Classic Literature – Page 2

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: A New Jane in Cary Fukunaga’s ‘Jane Eyre’ (2011)

Movie poster for Jane Eyre (2011)

This is a guest post by Rhea Daniel.

The ghosts of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë have suffered several film adaptations of their most famous works, and the problem with multiple film adaptations of the same novel, however well-meaning or loyal to the text, is that watching three versions of the same story before reading the book can numb one out to the brilliance of the original. I’ve seen this scene before, I’ve heard this dialogue before, I’ve had enough of this famous line because I got to see the three versions of Pride and Prejudice before I hit fifteen. Thankfully, Jane Eyre falls way below Pride and Prejudice in the best 100 books list, so its adaptations didn’t have as much reach or appeal of the latter. I did get to read articles and see films on the Brontës though and they were terribly interesting and creative people, their suffering contributing to the achey longing that filled their books. Lowood School with its pitiful conditions, for one, took its characteristics from the school where the writer lost two of her elder sisters.

The film uses a nonlinear timeline, choosing to begin with Jane’s long trek through the moors after she runs away from Thornfield Hall, her past played out as she is questioned by St. John, making her trudge down the unhappy path of memories again. This actually makes the film more interesting and we need that, because the story of a governess falling in love with her (much older) employer is one overdone in romance novels.

Mia Wasikowska awed us as Alice by blooming from an anxious young girl running away from an undesired proposal into a sword-wielding Jabberwock-killer. As Jane Eyre, she manages to convey the character of the (on the surface) insipid and sexless governess quite well. Blanche Ingram‘s blatant disrespect for her only reinforces the image of the dry governess, but the audience already knows that the deeply passionate Jane is more than that. As for Rochester, Brontë describes him as such:

I traced the general points of middle height, and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features, and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.

As Byronic dudes go, Michael Fassbender is close with the stern features and heavy brow, but who are we kidding, both the stars have painfully good looks. Mia’s trademark furrowed brow only makes her more appealing. Michael Fassbender makes a great Byronic dude with his wrinkles. The match seems perfect. In fact the entire movie is terribly perfect; it lacked the rawness of the book, and that’s the only thing I could find wrong with it.

In the beginning, Adèle tells Jane the story of the vampire-woman haunting Thornfield hall, with Adèle’s doll pressed up against the window of a dollhouse in the background.

Jane Eyre (2011) screenshot

The doll represents the watchful presence of Bertha, not revealed as yet, keeping a close eye on the occupants of Thornfield Hall, whenever she manages to escape her prison at least.

Rochester assumes Jane is a bit of a weirdo after seeing her fanciful paintings, telling her as much. Her response, implying that she’s even weirder than he thinks, arouses his curiosity. Her gaze is direct, she is not cowed by him, she possibly hates his (initially) overbearing nature because she’s had her fill of men like him. In their second conversation he reaches out to her almost desperately, bringing his hidden vulnerabilities to light. He finds a kindred spirit in Jane and the inexperienced Jane is moved. We can tell because when she first arrives at Thornfield hall, she curiously glances at a nude painting and after her second conversation with Rochester, she dares examine it more closely. Jane is a decent artist; but for the prudery of the times, she would be practicing human anatomy, but she can’t of course. And considering the reactions to the presence of the painting in the film even in this day and age, one can have plenty of reasons to imagine why*. There’s is more to this painting: Jane’s latent sexuality is aroused, and the presence of the painting is a way of showing a fleshly desire for Rochester. I know this is obvious, but being an artist myself I tend to disagree about equating the two.

The kissing scene in the movie plays itself out exactly as I imagined in the book. Immersed as I was in the tale my reaction was in keeping with the times: what a little strumpet. She’s so enamored by the kiss that she barely notices Mrs. Fairfax’s horror, beaming happily from ear to ear before running off to her room. The insipid governess blooms; she is not so sexless after all. Suddenly she’s a biological creature, and it’s almost vulgar for the audience.

