eyes.
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Speaker 1: And thus for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished
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Speaker 1: with blindness all their days.
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Speaker 2: That's poetic justice. Thus, for their wickedness they were punished.
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Speaker 2: The Cinderella story gets adapted for the screen by Walt
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Speaker 2: Disney in maybe the most famous of all of his
13:49
Speaker 2: animated movies.
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Speaker 5: The dream that you wish will come.
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Speaker 2: True, but it's only the dreams and wishes of the beautiful,
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Speaker 2: angelic Cinderella that come true. With Cinderella, Disney went all
14:08
Speaker 2: in on poetic.
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Speaker 6: Justice, the famous movie that so many of us saw
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Speaker 6: as children, Cinderella, that rescued the Magic Kingdom from bankruptcy
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Speaker 6: and became the logo of Disney. And ever since then,
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Speaker 6: all of Disney's fairy tales have had that same story
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Speaker 6: model of good coming from good, or virtue rewarded or
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Speaker 6: poetic justice. It's this inheritance of the Enlightenment.
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Speaker 2: A few years ago, Angus Fletcher was approached to do
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Speaker 2: a project on measuring children's emotional reactions to the stories
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Speaker 2: they heard.
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Speaker 6: We actually have a technology here which can track how
14:43
Speaker 6: interested kids as young as four are in things. You know,
14:47
Speaker 6: if we have ten or twelve or fourteen kids enough
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Speaker 6: of arrange, we can actually tell you very specifically whether
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Speaker 6: kids like the ending or not and how much they
14:55
Speaker 6: like it. But the overall thing is.
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Speaker 2: This eye tracking? Is this eye tracking stuff? How are
15:00
Speaker 2: you doing that?
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Speaker 6: It's secret and I'm not kidding.
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Speaker 2: So Fletcher does his top secret analysis of little kids
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Speaker 2: watching Disney movies, and he thinks he knows what he's
15:10
Speaker 2: going to find. The kids prefer Cinderella. They don't want
15:14
Speaker 2: the moral anarchy of the fairy tale twist. And sure
15:17
Speaker 2: enough the kids squeal with delight. They love the songs.
15:22
Speaker 2: But then it all falls apart. There's a kind of
15:26
Speaker 2: post Disney hangover.
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Speaker 6: There's been this whole history of condemning Disney fairy tales
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Speaker 6: because they're not realistic, or because they advance kind of
15:34
Speaker 6: stereotypes or kind of unrealistic expectations about what princesses should be,
15:38
Speaker 6: and so on and so forth. But it turned out it
15:40
Speaker 6: really wasn't any of those things that was going on.
15:42
Speaker 6: It was the narrative structure.
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Speaker 2: The kids like the characters, the adventure, the humor, the
15:47
Speaker 2: idea that mice and other animals could do all manner
15:50
Speaker 2: of cool things. But they struggled with the idea that
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Speaker 2: good always comes from good and bad from bad. Why
15:58
Speaker 2: because your child is perfectly capable of extrapolating what all
16:02
Speaker 2: this means.
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Speaker 6: What your brain processes is, well, bad things are happening
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Speaker 6: to me. Why are bad things happening to me? There
16:13
Speaker 6: happened to me clearly because I'm bad, and if bad
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Speaker 6: things happen to bad people and I'm bad, then worse
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Speaker 6: things are going to start to happen because there's no
16:20
Speaker 6: way for me to turn this train around. And what
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Speaker 6: we see is that these stories generate what's called catastrophizing,
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Speaker 6: and catastrophizing is when you become convinced that there's no
16:28
Speaker 6: way to break the cycle of bad feeling. And this
16:32
Speaker 6: is masked in Disney fairy tales because the immediate emotional
16:36
Speaker 6: effect of watching a Disney story is to feel good,
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Speaker 6: is to feel happy because the ending is so sentimental
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Speaker 6: and so positive, but over time it has this corrosive
16:44
Speaker 6: negative effect.
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Speaker 2: Now, by contrast, what happens when a child hears a
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Speaker 2: fairy tale twist story. Those kinds of stories defeat catastrophizing.
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Speaker 6: They short circuit that, and they say, no, no, no,
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Speaker 6: no no. Bad doesn't always come from bad, Good can
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Speaker 6: come from bad. Just relax. Life is not logical.
