Speaker 1: On the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women inum? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start changing
Speaker 1: it with the beck del cast. Hi, so you're about
Speaker 1: to hear an episode about Disney's The Little Mermaid, a
Speaker 1: popular across a popular movie. It was recorded in Seattle
Speaker 1: at the jewel Box Theater. Yes, but before we get
Speaker 1: to that, we have a whole slew of things we
Speaker 1: would like to plug, just upcoming shows. We're touring once again,
Speaker 1: can you believe it? So before we go on tour though,
Speaker 1: our our first show chronologically coming up is at the
Speaker 1: Ruby in Los Angeles on April six, and we're doing
Speaker 1: Bring It On with Maggie Maggie returning favorite Uh. In
Speaker 1: mid April, we're gonna be in Denver just doing some
Speaker 1: and up shows to be announced on our individual website. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then me, Caitlin High, I'm gonna be doing my
Speaker 1: intro to screenwriting workshop in Denver at Comedy Works on
Speaker 1: April so again, yeah, check out my website Caitlin Drown
Speaker 1: dot com for those details. And then also I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania on April.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a stand up show there at the Carnegie Cinema.
Speaker 1: On April. We're going to be at the Bellhouse in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn with Melissa E. Losada Oliva doing a live show
Speaker 1: on thirteen, going on thirty. Tickets for that are already
Speaker 1: going really fast, so if you're on the fence, definitely
Speaker 1: get your tickets soon. They're selling very quickly. Huh and uh.
Speaker 1: That's the first date of our little East Coast tour.
Speaker 1: The next one is April. We're gonna be a good
Speaker 1: good comedy theater in Philadelphia, and I will be doing
Speaker 1: my show Boss Home Is Girl right after the betel
Speaker 1: Cast live show that very same night, so stick around
Speaker 1: for that. Then on May one, we're going to be
Speaker 1: at the Draft House Comedy Theater in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And then on May second we will be back at
Speaker 1: the Women in Comedy Festival in Boston. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: at the Rockwell. That's on May second. And then for
Speaker 1: all you little New Yorkers out there, I'll be back
Speaker 1: in New York on May nine doing Boss Home Is
Speaker 1: Girl at Union Hall an Oh my goodness. I'll also
Speaker 1: be doing something in New York myself. It's the same
Speaker 1: day as our New York show. On April, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be doing another intro to screenwriting workshop, so come
Speaker 1: and learn from me a master a master um. And
Speaker 1: we're still in the process of confirming guests and movies
Speaker 1: for most of those dates, so just stay tuned to
Speaker 1: the Twitter, the Instagram, etcetera. Will be releasing that info
Speaker 1: ace app, so go to backdel cast dot com for
Speaker 1: details on the live podcast shows and keep an eye
Speaker 1: on the social meats social And finally, we just wanted
Speaker 1: to plug our campaign to raise money for the organization
Speaker 1: called Black Girls Code, Uh, and we are doing that
Speaker 1: by selling Rise of the Matriarchy t shirts. There's only
Speaker 1: a few days left because the campaign ends at the
Speaker 1: end of March, so as much money as possible, So
Speaker 1: please grab the Rise of the Matriarchy shirt. Designed it myself.
Speaker 1: It's cute, it's adolerable, and grab it at t public
Speaker 1: dot com slash the backdel Cast. Only a few days
Speaker 1: left and uh, we'd really appreciate it if you helped
Speaker 1: us made our goal indeed, and uh go ahead and
Speaker 1: enjoy the episode. No further ado the Little Mermaid del Cast, Hi,
Speaker 1: what's up under the show? Welcome to the Bechtel Cast
Speaker 1: Live Seattle. Wow, We're so psyched you're here. This is
Speaker 1: our last stop on our West Coast tour as our
Speaker 1: first time coming here. We're so excited to be here,
Speaker 1: to be here just out of curiosity. By round of applause,
Speaker 1: who has listened to our show before? Hey, a coppul Okay,
Speaker 1: my favorite clap as if you're embarrassed and want to disappear,
Speaker 1: if you've never listened to our show before and this
Speaker 1: is your first time, yep, that's those are the brave.
Speaker 1: Thank Thank you to everyone who dragged their friends who
Speaker 1: have never listened to the show before to the show. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This is how this is how
Speaker 1: it goes. That's right. So for for the three of you,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what the show is. Uh. Bechtel Cast
Speaker 1: is our podcast about the portrayal of women in movies
Speaker 1: that is usually bad. Right, And we use the Bechtel
Speaker 1: Test as a jumping off going to initiate that conversation,
Speaker 1: and that, of course, as a media test created by
Speaker 1: cartoonist Alison Bechtel that requires that a movie has two
Speaker 1: female identifying characters with names who speak to each other
Speaker 1: and their conversation has to be about something other than
Speaker 1: a man. Today we have both an incredible guest and
Speaker 1: a movie that had to be done sooner later. But
Speaker 1: a movie at least, I don't want to speak for everyone,
Speaker 1: but a great movie. Or it was we all used
Speaker 1: to think. So, Uh it's a problematic slapper, Yes, I still.
Speaker 1: I fully saw that this movie was playing in in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles last weekend and I went and I cried
Speaker 1: so much. It was Wait, this movie, hideous movie? What
Speaker 1: about this movie makes you cry? Like? Which parts? Um?
Speaker 1: You know? Lost youth? Okay, not to shame you for
Speaker 1: emotions when I think of No, just like anytime I'm
Speaker 1: confronted with something, not even confronted, Like I had a
Speaker 1: lovely childhood for the most part, but I just was
Speaker 1: like I had, like I have a nostalgia Fawcett and
Speaker 1: that just turns on and like I saw this once
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I was crying. And there were also
Speaker 1: a bunch of cute kids dressed as mermaids there. I
Speaker 1: probably looked like a pervert being at this place. Uh,
Speaker 1: I am alone, adult, but there, but there were a
Speaker 1: bunch of cute kids that were so excited, and when
Speaker 1: Ariel came on screen, they were like yeah, and then
Speaker 1: I cried. So kids are still watching this movie. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I guess their parents. Yeah, I mean yeah, unfortant.
Speaker 1: So that's why we're here. Um. But I do still
Speaker 1: have a crying response to this movie. I see, I
Speaker 1: love it. I cry for the entire duration of Mowanna,
Speaker 1: So I get it. But well, you're very welcome, congratulating,
Speaker 1: Thank you. I cry at everything all the time, and
Speaker 1: I like to pay to myself in circumstances where I
Speaker 1: can cry in public and it is not inappropriate. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that a public screening of The Little Mermaid
Speaker 1: is now that he said, I'm always just looking for
Speaker 1: a dark space to cry, a dark sanctioned space to
Speaker 1: cryan just out of curiosity. Is there anyone here who
Speaker 1: has not seen Disney's The Little Mermaid? Good? Great? This
Speaker 1: is the first time this has ever happened at a
Speaker 1: live show. We've done probably like twenty live shows now,
Speaker 1: and there's always like ten people who are like, I've
Speaker 1: never seen the movie you're talking about, and then one
Speaker 1: person who's like, I'm at the wrong event. So all right,
Speaker 1: this is great. Shall we introduce our guests? All right?
Speaker 1: They are a local Seattle comedian. They're the co host
Speaker 1: of the Hot Takes with Hot Dikes podcast and you
Speaker 1: can check them out on their website, Clara Pluton dot org.
Speaker 1: Give it up for Clara Pluton. God. Well, come, hi,
Speaker 1: how are you doing here? Oh my god? Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. This is great. Um, tell us your your history,
Speaker 1: your relationship with the Little Mermaid. My relationship with the
Speaker 1: Little Mermaid has always been sparse, even like as a child,
Speaker 1: I was a lesbian, Like, I didn't like it. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is fake news. I don't want anything
Speaker 1: to do with this. This seems wrong. I didn't like
Speaker 1: princesses growing up. I like Pokemon Sailor Moon was like
Speaker 1: the closest thing to a princess. Yes, someone was like feminist,
Speaker 1: totally nice, but you've seen it. I've seen it, so
Speaker 1: I think I watched it maybe once as a we one,
Speaker 1: but it really was when I had to watch it
Speaker 1: for this and I sunk my teeth into yes, it
Speaker 1: just did it. It never appealed to me. I was like,
Speaker 1: why would someone not want to be a mermaid? Doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense, right, I was like, where's my version
Speaker 1: where I turned into a Mermaid? Yeah, I plunged myself
Speaker 1: deeper into the ocean. Parents like where are you? I'm
Speaker 1: like trying to find this cool world that people want
Speaker 1: to leave for some reason that makes sense reverse dingle
Speaker 1: hoop literally, yes, under the ocean. Yeah, Jamie, what's your
Speaker 1: history with the movie? It makes me cry? I I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean I I had the Disney Renaissance
Speaker 1: catalog hammered into me as a kid, as a child
Speaker 1: who uh needed to be shut up. Very often VHS
Speaker 1: tapes were employed into your mouth, shut up, they would
Speaker 1: I would have the VHS for Dumbo in my mouth
Speaker 1: so I could not make a noise, and I would
Speaker 1: be watching a Little Mermaid uh double festingg Disney. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: my mom ran a daycare when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: so there would always be something playing for like whatever
Speaker 1: rogue child would wander into rooms. So we were playing
Speaker 1: Disney movies at our house all the time for like
Speaker 1: the first ten years of my life. So I was
Speaker 1: very attached to this movie and most of the princess
Speaker 1: movies of this era. And I do think it affected
Speaker 1: me negatively. Yeah, for sure, Say what about you. This
Speaker 1: movie came out when I was like three, and I
Speaker 1: probably saw it when I was five, and then every
Speaker 1: day for those like next ten years. Probably your fifteen
Speaker 1: years old? Yes, correct, you went to your homecoming in
Speaker 1: a full red wig. But does no one want to
Speaker 1: date me? I would say I had a second wave
Speaker 1: of love for The Little Mermaid in high school, weirdly
Speaker 1: where I like loved it when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and then I loved it again as like a teacher
Speaker 1: you could purchase a hot topic and I still love yeah. Continue,
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's that's mostly it. Yeah, so this movie
Speaker 1: is very ingrained into me. I'm sure it shaped my
Speaker 1: you know, Plato brain when I was a small child
Speaker 1: for the worst. So the philosopher right, yes, correct, you're
Speaker 1: speaking of ancient speaking of ancient Greek philosophers. Shout out
Speaker 1: to our producer Aristotle. He is not here, I know, sorry,
Speaker 1: but our good friend Sammy is here. You might remember
Speaker 1: from the She's the Man episode, so shut out for
Speaker 1: true backtal heads. Yeah, you'll know. I just feel like
Speaker 1: I never liked princesses because I always had too thick
Speaker 1: of an attachment to irony, Like I couldn't deal with it.
Speaker 1: I was like five and I wanted to watch David
Speaker 1: Lynch's eraser Head. What I just got imo too quick?
Speaker 1: I'm like, no musicals, it's too corny. You're a child
Speaker 1: of nihilists. Fully, Fully, I came from Mitzscha and that's here.
Speaker 1: I'm jealous. But the Little Mermaid at this age now
Speaker 1: made me cry. So now it went like full throttle.