This is just a weak moment for Jane. She is stronger than Rochester. Rochester makes two wrong choices and pays dearly for them. He’s taken in by a profitable, loveless marriage. He falls for a woman’s charms before he is betrayed but he adopts her daughter; both choices stretch his misery yet Rochester is a man with a conscience. Jane has no money or physical charms to speak of, and he finds that simplicity “becoming.” He thinks she won’t cause him any problems. He doesn’t however, speak a word in the defense of Jane after Blanche’s acidic remarks about her profession. Is he spineless and afraid to mess up his courtship with Blanche, or is he trying to make Jane jealous? Would it be patronizing and tiresomely chivalrous of him to speak out on Jane’s behalf? Would Jane be insulted if he shushed Blanche and came to her rescue? We don’t get to see that resolved; all we have to settle for is his rejection of Blanche.

After Bertha’s presence is revealed, Jane refuses to go through with the illicit marriage. There is more for Jane to fear than loneliness with this decision. In Lowood school, there was one thing that kept her passions in check: physical chastisement. Later when Rochester begs her to stay, she is faced with her physical vulnerability again when he says “I could bend you with my finger and my thumb! A mere reed you feel in my hands.” Jane keeps her individualism intact at yet another level in spite of the memory and trauma of past physical violence. If she had said yes she would have to live with the specter of the first wife lurking in the background for the rest of Bertha’s life. As an unloved child, she is not lured into the comforts of heart and hearth, compromising the laws of societal convention that Rochester, who obviously has been burned by both love and marriage, is willing to put aside. Though Rochester’s revulsion for all manmade laws is understandable and his story worthy of pity, she does not hitch her fate to his, and for the abandoned child not to lunge at such an offer is surprising, for why should Jane worry about societal convention? In the book, it’s because it’s ethically wrong. In the movie it is because she must respect herself (thank you Cary, Moira). In spite of being confronted with the fear of loneliness once again, accentuated by her cold and the endless trek through the moors, Jane manages to make a decision well-balanced by intellect and intuition. She does it once again, refusing the offer of marriage from St. John, not giving in in spite of him berating her “lawless passion,” and in spite of owing him her life, because it would go against her nature and thus “kill” her. Jane is a classic proto-feminist**; she controls her passions enough to work out her priorities, but not at the expense of her deepest desires.

When Jane returns after the fire, she finds what remains of the painting is but the frame, the canvas burnt out and the half-burnt doll sitting inside it (symbolism much?). Jane has been jolted out of her brief experience with earthly pleasure (burnt nude painting), and her love for Rochester has matured. Bertha (the doll) is gone; no hurdles remain between Rochester and Jane’s union. Jane picks up the doll with some sadness when Mrs. Fairfax finds her. In spite of Bertha being Rochester’s ball and chain, neither of them blames her. Considering the lack of knowledge in the field of mental health, Rochester was being kind for the time by locking her up. She was still the madwoman in the attic though, standing like a rock between Jane’s and Rochester’s happiness, and once she was gone, they could all breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Perhaps she represents the wild, passionate part of Jane’s psyche that is now released, but I’m not going to stretch that one out…

The central story of the complex lone woman, unloved and unwanted–matched with the world-weary hero set in a background that’s far from sumptuous–is in great danger of turning into a great depressing drag of a tale, so it’s incredibly important for that spark and pull between them to work. The script by Moira Buffini aids this, taking only the relevant bits from the novel and chipping away at them so that they shine at the significant parts of the movie, avoiding the verbal diarrhea that can come with being loyal to a classic novel. The music too, soars lonesome and yearning to match the tormented souls of the main characters. The lighting is superbly planned, muted and misty in the day and full of deep flickering shadows in the night, the house dark and creaky just like the gothic Thornfield of the book. From what I saw of the deleted scenes (those are always interesting) Helen’s ghost arrives to guide Jane through the moors. This coupled with Jane’s hearing Rochester’s voices would have been clairvoyant overkill, so I’m glad that was edited out. Jamie Bell is amazing as St. John, a warmer version than the book. Judi Dench plays Mrs. Fairfax, sticking to the role of a secondary character and not pressing her presence, the trait of a self-assured and experienced actress***. The claim to the horror element by the crew though, I can’t really place. This movie wasn’t remotely nail-biting or scary.

