The Little Mermaid Discussion

[xxhplinkxx]

Don't get me wrong, I love it too, but her cheeks look noticeably more round/chubbier in that scene than most other ones.

I love the look on her face when she first spots Eric. That's such beautiful animation, so lifelike!

Oh, I agree! I love her expression in that.

[xxhplinkxx]

Ok, so has anyone else ever thought of this?

So when Ariel becomes human and became the Queen (I'm guessing?), do you think she made a law banning all seafood in her kingdom?


And the whole "Queen" thing brought up another point. Did they become King/Queen when the got married? Where the hell are Eric's parents? Why weren't they present at their own son's wedding? Tsk tsk.

[Escapay]

Ok, so has anyone else ever thought of this?

So when Ariel becomes human and became the Queen (I'm guessing?), do you think she made a law banning all seafood in her kingdom?

[Bruce]Fish are FRIENDS, not FOOD![/Bruce]

And the whole "Queen" thing brought up another point. Did they become King/Queen when the got married? Where the hell are Eric's parents? Why weren't they present at their own son's wedding? Tsk tsk.

Dead?

Maybe they disowned Eric when they found out he was in love with a fish.

albert

[totallyminnie86]

I may have already asked this here but, here goes:

Years ago I read on a random forum a post mentioning that the original theatrical release contained a major difference in the scene where Ariel signs Ursula's contract. The person claimed that instead of signing it with a pen, Ariel signed in blood, and it swirled into her name on the piece of paper.

I did see this in its original theatrical release, however I was only 2

Just curious if anyone has any knowledge or insight on this.

[Sky Syndrome]

I may have already asked this here but, here goes:

Years ago I read on a random forum a post mentioning that the original theatrical release contained a major difference in the scene where Ariel signs Ursula's contract. The person claimed that instead of signing it with a pen, Ariel signed in blood, and it swirled into her name on the piece of paper.

I did see this in its original theatrical release, however I was only 2

Just curious if anyone has any knowledge or insight on this.

That makes me think of the animated movie, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. In it, a boy and girl run away to a freak circus and the owner has them sign in blood (from pricked fingers) in order to join his circus. Before the kids sign it, the contract is blank but when it's signed the contract's text reveals itself and the kids' blood smears vanish with a poof of red smoke and their names appear.

[Elladorine]

I may have already asked this here but, here goes:

Years ago I read on a random forum a post mentioning that the original theatrical release contained a major difference in the scene where Ariel signs Ursula's contract. The person claimed that instead of signing it with a pen, Ariel signed in blood, and it swirled into her name on the piece of paper.

I did see this in its original theatrical release, however I was only 2

Just curious if anyone has any knowledge or insight on this.

I always remember it being the fishbone "pen" (I saw it in the theater when I was 13).

Something I do remember reading though is that the artists planned on putting different symbols on the contract as the camera quickly pans down it as inside jokes, including a gun pointed at Mickey Mouse's head. Didn't make it into the final cut though.

Oh, and anyone here know anything about handwriting analysis? Ariel has a rather interesting signature.

[JaneMccoy]

Oh, and anyone here know anything about handwriting analysis? Ariel has a rather interesting signature.

i learned a little bit in my psych class...if i find a screen cap, maybe i can decipher something

[Chernabog_Rocks]

Oh, and anyone here know anything about handwriting analysis? Ariel has a rather interesting signature.

i learned a little bit in my psych class...if i find a screen cap, maybe i can decipher something

I think that her signature will tell us it was animated by someone who works for Disney and drew it because it was needed for that scene

[Disney's Divinity]

Sky Syndrome, I don't know if TLM ever had "blood" in it or not, but that movie's exactly what I thought of, too! I remember a scene from Cinderella III: Twist in Time reminding me of the movie, too--when all the green mist is swirling around Tremaine when she's turned back time (and the music there is similar, for a few moments). I haven't seen We're Back! in forever though.

