Changing for You
Aug. 15th, 2009 03:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteFor some reason while I was trying to get to sleep tonight, I was struck with a thought: The Little Mermaid and Grease really are a lot alike. Both of them feature a pair of people that fell for each other shortly after meeting, and don't think they'll meet again. But circumstances align such that they do, and the girl ends up changing herself to be with the guy.
Of course, there are some huge differences too, the least of which is the fairy tale vs. real world settings. I thought perhaps someone might have discussed this somewhere else, but a quick Google search didn't reveal anybody linking the two, so here goes.
To begin with, when I talk about The Little Mermaid (henceforth TLM), I'm talking about the Disney animated musical, not the original Hans Christian Andersen tale or any other adaptations of his story. And Grease, well, Grease is the popular musical movie featuring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
Another thing I feel I should mention is, I love TLM. It was my favorite Disney movie growing up, and I still have a fondness for it above many other Disney films and franchises. Conversely, I hate Grease. Sure, I tried out for the part of Rizzo when my middle school (at least I *think* it was middle school) was putting on a performance of it, but that was mainly because I loved being on stage and performing, not because I liked the story. And Rizzo was a character I admired a lot more than Sandy.
How is it possible that I could love TLM so much more than Grease when they're fundamentally the same story? Or is that, despite the striking similarities, they're not really the same story at all?
To really figure out if they're even the same story, one must begin at the beginning. We have our two heroines, Ariel the mermaid and Sandy, the smart, pretty, wholesome American girl. Where Ariel is spontaneous, rebellious, and fun, Sandy is more reserved, cautious, and polite. Ariel doesn't mind mouthing off to her father, king of all the seas, but Sandy probably takes her parents' words very seriously and is fairly respectful of them.
But then again, Ariel, despite her brashness, is clearly Triton's favorite daughter regardless, and Sandy still had her summer adventure with Danny, the male lead of Grease, regardless of any "wholesome values" or sense of naivete she's supposed to have.
Right there, we have a host of contrasting differences between Ariel and Sandy, and a very striking similarity: both of them have conflicting personality traits. One could argue that this makes them particularly well-rounded, since real people can have inner conflicts too, or aspects of their personality that they keep hidden.
Then comes their journey: Ariel makes a concerted effort to find more about being human, about what their world is like, and how she might someday become one. In the first TLM movie, she's rebelling against mer-kingdom law, more or less; in later movies and in the animated series, it's revealed that Ariel wasn't always interested in humans, nor was contact with them always so forbidden. Her journey to becoming a human is something that's built up over years and years. She ends up taking a rather dangerous route to get there initially: she goes to the sea witch, a known "bad person" in the realm of the sea. She does this mainly because, naive as she is, she sees no other way. She doesn't think that her father would help her, assuming she even knows that he COULD.
Sandy, on the other hand, ends up at Rydell High entirely by coincidence. We don't know why her family's moved from Australia to the United States, but we have to accept it as fact: it's clearly not important enough to the story (or to Sandy) to be mentioned. She also coincidentally ends up meeting and somewhat "making friends" with the very people who could get her to meet up with her summer crush, Danny: the Pink Ladies. They are a varied bunch, but generally have a particular attitude and personality traits that set them far apart from Sandy's "usual" crowd. Sandy shows no particular aptitude for change, not just "at first," but even as the movie progresses. Unlike Ariel, she has no particular reason to change: she didn't follow Danny to his high school, she didn't know enough about him to realize this was his school that she transferred into, and she doesn't think of the Pink Ladies as her "in" to finding or getting back together with him. Sandy, much more than Ariel, expresses naivete about her world and the people in it.
Ariel doesn't share her love of humans with other mermaids. She's well-aware of the fact that it's taboo, although she might not entirely remember why. As a result, Ariel tends to go off and do her own thing on a regular basis, as infuriating as it is to her father, her guardian crab Sebastian, and her scaredy-fish friend Flounder. When she does share what happened when she went to the surface and saved Prince Eric's life, it's with her other sea friends, not any mer-friends or family.