Speaker 1: Now I want my youth back. I'm like, please give
Speaker 1: it back to me. I wasted it away listening to
Speaker 1: Marilyn Manson. I want to feel young again. Please. There
Speaker 1: was also like and when I think maybe what motivated
Speaker 1: my high school reappreciation was when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: tumbler was becoming a thing. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of shitty fan art of like Ariel but like she
Speaker 1: had tattoos and brilliant postmodern reimagine him or she'd have
Speaker 1: like Apear doesn't even remember that she That was like
Speaker 1: of all the Disney princess she was skateboarding like with
Speaker 1: a fin It's like how And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is still nothing like me. But they just adapted,
Speaker 1: like oh what was aspirational for me as a child
Speaker 1: to what was aspirational to me as a teenager, which
Speaker 1: is like a hot goth. Yeah, so um, yeah they
Speaker 1: really they got me twice? Motherfucker's Disney. Should I do
Speaker 1: the recap um? Alright? So we see an opening shot
Speaker 1: of dolphins are jumping around in front of a ship
Speaker 1: that later stinks what is this Titanic? Big? Okay, the
Speaker 1: fish gets away. I start crying the second the fish
Speaker 1: was like, who's Like, holy, I wish why why doesn't
Speaker 1: he come back? Started to impost gender on this fish.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We'd write a story in any case,
Speaker 1: probably a non binary fish, I hope. So we meet Eric.
Speaker 1: He's a prince. He's sailing on a shampoo's colonizing places,
Speaker 1: probably with his other white sailors. He's also wearing a blouse.
Speaker 1: He also plays the flue. The recorder the recorder worse
Speaker 1: is a confirmed recorder. I was like, way, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a recorder. Yeah, it sounds like a recorder. I
Speaker 1: forgot that shot of him moodily sexily wearing a cape
Speaker 1: the recorder, Like what do I do? Yes, he's such
Speaker 1: a pisces. I got to say it, no, Shane, but
Speaker 1: he gets like really like broody at one point and
Speaker 1: I screenshot at it and posted it with a flute
Speaker 1: and I got rose and they're like, no, idiot, it's
Speaker 1: a recorder. I was like, okay, people in mind need
Speaker 1: to chill out. But and then you see he spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: flings the recorder into the sea, polluting. Yes, compost the recorder,
Speaker 1: come on, so which kind of confirms that it's a
Speaker 1: recorder because he flings it with the ease that one
Speaker 1: may recording. But also real quick, Prince Eric really Eric,
Speaker 1: like what prince is named? Eric? Could be like Eric Kobia.
Speaker 1: I'm not buying it. Yeah, it's like basically like Prince Joey,
Speaker 1: Prince Brendan, Prince Toby. Like, okay, Disney, do you think
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump's son used to call himself Prince Eric
Speaker 1: when he was Yes, I think he did. Shout out
Speaker 1: to my brother Eric, who who does listen to the podcast,
Speaker 1: so shout yeah, because I texted you Prince Erik HoTT
Speaker 1: and you're like, the same name as my brother. Can't
Speaker 1: do it, okay, So Eric, he's hanging around, uh and
Speaker 1: then the sailors are like, hey, have you heard of
Speaker 1: this King Triton? And he's like, no, what are what
Speaker 1: are mur people? And then we meet some murpy budgebold
Speaker 1: perverts tell us about the mur people. Yeah, King Triton,
Speaker 1: we meet Sebastian the Crab. He's conducting a concert and
Speaker 1: all of Triton's daughters are singing except for Ariel. Comes
Speaker 1: on Shane and all the kids in the costumes. You're like, yeah, ever, okay,
Speaker 1: because remember in the Bomb's World days where it was
Speaker 1: like hidden things you didn't see in Disney movies. And
Speaker 1: it's like on the cover of the Little Mermaids there's
Speaker 1: a penut Tryan's castle. So the whole movie I was like,
Speaker 1: where's the penis? I had my binoculars out, like real
Speaker 1: to see the sneaky penis. All subsequent releases post eighty
Speaker 1: nine they take out all the because the priest has
Speaker 1: a boner in the original movie, and they edited, they
Speaker 1: edited censorship. I know, it's like, where is our erect,
Speaker 1: tiny old man representation? And I'm ready, I'm horny erasure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we meet Ariel. She is exploring a shipwreck, much
Speaker 1: like Bill Paxton in Titanic, and she's there with her
Speaker 1: fish friend Flounder, because the thing is that she loves
Speaker 1: humans stuff, So she's like collecting all these artifacts a
Speaker 1: fork and basically a paleontologist, except humans are a hoarder. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I don't like calling her like she is. She My
Speaker 1: whole thing with Area is like she starts like having
Speaker 1: an intellectual interest in something, and then it's like taken
Speaker 1: away from her. And then they're like, actually you need
Speaker 1: a boyfriend, and she's like, oh, yeah, that's true. And
Speaker 1: then the movie she was trying to be she was
Speaker 1: trying to be an archaeologist, a woman in stem You will, well,
Speaker 1: I think that she is. I don't know, you can't
Speaker 1: have a collection and not be I sound really defensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. It's not like it was snow globes. It
Speaker 1: different variety that inspired She was curious about that waterproof
Speaker 1: books stuff. And then she takes them lot of scuttle.
Speaker 1: He lies to her about, right, I'm tired of scuttle. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we meet Ursula. She's a sea witch and
Speaker 1: she's better for having been banished from the Sea Palace.
Speaker 1: So she wants her eel friends Flotsam and Jetsam to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on Ariel because she might be the
Speaker 1: key to Triton's undoing. Plots of and jets undered their
Speaker 1: own spin off. Yeah, parismatic and fun to me, Like
Speaker 1: Tomona Pumba got one right, them up to no good
Speaker 1: squash buckling. I just wish the Flotsam and Jetsam had
Speaker 1: like different personalities, Like where's who's cranky in the morning.
Speaker 1: We just don't know who's like the night owl, who's
Speaker 1: like get to bed on time, who's like five years sober?
Speaker 1: And who's still it's Flotsom is addicted to ketamine. It's
Speaker 1: canonical Ariel. She's talking to Triton and flounder led to
Speaker 1: slip the it she went to the surface and like
Speaker 1: you can't do that because humans are evil and Barbara,
Speaker 1: I'm not a child. It's my favorite, like, oh she's sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for what happens later? Um, And here's where I really
Speaker 1: start to see myself an Ariel, because like going to
Speaker 1: the surface for me and like sneaking, Like I was
Speaker 1: sneaking around all the time at sixteen, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: the surface. It was like raves on the South Side
Speaker 1: of Chicago and like abandoned Chinese restaurants, So like I
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah, And that's the same for Ariel. Except
Speaker 1: she's got like a cave of wonders basically, and she
Speaker 1: keeps all her human artifacts there. And Sebastian follows her there,
Speaker 1: and she's singing about how she wants to be part
Speaker 1: of the human world, and then we see some amazing
Speaker 1: shots of her hair and some great hair shots, and
Speaker 1: just then a ship traveling overhead goes by, and she's like, wow,
Speaker 1: who's this man? And her? The movie really falls apart, right,
Speaker 1: I like the movie up to that point. And Anthropologist, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's over. She literally starts as a young scientist and
Speaker 1: then she's derailed by heteronormativity. Uh. And the hurricane strikes
Speaker 1: and Eric's ship is destroyed and Ariel saves him and
Speaker 1: she sinks to him and he starts to wake up,
Speaker 1: and he sees her upper body but not her mermaid
Speaker 1: fish tail gets horny. He gets very horny. He's like,
Speaker 1: I was dead but now I'm alive in horny. But
Speaker 1: she disappears into the ocean before he can like fully
Speaker 1: regain consciousness, and he was like, oh, my god, who
Speaker 1: was that. If Eric's Dogg could talk, this movie would
Speaker 1: be over so fast. Because Eric's Dogg repeatedly has the receipts,
Speaker 1: but not like the communication that Eric would have been
Speaker 1: able to write a Craigs less misconnection like saw hot girl,
Speaker 1: maybe teen not sure, perhaps a mermaid. Good back to me,
Speaker 1: here's my kick you please, And then Ariel is swooning
Speaker 1: and Sebastian tries to convince her that where she belongs
Speaker 1: is under the sea and the great song that we
Speaker 1: all loved, but she's not having it. And then try
Speaker 1: and founds out the Ariel is in love with a human.
Speaker 1: So he destroys all of her stuff. I hated that
Speaker 1: seeing that it still upsets me. It's very upset, like
Speaker 1: full flashbacks of my dad, like throwing my bob down
Speaker 1: the stairs. He's like, I found sheets of acid again,
Speaker 1: I'm burning them all. I'm like no. And then so
Speaker 1: Ariel goes to Ursula based on the promise that she
Speaker 1: will use magic to turn Ariel into a human for
Speaker 1: three days, and if she gets Eric to kiss her
Speaker 1: by the end of the day on the third day,
Speaker 1: she gets to stay a human forever. And if she fails, yes,
Speaker 1: as we all know, and if she fails, she will
Speaker 1: belong to Ursula yea. And as payment, Ursula takes Ariel's voice,
Speaker 1: So she has legs but no voice, and she goes
Speaker 1: to the surface some artfully dodged nudity in this state.
Speaker 1: I'm still shocked at how far down the torso you
Speaker 1: goes like when do mermaid pubes start coming in? Because
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing any great question, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: My favorite line in the movie it's from the song
Speaker 1: where Ursula takes Ariel's voice, obviously, which is men prefer
Speaker 1: women to not make a word? Yeah, just children? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's I think the best Disney song of all time.
Speaker 1: Poor unfortunate souls. So Ariel's animal friends are helping her.
Speaker 1: She finds Eric and he's like, oh, you're really cute.
Speaker 1: What's your name? And she can't talk, so he's like,
Speaker 1: you're even better, right, marry me? Well, he says, do
Speaker 1: I know you? He doesn't say you're hot? Well, he
Speaker 1: said he thinks. He's like, hey, were you that girl
Speaker 1: that made me horn you when I thought I was dead?
Speaker 1: Did I see you at the party last night? I
Speaker 1: was too nervous to say anything. I was like sort
Speaker 1: of black dab, but you look familiar, Like do you
Speaker 1: go here? That is something that Eric's do. He just
Speaker 1: comes from like a line of like swashbuckling frat bros. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you're pretty chill. What's your name? Don't care,
Speaker 1: can't talxic. I want to come to my house. It's
Speaker 1: a castle. My dad lets me of a castle. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I don't even know what he does, like
Speaker 1: stockbroker or whatever. There's this lady there. She'll give you
Speaker 1: a bath. It sounds us, but it is not sus
Speaker 1: because she can't talk. He's all like, oh, you're not
Speaker 1: the woman who I thought you were, but I'll let
Speaker 1: you hang out with me anyway. And he takes on
Speaker 1: a tour of the town. They're on a rowboat at night.
Speaker 1: There's another slab that's great but problematic, and um they
Speaker 1: almost kiss and then Ursula was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that was too close. So lots of and jetsam come
Speaker 1: in clutch every time flotsom into Ursula is work from home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: botsom and jetsas that are in the fields, right, they're
Speaker 1: out there. So to prevent any more close calls, Ursula
Speaker 1: disguises herself as a human woman and then uses the
Speaker 1: voice that she stole from Ariel to like seduce in
Speaker 1: an chant eric yes and then it's announced that Eric
Speaker 1: is getting married the next day because he was under
Speaker 1: a spell of horny correct and he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: getting married to the woman that is pretending to be
Speaker 1: Vanessa Vanessa Vanessa Vanessa and Eric. Yeah. So then Ariel,
Speaker 1: she and her friends are trying to stop the wedding. Well,
Speaker 1: Aria gives up right away. She's like, like when it's
Speaker 1: like all of her friends that had to be like, no,
Speaker 1: let's try to do something. She's She's like no because
Speaker 1: she has no agency at this point. And the second
Speaker 1: she loses her voice, we just lose the character entirely.
