The Little Mermaid – directed by. Ivan Aksenchuk (1968/Soviet Animation) (ENGLISH & TURKISH CC)
What does it mean, if there was no happy ending for the Little Mermaid, and the memory of her was swallowed up into the sea? The 1968 Soviet Animation of The Little Mermaid, Rusalochka, does not shy away from the mermaid’s tragic fate, and in doing so tells a moralizing story about knowing one’s place, or striving to live through love and compassion. This tragic ending and the interpretation of it is divided between two lenses, the fish who views the little mermaids death as a tragedy and a waste, and a Danish tour guide who considers it a story of love, courage, and kindness, told to a group of tourists. Despite the conflicting views on her death, her fate is nonetheless tragic, but her sacrifice is regarded by humans as heroic, thus this version acknowledges her mark on history through her memorialization, both through sculpture and song. This version allows the exploration of mermaids’ autonomy by giving her a voice and a song, where the book was unable to convey the splendor of her voice. As a children’s story, it becomes a tool to bridge humanity and the soul of the ocean. The little mermaid reaches out to us and teaches humans kindness, love, and compassion, where humanity lacks it despite having a soul.
“The surf beats against the black rocks
Life is hard for humans, this everlasting struggle
But I believe drop by drop, your vitality will return
The first drop will be strength
The second drop will be joy
The beautiful should not perish,
The brave should not perish
They should not, they should not die”
This lamentation is heard when she originally saves the prince; it is her song. It is heard again only after she dies and is reclaimed by the ocean. Unfortunately, she is only briefly mourned by the prince, who mistakes her song as coming from his new bride. This poetic addition brings the focus of the story back to the fact that the Little Mermaid held a bountiful understanding and empathy for human life, culture, and beauty.
The ending differs from the original story by Hans Christiaan Anderson, where her sisters give her a knife to kill the prince and his bride in the book, here she is given a magical shell that has the power to summon a storm that will sink the ship and kill the prince and his bride. Only by unleashing the power of this shell can she return to her life as a mermaid. But when she drops this shell into the ocean, unable to betray her love for the prince, she is swallowed up by a wave, and her song is heard throughout the ship. Perhaps this is an homage to the original ending, as the prince searches for the voice in the sails of the ship and in the birds that fly above the ocean. Though she is not missed by the prince for long, her song is heard by the audience, her story is told by the guides, and it resounds through history. The last scene, is her image imortalized in bronze.
Her fate is lamented by the fish that tells her story to the school of fish, regarding this story as a tragedy and a lesson of knowing one’s place. She is heard weeping tearfully: “And that, my children, is how the story ends. The foolish mermaid wanted to become human, but as they say, everyone should know one’s place.” However, the tourists who gaze upon her statue in the Copenhagen bay view it as a story about kindness, love, and devotion, “a tale of love that knows no bounds, the tale of courage and kindness.”
This change is all the more impactful, not because it shows her loss of life as a tragedy, but rather because she is given a place of belonging, gazing upon the changing and shifting human world. Her position in the water, her physical memorialization, allows humans to keep in constant communion with the ocean, where her song can be heard in the ocean. Her sacrifice becomes not one born out of spite for her unrequited love, but of her love and appreciation for humanity.