Sandy has no such people at Rydell, at least not serving the sole purpose of "guardian," "hesitant best friend," or "goofy knowledge source." Furthermore, while some of the Pink Ladies might fit the "hesitant friend" or "goofy friend" archetypes, they are also cast in the role of "villain" or "antithesis" to Sandy, because they serve as her catalyst for change, much the same way that Ursula did for Ariel. For that reason alone, Ariel is a very different character than Sandy, because of those that she is surrounded (and chooses to surround herself) with.
Once Sandy's at Rydell, the story of her summer adventure (it's not known that it was with Danny at first) is a sharp contrast to what Danny says. Considering Sandy's personality is built on being wholesome and trustworthy, one might think her side of the story is the true one, but when Sandy makes her abrupt change to fit into Danny's social circle later on in the film, one has to wonder if maybe the seeds were planted during the steamy summer, and if perhaps Sandy DID experiment with a "wild side" of her personality, and at least some of what Danny brags to the boys about (making out in the sand, among other things) is true.
Ursula knows full well who Prince Eric is, but she lets Ariel tell her the story anyway, just to make it seem as though she actually sympathizes. All while Ariel thinks she's getting an opportunity (albeit in the form of a challenge: she has to get Eric to kiss her with True Love's Kiss® within three days), Ursula is planning: she doesn't really care about Ariel, Eric, true love, or any of that. She simply wants to be able to use Ariel as leverage against her father, Triton, so that Ursula, ambitious witch that she is, can take over all the oceans in the world. She's incredibly powerful, but also very confined, and has to resort to working through others to achieve her ambition.
After Sandy reveals her story, one of the Pink Ladies smartly asks who Sandy's love interest is. Sandy reveals the name, and the Pink Ladies realize that THEIR Danny is HER Danny, and what Sandy thinks of him isn't the way he portrays himself at school. Rizzo surprises them both by introducing them, and Danny, surrounded by his friends and the Pink Ladies, acts like the "greaser" he is. This infuriates Sandy, who says she wishes she never met him. Rizzo was not being "evil" or "villainous" by surprising Sandy with Danny; she had no malicious intent in it, and no personal plan for revenge against Sandy or anyone else in her life. She doesn't dislike Danny, but she doesn't like him romantically, either. Rizzo functions well as a leader of others, though her attitude is that of a girl that can handle others on her own, too. She almost comes across as a floater: the sort of girl that goes through life doing what she wants, taking things as they come. If she's got a higher ambition, it's not revealed in the film, since she's not part of the main pairing.
Ariel and Eric never had a meeting where Eric pretended to be something he wasn't, or acted differently around her. Both Ariel and Eric are genuine characters, but in Grease, only Sandy is, and only for a brief while. While the others are also "true to themselves" in how they act most of the time, they are acting to fit a particular image or stereotype, such as "greaser" or "chill girl." When Ariel and Eric finally do meet again, Ariel is the one that seems different: she can't talk, which was the one trait that Eric really remembered about her. He doesn't know much else about her: that she enjoys singing, finds humans fascinating, is easily excitable, a bit naive/gullible, and very passionate. But he finds them out, as Ariel is open and again, true to herself throughout the three days she spends in Eric's company. Ariel loves Eric for who he is, and Eric, while not knowing much about Ariel the mermaid OR Ariel the mute human, ends up loving her for who she is, because despite "deceiving" him by acting human when she's not, she was always true to herself even in "human guise."
Sandy's approximately 17 or 18 years old, and yet she's never had her ears pierced, smoked, drank alcohol outside of a celebratory occasion, and likely never "made out" with anyone, let alone had sex. Ariel's the younger one, but she demonstrates a personality that doesn't care too much about what people think (unless it'll get her in trouble, and even then, she still rebels), even her own father. While drinking and sex don't have any place in Disney animated films, Ariel has a willingness to try new things not just because the people she admires are doing them, but because she loves learning and finding out new things. She knows she should act proper to impress a prince, but Ariel can't help but act like herself, and who cares if that's not what people expect? She also is bold when the circumstances are right: going right up to the human ship where Eric was celebrating his birthday, saving him, and later, singing to him and very nearly kissing him before he awoke. Sandy demonstrates no such boldness of her own accord; when she tries new things, it's to fit in and cave to "peer pressure."