Whether Jane Eyre purists agree with me or not, there’s little not to like about Jane Eyre (2011), and I eagerly anticipate the release of director Cary Fukunaga‘s next film.

*It’s art, barely pornographic, get over it people.

**Not sure if the term applies, but I love it so I’m using it!

***For who can forget the woman who called James Bond “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur“??

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Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell My Concubine’

Official movie poster for Farewell My Concubine

This is a guest post by René Kluge.

[Trigger Warning for rape and sexual violence.]

The protagonist in Farewell My Concubine (PR China, 1993) is a woman. Or is it? On the one hand the lead role is played by the famous male Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung. On the other hand, since being a little boy in a Bejing Opera training school, Cheng Dieyi gives up his male identity and plays the female parts in renowned Beijing Operas. The rest of the movie shows him adapting femininity not only on stage but also in real life. In fact, he struggles with telling the Opera world and real life apart. Even his stage name – Dieyi, which loosely translates to Butterflydress – has a female connotation. His femininity is contrasted with the hyper masculinity of his stage partner Duan Xialou. Between him, Xialou and Xialou`s wife Juxian, a complex ménage à trois with changing relationships develops. According to some commentators[1] the asserted analytical solution to this scenario is to take Dieyi as a symbolic woman. Dieyi is male, but in the context of the movie, he performs the function of a woman.

Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi

The interesting part is how he becomes that symbolic woman. It is not his own decision based on sexual preferences, as in known trans* movies like The Birdcage or Boys Don´t Cry; it is also not cross-dressing as in Some Like it Hot or Mulan. Instead, Dieyi suffers through a violent process, which forces him to adapt a female identity and give up his masculinity. Right in the beginning of the movie, Dieyi´s own mother cuts of his sixth finger with a butcher knife in order to make him acceptable for the opera school admission standards. Dieyi´s mother is a prostitute and even in the brothel there is no place for him. He has to go through this act of “straightening” to be fit for any kind of social community. While the sexual connotation of this brutal amputation is not outright obvious, the next initiation Dieyi has to endure has a clear symbolism. Dieyi starts training to become a Bejing Opera actor. It quickly transpires that he is exceptionally gifted in all the required skills and talents. The only problem is, when asked to recite a passage from a traditional play, he refuses to sing the correct line I am by nature a girl and not a boy and stubbornly sings, I am by nature a boy and not a girl. In the presence of an influential opera producer, this behaviour risks the future of the whole company. Consequently Xiaolou, who is by now Dieyi´s close friend, forces a pipe down his throat. He does this so vigorously that a small stream of (defloration) blood flows out of Dieyi´s mouth. As a result, Dieyi dutifully sings the role and uses the correct words: I am by nature a girl. Dieyi has to submit to this procedure in order to become a successfull Opera actor – a Dan, male actors who only play female roles. After Dieyi´s and Xiaolou´s first big and successful opera performance, the two get seperated. Dieyi is led to the chamber of an old eunuch who rapes the still very young boy. Right after this, Dieyi finds an abandoned baby on the street side, which he decides to take with him. Continuously disciplined with brutal beatings by the harsh opera teacher, Dieyi runs the gamut from castration, penetration rape, and accidental motherhood to complete his way to a female identity. The symbolic woman is not born, but the product of (violent) social conditions. It is therefore not completely absurd, as some commentators argue, to see Farewell as a filmic interpretation of the feminist philosophies of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauviour.

