This is a very similar image to the Little Mermaid from my favorite card game Magic the gathering, and the artist who created her is named Livia Prima (which we can find on the card). From the drawing and background narrative (she yearned to walk on dry), we can find that she faces the same dilemma as the Little Mermaid.

But the difference is that she has a purpose other than romance – vengeance, a manifestation of the awakening of female consciousness that “we can do something great or heavy without the help of male power”.

Unfortunately, the image still has overtones of objectifying women. But considering that the author is a female artist, we can understand it as a personal aesthetic pursuit of hers, rather than an attempt to please men.

I chose this piece of art because this is one of the first pieces of art that I could find that depicted Little Red Riding Hood as a child that, when compared to the interpretations and recreations of Little Red Riding Hood in today’s society, the majority, if not all, of these depictions present Little Red Riding Hood as a woman in her teens. In the original text of The Story of Grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood is described as a little girl not a woman in her teens. This shows that Little Red Riding Hood is still being sexualized today and in a way that would be considered socially acceptable because no one wants to see a young child be sexualized for the enjoyment of perverted people but instead it has become socially acceptable to sexualize a teenage woman, hence why Little Red Riding Hood has continued to be depicted as such in modern adaptations. This leads me to wonder this: What other fairytales have been sexualized in this way and how did these adaptations become accepted by society?

Rather than a specific piece of art itself, I found interest in an artist and their work in general. Kay Nielsen, born in the 1800s in Copenhagen, was an illustrator under Disney who inspired and worked on many well-known Disney pieces today (Fantasia, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) Known for his intricate, darker art style, Nielsen offered Disney an art style that was not always appreciated or utilized in its time.

His work in The Little Mermaid, for example, was shelved before being picked up for the 1989 version, after Nielsen’s death. Obviously, the artwork pictured is much different than the bright, playful Little Mermaid we know of, even with the elements that parallel. The ethereal, other-worldly feeling of Nielsen’s art has retained its inspiring qualities despite the years that have passed since its conception.

This piece, for example, retains Andersen’s darker Little Mermaid tale. It is interesting to think about what possibly could have been from Nielsen’s work, had he not been let go numerous times throughout his run at Disney. What could we have possibly received if Nielsen’s concepts had been continued from when they were originally published? Would his work on The Little Mermaid have remained a silencing and at times brooding lesson in disguise, truer to Andersen’s vision, or would it have been polished and cleaned through processing at Disney?

These questions may not necessarily have answers, but it is very interesting to think of what Disney’s The Little Mermaid might have been like if it stuck truer to Andersen’s original work through the inspiration of Nielsen.