When Danny shows up with the other greaser boys at Frenchy's house when Sandy and the others are there for a sleepover, Sandy sings about how she's still hopelessly devoted to him, despite Danny deceiving her and quite plainly being unwilling to be honest about their summer experiences together. Far beyond this demonstrating naivete, this makes Sandy come across as hypocritical and stupid: either she really cared about Danny's lying or she didn't. Saying she did and lying about it ruins her wholesome, good-girl image that everyone has attributed to her, and part of what supposedly makes her attractive in the first place; saying she did and then changing her mind makes her wishy-washy and superficial.
It could be argued that Eric deceived Ariel by planning to marry Vanessa, but Disney made sure to show that Eric was forcefully hypnotized: not only could he not see beyond Vanessa, but he couldn't even remember his experiences with Ariel. He was a complete puppet, with Vanessa pulling his strings. Ariel is upset by this, but she doesn't think ill of Eric: she thinks that she herself has failed, and that she is the one that doesn't know enough about love, about humans, or about Eric to have gotten him to fall for her in three days. Despite Eric and Vanessa departing on a wedding ship and heading off into the sunset, Ariel doesn't give up: once she finds out that Ursula is really Vanessa, and therefore manipulating the very plot she claimed to help Ariel set in motion, she goes after the ship, even though she's just a human with no voice (literally or figuratively). Ariel's devotion to Eric despite him running off with Vanessa isn't demonstrative of Ariel's naivete, but of her pure heart and devotion to someone she's taken the time to get to know, despite there being a huge barrier between them.
Sandy makes no such effort, and is still devoted to Danny as he presented himself over the summer, not the Danny that she sees at Rydell. When Danny actually up and talks to Sandy, he apologizes for pretending that he didn't know her, or that their summer was very different, but he excuses himself by saying he had an image to maintain and, the all-time classic "It's complicated." Sandy, despite her singing about being so devoted to the image of Danny from summer, seems to have moved on, and Danny is jealous, but he realizes that if he wants Sandy back, he'll have to change. He enrolls in gym, but his efforts seem futile and small compared to the sort of change Ariel made for Eric or that Sandy later ends up making for Danny. All Danny does is try to become more athletic, or a "jock," as if that is more acceptable to Sandy than a greaser: he's still devoted to his greaser self-image as the popular, cool guy. He gives Sandy his ring, which she thinks is sweet, but he still tries to get fresh with her against her will. He wails about driving her apart every time he tries to get close to her, but he can't take any major steps to actually change: he relies on Sandy coming back to him.
When their journeys come to an end, Sandy turns herself into a Pink Lady-greaser type: curly hair, pierced ears, wears lipstick and leather, and is perfectly willing to smoke, drink, and fit everyone's image of "sexy." Where before she was "beautiful" or "cute," now she is strictly "sexy" because it's what she assumed Danny really wanted: a girl that would look good on his arm and put out. Danny gets to be the greaser stereotype he perpetuates at school, rather than showing any sweetness that Sandy may have experienced in their summer together, but Sandy the good girl who was honest and genuine disappears completely. She does this upon realizing that the way she is presently can never be with Danny as he is presently. Rather than accept that fact and move on, or even try to be "friends" with Danny, she throws away all her good traits just because other people see them in a negative light (that she's a prude, that she's a stickler, that she's too naive and a pansy, etc).
Ariel, on the other hand, demonstrates that even though she couldn't get what she wants, she'll still go as far as she can to help those that mean something to her. Even though her father didn't support her interest in humans, she saves him; even though she becomes a mermaid again, she still loves Eric and tries to save him, too. In the end, Triton is the one that has to change and be accepting, and he turns Ariel into a human. In the end, this seems more reasonable and predictable than Sandy's shift, especially since Ariel's change was always out of her control, but she retains her same personality even when human.
In the end, Danny's change into a lettered track star doesn't seem like very much of an effort compared to Ariel's changes to learn more about humans and be with Eric. Sandy's change is so drastic it almost comes as a surprise, and is sickening when you think about the loss of the traits that could have made Sandy a likable character. Two characters may have the same destination, but if the road traveled differs, so too will the perception of that final destination, and whether it's truly the right one or not.