Speaker 1: It sucks. But then she gets her voice back because
Speaker 1: like the shell necklace breaks scuttled galvanizes the various sea
Speaker 1: creatures that are annoying and that's sort of their role.
Speaker 1: But it's too late because the sun has set and
Speaker 1: she turns back into a mermaid and and snatches her up,
Speaker 1: and all the humans are very chill about like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess there's mermaids. There's no, that's not a dress
Speaker 1: that I mean. There's a lot of people at this wedding,
Speaker 1: and she turned into a mermaid right in front of them,
Speaker 1: and then a person they thought was a person explodes
Speaker 1: into an octopus, and we never get their side of
Speaker 1: this story. And in fact, we don't really know what
Speaker 1: happens to the people on the boat, because I mean,
Speaker 1: what happens to the wedding game right, because about a
Speaker 1: half hour later the boat sink again. Maybe because she
Speaker 1: enhances in size by like eight thousand times and that
Speaker 1: spell was unclear to me. I think they were like,
Speaker 1: we're having mimosas, there's canopas. Maybe it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're regularly doing hallucinogenics. They're like, well, wild weddings,
Speaker 1: but this action I'll wasca ceremony. But do the people like,
Speaker 1: do we know what happens? I truly haven't thought of
Speaker 1: it this like, do we know what happens to the wedding?
Speaker 1: Guess I don't think so, No, there are so many
Speaker 1: people that way. What happens is that the Boner Priest
Speaker 1: justice for Boner weird, so Ursula like uses aerial as
Speaker 1: leverage to get the power away from King Triton, and
Speaker 1: then she, yeah, she like also King Triton kind of zaddie.
Speaker 1: He's very like yeah, yeah, I mean he is. He's
Speaker 1: very buff. Long beard like Zeus vibe. The fact that
Speaker 1: his nipples are very visible throughout the entire movie is
Speaker 1: something that I noticed as a five year old and
Speaker 1: never I thought about nothing else. The way his nipple,
Speaker 1: the way his nipples are drawn. First of all, he's
Speaker 1: also hairless, which is like, okay, uh, he's a smooth zaddie.
Speaker 1: But there's no distinct. I'm sure because like Disney things
Speaker 1: that any detailing of the body in a realistic way
Speaker 1: is repulsive. But there's no distinction between nipple and ariola.
Speaker 1: It's just like vague, large blob and you're like so,
Speaker 1: and I remember literally being like so that's what men look.
Speaker 1: They're just sort of a pancake, Like that's my dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh cool, never seen my dad's shirtless. He's
Speaker 1: a humble man. So now I know, smooth part of
Speaker 1: Disney cannon. Like there's like no moms in Disney movies.
Speaker 1: We'll get there, yeah, yeah, don't worry there. Yeah, mommies
Speaker 1: are canceled. Yeah, he's like the scrappy divorce. He's like,
Speaker 1: I got all these daughters. Yeah, they're up to seven daughters.
Speaker 1: I love to hear, like, oh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: daughters where that movie he's my Lady Gaga's dad and
Speaker 1: a star is born. Ye, He's like, I'm busy us.
Speaker 1: God here, I'm smashing your stuff. Dice can't even handle
Speaker 1: one daughter. Man can give Dice seven. He's gonna screw up.
Speaker 1: Why was Dice in that movie? And you don't know anyway.
Speaker 1: So La is huge and she's trying to kill Eric
Speaker 1: and an Ariel and she the thing is, she gets
Speaker 1: very large, yes, and then Eric takes what used to
Speaker 1: be a Sounken ship and drives it into her pointy
Speaker 1: end first and bursts her and then she dies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's also made. She's made to seem like unkillable, what
Speaker 1: with the growing quite large, but then is immediately killed
Speaker 1: right right, right right. Plat and Jackson also die. That's
Speaker 1: why there's no spinoff. They are killed and see them
Speaker 1: in how immediately Yes, And then in the the math
Speaker 1: of all that, Ariel is looking longingly at Eric on
Speaker 1: a beach and try and it's like, wow, she really
Speaker 1: loves him. I have to let her go. And then
Speaker 1: he turns her into triarchal structure to the next turns
Speaker 1: her into human again, and she goes and kisses and
Speaker 1: marries Eric, and that is the story of feminist masterpiece
Speaker 1: The Little Mermaid. So there you have it. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I guess, just as we were talking it
Speaker 1: out now, the ship they get married on is within
Speaker 1: the past few weeks, the third ship that Eric has
Speaker 1: needed to buy rent. Yeah, he's gave me his black X.
Speaker 1: I keeps crashing all these blokes. Prince Eric is a
Speaker 1: magnesis memory. He went to Firefestfest. He's like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: I put a dred thousand dollars on my fireband. It's
Speaker 1: so fucking embarrassing. He's in the dot like I wanted
Speaker 1: to do body shots on Bellahadi is like for my birthday.
Speaker 1: My wife Ariel let me go. She's super chill, alright. So,
Speaker 1: I mean there are problems that people has been talking
Speaker 1: about for a long time now, the various obvious ones
Speaker 1: where you know, Ariel changes herself and sacrifices basically every
Speaker 1: significant thing about herself so that she can be with
Speaker 1: a man all agency there. Yeah, there's you know, Ariel's
Speaker 1: voice being taken away, and you know she doesn't have
Speaker 1: access to any language that allows her to communicate effectively.
Speaker 1: This is an interesting movie. When we were like setting
Speaker 1: up this episode because we're like the criticism around this
Speaker 1: movie is so well known that to some extent it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like we all know this, but there's like there's
Speaker 1: but there's more, more, there's more. I feel like one
Speaker 1: of the other more obvious ones is like Eric falling
Speaker 1: in love with her despite not knowing anything about her,
Speaker 1: because again, she cannot communicate in any way. I'm a
Speaker 1: septender and that happens like every ship. Every ship is
Speaker 1: like whoa, I think I love you, I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about you, Like this is so much fun for me,
Speaker 1: Like if only you couldn't talk. So let's dive into
Speaker 1: perhaps some of the intended Where should we start. I
Speaker 1: mean we're tuan. Let's start with Ursula as a mean lesbian. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it. There's a lot of queer coding in
Speaker 1: this movie, and I just think like Ursla is the
Speaker 1: most badass person the whole movie. She just like hates
Speaker 1: straight people, like we'll do anything in her power to
Speaker 1: take their power away. Because obviously flatsam jetsam dating like
Speaker 1: balk icons. It's like are they brothers? Were boyfriends? We
Speaker 1: don't know. We don't have to know that they're they're touchy.
Speaker 1: If they're brothers, they're touchy brother they're regularly like the
Speaker 1: skin to skin, they're there. They've got to be dating,
Speaker 1: or they're creepy brothers. And she just wants to ruin.
Speaker 1: She's like, I don't want straight people to be happy,
Speaker 1: and I don't want you to be happy, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna make this all your problems. I'm like, you're you're
Speaker 1: a badass. You're a sea witch? Why is that bad?
Speaker 1: Why Disney movies telling kids not to be witches? Also,
Speaker 1: which until Halloween Town when we realized it was actually fine.
Speaker 1: And part of what I noticed on this watch because
Speaker 1: I've been I was so brainwashed by this movie is
Speaker 1: that we get really no explanation as to why Ursula
Speaker 1: is not a part. We don't know why is there
Speaker 1: no one else in this story that looks anything like her,
Speaker 1: Like we're like people, right, and there's like so much
Speaker 1: to the point where it's like I feel like implied
Speaker 1: that she's extricated because she's mothered in this way and
Speaker 1: there's not even an attempt. She's just like, well, I
Speaker 1: used to be a part of this, but now I'm not,
Speaker 1: And like there that's all you get, And there's no
Speaker 1: we're just supposed to assume that Triton is right. A
Speaker 1: man is rightly as as demonstrated by everything else he
Speaker 1: does in the movie, He's almost never right. He's not
Speaker 1: a good ruler, nor is he a good father. Like
Speaker 1: there you know, so that had never struck me before.
Speaker 1: Like they're just like, no, this is the villain, and
Speaker 1: this is what a villain looks like, and accept it. Right?
Speaker 1: She did you notice that the like structure that she
Speaker 1: comes out of the first time that she's introduced is
Speaker 1: like this volva, it's just a does she tumble out
Speaker 1: of the magine incredible? She wipes her mouth. She's like,
Speaker 1: I was busy, pasty animals. It's like, why does the
Speaker 1: cool fat dike with short hair have to be bad?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm the whole time she's awesome. She's annoyed
Speaker 1: with clearly something I mean right when we just we did.
Speaker 1: We just don't know anything about why she has been banished. No,
Speaker 1: there was probably like a Lilith Fair back in the
Speaker 1: day with other like tentacle lesbians, and then Triton canceled
Speaker 1: it because he wanted to have like Diplo play, but
Speaker 1: where did all the other Tentacle people go? Like, It's
Speaker 1: just I was, I was more frustrated. I mean in
Speaker 1: Ursula is the best most interesting character in the movie
Speaker 1: by far. She's got the best songs, She's got the
Speaker 1: best henchman like Flossom and Jetsam could murder Flounder like there,
Speaker 1: they could kill him like Flounders Fox too, because it's
Speaker 1: like I feel like he's also the trope of like
Speaker 1: dopey fat boy, you know what I mean, where he's
Speaker 1: like chubby and he's like I'm slow, wait up for me.
Speaker 1: It's like wait up for him. Yeah, he's taking his
Speaker 1: time and he and you're also being reckless area out there,
Speaker 1: I mean playing off of that too. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's like a chubby boy character and he's a coward
Speaker 1: like and that's such a pervasive trope with that too.
Speaker 1: It's just like they're scared of everything and blah blah ba,
Speaker 1: and it's like, come on, she cuts all the crust
Speaker 1: off my sandwiches. I don't know if I can go
Speaker 1: in there well. La is also I have a few
Speaker 1: theories that have been testing out on the podcast, so
Speaker 1: you may have heard these before. But movies with female
Speaker 1: villains usually have a female protagonist because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's implied that female villains can't pose much of a
Speaker 1: threat to male protagonists, so this reinforces that theory. Also,
Speaker 1: movies where a female villain makes potions and stuff like
Speaker 1: it is like a subtle way to villainize women in stem. Wow,
Speaker 1: female scientists be dangerous. We see this in Disney movies
Speaker 1: a ton it's even up to as recently as The
Speaker 1: Incredibles to where that was a woman in stem and
Speaker 1: a villain. Interesting, and that's so true in every way.
