In Walt Disney's story of the Little Mermaid, Ariel ends up marrying her handsome prince and lives happily ever after.
Sorry to give it away....
One of the highlights of my recent trip to Copenhagen was seeing the Little Mermaid statue sitting on a rock. When I was in primary school I was in a play about Hans Christian Anderson, and I've found his stories fascinating ever since. They are fairy stories.... not the 'all lived happily ever after' Disney type but stories that talk of mistakes and naivety, of bad choices and struggle.
While in Copenhagen I also went to see a group of statues called 'Paradise Genetically altered' by Bjorn Norgaard. One of these statues is a genetically modified Little mermaid. Sitting on a rock in the canal her appearance is of stark difference to the gentle statue of a mermaid that attracts crowds of people. This mermaid speaks of a life of pain and struggle, where dreams are not met and where pain and suffering is a part of the every day. It, in many ways, seems closer to Hans Christian Anderson's original mermaid story which doesn't end quite as happy as the Disney version.....
I think that Disney has a lot to answer for. It has changed stories that speak of you can't always get what you want to stories that imply happiness in the end is possible if you are good.... Its versions of Pinocchio, the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and others leave aside the gruesome bits where parts of the body get cut out, where every step is painful, where main characters are attacked, abused and even raped. It's understandable that a lot of this stuff might not be in children's films.... but by taking it out our understanding of what it means to have a fairy tale life, what we aspire to as perfect, is unreachable. I will never be a Disney princess, and if I was and the true fairy tale stuff came out.... well I wouldn't want to be one.
I like the genetically modified mermaid best. Not because it was more attractive, but because it was more truthful. It spoke of how if you go out of your way to do everything to get the perfect life, it's not going to always be happily ever after. A fairy tale life includes hurt and pain. It includes sorrow and loss. It includes a reality far different from a Disney princess.
Behind every Disney fairy tale there is a real tale that is more painful...
Behind every happy picture there are stories that hurt....
When we talk of the Christian life we can make it more Disney than reality. We are to be joyful and happy and dance and sing and dance..... but the reality of a fallen world means life is more like the original fairy tales. We don't know why it's so hard sometimes, but it's in the darkness and in the lonely places that we can reach out, we can listen and hear and feel the breath of God as he holds us close, his love never going away.
'Be Still, and Know that I am God' Psalm 46:10
