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