Disney Debunking 5: Ursula isn't the Villain of The Little Mermaid?
So... I've joked (a LOT) that The Little Mermaid started a new trend at Disney: one in which the true "villain" is trauma from bad parenting. Moana's dad is so overprotective and controlling that it borders on abuse. Maui's parents tried to murder him because his eyes are too close together. Anna and Elsa need years of troll therapy because of King Agnarr. Tiana actually had wonderful parents, but her dad maybe miscommunicated some life lessons before being killed. Fa Zhou goes from being a loving parent to Mulan to getting caught up in patriarchal B.S. King Triton is a raging, controlling racist until he immediately regrets losing his shit at Ariel and doesn't know how he can apologize to her.
But I've read way too many posts and articles actually defending Ursula as a good octo-person.
Hahaha, no. That witch is evil.
So here's how those Ursula-defenders are wrong.
1.) "Ursula was a feminist fighting the patriarchy of Triton's Atlantica".
A feminist is someone who advocates that women deserve equality with men, at it's basic core. Is Ursula trying to fight to bring equal rights to the mermaids of Atlantica? Fucking no! She wants to turn everyone into emaciated shrimp. She manipulates and hurts people to gain power. She wants power only for HERSELF. Triton isn't oppressing her because she's female. Triton is oppressing her because she's an evil and power-hungry criminal. That isn't her first emaciated shrimp collection. Ursula is a feminist like Cruella is an animal-rights activist. Or like how I'm a disciplined Sims 4 cc creator. 😅
2.) "Ursula is offering Ariel freedom and a choice, unlike her father King Triton."
Lulz, no. Ursula is manipulating an abused teenager into signing a contract that Ursula sets up to fail. Everything Ursula feeds Ariel is a fucking lie, and then she steps in as "Vanessa" to straight up sabotage Ariel. This argument is delusional. You want to tell me next how casinos are designed to give us the freedom to become millionaires? All Ursula's contracts are scams. I don't even understand how anyone can be dense enough to think otherwise...
3.) "Ursula is right about everything she tells Ariel about all men, and Eric even proves it true at first."
Okay, so... These people clearly didn't watch the movie. Props for even getting Eric's name right by googling it, I guess.
Sure, some men don't care what a woman has to say and only understand "body language". One of them is named Gaston. Li Shang's soldiers also fall into this camp, until they actually spend time around a real woman and realize that they're, y'know, people too. There are sexists out there, for sure.
Eric is not one of them.
I'm forcing myself to not dive too deep into this, since that will be another post. But Eric literally is not romantically interested in Ariel at first. I mean, he was for a second when he thought she was the amazing woman who saved his life. But when losing her voice rules that out, Eric loses all interest in Ariel... Outside of wanting to help out and befriend this shipwrecked stranger.
Eric only starts to have feelings for her after Ariel manages to show her personality without uttering a single word. She shows Eric that she's fun-loving and adventurous when they explore the city together. That's not "at first". You need to also remember that Disney romances are ALWAYS sped up because of the runtime. You have to suspend your disbelief a bit for the fairy tale to work.
Sorry, but it's not okay to assassinate other characters so you can justify one character that you like. That's my main beef with Maleficent: I can only enjoy it in the mindset of "I'm watching Villain propaganda right now." And let's be honest: that actually makes it even better. I love unreliable narrators.
Cruella avoided this by creating new characters to be the antagonists. Sure, Roger is kind of a dick. But... He's always been a bit if a dick. The lawyer thing was weird, but it doesn't destroy his established character. Not sure why Cruella is going to end up kidnapping puppies, but...
I'm getting off-topic.
My point was: I'm worried about the new Little Mermaid movie. Not the black mermaid thing: there are dark-skinned mermaids in the Animated Series, so those incels are factually wrong. No, I'm worried that Ursula is going to get morally-whitewashed to justify her actions, like they did to Jafar. And Jafar suuuuucccckkkkked. Dude was boring. He was the second biggest crime of that remake.
The first being that Friend Like Me wasn't a 90s Will Smith rap... a la Men In Black and Wild Wild West.
