The Little Mermaid: Like the Garden of Eden, Only Wetter

The Little Mermaid opened in theaters 25 years ago Monday (Nov. 17). It proved to be a pretty significant day in the annals of animated filmdom, marking not just the beginning of Disney’s fabled renaissance (Beauty and the Best, Aladdin and The Lion King followed hot on the Mermaid’s scaly heels) but also an unrivaled run of animated excellence across the industry. Mermaid’s artistic and commercial success helped lead to Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me and Frozen. Before The Little Mermaid, animated films were, really, cartoons—meant for kids and tolerated by adults. Mermaid reminded us that these things could be art, and contain a pretty powerful story, too.

Some don’t see it that way. Willa Paskin, writing for Vulture in 2011, said, “What’s most striking about The Little Mermaid now is that it’s a kids’ movie, but from a time before studios were even aware that parents would have to watch these things too.”

But truth is, The Little Mermaid was, and is, a story with crossover appeal: I was in college when it was released, and the thing was huge—so much so that many of my friends went en masse to see the thing. It’s a love story, a musical, and sometimes a campy delight. And it’s got some spiritual heft to it, too; perhaps unintentional, but still there.

Think of Ariel’s underwater world as a soggy sort of Garden of Eden.

It’s portrayed as a paradise—so much so that Triton’s head crab, Sebastian, can’t quite figure out why Ariel’s not completely satisfied with the place. In the deep theological treatise known as “Under the Sea,” he stresses that this underwater realm is completely free of worry and anxiety, pointing out that outside these watery walls things are much different: “Up on the shore they work all day/Out in the sun they slave away/While we devotin’/Full time to floatin’/Under the sea.”

He makes the whole of dry land sound a little cursed—almost like the curse that God laid on Adam back in Genesis 3:17-20: (“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground,” it reads in part.)

But Ariel is driven with a craving for forbidden knowledge—the knowledge of what’s outside this watery Eden. She collects terrestrial artifacts and eventually falls in love with someone who’s more comfortable topside, the handsome Prince Eric. Ariel’s father, King Triton (looking remarkably like Michelangelo’s version of God, if Michelangelo stuck a tail on Him) is, naturally, furious: The outside world is not for her, Triton insists. In fact, he forbids her from having anything to do with Eric or the drier world above.

So who comes along? Two very snake-like eels named Flotsam and Jetsam. They tell her that their boss, the Sea Witch Ursula can give Ariel what she wants: Access to the land above and, of course, Eric. Ariel can have that forbidden fruit she so desperately wants … if she only takes the bait—I mean, bite.

(Now, this takes on an deeper resonance when you consider Ursula’s origins. We don’t know much about her backstory, but she does mention that she used to “live at the palace” but has since been banished—”practically starving,” she complains. Her admission suggests a backstory that mirrors Lucifer’s own banishment from heaven. And let us not lose sight of the fact that Ursula, like Lucifer, collects poor, unfortunate souls.)

Here, the movie shifts slightly fromParadise Lost to Faust: Ursula promises to give Ariel everything she longs for in return for her voice. If Ariel can make Eric fall in love with her, then she gets to keep her legs. And if she can’t get that to happen in three days (another little biblical echo there), Ariel’s soul belongs to the sea witch.

Ariel gets her legs. Unable to stay underwater, she essentially casts herself out of the garden—and must go to a much drier, harsher world filled with (as Sebastian has warned us) pain, labor and fish-eaters.

Now, Disney doesn’t make this topside look all bad, of course. Eric’s palace isn’t exactly a sweat shop. But the fact remains that Ariel has been exiled from paradise to … somewhere else; another home that isn’t really her home. She’s a fallen mermaid, if you will. And when mermaids fall, they fall up—to an equally fallen world.

Ursula will make sure that Ariel will stay fallen. She plots and schemes and directly interferes with Ariel’s own designs until the third day’s up. There’s only one way, it seems, for Ariel to escape her fate as another soul in Ursula’s collection of them. Someone will have to take her place. And in a very New Testament twist, that someone is Ariel’s own godlike father, Triton. He gives his own life for that of his child … even though she got herself in trouble through her own disobedience.

Now, it’s here where this vaguely spiritual string of metaphors kinda breaks apart, what with Eric spearing Ursula’s midsection with a ship and all. But that doesn’t change the fact that The Little Mermaid is a story of redemption: Ariel doesn’t return to her watery paradise, but through grace and sacrifice, she’s no longer a completely fallen creature, either. She was saved, quite literally, and in the end finds happiness even in her fallen state, and as apart of a fallen world, because she knows her Daddy loves her—loves her enough to sacrifice everything for her.

I think it holds a little bit of water … don’t you?

Paperman: God is My Paper Airplane Co-Pilot

Cartoons should be seen, not heard.

That seems to be the philosophy for short animation films these days. "Forget dialogue," animators seem to say. "Let's tell a story with just pictures and movement and maybe a little music. Who needs those stinkin' words?!" 

And they've got a point. I mean, the folks who craft these moving works of art are ... well, artists. They've been trained to talk through image. And when we see Pixar's amazing short films (most of which are wordless) or "The Master," which I blogged about last year, words seem superfluous--even distracting. These artists understand what we sometimes forget (particularly us writers): The most profound, most powerful moments often come unaccompanied by syllabic flotsam. Words just get in the way.

Take a look, for example, at "Paperman"--a short by Disney that's been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film (Animated). Just six minutes long and presented in gloriously rich black and white, it still conveys a world of emotion.

Nifty, ain't it? It needs not a single word of explanation but is still filled with promise and regret and tension and magic. No back story needed. No subtext required. It's a  gem to be appreciated simply for what it is.

And yet, it also sticks with you. And maybe in its wordless way, it propels you along an unexpected line of thinking.

"Paperman" obviously wasn't designed to be a spiritual illustration. And yet it could be--on the strange, mysterious way in which some of us feel God works in our lives. 

Look at the man again, throwing his pile of paper airplanes. All his work and toil (and perhaps painful papercuts) seem to come to naught. But then, the airplanes themselves seem to pick up the cause, mysteriously forcing these two would-be lovers together. The planes lead, encourage, even flirt. And when the man seems bent on going another way, they physically force the guy to move toward his destiny.

I've interviewed a lot of folks who feel as though God has "told" them what to do--that He pushed them to perform a certain task or take up a certain job or give a certain gift. "I didn't want to do it," they sometimes tell me. "I had no intention of doing it. But it became so obvious that that's what God wanted me to do." It's as if God's paper planes surrounded them and pushed them along.

Now, I've always treated these stories with a certain skepticism, maybe because I've never really been there--never felt so obviously "pushed" by God. I have no burning bushes or talking donkeys in my backlog of memories. I've never heard God tell me to do something. Never felt Him manipulate me like a Ouija pointer to a pre-determined course. Oh, don't get me wrong: I've felt God's presence in my life (or I feel as though I've felt Him), but when it comes to big decisions--to leave an old job or capitalize on a new opportunity or take a grand leap of faith--God grows silent. 

Or perhaps not. Maybe He, like the film "Paperman" itself, speaks to me without speaking  ... His influence quiet but inexorable, graceful but unmistakable. After all, He knows us all so well. Maybe He knows (just like my wife knows) that I don't like to be told what to do. Maybe He speaks to us in tailored language, communicating what we need to hear in ways we best understand. 

Maybe God knows that, for some reason, I need my illusion of control. That I need to make my paper airplanes. And that the beauty of faith for me isn't so much in certainty--a call from God by bullhorn--but in mystery. To watch my planes float through the air, wondering where an unseen hand might take them.