Speaker 1: And it's also like it's like they don't want to
Speaker 1: teach young girls that you should be scared of men,
Speaker 1: and like the patriarchy is bad, so we're gonna put
Speaker 1: like this lady, this fat woman on it, so you
Speaker 1: should like fear body positivity and queerness and like your
Speaker 1: own mother. It's like I don't like it, right, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, and it and it does like all this
Speaker 1: whole genre movie does so much work to separate women
Speaker 1: from other women, to the point where it's very hard
Speaker 1: to see women even in the same scene where going
Speaker 1: off what you're saying, I mean, this whole movie. And
Speaker 1: this is like said all the time, but it's about
Speaker 1: Ariel being passed off from one patriarch, her dad, and
Speaker 1: just being handed off with his permission to another man
Speaker 1: into like this different heteronormative, oppressive structure and she, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like she is given agency for maybe ten minutes,
Speaker 1: but then the rest is decided and swayed by how
Speaker 1: the men around her act. And in the meantime, any
Speaker 1: woman who is seen acting on her own is acting
Speaker 1: maliciously and acting to take another woman down. And there
Speaker 1: is so much done to us, I think when we're
Speaker 1: young to make other women seem like a threat to Like,
Speaker 1: there's so much done to prevent women from talking to
Speaker 1: each other because then we'll like figure out it's all
Speaker 1: a scam, Like I don't know, but yeah, that is,
Speaker 1: and that's what I friends are women either like none
Speaker 1: of the supporting characters or women. Yeah, they're they're surrounded
Speaker 1: by different men, Like why couldn't founder just like be
Speaker 1: a girl, Why couldn't it be like girl power or
Speaker 1: why couldn't we see what her relationship is with all
Speaker 1: who are like they're who are named in this movie,
Speaker 1: but they're all basically the same they're interchangeable. We know
Speaker 1: nothing about nothing about them. It would have been so
Speaker 1: easy to have two sisters in conflict of like one,
Speaker 1: you know, Ariel wants to go to the surface, one
Speaker 1: sister doesn't think it's a good idea. Like why we're
Speaker 1: like one of her sisters being in like the Sebastian
Speaker 1: role where she's like, I'm tattling on you. Because women
Speaker 1: having jobs in this world, like they're literally in as
Speaker 1: far as we know the Mermaid world, women are performers
Speaker 1: and that's backstage. Yeah, for when Triton wants a little ditty,
Speaker 1: he's like, gals, you know. But yet we don't see
Speaker 1: the sisters interacting with Ariel at all, which is strange
Speaker 1: because whenever she's like, oh but if I become a human,
Speaker 1: I'll never see my father or sisters again. So we
Speaker 1: don't We don't know because here the examples of them
Speaker 1: interacting in the movie. Um, one of them says, Ariel,
Speaker 1: time to come out. You've been in there all morning,
Speaker 1: because you know, women be in the bathroom, and I mean,
Speaker 1: if they're in the sea, isn't it all a bathroom?
Speaker 1: In they'll in a way the bathroom like in the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's a bathroom. Ariel does not respond to this. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then later another sister says what's with her lately?
Speaker 1: And no one responds. So that is the interaction that
Speaker 1: the sisters have with each other and with Ariel. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it annoying a little bit more on like the character design.
Speaker 1: Um so like with Ariel. Okay, you mentioned Jamie, like
Speaker 1: her fish bottom is so low and her just like
Speaker 1: body shape, her proportions like her it's not anatomical No,
Speaker 1: there there was another thing that made the rounds a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, of like, where someone tried to
Speaker 1: render what would a human with those proportions look like.
Speaker 1: It's done with barbies every once in a while as well,
Speaker 1: And it is predictively horrifying. Is the scariest thing you've
Speaker 1: ever seen, just women with gigantic heads. It's like you
Speaker 1: and but had three D. Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is horrifying and designed to make little girls feel
Speaker 1: bad about themselves so that they'll continue to buy products, products,
Speaker 1: products for the rest of theirs. And also she explicitly
Speaker 1: says in the movie that she is sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: So the animators are like crazy over sexualizing a teenager,
Speaker 1: I've got some freaky Okay. So the way that this
Speaker 1: this movie is such a comes out at such a
Speaker 1: strange point in time because at the time this came out,
Speaker 1: it was considered of like, wow, a Disney princess is
Speaker 1: allowed to do something. This was progressive at the time
Speaker 1: and came before it. Why well, if we're talking princesses,
Speaker 1: it's like Cinderella being beauties snow white, so truly like there,
Speaker 1: like she's not unconscious, Like what's the problem, Like, shut up, feminist,
Speaker 1: that's the literal bar we're coming in. It is like
Speaker 1: she's awake the whole movie, So can she speak the
Speaker 1: whole movie? No, it's you. They're like, let's give us
Speaker 1: a few years, maybe we'll let her talk, but she
Speaker 1: will be a prisoner. And that movie is Beauty and
Speaker 1: the Beast. But you know that's a feminist next because
Speaker 1: she can read fucking stupid. But the way that people
Speaker 1: reviewed this movie at the time, I mean, much of
Speaker 1: the problem with film criticism is it's so male dominated,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen is even more so. The way people
Speaker 1: right about this cartoon is pornographic. Theys here's an l
Speaker 1: A Times clip Mermaids saucy heroin. Ariel isn't much like
Speaker 1: anderson sad noble sea maid. She's a sexy little honey
Speaker 1: bunch with a double scalloped seashell bra and a mane
Speaker 1: of red hair tossed and tumble out of bed so
Speaker 1: cow style like, so cow style, Like so what is
Speaker 1: he talking about? So cow style? What is she longboarding?
Speaker 1: It is discus and then and then put him to
Speaker 1: the Sharks, and then in the Boston Phoenix. Uh, this
Speaker 1: one is uh, let's see, Ariel is sexy as well
Speaker 1: as sympathetic, and Orlando Sentinel, Ariel is sympathetic and in
Speaker 1: her little bikini top rather hot. You're just like everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, just a reminder that straight men are
Speaker 1: scary and always want to cartoons, even when they're teenagers,
Speaker 1: even when I mean, so, the way this character was received,
Speaker 1: and I think in retrospect, like a lot of the
Speaker 1: flag that Ariel receives has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the way adults viewed and spoke about this character, because
Speaker 1: they're like, what, Disney princesses are hot and I want
Speaker 1: to fund them, now what? And it's like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a youth there like that. Yeah, so anyways, per right, right,
Speaker 1: but then what else is the Ariel is supposed to
Speaker 1: wear a shirt, it'll get wet. The option besides double
Speaker 1: scalloped bra like leave her along, I mean, unless we're
Speaker 1: freeing the nipple under the sea, which I would embrace.
Speaker 1: But then like contrast her character design with Ursula for example,
Speaker 1: where and this is the case with I would say
Speaker 1: every Disney villain where they're designed with body types that
Speaker 1: do not adhere to like the western conventional western beauty standards,
Speaker 1: to say the least, right, so you know, when children
Speaker 1: are watching these movies and the heroes do would here
Speaker 1: to those standards, and the villains don't, you know, our
Speaker 1: mushy child brains are like doubles down right, It's like then, um,
Speaker 1: you know, thin beautiful people are good and people who
Speaker 1: are not that are bad. I mean, And the same
Speaker 1: goes for like coded sexuality is like hetero people even
Speaker 1: if they're evil, pancake nippled fathers who don't who can't
Speaker 1: like rule it camedom to say, they're fucking they can't
Speaker 1: rule their own penis kingdom. If they're straight, they're probably
Speaker 1: good at their job and they're a great parent. They
Speaker 1: because I think so much with Ursula too, it's like
Speaker 1: because with the way that she's drawn, it's like how
Speaker 1: bad of a thing it is to take up space.
Speaker 1: It's like I would think that there's that too, where
Speaker 1: it's like you like, these men are drawing these women
Speaker 1: to be waves because that's how they want as much
Speaker 1: space for women to take up, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: they want people to be quiet. But like like you're
Speaker 1: large and you're allowed and you sing songs that are cool,
Speaker 1: then you're bad. And then the thing with Ursula's character
Speaker 1: design that is kind of like stray is from the
Speaker 1: direct criticism a little bit, and there is a lot
Speaker 1: of like gray area to get into with with this
Speaker 1: discussion is that Ursula like canonically was modeled on Divine,
Speaker 1: the drag queen who appeared in all of John Waters films,
Speaker 1: and that was like the creators were pretty upfront about like,
Speaker 1: this is who we designed this character after. And I
Speaker 1: mean in in the gay community to an extent has
Speaker 1: embraced that. And but it's just like the fact that
Speaker 1: that is the option for queer visibility is fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's what's so amazing about Divine
Speaker 1: and watching her movies is she is an example of
Speaker 1: being like a fat gay person who is funny, who's radical,
Speaker 1: who's outspoken, who knows what she wants. Everyone loves her
Speaker 1: and if you don't love her, she'll kill you. Where
Speaker 1: like she is Ursla, but like written by gay people.
Speaker 1: Like that's why Divine is so incredible. Where it's like
Speaker 1: when you let queer people write their own stories and
Speaker 1: have their own narratives and they don't get to be
Speaker 1: these like power hungry lesbians who want to eat redheads, right,
Speaker 1: and like that is sometimes what we want to do,
Speaker 1: but it's different and it's better because we said it,
Speaker 1: and you win. Both people win, the red head and
Speaker 1: the fat lesbian. Everyone win. There's a true happy hand
Speaker 1: tank to this movie. Um Yeah. And then another another
Speaker 1: thing worth mentioning is um there is like this weird
Speaker 1: blend between most of the movies writers directors are straight guys.
Speaker 1: But the composer of the songs and also of I
Speaker 1: Think Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, it was a
Speaker 1: composer named Howard Ashman who was dying of aids throughout
Speaker 1: the writing of the songs for all three of those movies.
Speaker 1: And so there has been stuff. I mean, he never
Speaker 1: said anything about it explicitly in terms of like how
Speaker 1: his illness corresponded to his work, if at all, But
Speaker 1: apparently he would advocate for like, Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: write like a good song for this queer coded character
Speaker 1: because at the time, like that's the only option for
Speaker 1: a queer character to appear is coded and bad. But
Speaker 1: Howard Ashman would write the best song for them? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it is it is interesting that,
Speaker 1: I mean, there wasn't an openly queer composer writing all
Speaker 1: these songs that are the best part of all of
Speaker 1: the movies, Like whoever wrote all of shares songs? You
Speaker 1: got to give the people what they want? Uh, So
Speaker 1: you know he's the one penning the slappers. I just
Speaker 1: think it's also so I mean clearly like a doy
Speaker 1: to doy, like men rule everything. But it's like why
Speaker 1: do men rule writing movies for children who are women?
Speaker 1: Like I don't understand, Like why do men rule every thing?
Speaker 1: Like why I don't get why women can't even write
Speaker 1: movies for small girls. It doesn't make sense. They're like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: we got this right, because even today they're uncomfortable looking
Speaker 1: because even today, the same writers and directors of this
Speaker 1: movie also were the major creative players of Mowanna, which
Speaker 1: again is a feminist text, so they learned a bit
Speaker 1: from between women forced them to learn was done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. I mean it's it's because all this Disney
Speaker 1: stuff is like, I'm so skull fucked by all of that,
Speaker 1: Like I can't I can't make Hazzard. But but it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see this, you know, the same the same
Speaker 1: directors seventeen years later. At least, even if they don't
Speaker 1: want to, the culture had to force them to move
Speaker 1: forward at least a little bit. Although why aren't women
Speaker 1: allowed to direct Disney movies? Still? Yeah, I'm just not
Speaker 1: really lucky that I never I never had a princess phase,
Speaker 1: and I never liked Disney movies. So I do feel
Speaker 1: grateful for whatever reason. My brain was never like Plato,
Speaker 1: molded by that. But I was like, how can I
Speaker 1: look like Jack Skellington, Like that was my ariel. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a different form of body dysmorphia. Other unrealistic
Speaker 1: bodies I've set for, Like mom, can I have a
Speaker 1: have a straw? Black straw? Cape for Christmas. Please don't
Speaker 1: ask why I wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: arials agency and lack thereof and her like sense of adventure. Um,
Speaker 1: because she is, as we mentioned, one of the earlier
Speaker 1: Disney princesses that has any sort of agency spur of agency,
Speaker 1: but she uses that agency to make a lot of
Speaker 1: questionable choices. But you know, she's a teenager. We all
Speaker 1: were idiots when we were teenagers. And then she also
Speaker 1: has a sense of advance en sure much like the
Speaker 1: other like doesn't renaissance princesses, where you know, Bell is
Speaker 1: like I want so much more than this provincial life.