Please just let Ursula be outlandishly evil. That's WHY we love her. Let her be manipulative, power-hungry, and fabulous.
So, I love Hercules. The Animated Series is a lot of fun, and I'm rewatching it all for the first time as an adult. I consider it canon to the Disneyverse.
Luisa is also a fan, as evidenced by her references to Greek mythology. She's a total Hercules nerd.
Side note: part of me HATES that Encanto didn't use Disney's established version of Herc. Making him older looking would have been fine! Whatever! Instead we get... Mariano with a beard? I'm pretty sure they just put a beard on Mariano's character model. This is my ONE big flaw with that beautiful movie...
Now I have to justify that Luisa's books must not have illustrations, so she imagines Hercules like the hunkiest Colombian guy she knows. Does that mean Luisa has a crush on Mariano too? I wouldn't have to be opening this can of worms if they'd just tossed a beard on Disney's Hercules like they should have!!!
Anyways... So the movie Hercules established that Achilles was Phil's most promising hero-in-training before Hercules, but his weak heel made him a laughingstock. In mythology, his heel (the Achilles tendon, I believe) was where his mother was holding baby Achilles when she dipped him into a river that made him invulnerable... Leaving that spot, y'know, vulnerable.
None of that is detailed in the Disney Hercules media. I need you to forget it. Because Disney Achilles didn't even fight in the Trojan War.
The movie only establishes that Achilles is a former, disgraced would-be Hero. He's older than Hercules. His weakness was his heel. That's about it.
When Achilles shows up in an early episode of Hercules: The Animated Series (HTAS from now on), he's an older man. This is jarring if you forgot to forget the Trojan War, so I need those who ignored me to go dip their heads in the River Lethe. Why is Achilles being older jarring though? Well, Hercules goes to Prometheus Academy with Helen of Troy. Who is a teenager, like Hercules.
So if Achilles is famous for the Trojan War, then Helen of Troy was abducted as like a 5 year old and just gross.
In episode 26 or something (I don't even know, since Disney+ royally messed up the episode order for this show), we get the Disney version of the Trojan War. Mild spoilers and long story short... The "War" is a homecoming school rivalry type situation and the Trojan Academy kidnaps Helen as a prank. Homer covers the story, but "spices it up" by turning the whole thing into a war epic.
In the Disneyverse, all of the Aeneid and Odyssey are lies. Fictions written by Homer to get on the Best-Selling Tablets list. The Muses are probably to blame as well, but... Damn if they don't write a catchy song.
Anyway, there's no Achilles paradox because Achilles had nothing to do with the "Trojan War" here. He must have just been a monster-fighter until someone got him in the heel. Like The Witcher, only more silly.
Homer's version seems to have really caught on though, as Hades even comments on the Trojan Horse during his plots to kill adult Herc. Like 3 years later.
You want to know a real plot hole though? Hades, Pain, and Panic being aware of Hercules throughout the entire series.
They needed to end the series with the evil trio falling into the Lethe and forgetting the entire series or something. I... don't think they do. Massive oversight.
Meanwhile, I'm also over here pretending that Kuzco Academy is a university, not a high school. Because Kuzco and Kronk are grown adult men (Emperor's New Groove establishes Kuzco as 18, iirc), and the whole Malina thing just got really gross if she's like 15.
This one has been bugging me since I heard it. Apparently "the internet" thinks Snow White's Prince is over double her age: 31 years to her 14, to be exact.
According to KnowYourMeme and a bunch of "internet news" sites, this number is attributed to Twitter's @diordeux, who "did the math" and posted the following:
Convenient that the source url on that google search is obscured by the image... 🤔
Diordeux has since deleted the post, set their account to private, and changed their profile picture to the kid from The Boondocks. I could have reached out to him/her, but... Yeah, social interactions are a big NOPE for me. 😅
Doing a Google search myself, I can't find any reliable sources stating the Prince's age. Nearly every website just says "it is believed..." or "it is speculated..."
This is where wikipedia (or your English teacher) will give you a little "By whom? Source needed" note.
