“I'm not asking much, just a token really, a trifle!
What I want from you is - your voice.” – Ursula the Sea Witch (1989)
One of the “magical” things about the Disney films of my childhood was the way they took horrendously dark morality tales from The Brothers Grim and Hans Christian Andersen and put a happy, sugar-cookie coated, ice-cream soda spin on them for the silver screen. It became its own adverb – Disnified.
It was generally agreed to in the 1980’s that childhood was a precious commodity and that children’s entertainment should be dumbed down to the point of only “Happily Ever Afters” to keep children as innocent as possible as long as possible in our sex-crazed, cold war lovin’, nuketastic “material world.”
So when Disney released its 1989 classic with the most singably crowd-pleasing soundtrack since The Sound of Music, no one batted an eye at how deeply the plot of this “Mermaid-Coming-of-Age” story departed from the original tale penned a century and a half earlier by Andersen. No one that is - except a self-proclaimed pubescent “edge lord” (before such a phrase existed) from rural Western Upstate New York. You see – I had, in my possession since age six, a very lovely illustrated story-book version of the original tale (translated to English of course from the original Danish.) I knew the REAL ending of The Little Mermaid. ***Spoiler Alert*** She DOESN’T marry the prince and live happily ever after. The prince marries the girl his parents picked out and Mermaid can’t stop it because she gave up her voice. And she DIES. She gave up her voice and she DIED.
Imagine – a story from “progressive” 1830’s Denmark that teaches girls surrendering their voice for “love” will lead to DEATH. But the modern, post-feminist 1980’s version of this film depicts a head-strong teenage girl in “training” clam-shells who puts it ALL on the line for the first guy she sees and somehow wins even though she can’t speak – and combs her hair with a fork… (Manic Pixie Dream Girl much?)
Sure, I loved the movie. I learned all the songs with all the accents. But I knew the secret they were hiding – women who were seen and not heard do NOT win the day. They get cast overboard and dissolve into sea
foam – or maybe they get a second chance as a ‘daughter of the air’ to obtain an immortal soul after 300 years of servitude… Potato/potahto…
“Rev – WHY are you railing on a small discrepancy in 37-year-old cartoon movie?”
Because 37 years ago, the most popular film of the summer created by corporate media told kids that they could give up their voices and everything would still work out. The prince would fall in love with you anyway and fight to save you and your family. Daddy would step in with some magic and make everything better even though he didn’t agree with your choices. Crabs and fish made better friends than main dishes. THE LIES!!!
And today many women rejoice with the deplatforming of Andrew Tate. Just like they celebrated with the deplatforming of Alex Jones, Donald Trump and dozens of other people whose views and rhetoric they don’t like. Me? I’ve never wanted to shut down individual people for their words – even when their words are lies. Hell – I knew Disney’s Little Mermaid was a lie and I demanded that my mom buy it for us on VHS and I paid for the soundtrack with my own birthday money!
But something far more sinister than a Sea Witch with two pet eels is happening here. We’ve been signing away our voices little by little for years now. It started when our values were challenged and we were told that if we didn’t buy into the new narratives on equity and inclusion we were bigots. We didn’t have a magic contract with a Sea Witch – but if we dared to speak out on social media against these new western order ideals – even just to question the desired outcomes of such concepts – we were linguistically crucified and “blocked” by people we considered friends.
It was odd terrain – far more foreign for most of us than anything we’d ever encountered before the digital information age. Many of us grew up valuing spirited debate and challenging the status quo. Punk, Hip-Hop and the X-Files taught us to question everything and trust no one – especially the government, big pharma and the multi-national corporations.
The Bill of Rights was SACRED to both the Left and the Right. As a proud member of a military family (yes – I KNOW “pride” is sin) I always held to the notion of, “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to my death to defend your right to say it.”
But we began self-censoring – you know – to keep the peace. And then eventually, little by little, self-censorship led to silent complicity, which then morphed into quiet agreement. This has now become in, many cases, virulent defense of arguments that less than a decade ago many new “defenders” would have openly scoffed at. And now the Sea Witch’s contract HAS been signed – in blood. If you hold your tongue – like a good little mermaid – and go along with the central narrative – your social media posts will be seen by more people and they will be #liked and you will be “cyber popular” and become a Real Influencer. Because – of course – you are wielding the influence of the machine. You have been socially conditioned to behave in a certain way. And you have signed a little more of your soul over to the Sea Witch each time you agree to new “terms of service.”
She’s not asking much from you. Merely a token. Only a trifle. What she wants is – your voice.
And you’ve (we’ve) given it to her in one fashion or another. Either by speaking against the machine to be silenced like Jones, Tate and Trump or by simply refusing to speak because we understand the consequences OR by bending our personally held values to gain social acceptance. No matter “witch” way you slice it – she has “your voice.”
In the original story, the mermaid was told she could save her own life by killing the prince. Isn’t that what social media tells us each day? “Say the correct thing, and you will live. Continue to say the “wrong” things and you will lose your voice, your access, your friends, your livelihoods…”
The mermaid still loved the prince – even though he betrayed her, so she throws first the dagger and then herself overboard to be consumed by the ocean that was once her home. She doesn’t really have a choice. She gave up her voice.
So friends – are you ready to stop taking shady deals in underwater caves with Sea Witches? How will you take your voice back? Or will you just let the machine grind you down into sea foam?