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Speaker 2: For fairytale twists to poetic justice. They prefer Adam and
17:13
Speaker 2: Tina to Cinderella. Now, why does this matter to our
17:21
Speaker 2: discussion of the Little Mermaid film? Because the Little Mermaid
17:25
Speaker 2: is poetic justice on steroids good things happen not just
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Speaker 2: to good people, but to rich and powerful and beautiful people,
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Speaker 2: and bad things happen not just to bad people, but
17:36
Speaker 2: ugly bad people. When Prince Eric wanted to claim his
17:46
Speaker 2: beautiful bride, he got to take the law into his
17:48
Speaker 2: own hands, become a vigilante kill Ursula in cold blood
17:52
Speaker 2: with no legal consequences whatsoever, because he's a handsome prince,
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Speaker 2: no other reason. Handsome entitled Eric gets away with murder,
18:05
Speaker 2: and Ariel, our beautiful, spirited mermaid who wants to marry
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Speaker 2: a prince. She gets to marry a prince without really
18:14
Speaker 2: having to lift a finger. By the way, in the end,
18:16
Speaker 2: Daddy does everything.
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Speaker 4: Oh then I guess there's just one problem left.
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Speaker 1: And what's that, your majesty?
18:26
Speaker 6: How much I'm going to miss her?
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Speaker 2: Daddy gets at as golden trident and turns Ariel into
18:33
Speaker 2: a female human in a sparkly dress. This is unearned
18:39
Speaker 2: poetic justice. It's one percent poetic justice. I'm still waiting
18:43
Speaker 2: for the Disney sequel where Ariel gets into Stanford as
18:46
Speaker 2: a legacy admission after her dad endows the King Triton
18:50
Speaker 2: Institute of Aquatic Governance. One of the things I realized
19:01
Speaker 2: in talking to Angus Fletcher was how difficult it was
19:04
Speaker 2: to make the transition from poetic justice thinking back to
19:08
Speaker 2: fairytale twist, thinking it doesn't feel right. Bad must be
19:13
Speaker 2: met with bad so that good can be met with good.
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Speaker 6: It feels awfully wrote When you watch the movie, you
19:19
Speaker 6: just feel from the beginning like you know what's going
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Speaker 6: to happen.
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Speaker 2: So Ursula has great power under the sea and decides
19:27
Speaker 2: at the end of the movie that what she wants
19:29
Speaker 2: to do is to disguise herself as Ariel and or
19:32
Speaker 2: A as a beautiful princess and mary Eric right the prince.
19:36
Speaker 2: But what if Eric is revealed to be actually kind
19:40
Speaker 2: of dull and nasty, and so Ariel realizes, Oh, let
19:46
Speaker 2: her marry him, you know, if that's what you want.
19:48
Speaker 2: It turns out the guy's bit of a jerk. I
19:51
Speaker 2: wanted to give Angus my ideas for fixing the Little Mermaid,
19:54
Speaker 2: but I was struggling. Or what if the idea of
19:57
Speaker 2: the outside of the water. She loses her power, so
20:02
Speaker 2: she becomes Eric's bride, but she is now just a
20:07
Speaker 2: normal person who's stripped of all of the because she's
20:11
Speaker 2: chosen the terrestrial world over the underwater world. She's now
20:16
Speaker 2: just an ordinary, hapless citizen. Now, I suppose what we're
20:20
Speaker 2: doing there is we are we're giving a bad ending
20:23
Speaker 2: to a bad person. But at least it's it's a
20:28
Speaker 2: more interesting bad edding.
20:30
Speaker 6: I suppose, yes, it's more creative.
20:33
Speaker 2: I hear a distinct lack of enthusiasm in Angus's voice.
20:38
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's any way not to. We
20:40
Speaker 2: do have to kind of put Ursula in her place.
20:45
Speaker 6: No, you do not.
20:47
Speaker 2: I still couldn't get it out of my head that
20:50
Speaker 2: bad had to come from bad. It was as if
20:53
Speaker 2: everything Fletcher had tried to tell me had sailed right
20:56
Speaker 2: over my head. That's how deeply embedded poetic justice is.
21:00
Speaker 2: It's in our bones.