Speaker 1: And this is the time that the like the literal
Speaker 1: formula for these movies became like fully formed of like
Speaker 1: there's always that song where the princess is allowed to
Speaker 1: want something more, whatever that vague more is. It usually
Speaker 1: isn't a relationship until two minutes later. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: Ariel starts as uh character that you know, at least
Speaker 1: there's there's something to her. She wants to learn more
Speaker 1: about this culture she doesn't understand. She's investigating stuff, she's
Speaker 1: collecting stuff, she's seeking out answers. Even if the only
Speaker 1: person she knows is a dumbass seagull, like she there
Speaker 1: was no internet, she couldn't she had to ask a seagull.
Speaker 1: But she is like she is, I think, very active
Speaker 1: and like you know, rebels against her father and starts
Speaker 1: out as like, oh, you know, she's she's rejecting the
Speaker 1: norm of her society. She wants to learn more, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, the second after that statement is made in
Speaker 1: part of your world pretty clearly, she's like listening, here's
Speaker 1: things I'd like to know, and then as far as
Speaker 1: we know, she never learns about. It's like, why couldn't
Speaker 1: she have found like a map, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, that's what's so frustrating, is like
Speaker 1: this text just manipulates all of our like innate, beautiful
Speaker 1: desires for freedom and like existential quandary. But these guys
Speaker 1: in the writer's room are like, I just can't think
Speaker 1: of anything else she could do that could take her
Speaker 1: on a journey of self awakening. Let's get married at sixteen,
Speaker 1: Like there's nothing else she could do, right. The princesses,
Speaker 1: they have these a sense of adventure, but then they
Speaker 1: never go on an adventure because they just meet a
Speaker 1: man two seconds later, and then their adventure becomes they
Speaker 1: literally never go further than like a mile from their house.
Speaker 1: Jasmine doesn't even get to move like Aladda moves into
Speaker 1: her house. It's like it's fucked up. And then I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk out a little bit about just like
Speaker 1: in the climax of the story. This is uh an
Speaker 1: example of a movie where the protagonist does not get
Speaker 1: to participate in the climax, and Ariel is completely sidelined,
Speaker 1: very damseled, because Eric has to step in and like
Speaker 1: kill Ursula and save the day. She does one she
Speaker 1: does one thing at the climax, but she doesn't get
Speaker 1: the conclusive moment that she She's even robbed of the
Speaker 1: moment where she is able to get her own voice back,
Speaker 1: like Scuttles, the one who like snatches the necklace. Scuttles
Speaker 1: a dumb bitch, Like how dare he take that from her?
Speaker 1: He doesn't even know what a bark is? All birds
Speaker 1: know what works are, dumbass. Ariel does save a man
Speaker 1: at the beginning, so that is the thing, but that's
Speaker 1: hardly I think that at the time. This is like,
Speaker 1: oh no, she does stuff, but it's all it's like
Speaker 1: empty gestures because she's not even the hero of her
Speaker 1: own story. What she does, which is pretty badasses that
Speaker 1: she blows smog onto that pompous guy's face because she
Speaker 1: like embarrassed a man because that dumbas bird was like
Speaker 1: it's a recorder blow into She got to put like
Speaker 1: tobacco ash in a man's mouth. So I'm like, that's feminist.
Speaker 1: That was powerful, I'll take it, which made me think
Speaker 1: that she kind of ends up becoming like the Born
Speaker 1: Sexy Yesterday type for like at least a little bit
Speaker 1: where when she gets to the human world because she
Speaker 1: like she doesn't know what forks are. The thing is
Speaker 1: the subverts that trope I think is that she quickly learned.
Speaker 1: She like realizes that she's doing it wrong, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I I think you're the Born Sexy Yesterday.
Speaker 1: There is something to that for this movie, because we're
Speaker 1: at least there's like some vague like, oh, Eric, you know,
Speaker 1: she's not the girl that he was horny for, but
Speaker 1: he likes her because she doesn't know how to use
Speaker 1: things like and that's a part of the borns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's like the Born Sexy Yesterday think of like
Speaker 1: even though the movie's like, no, he likes her for
Speaker 1: a reason, but it's like the reason he likes her
Speaker 1: is because she's a little baby like right, you see,
Speaker 1: Like there's like this unequal power dynamic between him and her,
Speaker 1: where like the man knows how to conduct himself in
Speaker 1: this world and she does not, and nor does she
Speaker 1: have a voice to express her concerns or ask questions.
Speaker 1: So it's worse even where and and yeah, like the
Speaker 1: moments where Eric looks cool is when he knows how
Speaker 1: to do basic ship, where he's like, oh no, it's
Speaker 1: actually for just like I wish I was just seeing
Speaker 1: where she got to acclimate to all these things that
Speaker 1: she had in her treasure trove that she got to see. Now,
Speaker 1: that would be cool if she, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was like, what's the chair? Like is it a hat?
Speaker 1: Like who knows? Or if there is any moment where
Speaker 1: she got to demonstrate something she knew that he didn't,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole Mermaid. Yeah, there's a whole world
Speaker 1: she's acquainted with that he knows nothing about. But he doesn't,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean we guess. I guess part of
Speaker 1: the reason that is is because the second he finds
Speaker 1: out she's a mermaid, he both is like oh, and
Speaker 1: and then the movie is over. So as soon as
Speaker 1: she becomes a human, she can't swim anymore. Remember when
Speaker 1: she dives in the sea to like go after the wedding,
Speaker 1: she would have more powerful arms. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what it's like to be a mermaid. But I think
Speaker 1: it's all core. She I mean, she had her core,
Speaker 1: and she she has legs. That's that's a big part
Speaker 1: of swimming is legs. It's not as good as a
Speaker 1: but like flounder has to like swim her to the boat,
Speaker 1: like she can't even swim herself. My boys, Although I
Speaker 1: mean it goes without saying that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: allegedly sexy fish in this movie, however they're none of
Speaker 1: them are as sexy as the fish from This Shape
Speaker 1: of Water, who is still the sexiest fish with the
Speaker 1: firmest ass. Oh, I would say, like second to that
Speaker 1: fish should be Larry the labster from the spot. Oh. Yes,
Speaker 1: top two sexy fish, Yes, sexy crustaceans and Larry icon
Speaker 1: a buff icon. Uh. Can we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the romance between Ariel and Eric romance right, Well,
Speaker 1: she sees him and falls instantly in love with him,
Speaker 1: which because movie, because movie, and that's also happens, like
Speaker 1: I can even extend my view this in Scorpion, like
Speaker 1: I can extend like seeing someone being like boiling like sure,
Speaker 1: to an extent, but to the point where you neglect
Speaker 1: what you've spent your whole life building simply Also, she's
Speaker 1: a team Yeah, so there's no time spent developing their
Speaker 1: relationship or establishing reasons why they might like each other.
Speaker 1: It's just like that instant attraction that does happen, sure,
Speaker 1: but it's grounds for a marriage. So yeah, this is
Speaker 1: just it's a movie where the people are close to
Speaker 1: each other and they are attracted to each other, so
Speaker 1: they must get married. Well, another another thing that's mentioned
Speaker 1: a lot in the early Disney Renaissance reviews of this
Speaker 1: movie is oh Eric is the first prince that has
Speaker 1: a personality, which again is like you, he doesn't, although
Speaker 1: he does well recorder Cape, right, so they so recorder
Speaker 1: Cape blouse. So we've got a lot of elements going on.
Speaker 1: And because it's also like even the beginning of the movie,
Speaker 1: like they're the men get to have they get to
Speaker 1: have their storyline where they get to be like funny
Speaker 1: and quirky and like I don't know that what's again
Speaker 1: like the count olaf looking one who's like the old
Speaker 1: Chancellor Grimsby. Also everyone's British except for Eric. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand this, and the chef from who is
Speaker 1: chef there thinks another there oh yeah, but like Grimsby
Speaker 1: gets to give Eric this like big statue and then
Speaker 1: like that gets to be like their little moment like
Speaker 1: your old that isn't extended to like any woman in
Speaker 1: the where they get to have this expose of personality. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is like they're they're saying like, oh, Eric
Speaker 1: has a personality, but he really doesn't. But the reason
Speaker 1: they're saying that is again because the bar is so
Speaker 1: fucking low from previous princess movies where there's some there
Speaker 1: it's always love at first sight, but it's like even
Speaker 1: more boring love at first sight, where like the prince
Speaker 1: in Sleeping Beauty is like oh and then he's like man,
Speaker 1: Jesus sleep and he's I gotta go fight a dragon
Speaker 1: but you barely see you like you don't anything. So
Speaker 1: just because Eric is like I don't like statues and
Speaker 1: I play the recorder, They're like, Wow, amazing progress character development?
Speaker 1: Is it not like the other boy? I like the
Speaker 1: other princes. The thing is if a boy, if I
Speaker 1: met a boy when I was sixteen who played the recorder,
Speaker 1: wore capes and brooded, I would I would fuck him.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, you know, there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways to view Insure, but I mean, like, because this
Speaker 1: is a manic pixie dream prints kind of he's kind
Speaker 1: of like an emo dream boy at times, but it's
Speaker 1: like he doesn't really have that much of a personality
Speaker 1: and we don't understand, right. And the thing is Ariel
Speaker 1: does have a personality, but he doesn't know that right.
Speaker 1: But you can't talk. Yeah, like this is a movie
Speaker 1: targeted children, and like I under I understand like wanting
Speaker 1: to simplify some thing as complicated as romantic love to
Speaker 1: like cater to your intended audience, but also when you
Speaker 1: do that, it sends very confusing and wrong messages. There
Speaker 1: should be a Disney princess who gets divorced. Yeah, they should,
Speaker 1: like it should start with a marriage that is not
Speaker 1: working out, And she's like, actually, I want to get
Speaker 1: an education. If you like eat, pray, love, but a
Speaker 1: princess eat, pray, princess um. I also wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about the spell and Sebastian's song because the spell that
Speaker 1: our Sila puts on Ariel means that like she must
Speaker 1: be kissed. So what means like a woman can't be
Speaker 1: active in her own sexuality, like she has to wait
Speaker 1: to be kissed. H And also the consent gets murky
Speaker 1: true because like, yeah, the story requires her to need
Speaker 1: to be kissed, but what if she's not ready? She
Speaker 1: is six ten after Sebastian. There's like a bridge in
Speaker 1: the song where Sebastian like explains basic consent definitely needs
Speaker 1: like of course you're going to need a firm Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm Sebastian instead him right yeah, because he says Ariel
Speaker 1: and Eric's like, oh, I speak crap, So maybe he
Speaker 1: does have a personality. Maybe maybe because the lyrics of
Speaker 1: the song are actually this. Sebastian is like, you should
Speaker 1: kiss the girl, and he says possible she wanted to.