Anyway, here's Ariel's signature:

It's as if she started writing in print, then turned to cursive after the A. Anyway, I've always liked the way they did the scroll. I like how the middle part is nonsense and unreadable, because it explains Ariel's state of mind and how Ursula's taking advantage of her emotional state and naivete.

[xxhplinkxx]

Makes me think... the last thing she did was finish the L... so at what point did she cross the A and dot the I? I know when I write my name (Christopher) the last thing I always do is cross the T and dot the I, so it always makes me want to see Ariel sign her complete name from the beginning.

[Disney Duster]

I've always been interested in the contract, and Ursula's stuff in general.

I like how the middle part is nonsense and unreadable, because it explains Ariel's state of mind and how Ursula's taking advantage of her emotional state and naivete.

Interesting and plausible...but I always thought A) Ursula made some of it their common language and the rest of it a magical language or alphabet Ariel would not know so she couldn't read maybe what would happen to her when she belonged to Ursula, so she wouldn't know other things, etc. B) Atlanteans write really weird with some English words and alphabet and then something else, or C) The animators didn't want to write the whole long fine printed contract that the audience couldn't read. Remember there's time and money that always figures.

C is the most likely, but as usual your theory is still possible.


Don't mind this, just temporarily saved for school...



Michael Quelet
ARTA 101
Doug Zucco
Essay I

For years we have wondered about our own existence. Not just how we became what we are, but why we became at all. Those two things are both wondered about when thinking about cavemen, often simultaneously. Well, maybe most people, mostly, at first, just wonder about how we got to be the beings we are, but the why comes with this often and easily.

Art separates us easily from all other creatures. With intelligence and the way we show emotion also came expressing ourselves and making things other creatures couldn’t even dream of because, well, they can’t think like us. Birds make nests and primates make tools, and though they serve as homes and items necessary for survival, who am I to say I know they didn’t also like how they looked? I mean, nests are beautiful. But still, they aren’t near the same as the actual art we make. Our art is entirely different. Unfathomably, to them and even to us, different.

Art, or at least these cave paintings, seems to have started 30, 000 year ago. This art was made in the same age as the old stone age, from roughly 35,000 BC to approximately 12,000 BC, the very early time for humans when they covered many parts of the globe but hunted and gathered in tribes, before settling down in one spot for agriculture. But they say we made tools first, things for our survival before art. And these were for our survival. They are considered beautiful, or at least interesting to look at today, but they say that back then, they were only for survival. I think surely the humans who made them must have thought they made something neat, neat to use and or also neat to look at, something that didn’t exist before, but we don’t know how they felt. But from this came the art.

Cave paintings were first discovered in 1879, when Maria, the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat, Don Marcelino de Sautuola, was small enough to crawl through the small space to get into the save and see the drawings, after he discovered the area of the cave in 1868 when a hunter’s dog fell into some rocks that hid the entrance of the cave, and Don Marcelino investigated after hearing about it. At first this discovery was thought of as a hoax, but when more cave art was discovered in many other places, people started believing they were real. Ah, thus is the way of science and history, no? We believe in things or we don’t, and then we change our minds about them, and we change our minds again. It’s true! No, it’s not! Yes, it is!

Apparently some animal engravings had been discovered in a French cave before this, though. Spain and France. Yes, most of the caves have been discovered in Europe. It made me wonder if there was something about the beautiful land that inspired the people there to make art. So many cave paintings are found in France. France is known for its art, or at least I think Europe and especially France are very artistic, and if not that, very beautiful. Cave art is most commonly found in the Chavet cave in Ardeche, France, and the Cave of Lascaux in Dordogne, France. The Chavet cave is the oldest known cave discovered, probably around 3, 2000 years old. The archeologist Meg Conkey discovered Chauvet in 1994. Apparently no humans had been around it in or anywhere near it for thousands of years. With many hand prints in addition to the usual animals seen on the cave walls, the paintings looked like they could have been done today, and is considered one of the best examples of cave paintings.