The young Deiyi after the penetration with a pipe

To get a broader view of the filmic representation of femininity in Farewell we have to take a closer look at Juxian, the other (biological) woman in this movie. Juxian is played by Gong Li. As with other movie stars, Gong Li brings with her the aura of her prior roles. She is particularly known for starring in Zhang Yimou’s so-called Red Movies. In Red Sorghum, Judou, and Raise the Red Lantern, she playes women who are unwilling to passively accept the rigid social roles that the traditional Chinese society reserved for them. Whether through deceit, protest, escape or inner refuge, all those female protagonists fight against the oppression of women by men. Juxian herself is proud and strong. She is a prostitute, but buys herself out of a brothel to marry Xialou. While Xialou is unemployed and suffers from depression, she runs the little inn they own by herself, and when Dieyi struggles to overcome an opium addiction, she is the one who brings up the emotional and physical strength to lead him through detoxification. In an enigmatic scene at her wedding, she takes the red veil – which serves as the symbol of domestic oppression in all the Red Movies – off herself, signaling that it is she who initiated the wedding and that she is no victim of an arranged marriage. But if we look closer, it becomes obvious that her goal is not independence, but rather seeking Xiaolou´s love and companionship. The women in the Red Movies were trapped by the social institution of marriage and struggled to get out. Juxian, on the other hand, is a social outcast and seeks to find her way into mainstream society and into marriage. She needs Xiaolou; she needs the male to accomplish this goal. The emancipatory impetus of Juxian is therefore a double-edged sword.

The same double-edgedness can be found in the portrayal of homosexuality in Farewell. There is no mention or depiction of homosexuality in Farewell, but the connotations are very clear. While there seems to be some underlying homoerotic tensions between Dieyi and Xiaolou, Dieyi engages in an escapade with an influential opera patron. Homosexuality was virtually absent from Chinese cinema up to that point, so having a homosexual protagonist in a big and expensive production movie seems like a big step forward. Sadly, this protagonist is teemed with homophobic stereotypes: he is timid, soft, and jealous. In contrast to A Lan, the protagonist in the Chinese independent movie East Palace West Palace, that premiered just three years later, Dieyi is not openly homosexual. He has no self-confident homosexual identity. Instead he hides his preferences from society and from himself. Most importantly, he plays the role of a woman. Probably the most common prejudice that gay men have to tackle is the imagined coherence between femininity and homosexuality. Dieyi becomes gay when he takes on the female identity. Masculinity and homosexuality still seem to be mutually exclusive phenomenons. Zhang Yuan, the director of East Palace West Palace is not a homosexual. In an interview, he explained that he still felt capable of identifying with the stigmatization and hardship that gay men in modern Chinese society have to endure because he himself, being an underground artist, often faces similar problems. On the other hand Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell is not an underground artist. The commercial and critical success of Farewell made him one of the most popular Chinese directors today, who seldom has problems with funding, obtaining filming permits, etc. One could argue that Zhang Yuan´s marginalized social position enabled him to show an attitude of solidarity toward homosexual men and create a filmic image of them, which is free of discriminating stereotypes. In contrast, Chen Kaige was incapable of obtaining this position of solidarity. Thus his portrayal of homosexuality is more abstract and artificially detached.

Gong Li as Juxian

A gender conscious reading of Farewell hence raises a question that seems to play a big role in many contributions on Bitch Flicks: In light of a film history that has in big part either ignored women or made them the objects of the male gaze, is the sheer visibility of women and/or trans* people already a step forward, or must we pay closer attention to the substance of the representation? This is a question that is not easy to answer, especially for me being a white heterosexual male with no shortage of role models and media idols. Maybe this question is actually very personal and revokes an abstract theoretical analysis. Maybe every female, trans* and/or homosexual person has to choose for her/himself. If they can relate to Dieyi or Juxian, identify with them and understand their personal emancipation and empowerment through them, then no detached scholarly interpretation could argue with that.

[1] For example Wendy Larson: The Concubine and the Figure of History. Chen Kaige´s Farewell my Concubine. In: Sheldon Lu: Transnational Chinese Cinema. Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: 1997.

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René Kluge is a German PhD. student. He studied Philosophy and Chinese Studies in Berlin, Potsdam and Beijing. His main interests lie in questions of labour, gender and interculturality.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell My Concubine’

Official movie poster for Farewell My Concubine

This is a guest post by René Kluge.

[Trigger Warning for rape and sexual violence.]

Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi

The young Deiyi after the penetration with a pipe

Gong Li as Juxian

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René Kluge is a German PhD. student. He studied Philosophy and Chinese Studies in Berlin, Potsdam and Beijing. His main interests lie in questions of labour, gender and interculturality.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Ballet Shoes’

Written by Max Thornton.