I did find another site , however, which linked back to a reddit post containing the following image:
The creator, one Zachary Bisenio, apparently got this information from "Other Various Sources". Yeah, the dude just gave us the Mary Ann treatment.
(Imagine there's a Gilligan's Island gif here. My connection is crappy and the gif library won't load tonight.)
This reddit image was posted only "1 year ago", so it seems diordeux may have been another "Various Source". I have no idea where this 31 years number came from, aside from someone pulling it out of Ferdinand the Bull's butt.
So how old is Prince Florian really? A few Quora.com writers speculate he's only 17-18, mostly based on the fact that he's short (not much taller than Snow White). Dude has a *very* manly voice though. And a man's voice can continue to change/deepen until he's 25. Depending on the angle, Florian goes from looking boyishly teenaged to a serious case of old-face. Disney animators reportedly had a very hard time drawing and animating him.
Some pictures I'd be willing to say he's 15, but... That voice kills it for me! Waaaaay too deep and settled. I'd have to guess he's anywhere from 17-25 years old.
I can't find the source of the following image, but as this post constitutes Fair Use for the sake of analysis, I'll have to post it without attribution. If anyone knows the source, please DM me!
Whichever book that image is from, it shows how more modern depictions show Florian looking much younger.
Final Verdict: This one is false. Prince Florian is definitely not 31, and no reliable source can be provided he is. Due to his younger appearance in post-film media but his deep and manly voice, I would guess he is between 17-25. Hopefully 17. Still one of my least-favorite Disney Princes though.
I've been seeing this one for years now, so now is a good time to tackle it. Let's break down the arguments:
Mrs. Potts is too old to have possibly given birth to Chip and can't be his real mother.
The castle has been cursed for 10 years, yet Chip is clearly younger than 10. How is this possible?
Okay, so looking at the first argument: we don't actually know how old Mrs. Potts is. I tried googling it, but we *all* know how that always works out for Disney characters...
Yeah, remember this guy?
So this is what came up, and none of the Disney wikias had any hard facts either.
Why do they say she's "clearly in her 50s or 60s"? Sure, she has white/grey hair. But according to webMD (yeah, I know: not the greatest medical source. But this is an informal discussion about Disney characters, so I think it'll suffice) Caucasians typically begin to grey in their 30s, and greying begins earlier in women on average.
Source:
Mrs. Potts has NO visible wrinkles/liver spots too, so all this supports the idea that she's actually <50 years old. The woman isn't even drawn with crow's-feet. Frankly, the writer at decider.com just wanted a conspiracy/conflict to write an article about. And nothing sells like dissing Disney!
Disney Fandom wiki says that Chip is 7. I have no idea if the movie confirms this, but I agree he's definitely younger than 10 (more on that later). I'm going to use that number for the sake of argument 1.5 though (determining Potts's age range). As decider.com pointed out, we do see at least 6 other teacups in the cupboard when Chip is told to go sleep with his siblings. Assuming there were no twins and each kid was roughly 1 year apart, that gives us 13 years. We're talking pre-Revolution France here, so Potts likely married young. Possibly at around 16. This means that Mrs. Potts *could* be as young as 16+13=29 years old. Yeah, that's younger than average to completely grey; but not impossible, especially when you consider the stress from running the castle housekeeping staff and birthing/raising SEVEN children. That takes a toll on the body, y'all. And NO, decider.com, that is NOT "a lot of children for one middle-aged, single housekeeper." In fact, until the last century that was probably the average number of children for a fertile, married woman who hasn't died in childbirth. It is entirely plausible to say Mrs. Potts is somewhere between 30-50 years old, so she would have been 23-43 when giving birth to Chip***. That's completely normal. Unless, y'know, she was a teapot.
Whoop! Perfect transition into part two! So if "for ten years [they]'ve been rusting" as enchanted furniture, *how* is Chip younger than 10 years old? Was he born as a teacup?
No.
So, it has always seemed super uncool that the Enchantress cursed the ENTIRE castle staff for the Beast being a dick. Which is true. They shouldn't have been punished because their 11 year old boss was a turd-human. Maybe the curse wasn't quite as bad for them though.