Of course, there are some huge differences too, the least of which is the fairy tale vs. real world settings. I thought perhaps someone might have discussed this somewhere else, but a quick Google search didn't reveal anybody linking the two, so here goes.
To begin with, when I talk about The Little Mermaid (henceforth TLM), I'm talking about the Disney animated musical, not the original Hans Christian Andersen tale or any other adaptations of his story. And Grease, well, Grease is the popular musical movie featuring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
Another thing I feel I should mention is, I love TLM. It was my favorite Disney movie growing up, and I still have a fondness for it above many other Disney films and franchises. Conversely, I hate Grease. Sure, I tried out for the part of Rizzo when my middle school (at least I *think* it was middle school) was putting on a performance of it, but that was mainly because I loved being on stage and performing, not because I liked the story. And Rizzo was a character I admired a lot more than Sandy.
How is it possible that I could love TLM so much more than Grease when they're fundamentally the same story? Or is that, despite the striking similarities, they're not really the same story at all?
To really figure out if they're even the same story, one must begin at the beginning. We have our two heroines, Ariel the mermaid and Sandy, the smart, pretty, wholesome American girl. Where Ariel is spontaneous, rebellious, and fun, Sandy is more reserved, cautious, and polite. Ariel doesn't mind mouthing off to her father, king of all the seas, but Sandy probably takes her parents' words very seriously and is fairly respectful of them.
But then again, Ariel, despite her brashness, is clearly Triton's favorite daughter regardless, and Sandy still had her summer adventure with Danny, the male lead of Grease, regardless of any "wholesome values" or sense of naivete she's supposed to have.
Right there, we have a host of contrasting differences between Ariel and Sandy, and a very striking similarity: both of them have conflicting personality traits. One could argue that this makes them particularly well-rounded, since real people can have inner conflicts too, or aspects of their personality that they keep hidden.
Then comes their journey: Ariel makes a concerted effort to find more about being human, about what their world is like, and how she might someday become one. In the first TLM movie, she's rebelling against mer-kingdom law, more or less; in later movies and in the animated series, it's revealed that Ariel wasn't always interested in humans, nor was contact with them always so forbidden. Her journey to becoming a human is something that's built up over years and years. She ends up taking a rather dangerous route to get there initially: she goes to the sea witch, a known "bad person" in the realm of the sea. She does this mainly because, naive as she is, she sees no other way. She doesn't think that her father would help her, assuming she even knows that he COULD.
Sandy, on the other hand, ends up at Rydell High entirely by coincidence. We don't know why her family's moved from Australia to the United States, but we have to accept it as fact: it's clearly not important enough to the story (or to Sandy) to be mentioned. She also coincidentally ends up meeting and somewhat "making friends" with the very people who could get her to meet up with her summer crush, Danny: the Pink Ladies. They are a varied bunch, but generally have a particular attitude and personality traits that set them far apart from Sandy's "usual" crowd. Sandy shows no particular aptitude for change, not just "at first," but even as the movie progresses. Unlike Ariel, she has no particular reason to change: she didn't follow Danny to his high school, she didn't know enough about him to realize this was his school that she transferred into, and she doesn't think of the Pink Ladies as her "in" to finding or getting back together with him. Sandy, much more than Ariel, expresses naivete about her world and the people in it.
Ariel doesn't share her love of humans with other mermaids. She's well-aware of the fact that it's taboo, although she might not entirely remember why. As a result, Ariel tends to go off and do her own thing on a regular basis, as infuriating as it is to her father, her guardian crab Sebastian, and her scaredy-fish friend Flounder. When she does share what happened when she went to the surface and saved Prince Eric's life, it's with her other sea friends, not any mer-friends or family.
Sandy has no such people at Rydell, at least not serving the sole purpose of "guardian," "hesitant best friend," or "goofy knowledge source." Furthermore, while some of the Pink Ladies might fit the "hesitant friend" or "goofy friend" archetypes, they are also cast in the role of "villain" or "antithesis" to Sandy, because they serve as her catalyst for change, much the same way that Ursula did for Ariel. For that reason alone, Ariel is a very different character than Sandy, because of those that she is surrounded (and chooses to surround herself) with.
