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The Disney-fication of Fairy Tales
From Grimm and Anderson to Disney and back
Beware — the Disney Princesses have escaped from the screen and they are everywhere. On water bottles, colouring books, and children’s shoes. Frozen merchandise includes swimming suits and thongs, although I don’t recall Elsa and Anna going to the pool. You can even buy Disney Princess nappies so that your little princess can urinate and defecate into a pink, branded, disposable nappy. The marketing has become so ubiquitous that even if your children haven’t seen the films, they will know the characters’ names.
This essay is not going to be about the marketing phenomenon that is the Disney Princess. Peggy Orenstein covers that in detail in her brilliant book Cinderella Ate My Daughter (2011: Harper Collins Books). Rather, I want to look at how Disney has adapted the traditional fairy tales from Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm and its role in enforcing stereotypes about gender, age and class. It is easy to dismiss the movies as sugary children’s entertainment but Disney has an all-encompassing presence that makes it hard to ignore.
Anderson’s The Little Mermaid was published in 1837. A century and a half later, Disney adapted the tale for its 1989 feature film of the same name. Like Anderson’s mermaid, Disney’s Ariel longs to become human after seeing the handsome prince. However, the mermaid’s and the prince’s relationship is very different in the original fairytale.
Disney’s Prince Eric is the straightforward stereotype of the charming prince. As in most Disney films, he is blandly handsome and lacking personality. Ariel falls for him at first sight but cannot communicate her love for him as she has sacrificed her voice to Ursula the sea-witch. By the end of the film, Eric has fallen for Ariel and they are married, presumably to live happily ever after. In Anderson’s tale, the prince sees the mermaid in a paternal way; he is described as loving her like you would a child. If we take our romantic blinkers off, would it not be disturbing if someone found a naked, mute girl on the beach, took her home and decided that he might marry her…
