The creepy stories behind Disney movies like ‘The Little Mermaid’: deaths, cannibalism and revenge

The dispute between The Walt Disney Company and Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, United States, was evidenced last Thursday, May 18, when the entertainment giant discarded the project for build a complex in the state. This would have generated a investment of almost 1,000 million euros and provided more than 2,000 jobs.

The rivalry between DeSantis and Disney began in March 2022, when the Republican Party launched a law, known as ‘Don’t Say Gay‘with which Bans Discussing Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Schools. The company that gives life to the famous Mickey Mouse strongly criticized this initiative and announced that would stop funding Florida politicians.

Disney also has another open front: the great controversy in reference to the live action which he has configured since 2010, with the premiere of Alice in Wonderlanddirected by Tim Burton.

Some of the remakes The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, mulan and The Lady and the Tramp they were acclaimed by fans of the fantasy world emanating from Disney. But, due to its attempt to modernize and favor the social inclusionhas also received a wave of criticism.

This has happened with Peter Pan, where Yara Shahidi, actress who gives life to Tinkerbell, is African-American; and with lightyear, where a love scene appears between two women that came to be censored in some countries. Now the debate returns to The little Mermaid—opens this May 26th—since the protagonist, Halle Bailey, bears no resemblance to the red-haired, white-skinned cartoon Ariel.

yet another fandom of the company has come out in defense of the giant to conclude that, although the actors of the live action They don’t resemble the “reality” of animated movies, the films are still science fiction. What many are unaware of is that, behind their narrative, they hide chilling stories that have nothing to do with the “They lived happily and ate partridges” from Disney.

The Little Mermaid: 300 years of suffering

The little Mermaid (1989) from Disney tells the story of a young mermaid obsessed with a prince and life outside the sea Finally, and in exchange for giving her voice to Úrsula, the sea witch, she gets some legs, marry the young man and become human.

However, in the original tale by the writer Hans Christian Andersenpublished in 1837, the story does not end like this.

The narration begins the same as the Disney adaptation: a young mermaid who falls madly in love with a prince, who decides to go live on the surface, get new legs in exchange for her voice, marry him and thus achieve the immortal soul possessed by humans after death. However, the plot is transformed when the sea witch assures him that, every step you take, you will suffer intense pain and that, in order to achieve his long-awaited human life, the prince must marry her, otherwise, she would die and it would turn into sea foam.

Everything turns black when the prince decides to marryby obligation of his mother, the queen, with the princess of the neighboring countryand the Little Mermaid turns into sea foam.

The Little Mermaid will get the eternal soul that tando longs for if he performs good deeds for 300 years. For every good child he sees that makes him smile, one year will be subtracted, and for every bad child that makes him cry, it will mean one more year. Thus, one day she would get the immortal soul from her.

Pocahontas and the true story of colonization

The movie of Pocahontas from Disney (1995) recounts the love story of a young indigenous woman, Pocahontas, and of john smith, an English settler who comes to his land in order to settle but, after facing a series of obstacles, they fall in love and manage to be together. A happy ending that, like many of the company, does not resemble the original story.

He film is based on the life of matoakaalias Pokahantesú, a young woman who was born in 1595 and who belonged to the Powhatan tribe, Virginia, USA. Pocahontas —that’s what the colonists called it— I was 11 years old when the English explorer John Smith, recognized for establishing the first British settlement, came to their land to colonize it. The chief of the tribe had a plan so that this would not happen: to set a trap and kill him. Smith recounted that Pocahontas saved his life and he intervened so that they would not kill him.

A second assassination attempt by the head of the clan was cut short, again, by Pocahontas, who warned the colonists. The reasons why he decided to betray his own crew to save those who wanted to take his home are unknown. Disney recreates it as a love story, although the reality is that Pocahontas was still a child when everything happened..

Smith had to return to his country after being hit by an explosion. The version that came to the young woman was that smith had passed away. When she turned 18 was kidnapped by some settlers, who demanded the release of their compatriots captured by the Powhatan. Pocahontas was a bargaining chip. It is unknown if they sexually abused her, although she confessed so.

john rolfe, a tobacco planter, agreed to his freedom in exchange for marrying the newly-adult woman. Pocahontas could not decide his future and they christened her Lady Rebecca.

When the young woman returned to England, she found, to her surprise, Smith, and he wrote a letter to the Queen Consort of England, Anne of Denmarkin which he asked him to treat the indigenous woman as a person of royalty. Matoaka, the new Rebecca, died in 1617 at the age of 22 due to strange fevers. 14 years later John Smith died.

Sleeping Beauty, a tale of rape and cannibalism

The hidden face after the story of Sleeping Beauty from Disney (1959) hides in Sun, Moon and Talia, of Giambattista Basile, and was born in 1634.

The protagonist of the story is Talía, a young woman abandoned by her father after falling into a deep sleep for stick a poison splinter. During his stay in a neglected and dirty castle, a the princemarried to another woman, takes the opportunity to sneak into her house, sexually abuse her and impregnate her with two twins, Sol and Lunawhile she continues in the world of dreams.

One day, while those children survived thanks to the help of the forest fairies, Sol extracts the splinter from her mother by mistaking it for her breast in an attempt to eat, and the woman wakes up.

Talia forgive the young man and they fall in lovebut the prince’s wife discovers it and demands that her servants burn Talía at the stake, murder her children who, for more INRI, I cooked them to be devoured by her husband.

The cook, unable to take part in the revenge, saves both the little ones and Talía. The prince uncovers the evil plan of his wife and dictates her sentence: death by burning. Thus, the young man, already a king, makes Talia queen and her two children born as a result of her rape princes.

Snow White, the seven dwarfs and the hate involved

The movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) by Disney is an adaptation of the Grimm brothersof 1812. In the story, the young woman, banished for being the most beautiful in the kingdom, survives in a forest with seven dwarfs several assassination attempts orchestrated by his stepmotherwho poisons her with that famous red apple.

Snow White wakes up thanks to the prince’s kiss, however, and unlike the movie, the young woman seeks revengeand the young man forces his now wife’s stepmother to dance in iron shoes as she slowly burns to death.

Pinocchio and the darkness of the world’s most famous puppet

pinocchio (1940) tells the story of the most famous lying puppetmade by the watchmaker Geppetto but that, every time he lies, his nose grows. In the end, his eagerness to be “a real boy” leads him to promise a fairy that he will be “good, sincere and generous”, an attitude that you will have to check Jiminy Cricket, your conscience. The tests he faces to come to life are more complicated than Pinocchio thinks.

However, the original version is very discernible from Disney’s. carlo collodi published in 1881 the adventures of pinocchio in which the puppet he committed suicide in an oak tree, not before assassinate Jiminy Cricket and slam him against a wall for not taking his advice on good behavior anymore.

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