Once Sandy's at Rydell, the story of her summer adventure (it's not known that it was with Danny at first) is a sharp contrast to what Danny says. Considering Sandy's personality is built on being wholesome and trustworthy, one might think her side of the story is the true one, but when Sandy makes her abrupt change to fit into Danny's social circle later on in the film, one has to wonder if maybe the seeds were planted during the steamy summer, and if perhaps Sandy DID experiment with a "wild side" of her personality, and at least some of what Danny brags to the boys about (making out in the sand, among other things) is true.
Ursula knows full well who Prince Eric is, but she lets Ariel tell her the story anyway, just to make it seem as though she actually sympathizes. All while Ariel thinks she's getting an opportunity (albeit in the form of a challenge: she has to get Eric to kiss her with True Love's Kiss® within three days), Ursula is planning: she doesn't really care about Ariel, Eric, true love, or any of that. She simply wants to be able to use Ariel as leverage against her father, Triton, so that Ursula, ambitious witch that she is, can take over all the oceans in the world. She's incredibly powerful, but also very confined, and has to resort to working through others to achieve her ambition.
After Sandy reveals her story, one of the Pink Ladies smartly asks who Sandy's love interest is. Sandy reveals the name, and the Pink Ladies realize that THEIR Danny is HER Danny, and what Sandy thinks of him isn't the way he portrays himself at school. Rizzo surprises them both by introducing them, and Danny, surrounded by his friends and the Pink Ladies, acts like the "greaser" he is. This infuriates Sandy, who says she wishes she never met him. Rizzo was not being "evil" or "villainous" by surprising Sandy with Danny; she had no malicious intent in it, and no personal plan for revenge against Sandy or anyone else in her life. She doesn't dislike Danny, but she doesn't like him romantically, either. Rizzo functions well as a leader of others, though her attitude is that of a girl that can handle others on her own, too. She almost comes across as a floater: the sort of girl that goes through life doing what she wants, taking things as they come. If she's got a higher ambition, it's not revealed in the film, since she's not part of the main pairing.
Ariel and Eric never had a meeting where Eric pretended to be something he wasn't, or acted differently around her. Both Ariel and Eric are genuine characters, but in Grease, only Sandy is, and only for a brief while. While the others are also "true to themselves" in how they act most of the time, they are acting to fit a particular image or stereotype, such as "greaser" or "chill girl." When Ariel and Eric finally do meet again, Ariel is the one that seems different: she can't talk, which was the one trait that Eric really remembered about her. He doesn't know much else about her: that she enjoys singing, finds humans fascinating, is easily excitable, a bit naive/gullible, and very passionate. But he finds them out, as Ariel is open and again, true to herself throughout the three days she spends in Eric's company. Ariel loves Eric for who he is, and Eric, while not knowing much about Ariel the mermaid OR Ariel the mute human, ends up loving her for who she is, because despite "deceiving" him by acting human when she's not, she was always true to herself even in "human guise."
Sandy's approximately 17 or 18 years old, and yet she's never had her ears pierced, smoked, drank alcohol outside of a celebratory occasion, and likely never "made out" with anyone, let alone had sex. Ariel's the younger one, but she demonstrates a personality that doesn't care too much about what people think (unless it'll get her in trouble, and even then, she still rebels), even her own father. While drinking and sex don't have any place in Disney animated films, Ariel has a willingness to try new things not just because the people she admires are doing them, but because she loves learning and finding out new things. She knows she should act proper to impress a prince, but Ariel can't help but act like herself, and who cares if that's not what people expect? She also is bold when the circumstances are right: going right up to the human ship where Eric was celebrating his birthday, saving him, and later, singing to him and very nearly kissing him before he awoke. Sandy demonstrates no such boldness of her own accord; when she tries new things, it's to fit in and cave to "peer pressure."
