Sophia Week 6: Disney's Darkness

    Funny enough as it may sound, I tend to get tons of blog post ideas from tik tok. This week in particular, though, it was like a floodgate of ideas was opened. Earlier this week, I saw a video about the correlation between Philadelphia baseball teams winning championships/world series and economic recessions. As interesting, and seemingly real, as this theory might be, I am no economic expert and figured finding a better blog post idea might be in my best interest. The next inspirational video I saw came a few days later, although it was far from the good kind. It was a tik tok discussing the dark and perverted actions of the former Roman emperors, one story even mentioning an emperor who used to sit in a fountain at Capri and have little kids nibble at his feet/legs like fish. Talk about all sorts of disgusting. Anyway, I thought a high school AP English class was not the place to discuss these gruesome accounts. Then finally, this morning, I came across a tik tok about the twisted tales behind our favorite Disney movies. As someone who loves both the light-heartedness of Disney and the darkness of disturbing stories, I decided this is what my next blog post would be about. After looking over various stories from numerous different movies, I compiled a stock of the few I thought sounded the most intriguing, and therefore the most grisly.

The Little Mermaid: When I was younger, Ariel was one of my favorite Disney princesses, and I would watch the Little Mermaid all the time. I could never get enough of the catchy tunes and so-called “dramatic” storyline. Of course, I grew up believing that Ariel got her happy ending, but I’ve come to find out that that only happens in the Disney version. In the original story published by Hans Christan Anderson, Ariel’s cause is a lost one from the beginning. After being turned into a human, Ariel comes to discover that every step she takes causes her excruciating pain, and just like in the movie, she also has no voice whatsoever. The Prince ends up falling in love with another girl and marrying her, breaking Ariel’s heart in the process. Furthermore, the evil sea witch, who we all know as Ursula, provides Ariel with an ultimatum: she can kill the prince and become a mermaid again or let him live and sacrifice herself. She chooses the ladder and turns into seafoam. 

Cinderella: Although in the Brother Grimms version of Cinderella the princess herself still gets to live happily ever after, the story behind the sweet movie is all the more disturbing. It starts off with the medieval form of plastic surgery: cutting off parts of your body. Each of Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off parts of their foot, one choosing to lose a toe and the other a portion of her heel, to try to get their feet to fit into Cinderella’s glass slipper and prove to the prince they are the love he has been looking for. Obviously, this doesn’t work out for them, and Prince Charming ends up finding and marrying Cinderella, where at their wedding they enjoy the lovely view of watching Anastasia and Drizella get their eyes poked out by pigeons. Sounds really romantic, right?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Even in the Disney version, this story is darker than the rest, albeit still ending happily. Quasimodo defeats Frollo while simultaneously saving Esmeralda, and he is faced with a drastic reputation change from societal outcast to hero, causing him to depart from the cathedral and embrace his new role. In Hugo’s original version, though, Esmeralda is not so lucky. Frollo turns on her and has her killed. As both Quasimodo and Frollo watch as she is being hung and killed, Frollo’s maniacal laugh at the scene pushes Quasimodo to his breaking point, and he ends up killing him (which I guess sort of happens in the movie anyway). In the end, though, Quasimodo dies of starvation at Esmeralda’s grave. 

The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame are just a few of the many Disney films with grim (get it?) fables behind them. Below, I am going to include the link to the website in which I found several of the other dark stories behind Disney movies if you want to hear more. Personally, I thought they were particularly interesting to read about.

(P.S. let me know if I should pursue writing those blog posts about the rambunctious Romans or the Phillies' influence on failing economies)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/general/original-disney-stories-films