Cave paintings could have been made in many ways, and are made in many different ways, with many different techniques. They took from the nature around them, like plants, animal blood, and sap, to make inks and dyes. Adding red ochre and black manganese, they could make these long-lasting lines, shapes, and figures on the stone walls. In the deep, dark caves, they probably worked by the light of a lamp lit by animal fat. They might have chewed a piece of something like charcoal and blue on there hand to trace the shape. That’s like a stencil, and they even might have made holes and shapes in leather to be stencils. There is also finger paintings, and various other possible ways they made this great art, called Parietal art today. I am reminded that today young children do things like this often as their introduction to art. Taught to them, or not. I do know children make things almost out of anything, like mud.

I was happily surprised to learn that some of the oldest paintings were quite complex and detailed, yet some later ones were more simple. It seems they may have chosen to stylistically, specifically make their art in certain ways, how they wanted it. Like, today artists can make something very complex and people think that’s the best and most beautiful, but others choose to make it simple on purpose because that is what they like and want to express, it serves what they want to express. It’s just what they choose to do and like doing. Animals depicted include hyenas, lions, rhinos, panthers and wooly mammoths, but most of all horses, which look different from the ones today, more like an extinct or possibly only endangered species in China or Mongolia. I remember hearing animals, as well as fruit, and probably other things in nature actually might be a lot different from the way they were back then.

But why did cavemen make this art? I must admit, I think it’s almost silly to ask that question. Why do we make art? Like, us, today? You might as well just ask that question. But still, we wonder, and there could even be all these reasons that aren’t like any of the reasons we have for making art today. Like, today we, or most of us, don’t really make art for survival. But what if the cavemen did? Perhaps art was a way of helping them feel alive, or maybe they even thought they had to put their spirit on the wall. Or maybe it even was literally believed you had to make art to keep living, or maybe you had to make art to stay human, to keep dominance over and have difference from the animals and any other creature.

Or was it for the gods? To please them, make a kind of shrine to them, or just do something for them? Was it so the gods would help them? Maybe it was a way of telling the gods something or asking them something. If it wasn’t specifically for deities, maybe the cave people made it to be divine. Like making art was holy or spiritual in and of itself, so they did it for that reason. Going with that idea, the images on the walls done the way they were may have been a way to bring them good things in real life in a spiritual way, even specifically through animal spirits through the animals depicted.

But going back to the idea they made art to make art, and they made art like we make it today, some people believe they were decorating the walls, as we do, with wallpaper, graffiti, or even paints and drawings. I am once again reminded that children draw on the walls, and are often scolded for it. Some scientists believe that since the cave art came before the written language, they communicated stories, like about a successful hunt, or anything, with the pictures instead of words. Once again, children understand things from pictures and picture books, probably before they quite grasp words. They could have been spiritual and storytelling, like passing a story on to the other side. Or they could have been to say something to people passing through the cave in the physical world, at the time the artists was living or after he was gone.

Though the painted animals could have been thought to have god-like qualities, or be gods, they could have been done as just a ritual related to the hunt. The animals were most likely those needed for food. The paintings could also be calendars, almanacs, coming of age ceremonies, records of tribal migration, and mystic paintings made during a shamanistic trance. No one knows for sure what the cave paintings mean or were for, but at least they know that some of it actually was for specific people, anyone in the public, or even just for individuals, privately and personally.

If I were one of Paleolithic people, so new to everything, or rather, everything was so new to me, I think I would be amazed at what I could do. I think I would be amazed that I could make such paintings like that, draw, create anything really, but especially things like that. So them making them just because it looked cool, or interesting, or at least the amazingness of people able to do it, to capture things in life on the walls yourself, is part of why they came to be.

Hoover, Marleen. “Art of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Eras.” Art History Survey I.
July 2001. August 15, 2006. < http://www.accd.edu/sac/vat/arthistory/ ... PALNEO.htm>
“Art at the Time of the Cro-Magnon.” <pagesperso-orange.fr/prehistoirepassion/articles%20patricia%20originaux/art%20at%20time%20of%20Cro-Magnon%205.doc>
Maggie. “Cave Drawings.” Before Wire.
October 2004. March 2005. <http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/004 ... awings.htm>

[Elladorine]

i learned a little bit in my psych class...if i find a screen cap, maybe i can decipher something

Cool! I've always been interested in hearing someone else's interpretation.