If people see a list of things I love – science fiction, fantasy, progressive rock, movies about zombies, witty and charming sitcoms that you will watch on NBC Thursday nights at 8/7c starting February 7 – they might be surprised to learn that I think ballet is awesome.

If people see a list of my favorite authors – a small selection: China Mieville, Ursula LeGuin, Alan Warner, J. G. Ballard, Margaret Atwood – they might be even more surprised to learn that some of my most dearly beloved childhood books are about ballet.

This odd and rather niche enthusiasm neither stemmed from nor translated to any interest in performing myself. Slightness of build, grace, agility, physical stamina, a right and a left foot instead of two lefts: I have never in my life possessed any of the attributes necessary for success in the field of ballet dancing. My single semester of lessons was a comedy of ineptitude for my watching family, and a crushing humiliation for me.

Me.

All of which is to say, the depth of my love for Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 children’s classic Ballet Shoes might initially seem baffling. Until you read it, and learn how very very awesome it is. Alternatively, you could watch the 2007 BBC adaptation starring Emma Watson, which is very nearly as charming as the book.

Ballet Shoes is the story of three sisters, Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil. Adopted from assorted circumstances of orphanhood by the eccentric fossil-collector Great-Uncle Matthew, or “Gum,” they are brought up by his great-niece Sylvia and her beloved nurse Nana while Gum is off on a decade-long expedition around the world. When poverty compels Sylvia to take in boarders, the Fossils’ lives change dramatically: they are sent to a stage school to learn dancing and acting.

Much of the story’s genius lies in the characterization of the three sisters. Beautiful Pauline is a talented actress who feels the responsibility of being the eldest sibling; dreamy, waifish Posy thinks of nothing but dancing, to the point of complete otherworldliness; Petrova is the tomboy, the middle child, and the odd one out, who loathes being onstage and is happiest around engines. This set-up creates a lovely interplay of strong, distinct personalities who are united by the loyal bonds of sisterhood, which is really the heart of the story.


Petrova (Yasmin Paige), Posy (Lucy Boynton), Pauline (Emma Watson)

The adaptation is fairly faithful, notwithstanding the inevitable glossing over of details and eliding of the timeline. Two notable changes that, in my opinion, weaken the story are the character assassination of Winifred and Theo’s happy ending. Winifred is an enormously gifted actor and dancer, who is consistently overshadowed by the classically beautiful Pauline. In the book, she is also a genuinely sweet person and a stalwart friend to the Fossils; in the film, she’s rather bratty and unkind. Theo, one of Sylvia’s boarders, has no personal life to speak of in the book, but gets an unlikely reunion with a long-lost lover at the end of the film. I understand the motivation for these changes – they heighten the story’s fairy-tale feel: every character, good and bad, gets what she deserves – but they’re unfortunate from a feminist standpoint. Female friendship is undermined in order to perpetuate the tired trope of the jealous, spiteful girl; while the cleaning up of romantic loose ends reinforces the old chestnut that a single woman couldn’t possibly be happy.

Probably the biggest alteration made from the book to the film is the Sylvia and Mr. Simpson subplot. The book Simpsons are a happy couple, both boarders who act as friends and parental figures to the Fossils; movie-Simpson is a widower who lost his wife (and child, for added Tragic Backstory) to typhoid. Seeing that Mr. Simpson is the only male character of any presence in the story, he and Sylvia somewhat inevitably get a little romance.

This subplot has overtones of a lot of tedious cultural tropes, from the above-mentioned Unhappy Single Woman thing to the Wounded Man Who Can Only Be Healed By The Love Of A Good Woman, but on balance I think it’s a good thing. Sylvia gets very little characterization in the novel outside of her noble devotion to her girls; the love story is only one of several ways in which she is fleshed out for the film – she also gets an ongoing health problem and a rather charming unlikely friendship with Theo.