When Danny shows up with the other greaser boys at Frenchy's house when Sandy and the others are there for a sleepover, Sandy sings about how she's still hopelessly devoted to him, despite Danny deceiving her and quite plainly being unwilling to be honest about their summer experiences together. Far beyond this demonstrating naivete, this makes Sandy come across as hypocritical and stupid: either she really cared about Danny's lying or she didn't. Saying she did and lying about it ruins her wholesome, good-girl image that everyone has attributed to her, and part of what supposedly makes her attractive in the first place; saying she did and then changing her mind makes her wishy-washy and superficial.
It could be argued that Eric deceived Ariel by planning to marry Vanessa, but Disney made sure to show that Eric was forcefully hypnotized: not only could he not see beyond Vanessa, but he couldn't even remember his experiences with Ariel. He was a complete puppet, with Vanessa pulling his strings. Ariel is upset by this, but she doesn't think ill of Eric: she thinks that she herself has failed, and that she is the one that doesn't know enough about love, about humans, or about Eric to have gotten him to fall for her in three days. Despite Eric and Vanessa departing on a wedding ship and heading off into the sunset, Ariel doesn't give up: once she finds out that Ursula is really Vanessa, and therefore manipulating the very plot she claimed to help Ariel set in motion, she goes after the ship, even though she's just a human with no voice (literally or figuratively). Ariel's devotion to Eric despite him running off with Vanessa isn't demonstrative of Ariel's naivete, but of her pure heart and devotion to someone she's taken the time to get to know, despite there being a huge barrier between them.
Sandy makes no such effort, and is still devoted to Danny as he presented himself over the summer, not the Danny that she sees at Rydell. When Danny actually up and talks to Sandy, he apologizes for pretending that he didn't know her, or that their summer was very different, but he excuses himself by saying he had an image to maintain and, the all-time classic "It's complicated." Sandy, despite her singing about being so devoted to the image of Danny from summer, seems to have moved on, and Danny is jealous, but he realizes that if he wants Sandy back, he'll have to change. He enrolls in gym, but his efforts seem futile and small compared to the sort of change Ariel made for Eric or that Sandy later ends up making for Danny. All Danny does is try to become more athletic, or a "jock," as if that is more acceptable to Sandy than a greaser: he's still devoted to his greaser self-image as the popular, cool guy. He gives Sandy his ring, which she thinks is sweet, but he still tries to get fresh with her against her will. He wails about driving her apart every time he tries to get close to her, but he can't take any major steps to actually change: he relies on Sandy coming back to him.
When their journeys come to an end, Sandy turns herself into a Pink Lady-greaser type: curly hair, pierced ears, wears lipstick and leather, and is perfectly willing to smoke, drink, and fit everyone's image of "sexy." Where before she was "beautiful" or "cute," now she is strictly "sexy" because it's what she assumed Danny really wanted: a girl that would look good on his arm and put out. Danny gets to be the greaser stereotype he perpetuates at school, rather than showing any sweetness that Sandy may have experienced in their summer together, but Sandy the good girl who was honest and genuine disappears completely. She does this upon realizing that the way she is presently can never be with Danny as he is presently. Rather than accept that fact and move on, or even try to be "friends" with Danny, she throws away all her good traits just because other people see them in a negative light (that she's a prude, that she's a stickler, that she's too naive and a pansy, etc).
Ariel, on the other hand, demonstrates that even though she couldn't get what she wants, she'll still go as far as she can to help those that mean something to her. Even though her father didn't support her interest in humans, she saves him; even though she becomes a mermaid again, she still loves Eric and tries to save him, too. In the end, Triton is the one that has to change and be accepting, and he turns Ariel into a human. In the end, this seems more reasonable and predictable than Sandy's shift, especially since Ariel's change was always out of her control, but she retains her same personality even when human.
In the end, Danny's change into a lettered track star doesn't seem like very much of an effort compared to Ariel's changes to learn more about humans and be with Eric. Sandy's change is so drastic it almost comes as a surprise, and is sickening when you think about the loss of the traits that could have made Sandy a likable character. Two characters may have the same destination, but if the road traveled differs, so too will the perception of that final destination, and whether it's truly the right one or not.