Speaker 1: There is one way to ask her it don't take
Speaker 1: a word, not a single word, go on and kiss
Speaker 1: the girl. So it encourages not to check in with
Speaker 1: a girl to see who she wants to be kissed. Also,
Speaker 1: just like informs that teen urgency too, because we all
Speaker 1: think that we have to like kiss or make out
Speaker 1: or like have sex from this like wildly young age
Speaker 1: that were even aware of any of these things, where
Speaker 1: it like really praise on the insecurity that you won't
Speaker 1: be valid unless you're kissed and you got three days
Speaker 1: to do it or you'll die, right, like your life
Speaker 1: is ruined if you don't get approval from this man,
Speaker 1: which is entirely maybe like what if Eric wasn't what
Speaker 1: if Eric wanted to take things slow and then Ariel died? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad for for everyone. This mean like I have
Speaker 1: three days until prom I haven't had sex. I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1: But it no, it's not even that you'll die. It's
Speaker 1: that is that someone you barely know will die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because what if Eric was like, man, I just
Speaker 1: like we need to also like to hear her talk.
Speaker 1: We know, like yeah, it's like Ariel could write something down.
Speaker 1: I mean we know she can write canonically, she can
Speaker 1: write because she signed her name on the contract. So
Speaker 1: there give the lady a quill, like right, she could
Speaker 1: have expressed this. I don't know. I don't know. This
Speaker 1: movie is a mess. And also it's so short, like
Speaker 1: we were talking about sexstage that the movie is seventy
Speaker 1: minutes long. You had like at least another really like
Speaker 1: any of this down, so it wasn't just like we're
Speaker 1: going to take a woman's complete agency away so she
Speaker 1: can't be a scientist. Women's insecurity the end, right like
Speaker 1: you had twenty minutes. Also, it's announced that Eric is
Speaker 1: getting married, and then Ariel thinks that it's her that
Speaker 1: he's getting She wasn't asked, no one, you know that
Speaker 1: it was not discussed, but she's like, yep, it's me,
Speaker 1: and she's stoked and she's so she's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess he decided last night that he wants to marry me,
Speaker 1: so legally I must a dog he was just going
Speaker 1: to marry someone else because she could hit like Mariah
Speaker 1: Carey whistletones. It's it's implied that it's a curse. But
Speaker 1: that's also like trouble of implying that, like I mean,
Speaker 1: and this is like goes back forever of like men
Speaker 1: saying like oh she tricked me into doing like how
Speaker 1: men you know, often in movies, especially movies of this
Speaker 1: era will say like, oh, she tricked me into marrying her,
Speaker 1: and I didn't actually want to marry her, but she
Speaker 1: tricked And that is literally what we see happen of
Speaker 1: he is put under a spell and then gets married.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, another way men can offload regret
Speaker 1: onto women. Yeah, like the like a queer coded character, Uh,
Speaker 1: we've already been conditioned to hate also tricked a man
Speaker 1: into marrying her when she was bad. It's like it's
Speaker 1: just bad. Yeah. I don't know if this is worth
Speaker 1: talking about, but this movie presents the idea that Ariel
Speaker 1: needs to be under constant supervision because she's like a
Speaker 1: rascally and Sebastian says, someone should now that girls fins
Speaker 1: to the floor. Yep. Like when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: my parents were way more strict with me than with
Speaker 1: my brother because there's like, yeah, it's the idea that like, oh,
Speaker 1: boys they're allowed to go out and like you know,
Speaker 1: make mistakes, misbehave because like boys will be boys dump off.
Speaker 1: The girls have to be you know, well behaved. And
Speaker 1: I feel like this is an example that perpetuates that, yeah,
Speaker 1: girl doesn't have like there's no matriarch figure that is
Speaker 1: positive like a mom. It's just like back to King
Speaker 1: Chrain and just being by himself, like me and all
Speaker 1: these daughters. Where there's that too, where he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with my daughters, so I
Speaker 1: have to break all of her things and watch her
Speaker 1: all the time, right, Like the his solution to not
Speaker 1: knowing how to parent someone is to just oppress them
Speaker 1: and make sure that they don't stray outside the norm
Speaker 1: at all, because he's like, well, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to deal with anything but this one thing I know.
Speaker 1: So if you don't do that, you're canceling. It would
Speaker 1: be a really good scene if Erirol would be able
Speaker 1: to talk to her sisters and be like, jeez, Dad's
Speaker 1: kind of a dick, right right, because I'm like, are
Speaker 1: they just cool with him? Like I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: that transitions really well into the whole like lack of
Speaker 1: matriarch discussion and like the way Disney treats mothers and
Speaker 1: motherhood in this very bizarre way up until very recently
Speaker 1: and then still sometimes not well. But this is an
Speaker 1: example of a movie that most of the Renaissance movies
Speaker 1: subscribe to this exact because all the Renaissance movies aren't
Speaker 1: the same where it's like a single father, the mother
Speaker 1: is dead and not addressed. We don't know what happened,
Speaker 1: where there's no and there's no matriarch figure in her life.
Speaker 1: The same for Jasmine, the same for Bell, the same
Speaker 1: for pocahonas I believe as well, there it Mulan has
Speaker 1: a mom, yeah, but she doesn't get to do much.
Speaker 1: And Grandma, Yeah, Mulan's grandma was like incredible, but I
Speaker 1: can't can Horny Grandma horn and Grandma Horny, Grandma Lashtag
Speaker 1: Horney and Grandma, which is a trope, but I don't
Speaker 1: always hate it, but this one lacks a maternal figure
Speaker 1: at all. But in other and earlier iterations of like
Speaker 1: the previous generation of Disney princesses had maternal figures and
Speaker 1: they were evil, where Snow White and Cinderella have evil stepmothers,
Speaker 1: and the implication there always tends to be of like,
Speaker 1: if you are uh mother who is not a biological mother,
Speaker 1: you cannot love a child as purely as a biological
Speaker 1: mother could, which is of course fucking ridiculous. But it's
Speaker 1: just so insidious that from like conception, from like the
Speaker 1: Jomp that we were able to look at anything and
Speaker 1: understand in any sort of like cultural way, Like we're
Speaker 1: just taught from the start from these movies that we
Speaker 1: have to hate other women. Like that's all these men
Speaker 1: want to do, and that's why they want to write
Speaker 1: these movies where it's like we're gonna make all of
Speaker 1: these insidious plot points that you will never have a
Speaker 1: girl gang ever, he'll never be a girl boss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's I mean, and the like the solution to
Speaker 1: defeating a woman is always a man, and like having
Speaker 1: a man in your life to help you defeat the
Speaker 1: only other woman you've met, which is just it's it's horrible,
Speaker 1: it's horrible. There's yeah. And then if we're talking about
Speaker 1: King Triton, I mean, he's the worst Disney father to me,
Speaker 1: because you know, Maurice Bell's dad, he's a shitty inventor, right,
Speaker 1: so he's like incompetent, but like so are many fathers, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: Triton is genuinely a bad person. I mean, we know
Speaker 1: he's a bad person. He destroys her ship, he totally
Speaker 1: limits everything she can do, but he's also made out
Speaker 1: to look sympathetic and by the end, we get that
Speaker 1: moment where she's like, I love you, daddy, and she's not.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't get to see that conflict play
Speaker 1: out where there's this huge conflict between them. He destroys
Speaker 1: everything she owns, she's devastated. She rebels against him by
Speaker 1: selling her body to Ursula, and then it's chill. It's
Speaker 1: chill later on. And the fact that you know, we
Speaker 1: have we're coming off of this whole history of evil
Speaker 1: stepmothers going into this movie and we see a father
Speaker 1: act like an evil stepmother would, but then we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, but he's trying his best. He
Speaker 1: has abs, they're like pancake nipples, doesn't get his daughter,
Speaker 1: So it's okay that abusive selling body. And now there's
Speaker 1: kind of like an anti sex work element to this too,
Speaker 1: where it's like, I feel like they really give her
Speaker 1: this like evil like I own a brothel vibe as well,
Speaker 1: where she like owns all of these people. But it's
Speaker 1: like Trieden's a king. He owns people too. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, and we don't get to really see him
Speaker 1: do anything. They're input on a little show for his
Speaker 1: daughter's who I'm assuming are unpaid for that game. Hey, artists. Also,
Speaker 1: Triton does not check in with Arial to see if
Speaker 1: she wants to be turned back into a human. He
Speaker 1: just does it, like what if she didn't like being
Speaker 1: a human, Like what if she's three days she's like, no,
Speaker 1: I actually I'm gonna go back, like she went on
Speaker 1: like human rum Springer. Basically, I was like, no, I
Speaker 1: do want to return to my people community. And then
Speaker 1: he was just like, oh, she's looking at a human,
Speaker 1: so better turn her back into one. Like and then
Speaker 1: the fact that she can only become a human, why
Speaker 1: is he the only person who has that power and ability?
Speaker 1: We saw Ursula has the ingredients. It can clearly be
Speaker 1: done without your fucking penis stick. They carries around like
Speaker 1: it can clearly be done, and she's smart enough we're
Speaker 1: led to believe to be able to make it happen herself,
Speaker 1: but she just never like siblings they have. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've read Lord to that fire powers, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're the only two people who can do jack ship.
Speaker 1: Are they like twins? I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I wish we just knew more about Ursula's
Speaker 1: background at all. We just don't know anything about totally
Speaker 1: because that would make sense, Like why are they that
Speaker 1: both people who are able to do all this like
Speaker 1: wacky incredible powerful magic. So one's good and one's bad.
Speaker 1: But it's the same thing. But like when when the
Speaker 1: woman does it, it's actually bad. They do they literally
Speaker 1: do the same spell, but but when Tritton does it,
Speaker 1: it's actually good. And I wanted to just cover your
Speaker 1: little little context stuff really quick. Where this is one
Speaker 1: of the many Disney movies that's adapted from very old
Speaker 1: folk tale by Holms Christian Anderson ever heard of him?
Speaker 1: And uh, the adaptation of this, I mean this is
Speaker 1: like fairly common knowledge. But the way the Little Mermaid
Speaker 1: ends in the story is that she turns, you know,
Speaker 1: she realizes that she is never going to be a
Speaker 1: part of the human world in a meaningful way because
Speaker 1: she is a mermaid. And she turns into cea foam
Speaker 1: and dies. Uh so she turns into a big pyla
Speaker 1: come she foams okay, also does foamy and then she died. Also,
Speaker 1: I like really quick backtracking big pre foam is that
Speaker 1: like this the scene or ursula becomes massive, she has
Speaker 1: like does a giant sea queef when everything just turns
Speaker 1: like blow she sludge underneath her, and I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be bad. She anchored herself and it's incredible. Um.
Speaker 1: So the Hans Christian Anderson story ends very differently. Something
Speaker 1: I learned when I was researching this episode is that
Speaker 1: there is a lot of queer coding in Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Andersen stories that I wasn't aware of. Um Because at
Speaker 1: the time of Hans Christian Anderson, being queer was illegal.
