The Little Mermaid – Pain, Love, and Death
Years ago, when I was in school, the entirety of students were shuffled into the gym for a long-forgotten reason, sat down on the hard, wooden floor and “The Little Mermaid” was projected for us all to watch. I think that my favorite part of this Disney version was the singing seagull who walloped through the hit song “Kiss the Girl” with guttural la-la-las until he was physically silenced by the little red crab. I loved the juxtaposition of a happy little tune on a romantic date trying to set the mood for some smooching and this seagull is bellowing in the background just trying to fit in…why is he the only animal in the whole Disney-oceanic world who can’t sing? In this well-known version of this cartoon the foul-singing fowl is painful on the ears, but the original story is filled to the brim with pain and misery. Hans Christian Anderson wrote a tale of a young mermaid who
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