I think that her signature will tell us it was animated by someone who works for Disney and drew it because it was needed for that scene

Well obviously it's not a "real" signature and was designed by someone in order to look pretty, but it's fun to look into. And I can't help but wonder if the person who designed it knew a little something about handwriting analysis, either intuitively or from studying.

It's as if she started writing in print, then turned to cursive after the A.

That's referred to as print-writing and is supposed to be a sign of a flexible mind.

Makes me think... the last thing she did was finish the L... so at what point did she cross the A and dot the I? I know when I write my name (Christopher) the last thing I always do is cross the T and dot the I, so it always makes me want to see Ariel sign her complete name from the beginning.

I doubt it was intentional on the part of the artists, but people who cross the t's and dot their i's *before* signing their name have a sense of showmanship and a trust of their intuition. More likely though is that they felt it was more dramatic to make her hand swoop down at the end of the animation there.

It's that end stroke that intrigues me, actually. After finishing the l, she swoops back toward her name and unnecessarily drops down into the lower zone, ending with what appears to be a fish hook. That swoop is an unnatural stroke to begin with (because it goes in the opposite direction of which we are taught) and thus suggests deception. And going to the lower zone, well, without getting into a lot of complicated explanations it represents the id. The hook reminds me a little of a felon's claw, which is a sign of guilt.

I'm really rusty with all of this though and my father was much better at this stuff than I, but basically, it's as if her signature reflects the fact that she's feeling guilty over going against her father's ways and falling in love with a human.

Or perhaps I'm reading way too much into this.

[Disney's Divinity]

Well, regardless of whether it was intentional or (more likely) not, it fits. Although I think she might be more guilty about going to Ursula, and less so about falling in love with Eric.

C) The animators didn't want to write the whole long fine printed contract that the audience couldn't read. Remember there's time and money that always figures.

C is the most likely, but as usual your theory is still possible.

That was most likely the reason, but I still think it conveys the mood properly because of how it represents Ariel's pov in the moment. Strange how shortcuts can somewhat end up adding to a movie for once.

[Elladorine]

Well, regardless of whether it was intentional or (more likely) not, it fits. Although I think she might be more guilty about going to Ursula, and less so about falling in love with Eric.

Perhaps, but I was leaning more towards Eric because the lower zone not only covers the id, but sexuality. When people start making "weird" strokes in the lower zone like that it tends to represent an awareness of feeling outside the norm of society in that respect. Falling in love with . . . well, a whole other species? Feelings for a human would certainly be outside the norm in a society of merfolk. I've read in at least one official Disney book this version of The Little Mermaid is a metaphor for sexual awakening regardless, so it's an interesting consideration to make.

That was most likely the reason, but I still think it conveys the mood properly because of how it represents Ariel's pov in the moment. Strange how shortcuts can somewhat end up adding to a movie for once.

I never gave much though to that but I'll have to agree with you there. It's not important for us to see the details of the contract, we already know the gist of it and Ariel's point of view.

And to get back to what I was saying about the inside joke . . .

Of course, the producers of "Pocahontas" weren't the first folks to cut a proposed in-joke from a Disney animated film just because they were afraid that it would ruin a moment in a movie. The production team for "The Little Mermaid" had proposed an in-joke that would have appeared on screen for only a 10th of a second. Even so, Disney executives still made them cut the gag out.

This joke would have appeared near the end of Ursula's big number, "Poor Unfortunate Souls." As the sea witch unrolled the scroll that Ariel must sign to become human, the camera quickly flies over the fine print. None of the writing on the contract is very distinct.

That's how the scene appears in the finished film. But -- were one to view this same short scene on one of those highly illegal work-in-progress versions of "The Little Mermaid" that are floating around out there -- one would see something quite amusing. Going frame by frame as the camera rolls down the scroll, one would eventually see a series of arcane symbols on the contract. These symbols included a hand gun being pointed directly at Mickey Mouse's head.

