I had this random decision to make a thread about Kpop and The Little Mermaid.
One of the reasons is because it is a popular H.C. Andersen fairytale and I am part Danish and have read his fairytales in the original language.
Another reason is because I was thinking about writing a poem based on the fairytale. Even though I have written one before in a different thread.
And because of Disney's live-action remake of the 1989's animated movie recently haven been shown on theatres and Disney+. I haven't watched that movie by the way.
The Fairytale
A lot of people might be more familiar with the 1989 Disney movie than the actual fairytale.
I remember not having read the fairytale as a child and assumed that it was pretty much like the Disney movie.
There was one time when I watched an adaptation of that fairytale. It was in an episode of an animated TV series that was telling all these H.C. Andersen fairytales.
I watched that episode of the series as a 13-year-old or something, and I thought it was going to have the "true love's kiss" and all that other stuff from the Disney movie.
I remember when I watched the ending of this episode and was feeling both surprised and confused.
And then later, I read the original fairytale, which is in a Danish book that contains a lot of Andersen's fairytales.
It is one of H.C. Andersen's saddest fairytales. (Even though two of his fairytales The Angel and The Little Girl with The Matchsticks make tears run from my eyes.)
It is a bit sad that she doesn't get the prince and turns into sea foam.
But the ending is a bit happy because in the fairytale, mermaids cease to exist after death, while human beings have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven. In the end, she turns into a "daughter of the air" and is given the chance to earn her own soul by doing good deeds for humankind.
The reason why she doesn't just cease to exist after turning into sea foam is because what she did was selfless.
After the prince gets married to someone else on a wedding ship, her sisters show up and give her a dagger, telling her that if she kills the prince and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again and everything would be back to normal. But when she sees the prince sleeping next to his new wife, she can't bring herself to kill him and throws the dagger and herself off the ship into the water.
Baby Don't Cry
EXO have a song called Baby Don't Cry, and the Korean title is "인어의 눈물", which means "A Mermaid's Tears".
And the lyrics, written by Jo Yoon-kyung (EXO-M's version was written by Wang Yajun and T-Crash) , are based on the fairytale.
In this song, it is from the prince's point of view.
I have interpreted it as if this was the part where the mermaid is about to kill the prince, but the prince is being alive and tells her not to cry.
In these lyrics, it seems like the prince is in love with the mermaid, while in the original fairytale he only thought about her as a friend or a sister.
This song is actually my favourite EXO song.
Because I often like sentimental ballads.
By the way, I just found out that this song apparently has a demo version.
That demo sounds pretty nice.
It has different lyrics and has no reference to The Little Mermaid at all.
Which kind of explains why I felt like some of the lyrics in EXO's version felt a bit random.
The demo's version seems to be about this guy who tries to comfort this girl after her boyfriend or ex has been treating her badly and made her cry.
Gugudan's The Little Mermaid
Gugudan's debut EP is called Act. 1 The Little Mermaid, which Wonderland is featured in.
Wonderland's lyrics are written by ButterFly, Jang Yeon-jung and Kim In-hyung
The song is described as being a song about curiosity and longing for the unknown world.
That is pretty much how the mermaid feels in the beginning of the fairytale.
And that reminds me of Part Of Your World.
The similarity between Kpop fans and The Little Mermaid
For some reason, I have wanted to compare the thing about the mermaid or at least Ariel in the Disney movie is being fascinated by the human world and human stuff with how some kpop fans are fascinated by Korean culture.
But I don't know if that is a good comparison.
Perhaps I can say this, in the fairytale, the mermaid is in love with the prince, but she is mute and can't express it.
She is in love with him, but he only loves her as a friend or sister.
It is like when a kpop fan has a crush on a kpop artist, but the artist only thinks of the fan as a fan and nothing more, even though that star might say "I love you" to their fans, but they don't mean it in a "I love you and I'm seriously going to marry you."
And if the artist ends up in a relationship with someone who isn't you, then you need to let this artist and that someone be happy together, which I think is what the mermaid did.
Well... that was the thread.
Tagging xx-jenn-xx in this very long thread.
This thread is so long that it could probably be considered an essay, even though I think I kind of sucked at writing those in school.
I much preferred writing "essays", where I was making up a story.