Speaker 1: So he was a queer man, which was found in
Speaker 1: many of his letters. He had affairs with men that
Speaker 1: were expressed through letters, and there was a particular affair
Speaker 1: he had with a higher class, a man of a
Speaker 1: higher class than he was, who ended up having to
Speaker 1: marry a woman of a higher class because hetero, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so this is a part of his personal history
Speaker 1: and a lot of the interpretation around it is that
Speaker 1: the little roommaid was this expression of Hans Christian Anderson
Speaker 1: is Ariel um or who is Ariel in the movie? Uh,
Speaker 1: The object of his affection is eric Um. And so see,
Speaker 1: turning into c foam at the end is basically just
Speaker 1: and queer relationships aren't allowed, so I have to turn
Speaker 1: into foam emotionally, So there there is I know, shout,
Speaker 1: we gotta all, you know, take a shot for Hans
Speaker 1: tonight because he had it right, I mean. And and
Speaker 1: it is interesting like reading about queer literate or of
Speaker 1: like you have to really code in and metaphor on
Speaker 1: metaphor on metaphor to be able to discuss an issue
Speaker 1: like this at all, because if you just were queer,
Speaker 1: he would not be allowed to be, you know, working
Speaker 1: in any capacity. And so um, I don't know like
Speaker 1: learning that really and I don't think that that of
Speaker 1: reading of it is taken into account in the Disney
Speaker 1: adaptation at all, but I did. I did find it
Speaker 1: to be like an interesting example of how queer artists
Speaker 1: had to express themselves at this time in order to
Speaker 1: express literally anything. Yeah, that's really interesting context shout shouts
Speaker 1: out to this biopic. Ya, this is the one. I
Speaker 1: don't know, there is good what's it called? Well, I
Speaker 1: hope it's not Christians Christian. Christian sounds like another guy
Speaker 1: who would blackout at a party all the time. I
Speaker 1: feel like journey um. But yeah, yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting that there are so many are not so many,
Speaker 1: I guess too. Uh, queer artists. Uh there where you
Speaker 1: know Hans Christnaars and Reds the original story and then
Speaker 1: it's adapted with all this incredible music by Howard Ashman,
Speaker 1: but it's still you know, ends up being an incredibly oppressive,
Speaker 1: heteronormative piece that uh you know has been decimating the
Speaker 1: lives of children for going on thirty years. Indeed, tes incredible.
Speaker 1: Does anyone have any other final thoughts? Let me check
Speaker 1: my note here. Note talked about the Sea Queef. So
Speaker 1: I just wish that this story what could have been
Speaker 1: written with like Ariela is like a riot girl. That's
Speaker 1: like what I because like we're weren't watching the We're
Speaker 1: near Olympia where that I just feel like they have
Speaker 1: that so close where it's like such a cool story
Speaker 1: to talk about being sixteen and like hating everything and
Speaker 1: wanting to swim to the surface and like pick up
Speaker 1: a cool rock you found near a train track and
Speaker 1: added your collection and like see if it's a crystal
Speaker 1: maybe who knows. But instead they had to make it patriarchy.
Speaker 1: I just like want there to be retribution for Ariel
Speaker 1: and like have her sing in a band called like
Speaker 1: clitteral Attack or something. Click yeah, everything has to be seen.
Speaker 1: Were like c microphone. When she sat in her sea
Speaker 1: chair and ate sea food. She had sea bugles for
Speaker 1: a sea snack. I just wanted to say that there
Speaker 1: is a line that Scuttle says, um, look with the
Speaker 1: catfish dragged in, and I just want to say that
Speaker 1: cat fish have zero nipples, and that's at fish fact
Speaker 1: with Caitlin Um. I would like to say that Alfred
Speaker 1: Molina could have played any part in this movie because
Speaker 1: he's a versatile character actor who we know and love.
Speaker 1: You know, my close friend at this point, Uh, Alfred Realina,
Speaker 1: he has laid eyes on my face, I would say,
Speaker 1: and I'm just I'm just channeling him, my close friend.
Speaker 1: I would say that he received the script for this
Speaker 1: movie and wrote back a long letter explaining that actually
Speaker 1: this was a story by a queer author and that
Speaker 1: he wasn't seeing any of those tones represented, and so
Speaker 1: he refuses to participate, even for seventy five million dollars.
Speaker 1: What a story. I think it's not a story, it's
Speaker 1: the truth true. So out out to icon out. Let's
Speaker 1: take some questions or comments from the crowd. If you
Speaker 1: have something, come on up so that you can talk
Speaker 1: into the mic. Does anyone have yeah, come on up, Hi,
Speaker 1: what's your name? Hi? I just want to take a
Speaker 1: second to cape for or to like record or cape
Speaker 1: for Ursula as feminist icon because even as like a
Speaker 1: straight little girl, I was like yes, because she like
Speaker 1: is trying to topple the patriarchy. She runs her own business,
Speaker 1: she has employees, she's obviously in charge of legal, like
Speaker 1: she's drawn up which neither of the two heroes we
Speaker 1: see signing a contract even look at. But we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool, Like she's trying to disclose everything to them,
Speaker 1: and she's like, by the way, no one up top
Speaker 1: is gonna want to hear you talk in arials like chill,
Speaker 1: and then she just signs a thing. By the whole time,
Speaker 1: Ursula is just like trying to run her business. She's
Speaker 1: above board, she really is. That's right. She's done a
Speaker 1: four one K Yeah. Yeah, no, we came up. We
Speaker 1: have like a headcanon now that like because she's the witch.
Speaker 1: We were like, oh, maybe she was like the c
Speaker 1: medicine woman and maybe she was the Sea do La
Speaker 1: and that's why Ariel's mom is dead and why tried
Speaker 1: and kicked her out of the ocean. That's why she's
Speaker 1: so mad that thank you I have that shirt. That's
Speaker 1: a great point about there is a plot point in
Speaker 1: this movie where it's just like, no, sorry, it's illegally
Speaker 1: binding document. You're like, okay, weird moment to adhere to
Speaker 1: the rules of the real world. Any any other questions
Speaker 1: comments come up? Hi, My concept of Ursula is a
Speaker 1: little bit more sexual. But I have two concepts or theories.
Speaker 1: I feel like, what happens to the wedding guests, possibly
Speaker 1: when Pursla becomes really huge, is like a Titanic reference
Speaker 1: where everyone's actually drowning in the water while this whole
Speaker 1: scene is happening, but we don't see that Titanic element
Speaker 1: where none there were not enough lifeboats on that boat,
Speaker 1: exactly unbelievable. The other theory that I have is that
Speaker 1: King Triton actually killed Ariel's mom because Ursula was doing
Speaker 1: some weird tentacle like sexual beautiful things with Arrow's moms.
Speaker 1: So that's why Ursula turns him into a turret at
Speaker 1: the end, you know, because she that she's trying to
Speaker 1: take back what was her kingdom, which was a big,
Speaker 1: you know, lesbian kingdom. Yeah. Wow, cannon cannon. Ursla is
Speaker 1: just trying to topple the Dick Palace, the literal Dick
Speaker 1: Palace and turned into a quefdom. Yeah, we had someone
Speaker 1: else if you're yeah, so, I just want to say
Speaker 1: Ursula has like several hundred lost souls trapped in her cave.
Speaker 1: And like, I think this is just further evidence that
Speaker 1: Trying is a terrible ruler, because I feel like there's
Speaker 1: not that many people in the sea. Like if if
Speaker 1: like half the people in this room disappear and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I feel like I would look around
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, maybe some people left. But he's
Speaker 1: just like this several people who I've never seen again
Speaker 1: and who are so yeah. And he also seems to
Speaker 1: know where she lives. Hi Larry turned now And clearly
Speaker 1: they're like a lot of people dissatisfied with their lives
Speaker 1: that are like taking drastic legal legal measures to like
Speaker 1: try and find a better life. But they're just like no,
Speaker 1: and King Traydon has like no feelings about any of
Speaker 1: these people who have just left left his kingdom for
Speaker 1: to try and better themselves. God Trying is liked is
Speaker 1: turned to my all my daughter, Uh we we had
Speaker 1: we had another another question up here. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to say that, Um, there's not only a demonization of
Speaker 1: queer coded characters, but of Octopi. True quick in defensive Octopi.
Speaker 1: They are incredible carreactakers. When a female octopus gives birth,
Speaker 1: she lays all of her eggs and then stays with them,
Speaker 1: caring for them until she dies as a sacrifice. So
Speaker 1: quick defense of Octopy. Thank you? Are you a woman
Speaker 1: in stamp? Wow? Paternal icons brave. Yeah. To further talk
Speaker 1: about Ursula, Um, this movie, this movie does pass the
Speaker 1: loftist test. Yes, it does. Well. This woman in Charge
Speaker 1: it does, thank god, honest woman in charge. She is
Speaker 1: the baldest woman and she is truly in charge. Wow.
Speaker 1: I think we have time for one more. If there's
Speaker 1: one more. Um to your point that like Ursula and
Speaker 1: Triton were like siblings. I googled it once the lights
Speaker 1: came up. They're like confirmed siblings. It was like part
Speaker 1: of the original screenplay was that they were siblings. And
Speaker 1: you know her like little shell that she wears, that
Speaker 1: was like her source of power, and Triton got the
Speaker 1: trident and she got banished because like she was trying
Speaker 1: to be too greedy because they got like two halves
Speaker 1: of the kingdom. And so he was like, you're too
Speaker 1: opinionated and you have too much power. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: to banish her then, like you're you're not better? Was
Speaker 1: doing good signing contracts. She's a lawyer. Now, if that
Speaker 1: person's points right, then Ursula was sleeping with trite with
Speaker 1: a hit with her brother's wife. I mean, honestly, imagine
Speaker 1: if you're like sister, who is a lawyer and smarter
Speaker 1: than you, started hooking up with your wife, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I also love thank you so much? Right,
Speaker 1: was like, actually, they're all I love. Everyone's unhinged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I do. Though, like Ursula, she probably didn't
Speaker 1: want more power than him or and like she wasn't
Speaker 1: being greedy, she just wanted equal power. And he's like
Speaker 1: you you're banished, right, but he shouldn't be in theory,
Speaker 1: if they have equal power, why would he be able
Speaker 1: to manage her to to like Vagina k patriarchy. And
Speaker 1: also it looks like Ursula's like area is the same
Speaker 1: size as the kingdom, where as you pointed out, like
Speaker 1: fourteen people, she's storing a lot of souls he's in
Speaker 1: charge of like a private school, second grade class. She
Speaker 1: shouldn't Marie condo her soul storage. Should we decide if
Speaker 1: it passes the Bechtel test? No, no, you know, but
Speaker 1: you sure right, because even the few conversations are like
Speaker 1: exchanges between Ariel and Ursula that technically may pass because
Speaker 1: a man's name isn't mentioned, because there's like there's a
Speaker 1: line where like Ursua is like, the only thing is
Speaker 1: to become a human yourself, and then she's like, can
Speaker 1: you do that? But the context is all about a
Speaker 1: man and changing ariels whole self to be with a man.
Speaker 1: The one exchange I found that may pass is bad.
Speaker 1: It's towards the very end where Ursula is about to
Speaker 1: do the death quiff and Ariel says, you monster, and
Speaker 1: Ursula says, don't mess with me, you little brat. So so,
Speaker 1: you know, an iconic change, that was the one maybe
Speaker 1: I was able to find interesting. That's an excerpt with
Speaker 1: me talking to my mom in high school. You monster,
Speaker 1: I feel like because Ursula's whole goal is to overthrow
Speaker 1: and steal the power of Triton, which she rightfully like
Speaker 1: that was She's just trying to topple the patriarchy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then Eric stabbed her poor Ursula. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. I'm okay with saying that's a pass that
Speaker 1: I think that that is somehow a pass because she
Speaker 1: is kind of It's still contextually about a man, but
Speaker 1: it's about overthrowing a man. So please disregard everything we've
Speaker 1: just said. The Bechtel test is a perfect metric and
Speaker 1: it passes to feminist text. Shall we give him give
Speaker 1: it nipples? Yeah, let's on our nipple scale zero to
Speaker 1: five nipples. Based on its portrayal of women, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with a half nipple. I think more of an Ariola.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a king Triton pancake Ariola. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean between any like semblance of agency and like sense
Speaker 1: of adventure that Ariel is given is immediately taken away
Speaker 1: from her. The whole story is about her sacrificing, you know,
Speaker 1: herself and everything about herself to be with a man.