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Speaker 6: I mean, we have the obsession in the moner world
21:04
Speaker 6: that somehow, if you do something bad, you have to
21:05
Speaker 6: be punished for it. No, if you do something bad,
21:07
Speaker 6: we just have to make sure you don't do that
21:08
Speaker 6: bad thing again. It's rehabilitation, it's medicine. I mean, you know,
21:12
Speaker 6: we don't. We don't punish diseases. We don't. You know,
21:15
Speaker 6: once we've removed cancer from the body, we don't. We
21:17
Speaker 6: don't then send it to jail and punish it.
21:19
Speaker 2: You know, it's just like we So you think we
21:20
Speaker 2: should be able to we should fix her, Sila.
21:23
Speaker 6: Well, I think we should just stop her from doing
21:25
Speaker 6: whatever she's doing. We should have a conversation with her
21:27
Speaker 6: about maybe why this isn't helpful.
21:32
Speaker 2: Fletcher's point was that making Ursula bad and then punishing
21:36
Speaker 2: her for her badness is what you do if you
21:38
Speaker 2: don't care about the story you're telling. You don't think
21:41
Speaker 2: about the audience, the little girl who's trying to understand
21:44
Speaker 2: the way life really works. No, you've turned into ASoP
21:47
Speaker 2: who says there's a boring ant out there and a
21:50
Speaker 2: grasshopper who wants to make music. And I'm sorry, but
21:53
Speaker 2: that means the grasshopper has to starve to death. If
21:56
Speaker 2: he were alive today, ASoP would have a bungalow on
21:59
Speaker 2: the Disney lot. He'd be their rewrite.
22:01
Speaker 1: Man.
22:04
Speaker 6: It's not just that I think that Disney has sent
22:07
Speaker 6: a lot of fairy tales in the world which have
22:09
Speaker 6: overall made us less happy. I think it's also that
22:13
Speaker 6: they are a force against innovation and change and growth
22:17
Speaker 6: in storytelling as a whole, and they are destroying our
22:20
Speaker 6: capacity as a people to think of new directions and
22:26
Speaker 6: new paths and new plots. I mean, my kids love
22:28
Speaker 6: Disney plots. I'm not going to pretend it's like I've
22:32
Speaker 6: some my manage to keep it out of my own house.
22:34
Speaker 6: But you know, I mean, I really think that we
22:38
Speaker 6: have reached a point in our society where we're repeating
22:41
Speaker 6: the error of the Enlightenments, and we're allowing this one
22:46
Speaker 6: institution that thinks it knows the right way to do
22:48
Speaker 6: things to crush out the basis of our nature, which
22:52
Speaker 6: is creativity, change, spontaneity, and like you said, possibility.
22:59
Speaker 2: So I went back and watched The Little Mermaid again,
23:04
Speaker 2: only this time with Angus Fletcher's words ringing in my ears,
23:08
Speaker 2: and I began to I think we can rescue this movie.
23:22
Speaker 2: How old were you when you first saw Little Mermaid?
23:25
Speaker 2: You saw this as a kid?
23:28
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I saw it as a kid, and it
23:30
Speaker 5: was my favorite of all What the Princess?
23:33
Speaker 6: Oh yeah?
23:34
Speaker 2: I needed a screenwriter, a good one, to try their
23:37
Speaker 2: hand at fixing the dumpster fire that was Disney's The
23:40
Speaker 2: Little Mermaid, And I thought, why not Brit Marling, the
23:44
Speaker 2: co creator with Zolbupmanglage, of one of my favorite TV
23:48
Speaker 2: shows ever, The OA on Netflix. Britt Marling struck me
23:52
Speaker 2: as the kind of person who could live inside the
23:55
Speaker 2: imagination of young Ariel, our little mermaid who longs for
23:58
Speaker 2: a better life.
23:59
Speaker 7: I remember as a little girl, I used to not
24:02
Speaker 7: only with the only song I still to this day
24:05
Speaker 7: know on the.
24:05
Speaker 5: Piano is under the Sea really so I.
24:08
Speaker 7: Can play that. I used to play that and sing
24:10
Speaker 7: that and charge people money to watch it. But also, Malcolm,
24:15
Speaker 7: I used to tie my ankles with like sweat socks
24:20
Speaker 7: and then jump into the pool so that I could,
24:22
Speaker 7: you know, swim with my feet tied together like the
24:25
Speaker 7: Little Mermaid.