We know the Beast definitely ages while "enchanted". In the Enchanted Christmas midquel, the preteen pre-Beast Prince is definitely younger than post-Beast Prince Adam at the end of the original. I'm pretty sure I recall all the servants looking the same though (I'd need to rewatch it). Why should we assume that the servants all age as furniture though? The Beast is still a living mammalian-type thing. Everyone else becomes an inanimate object.
I posit that it makes more sense none of the servants age. That's why 7 year old Chip is still 7 when the curse breaks. That's why the stool dog didn't die halfway into the enchantment. Only Prince Adam has to lose out on a decade of his life. Everyone else gets to pick back up from the day that Enchantress knocked on the door. And we're talking magic, so it's not hard to believe that the servants all magically stay the same mental age as well.
Makes sense to me, and it eliminates the alleged plot holes. So final verdict: Mrs. Potts is NOT too old to be Chip's mother, and it does NOT make you cool to hate on Disney. Just let people like what they like.
***EDIT: so I realized that I forgot to add in Chip's age when I did my maths... In no way do I think this destroys my argument, but the 13 years sum would correlate to Chip's birth, not Mrs. Potts's current age. My sum should have been ~20 years. That would give 36 as her minimum age (if she married at 16, which wasn't uncommon in that time period) . I still contend she is anywhere between 36-50 years old at the time of the curse (then 10 years of not aging as a teapot). Just felt the need to point out my stupid miscalculation!
In honor of Mother's Day, I'm going to tackle a popular Disney theory involving my favorite Disney mother: Queen Ariel.
So the theory goes...
A.) Ariel's father is King Triton, and in Greek mythology Poseidon has a merman son named Triton.
B.) Hercules is the son of Zeus, whose brother is Poseidon. Therefore, Hercules is Poseidon's nephew.
C.) Hercules is therefore first-cousins with Triton and... I think second-cousins once removed to Ariel? (I forget how it works exactly, so we'll just say "distant cousins") The fact that both are redheads further cements this theory.
Sounds pretty legit, right? Except...
This is Triton, son of Poseidon, from Hercules the Animated Series.
These are not the same dudes.
The Little Mermaid Animated Series also features a Neptune, grandfather of Triton. While Neptune is the Roman equivalent to the Greek Poseidon, these also clearly aren't the same guys. Poseidon from Hercules is blue and fish-finned, and Neptune is pictured below:
He looks a lot like King Triton.
This is my personal head-canon, but we can reconcile this fan theory. I do like the connection, after all. Ariel and Hercules can still be cousins, just... Way more distantly cousined.
Hercules is definitely cousins with Triton... Just not King Triton of the Little Mermaid. Ariel's lineage would go something like this:
-Poseidon, god of the sea
-Triton I (from Hercules the Animated Series)
-Neptune (from The Little Mermaid Animated Series). Neptune sorta has a similar nose to Triton I, and having a human mother would explain Neptune's more human appearance.
-???, Son of Neptune (he's not officially named, as far as I can find)
-King Triton II, ruler of Atlantis
-Princess Ariel!
-Melody from The Little Mermaid 2
There could be way more distance between Triton I and Neptune, depending on the lifespan of demigods. For all we know, Ariel's dad could be King Triton CXII (pretty sure that's 112th). The timeframe between Hercules and The Little Mermaid is like 2100 years apart.
Anyway, the theory works. Just not with them being as closely related as most people think. The Little Mermaid probably takes place in Italy/Greece too, since so many of the mermaids have names taken from Greek mythology.
Make sure to call your mother! Happy mother's day!
Belle isn't a real princess, because beast parents died and he never had a coronation.
Mulan was never a princess because Shang is a general and his father was a general, she's not the Emperor's daughter.
Pocahontas is a princess because her father is a chief making her a royal in that time and place.
I don't know who else I would be forgetting message me if I am and I wanted to signal boost my bunny's YouTube channel it's Original_Snerd, he plays minecraft, Steven universe games, and hopefully more. he only has three subscribers and would like to expand his channel and content