Speaker 1: All of the character design that is damaging, all of
Speaker 1: the queer coding that's damaging everything about it is not good.
Speaker 1: But I have to give it a half nipple for
Speaker 1: the song, Poor Unfortunate Souls. So that's that. Uh but yeah,
Speaker 1: so half nipple will go to Ursula. Yeah, I'll give
Speaker 1: it a half nipple as well. And just to add
Speaker 1: to that, it is like frustrating to uh see uh
Speaker 1: female character in spite of all the like negative physical
Speaker 1: things that are happening in the character design and all that,
Speaker 1: but to have a female characters set up with a
Speaker 1: personality with an interest that isn't a heterosexual relationship and
Speaker 1: like setting up here's gonna be a cool character that
Speaker 1: we can root for and then literally remove all of
Speaker 1: it and then to a point and when you see it,
Speaker 1: when you're young enough, you don't even realize that that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. Um. So that made me sad. Half nipple
Speaker 1: because Ursula and I'm giving it to Flats, Um sure,
Speaker 1: because I don't think eels have nipples and I would
Speaker 1: like to give them a shot. Maybe the person who
Speaker 1: knows a lot about octopuses, do eels have nipples? Confirmed? Um? Yeah? Same?
Speaker 1: Like half to full to one nipple. I think it's
Speaker 1: like the only to me cool thing about this movie
Speaker 1: is that Ursula is so badass, and I think it's
Speaker 1: really cool twenty nineteen to have this like resurgence of
Speaker 1: queers and allies alike who understand like how radical she is,
Speaker 1: like even within how unfortunately she was portrayed in this movie.
Speaker 1: But to now have this like icon of like fat
Speaker 1: Dike who like is a lawyer and someone has now
Speaker 1: pointed out to us like anachemist, like and like pays
Speaker 1: her own bills, like pays the rent, like mortgage, like
Speaker 1: on top of it, like good credit score, like to
Speaker 1: just have her to exist in all of our cannons
Speaker 1: and all of our cultural understandings of Disney. To me,
Speaker 1: it's like that gives it the one. But that's because
Speaker 1: of us, not because of them, Like we gave her that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would you like to give your nipple too? Oh
Speaker 1: all right, I got carried away. Um it sounded like
Speaker 1: a threat the way I'm gonna give my one nipple
Speaker 1: to the woman who give aerial to bath. Oh. Yes,
Speaker 1: another character who we get to sort of meat, but
Speaker 1: we never get to get to know her as well
Speaker 1: as literally any man we made at any point in
Speaker 1: the story. But she seems nurturing. I don't know she
Speaker 1: does bathe a nude stranger. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: customs in this country a sure go sure, Well that's
Speaker 1: the damn show. Get up yourselves, got up for Clara, Clara?
Speaker 1: Where can people follow you? What would you like to plug? Um?
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram at real Chris Angel.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get crossover fans and that's c R
Speaker 1: I S. S. Angel Real Chris Angel. Please follow me.
Speaker 1: He's furious awesome. Thank you again for coming. Good night.
Speaker 1: So that was the episode. It was so so so
Speaker 1: much fun. Thank you to everyone who was there. It
Speaker 1: was packed shell, Yes, so much fun. Just a couple
Speaker 1: quick notes. Uh, we did the like Q and A
Speaker 1: at the end, little you know, audience questions and comments
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, but the audio quality some of the
Speaker 1: people they couldn't make it up to the stage to
Speaker 1: talk into the mic. So there were a couple of
Speaker 1: people whose questions comments we had to cut because just
Speaker 1: the audio didn't pick up on the recording. Our apologies
Speaker 1: go out to you if you had your comment cut.
Speaker 1: One of them to our houses kill us. So one
Speaker 1: was defending Scuttle. I was there for it. I was
Speaker 1: I was fully there for yes, we we we we
Speaker 1: were sorry. We came down so hard on Scuttle. Shouts, shouts,
Speaker 1: out to the scuttle sand. We were put in our place,
Speaker 1: Yes indeed. And then another one was a mother who
Speaker 1: said she recently watched the movie with her young daughter
Speaker 1: and just was horrified at the messages that the movie
Speaker 1: was sending and how her daughter was struggling to understand
Speaker 1: what was wrong with the movie because all of this
Speaker 1: like patriarchal ideas being implanted into the minds of like
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, starting with they get the kids young
Speaker 1: with the patriarchy, but shouts out to Seattle mom, who
Speaker 1: was doing the work getting out in front of it,
Speaker 1: crushing the patriarchy in advance. Yes, indeed. And then the
Speaker 1: last really quick thing was that, Um, I was talking
Speaker 1: to Joan Ford, a friend of the cast. Are on
Speaker 1: our Scream episodes, so if you haven't listened, and go
Speaker 1: back and listen, And I told her that we had
Speaker 1: recorded a Little Mermaid episode and she asked if we
Speaker 1: had talked about the interpretation of the movie as a
Speaker 1: trans narrative at all, right, and there's so there are
Speaker 1: so many fascinating different interpretations of a movie. Um and yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I said, I said I didn't. I didn't think we did.
Speaker 1: But would you mind sharing your thoughts, and she said,
Speaker 1: I'll just go ahead and read it here. Um as
Speaker 1: I've transitioned, I've come to think of Ariel as sort
Speaker 1: of a trans icon. The parallels are pretty clear. She
Speaker 1: was born into one body, but feels like she belongs
Speaker 1: in another and does the work to make that transformation happen. Sure,
Speaker 1: she makes some bad choices along the way, but the
Speaker 1: road to realizing your true self is usually a rocky one,
Speaker 1: especially if you have a family that doesn't accept you
Speaker 1: and you're forced to figure out stuff on your own.
Speaker 1: In parentheses, writing this, I'm realizing we should be celebrating
Speaker 1: Sebastian and Flounder as Cinema's original trans allies. Sebastian takes
Speaker 1: a little longer to get on board, but he really
Speaker 1: redeems himself during Kiss the Girl. Anyways, That's why I
Speaker 1: take issue with the aerial changes herself to be with
Speaker 1: a man narrative that critics tend to impose on the movie.
Speaker 1: Ariel wants to be human from moment one. She sings
Speaker 1: part of your World her trans anthem, long before she
Speaker 1: ever sets eyes on Prince Eric. Eric maybe the catalyst
Speaker 1: that finally gets her to take action and go see Ursula,
Speaker 1: But that decision is all rioted in her long held
Speaker 1: conviction that she wants to be where the people are.
Speaker 1: Whether or not Eric is worthy of her, it is
Speaker 1: kind of beside the point to me, as I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty common for kids to latch on to new
Speaker 1: people when they're going through this kind of big self realization.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're going to be together forever. Maybe she moves
Speaker 1: on when she realizes the world is huge and there
Speaker 1: are so many more humans out of the sea. The
Speaker 1: important thing is that he was there, offering her that
Speaker 1: possibility of a new and different life when she needed it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then again in parentheses, she says, by the way,
Speaker 1: I know him being kind of generous about Ariel's options
Speaker 1: as a woman in the eighteen hundreds. But whatever, it's
Speaker 1: a fantasy. If a Mermaikan girl legs, then I think
Speaker 1: it's also fair to think she can have an amicable divorce. Also,
Speaker 1: anyone who thinks giving up your voice to a sea,
Speaker 1: which is rough, should try getting hormone replacement therapy through
Speaker 1: Kaiser Permanent If you don't know what Kiser permanente, as
Speaker 1: it's like a healthier facility in California, She said, they
Speaker 1: make you jump through so many hoops. I wish I
Speaker 1: knew a c which who could have cut me that
Speaker 1: straightforward of a deal. So that's what John said. So
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really um awesome interpretation of
Speaker 1: the movie. Uh. And then I was just chatting with
Speaker 1: her a little bit after that, and we agreed that
Speaker 1: that was more than likely not any of the intentions
Speaker 1: of the filmmakers to try to create this like allegorical transnarative,
Speaker 1: but that's what fantasies are for, and that's why we
Speaker 1: got to discuss so many different interpretations of it in
Speaker 1: the episode as well. I'm so glad that she let
Speaker 1: us know because that tracks. Um, I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: as as problematic as these um old fairy tales tend
Speaker 1: to be, there are always a million different ways to
Speaker 1: see yourself inside of them, and which is, you know,
Speaker 1: probably why they're they're still around. I love that, Yeah, John,
Speaker 1: John and everything. Yes, follow her. You can check her
Speaker 1: out on Instagram at Joan Hayley Ford and read her
Speaker 1: book as well. Yes, indeed. So yeah, that's just the
Speaker 1: kind of the after the footnotes, No, oh my god,
Speaker 1: to channel Miles Gray that we wanted to increase that
Speaker 1: we wanted to include on this episode. And then also
Speaker 1: just to say thanks again to our guest of the show,
Speaker 1: Clara Pluton. We wanted to say thanks again to the
Speaker 1: jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous in Seattle for having us,
Speaker 1: and thank you to everyone who came. It really was
Speaker 1: such a fun um a couple of shows that we
Speaker 1: did there and we will be back. I got that
Speaker 1: was the show where someone brought me on Mike's hard
Speaker 1: lemonade uh light lamp. Whoa wait, yeah, like, oh I
Speaker 1: heard Mike's hard lemonade light and I thought of like
Speaker 1: crystal light, like diet on powder, like a bud light
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I wish they made it like cocaine
Speaker 1: for him, but they do not yet. Um, yes it was.
Speaker 1: It was an illuminated sign type yeah that shows with
Speaker 1: me always This specific show looms above. And then also
Speaker 1: thanks again to our road dog and audio engineer Sammy Junio,
Speaker 1: friend of the cast, She's the Man episode. Go back
Speaker 1: and listen to it, uh and I believe you know.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Check us out on all the
Speaker 1: normal places becktel cast dot com, on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: at back dol cast. Just another reminder to contribute to
Speaker 1: our Black Girl's Code fundraiser by buying our Rise of
Speaker 1: the Matriarchy t shirt at t public dot com slash
Speaker 1: the beck Doel cast and that's where all of our
Speaker 1: designs are for all of our merch But yeah, prioritize
Speaker 1: the Rise of the Matriarchy one for now, um el
Speaker 1: or else, and then of course um our our Matreon
Speaker 1: to bonus episodes every month for five dollars, including the
Speaker 1: entire backlog of all the bonus episodes. So you're on
Speaker 1: like forty bonus episodes. Honey, hon you're missing out if
Speaker 1: you're not a matron, Yeah, so and join, join up
Speaker 1: and be part of the world of the Matreon. And
Speaker 1: if you're not, you're going to be a poor, unfortunate soul.
Speaker 1: And then go out there and eat some lepoissant unless
Speaker 1: you're you know, you don't eatisha, then go out and
Speaker 1: eat something. I'm lave vegetabile la broccoli. Go with some broccoli.
Speaker 1: This has descended into chaos. See you later by