24:26
Speaker 2: Where you you would get performed, you'd sing the song
24:28
Speaker 2: and get performances. But it was even to the point
24:30
Speaker 2: where you thought there was something particularly alluring about the
24:35
Speaker 2: idea of being limited in the way that the Little
24:39
Speaker 2: Mermaid was being legless.
24:41
Speaker 7: Yeah, being legless. But I think it was what I
24:43
Speaker 7: was attracted to was what how they positioned her in
24:48
Speaker 7: the first fourth of the film, which is like she
24:52
Speaker 7: was bold and fearless.
24:54
Speaker 2: The first fourth of the film. Let's be clear, none
24:57
Speaker 2: of us have any issues with the first fourth of
25:00
Speaker 2: the film.
25:00
Speaker 7: There was a shipwreck and she's just like jumping amongst
25:03
Speaker 7: the you know, flaming, falling logs. It was like there
25:07
Speaker 7: was no other little prince being portrayed like that, Like
25:11
Speaker 7: snow White, you know, and Sleeping Beauty weren't performing those
25:15
Speaker 7: kinds of acts of heroicism. But then it's interesting that,
25:19
Speaker 7: like when I would play Ariel as a little girl,
25:23
Speaker 7: in my mind, it was only the phase in which
25:26
Speaker 7: she was a fish, because the moment she got legs,
25:31
Speaker 7: she loses all her agency. She's just sitting around waiting
25:33
Speaker 7: to be kissed.
25:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're absolutely right, that's what's so. I mean,
25:39
Speaker 2: I never saw it as a kid. I only saw
25:42
Speaker 2: it two weeks ago as an adult, and you know,
25:47
Speaker 2: I was, I have to say, mortified by what happened
25:51
Speaker 2: to me. I just like I flabbergasted. She disappears, she disappears,
25:55
Speaker 2: she stopped, She just disappears, and all she does is
25:58
Speaker 2: bat her eyelashes at this dumb prince. Disney entranced the
26:06
Speaker 2: young rip Marling. They owned her imagination. She was in
26:09
Speaker 2: love with Ariel. She was tying her legs together with
26:12
Speaker 2: tube socks and singing under the sea at the piano.
26:16
Speaker 2: And then what did Disney do They gave up on her,
26:19
Speaker 2: They lost her, They abandoned her with a plot that
26:22
Speaker 2: doesn't even do poetic justice. Justice we are supposed to
26:26
Speaker 2: believe this is a girl who is a young girl
26:29
Speaker 2: who is openly defying her father's wishes, and what is
26:33
Speaker 2: the nature of her defiance pursuing and marrying a prince,
26:37
Speaker 2: which is was exactly what her father, a king, what
26:42
Speaker 2: it for his daughter. It's like, it's as if one
26:45
Speaker 2: of the Kardashian's daughters was so angry at her parents
26:49
Speaker 2: that she went out and started a reality show. It's
26:51
Speaker 2: not teenage defiance. That is that is joining the family business,
26:58
Speaker 2: joining the family business.
27:01
Speaker 5: Because you know, Trenton would be down in his palace
27:04
Speaker 5: under the seat, rubbing his hands together and be like, hmm,
27:07
Speaker 5: and now I can broke her a deal with the
27:09
Speaker 5: men on land that we can consolidate our resources and
27:13
Speaker 5: extract even more and take over more of the world together.
27:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, come on, we went back and forth, Britt and
27:22
Speaker 2: I up and down. The movie just felt so slap dash,
27:26
Speaker 2: as if it's creators thought that six year old girls
27:29
Speaker 2: just wouldn't care about whether the narrative made any sense.
27:36
Speaker 2: What has Trenton done about the hundreds of souls entrapped
27:40
Speaker 2: by Ursula. Nothing, nothing, until his daughter gets captured, and
27:44
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, he's like, that's so cool.
27:46
Speaker 2: All of ad He's like, oh, this can't stand. Oh
27:48
Speaker 2: I'm i gonna go and do battle. Like wait, what
27:52
Speaker 2: kind of model of leadership is this?
27:55
Speaker 7: That's wait, that's good because there you're bringing the classism
27:57
Speaker 7: in again, right totally, because he doesn't care about everybody
28:02
Speaker 7: else who perished in Ursula's guard.
28:04
Speaker 2: He's the most.
28:04
Speaker 5: He only cares if his princess ends up there.