Theo (Lucy Cohu) and Sylvia (Emilia Fox)

What I really love about this story (apart from the “lady doctors,” who are certainly a couple) is that it’s ultimately a story about sisterhood and chosen family. Three orphans, a young woman, an older nurse, two retired professors, a dancing teacher, and a widower – none of them related by blood – come together, mostly by chance, and constitute a family. That’s pretty progressive for 1930s Britain. The three sisters love each other dearly, but they also have dreams and big ambitions. Their familial devotion and their wild ambitions are never presented as being in conflict; in fact, it’s those very ambitions that bind them together, as they vow on every Christmas and birthday: “We three Fossils vow to put our name in the history books, because it is uniquely ours, and ours alone, and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers.”

At the end of the story, Gum – the patriarchal male figure who has been totally useless and absent from the entire thing – returns after a decade abroad. He asks in surprise, “Who are all these women? … I brought entrancements! I brought babies!” To him, the girls were souvenirs, fossils, which he brought back as presents from his globe-trotting exploits. In his absence, they have grown into a close family of faithful sisters and strong, ambitious women, and it’s because of their guardian and their wealth of female role models, and certainly not because of their grandfathers.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: The Depiction of Women in Three Films Based on the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

This is a guest review by Alisande Fitzsimons.

Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is one of those writers whose stories—like those by the Brothers Grimm and Scheherazade (the Persian Queen who spun the stories that make up A Thousand and One Arabian Nights)—are so much a part of our culture that you undoubtedly heard them, and watched film adaptations of them, as a child.

Andersen had an unfortunate habit of falling in love with unobtainable women and later unobtainable men. The theme of lost love, and of the thing we love the most coming to destroy us is repeated throughout his fiction, much of which features a woman or female character in a lead role.

This essay will look at some adaptations of his most famous stories, and examine the role of the female protagonist in them.

Moira Shearer as Vicky in The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes (1948)

The film of the The Red Shoes differs slightly from HCA’s original tale. Rather than using it as a template for the whole film, the story is used as the basis for a fifteen-minute ballet that is performed in the movie. The composing and performing of the ballet is a crucial plot point within the movie.

The film revolves around Vicky (Moira Shearer), a prima ballerina, whose love for dance destroys her, the same way that the girl in HCA’s original story is destroyed by her beloved red shoes which eventually force her to dance herself to death.

The female protagonist Vicky is presented on-screen as flame-haired and beautiful. Less sympathetic though is the character’s passion for dance, and for The Red Shoes ballet in particular. Her obsession with it is such that she leaves her husband so that she can dance it once more, only to realise she’s made a mistake. She follows him to the train station and ends up being injured by an on-coming train, while wearing the red shoes she used to perform in.

Though the girl in HCA’s story is vain and wished for shoes that would let her dance forever, you’re aware that she’s also desperate to get out of the situation. In the film, it is Vicky who is possessed. She’s so obsessed with her career, and in particular the ballet that made her famous, that she cannot pass up a chance to dance it. Even when running after her husband, she does not remove her performance shoes.

It’s basically another film where a woman who’s career-focused is depicted as mentally ill because of it, and duly punished. No wonder it’s one of Courtney Love’s favourite films.

Bridget Fonda’s Snow Queen makes her romantic rivalry with Gerda clear

The Snow Queen (2002)

There have been many adaptations of The Snow Queen over the years (she’s a consistently scary bitch) but I’m talking about the 2002 made-for-TV adaptation starring Bridget Fonda as the eponymous villain of the piece. (It falls on me here, for no reason other than the fact that I’m immature and enjoy this kind of thing that “Bridget” rhymes with “frigid,” and to be frigid is to be icy and so on. Anyway…)

The most striking difference between HCA’s story and the film is that when it was made for TV the producers opted to make the story’s heroine, Gerda, into a love rival for the queen. In the fairy tale, Gerda and Kai—the boy the queen wants to own/seduce depending on the version—are best friends rather than girlfriend and boyfriend.

In the film, they are romantically involved, and so a story about friendship and sacrifice becomes one about a love triangle in which two women fight over a man. So far, so typical a Hollywood adaptation. But bearing in mind that HCA’s original story was about two children, and the sacrifices one was willing to make to save the other’s soul, isn’t that a bit sad?

It’s not just that two women can’t see each other as anything other than rivals for a man (even when one of them is a supernatural being with the power to control winter). By making the story “more accessible to modern audiences,” which producers love to do by reducing women to the sum of our ancestors’ parts (because once-upon-a-time we would have had to fight each other in order to make the best marriage we possibly could) they’ve actually made it a lot more boring. Sigh.