Given that the writers/directors of "The Little Mermaid," John Musker & Ron Clements, are notorious for stashing in-jokes in their movies (See "The Great Mouse Detective," "Aladdin" and/or "Hercules" for proof), it's quite likely that these guys were the two pranksters who tried to slip this obviously anti-Disney gag into the film. Unfortunately, Disney management somehow got wind of the proposed in-joke and insisted that it be dropped from the finished version of the film. (Though -- given that this gag revolved around a revolver pointed at the company's corporate symbol -- it's easy to understand why some folks might not find this particular in-joke very amusing.)

~ source

[Disney's Divinity]

Well, I can understand why Disney might not like that "joke," but I doubt the makers of it were anti-Disney (although it's possible they were). Maybe they just thought that, you know, Ursula's the villain, so she'd definitely be anti-Mickey, anti-good. Even lateron, she's shown against Mickey in Fantasmic.

Perhaps, but I was leaning more towards Eric because the lower zone not only covers the id, but sexuality. When people start making "weird" strokes in the lower zone like that it tends to represent an awareness of feeling outside the norm of society in that respect. Falling in love with . . . well, a whole other species? Feelings for a human would certainly be outside the norm in a society of merfolk. I've read in at least one official Disney book this version of The Little Mermaid is a metaphor for sexual awakening regardless, so it's an interesting consideration to make.

Yes, when I think of it that way, I agree with you. I've always considered Ariel's story a sexual awakening, I just thought you meant she would be guilty over her love for Eric because Triton hated humans rather than because she was attracted to someone outside the norm.

[totallyminnie86]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Perhaps this person was confusing it with "We're Back" lol, oh man I haven't seen that movie in years.

Enigawing- I heard about that mickey with a gun thing too. Before I knew it was cut, years ago when I first heard, I spent ages searching for it in each frame in that sequence, lol.

Also, I have a set of the TLM trading cards, and can almost point out the image in a particular card as well, however.. to me, it looks like Mickey with a sword or something. I'll have to have another look. I may scan it if anyone else is up for investigating, lol. In this trading card, its at the top and hidden in a very swirly design, I could sort of trace around the lines to find a mickey image. Or maybe I'm mistaken, lol.

[Chernabog_Rocks]

Given that the writers/directors of "The Little Mermaid," John Musker & Ron Clements, are notorious for stashing in-jokes in their movies (See "The Great Mouse Detective," "Aladdin" and/or "Hercules" for proof),

There's in-jokes in those movies? I mean I knew about Scar, that's rather hard to miss and I'm assuming the in-joke is the Dumbo toy in GMD?

[rb_canadian181]

But -- were one to view this same short scene on one of those highly illegal work-in-progress versions of "The Little Mermaid" that are floating around out there -- one would see something quite amusing.

Does anyone know any more information about the work-in-progress version? I've been studying this film for a while and a new perspective on it would be incredible! Please PM me if you can help out

Interesting perspectives, guys! it's been a joy to read this because i can tell you are all really thrilled about the movie!

[Goliath]

Given that the writers/directors of "The Little Mermaid," John Musker & Ron Clements, are notorious for stashing in-jokes in their movies (See "The Great Mouse Detective," "Aladdin" and/or "Hercules" for proof), it's quite likely that these guys were the two pranksters who tried to slip this obviously anti-Disney gag into the film. Unfortunately, Disney management somehow got wind of the proposed in-joke and insisted that it be dropped from the finished version of the film. (Though -- given that this gag revolved around a revolver pointed at the company's corporate symbol -- it's easy to understand why some folks might not find this particular in-joke very amusing.)

Musker and Clements must have gotten the idea for that in-joke while reading Floyd Gottfredson's 1930 Mickey Mouse newspaper comic 'Mickey Mouse tries to commit suïcide'. I'm not kidding, Mickey actually tries to kill himself, at one point trying to shoot himself:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/20/mi ... ies-d.html

[totallyminnie86]

I agree, any info about this "highly illegal" work in progress version would be amazing.