28:07
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is the most appalling king
28:10
Speaker 2: behavior that I've ever seen. There's no aspect of him
28:13
Speaker 2: in any way fulfilling the functions of his office.
28:16
Speaker 6: Here.
28:17
Speaker 5: You could also ask yourself this too, Malcolm. Why are
28:22
Speaker 5: so many people leaving Triton's kingdom and going to Ursula
28:25
Speaker 5: in the first place? Why are there so many dissatisfied
28:28
Speaker 5: citizens who are seeking out the help of the old
28:31
Speaker 5: wise woman you know in yeah, traditionally in the woods,
28:35
Speaker 5: but here deeper within the sea.
28:37
Speaker 2: Like yeah, oh yeah, no, Actually, what's what's.
28:40
Speaker 5: Rotten at the center of Triton's kingdom that he has
28:43
Speaker 5: so many unsatisfied more people.
28:45
Speaker 2: A thousand of his subjects are enslaved, like half a
28:49
Speaker 2: mile away, like.
28:50
Speaker 7: Living as ghost algae, stuck to the forest floor, scrambling
28:54
Speaker 7: for like you know, bits of human flesh.
28:57
Speaker 4: It's set.
28:57
Speaker 2: The man is appalling.
28:59
Speaker 6: Yeah.
29:00
Speaker 2: I could talk to Britt Marling forever, but I had
29:03
Speaker 2: to find out would she join me? Would she lend
29:06
Speaker 2: her magic to fixing the Little Mermaid? With the promise
29:09
Speaker 2: of nothing except the kind of random minor celebrity that
29:12
Speaker 2: comes from being a participant in a Revisions History episode.
29:16
Speaker 2: No money, no swag, not even legal indemnification if the
29:21
Speaker 2: Walt Disney Company comes after us. So let's talk about
29:25
Speaker 2: your homework. Hope it's not too onerous. I have sent you,
29:30
Speaker 2: emailed you a copy of the script.
29:33
Speaker 5: Oh wow, nice?
29:35
Speaker 2: And all I want is not even a scene, a
29:40
Speaker 2: piece of a scene. You don't have to resolve all
29:43
Speaker 2: these issues. I just want you to take a moment
29:46
Speaker 2: in the script where there is an opportunity to do
29:49
Speaker 2: something different.
29:53
Speaker 7: Do you know that this is literally my favorite thing.
29:56
Speaker 5: I can't honestly, I can't even accept this as a
29:59
Speaker 5: homework assignment because this is just like pure pleasure unbridled
30:03
Speaker 5: pleasure for me, she was all in.
30:08
Speaker 2: I would not walk al on this journey, this road
30:10
Speaker 2: of trials.
30:12
Speaker 4: We're trying to give the feeling of what is possible
30:16
Speaker 4: and then, well, you know, I'd like to see whether
30:19
Speaker 4: we can create a ground swell, public ground swell among
30:22
Speaker 4: nine year old girls in this country.
30:24
Speaker 2: For at a better version of Little Mermaid, the real one.
30:30
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, yes, yes.
30:37
Speaker 2: Next time on Revisions History, the Little Mermaid done.
30:41
Speaker 8: Right, Ariel, it was you, It was you all along duh.
30:54
Speaker 2: Revision's History is produced by Emi La Belle, Lehman Gesteu
30:57
Speaker 2: and Jacob Smith, with Eloise Linton and on a nine.
31:01
Speaker 2: Our editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Garra,
31:05
Speaker 2: mastering by Flon Williams and engineering by Martin Gunzal. Fact
31:10
Speaker 2: checking by Amy Gaines. Our voice actors are Paris Glasgow
31:14
Speaker 2: and Melina Rose. Special thanks to the Pushkin Crew, Hathefan,
31:18
Speaker 2: Carl Migliori, Maya ka Nig, Danielle Lacan, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
31:24
Speaker 2: Nicole Morano, Jason Gambrel and of course Jacob Eisberg. I'm
31:29
Speaker 2: Malcolm Glamo. If you love this show, and others from
31:39
Speaker 2: Pushkin industries consider becoming a Pushnik. Pushnick is a podcast
31:44
Speaker 2: subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four
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Speaker 2: dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Look for Pushnik
31:53
Speaker 2: exclusively on Apple Podcasts Subscriptions