Disney’s Little Mermaid Ariel gets her fairytale ending

Splash (1984) and The Little Mermaid (1989) based on The Little Mermaid

The fact of the matter is that, if you’re looking for an accurate rendering of The Little Mermaid on-screen, you probably won’t find one. The animated Disney version of the story, complete with singing lobsters and a best friend called “Flounder the fish,” sticks closely to the majority of the story but leaves out the fairy tale’s violence, pain and death in favour of a good inter-species marriage at the end.

It’s hard to overstate how violent HCA’s original story is. The mermaid’s tongue is cut out, she dances for the human prince despite being in excruciating pain, having never quite gotten her landlegs, and—after she realizes he will never love her—she has to decide whether or not to shed his blood using a massive knife. It’s no wonder that the man who received this story in the form of a love letter from HCA turned down his affections.

Directed by Ron Howard, Splash is one of the more enjoyable romantic comedies of the eighties, possibly because of the fairy tale elements it contains. Like the little mermaid of the fairy tale, Daryl Hannah’s gorgeous mermaid Madison first catches sight of her prince as a child.

Years later, when she washes up on the shores of Manhattan, the two are re-united and romantic and comedic chaos ensues until he decides he loves her so much that he will follow her to the sea, from where he can never return (although he will live for 300 years which might be some compensation).

Although Splash is very loosely based on HCA’s story The Little Mermaid, the decision of the male protagonist to follow his love into the sea is a direct contradiction of it. For one thing, in HCA’s story the mermaid does not get her man. He marries a more suitable human instead, and the mermaid perishes before becoming a spirit (it’s a bit complicated but very spiritual).

Daryl Hannah as Madison in Splash

I rather like this ending to a film because despite not sticking to the original story, it offers viewers a chance to see something that is still relatively unusual on-screen: a successful male character giving up his life for the woman (mermaid) he loves. He sacrifices everything for her, with no real guarantee that he’ll be happy, and absolutely no way back. In that way, the male lead (Tom Hanks) is more like the little mermaid of HCA’s original story, who gave up her life below the sea for the human she loved, than Daryl Hannah’s character.

Both Splash and Disney’s The Little Mermaid stick to HCA’s premise that once a mermaid is on shore, she will be rendered mute. Feminists have had a field day with this part of the story but bearing in mind HCA’s sexuality, it’s also possible to read their silence as a manifestation of his desperation to be loved.

Rather than forcing his female characters into silence as a nod to the social roles enforced by the patriarchy of the era, might this be HCA’s way of telling his love that he will silence himself for them?

Conclusion

The adaptation of works from previous centuries is, if sometimes undesirable, inevitable. The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, though still accessible to readers today, often shock with the violence and victimization that occurs to his lead characters, many of whom are, yes, female.

What strikes the modern reader, especially in light of what we know about HCA’s sexuality and relationships, is that many of these characters, though written as female are likely to be the writer consciously or unconsciously expressing parts of himself.

It’s curious then to see a character such as the Little Mermaid, who in literature sacrificed everything for the man she loved, pursued by a man who willingly sacrifices everything for her in one film version of the story, and happily married in another.

The film versions of The Red Shoes and The Snow Queen offer up more interesting re-interpretations of HCA and his characters’ psyches. In The Red Shoes, a character is destroyed by her mental illness and vanity—qualities the homophobic are very quick to attribute to gay men.

In the film version of The Snow Queen, the love of a good woman (Gerda) turns the character of Kai from a jealous, spiteful, mean young man (again qualities that homophobes love to attribute to young gay men) into the caring, loving, definitively heterosexual boy the filmmakers want him to be.

While it’s nothing new to argue that books and fairy tales reinforce the heteronormative, it’s interesting to think that HCA might once have been trying to do something quite different, and to imagine what a queer filmmaker might be able to come up with.

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Alisande Fitzsimons likes to eat. She blogs regularly at xoJane.co.uk and tweets about it @AlisandeF.