The Desert Mermaid

Every so often I check just to see if it's shown up yet.

It has.



As far as I can tell, it's using this version, though I think it scans better than she sings it--she seems to rush it a little bit.

One of these days I'll get me some good recording equipment and blast out my sprite version, because I am both an unrepentant Frozen fan and an unrepentant nerd. But for now, you can enjoy it in Classical Latin or Esperanto if you're so inclined. No Klingon yet, but I'm gonna keep watching. You never know.

Happy 80th birthday to my favorite duck!

It appears I'm not the only fan of the Disney Dubs, judging by this album. SO BUYING THIS WHEN I GET HOME.

Now I'm just waiting for the Klingon, Na'vi, and Quenya versions. Get on it, nerds!

Aw, yea, have acquired the Frozen DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack. I will now watch Frozen and "Get A Horse" nonstop for roughly the next couple of years.

And why, yes, I am translating Frozen's "Let It Go" into my own conlangs. To, uh, test them out. Yeah, that's it.

Okay, actually, this isn't really new--I've been doing Disney dubs and writing my own lyrics to songs since I was in junior high. And because I am totally fascinated by multilingual Disney songs. I can get lost for hours watching one song in multiple languages,* and I want in on that action! But this is a first for a couple of my newer languages, and I'm having a blast. Can't decide if I prefer the crazy polysynthetic Sprite Language Mark II version or the Modern OGYAFEse fossilized triconsonantal roots** with their esoteric rhymes, but they're both terribly fun to mess with.

Yeah, I know, I'm a nerd. But hey, we nerds know what we like, and there's nothing wrong with that!


*It is an eternal bummer to me that there are no official Swahili dubs. There's a Zulu dub of The Lion King, but that's as close as we get.

**Well, not quite triconsonantal roots, but rather overdone semantic derivations with the same sort of consonant radicals and ... yeah, you stopped caring, didn't you? Having a phenomenally boring hobby is a terrible burden.

Watched Bambi for the first time since I was like eight last night.

I think I liked it better this time around. I could appreciate the backgrounds, which are astoundingly lovely, and the simple narrative, and especially the animation of the bunnies. God, whoever did them must have REALLY watched a lot of bunnies.*

Rewatching something I'd previously seen only as a kid is always fascinating. Gives me some insight into my thought processes from way back when. For one thing, as a kid I couldn't stand the soundtrack. I thought it was cloying and obnoxious, but was under the vague impression that it was For Grownups and wondered if that meant I'd like it better when I was one myself. Now, since I havebecome a grownup, I can put that theory to the test--and I can tell you all that, nope, it's still cloying and obnoxious.

Sometimes the questions in life DO get answered.

On the other hand, something else got better that I hadn't even thought of. Another of my childhood hangups--one I have only just recently realized was even there--was a disproportionately strong distaste for even the slightest of awkward moments. Things that wouldn't even faze me now; things I might not even have noticed if I didn't carry the memory of how much they disturbed me. But for itty bitty Amelia, a startling moment, a stumble, or even an accidentally too-loud voice would be enough to send me running from the room. And Bambi's baby phase is just one awkward moment after another. It all started coming back to me: him yelling "BIRD!" too strongly bothered me, as did his falling on the ice and, especially, that moment where he gets too enthusiastic about running onto THE MEADOW!!! and his mom has to chase him down. And a whole bunch of others besides. I think they embarrassed me, in some ill-defined way.

And yet I was totally untraumatized by the infamous Ma Gets Shot scene.** Go figure.

(The scene with the pheasants, however, is burned deep into my brain. That was INTENSE.)

Mostly I just liked the feeling of the nature in the movie. It was lovingly put together. I suspect it wasn't always accurate (I guess white-tailed deer rut in the fall, not the spring, and much like the Lion King I note they didn't go with the whole polygamy angle), but it was enjoyable.


*Though I did notice that they had pads on their feet, which is not a thing actual bunnies have. Rabbits have no pads on their paws, only fur. Which can be pretty hilarious. If you ever have the opportunity to see a rabbit try to bolt on a linoleum floor, don't miss it, because it's one of the few times that cartoon physics can be seen in live action.

**Thinking about it now, I suspect the reason it was so traumatic for so many other kids was twofold: the suddenness, and--even worse--the following moments when he's running through the vast, cold, empty woods calling for her. I can see how that would be the most horrific thing for a child--kids don't really grasp death, but the fear of suddenly being alone and helpless looms pretty large.

EEEEK!

Look what Disney put up on YouTube!



I still say y'all ought to go check out the full movie, but if you don't see the entirety of Frozen, this is the best part. I kind of can't stop listening to it. (I want to sing along with it, but I came down with the post-travel crud, and I just can't in good conscience sing "The cold never bothered me, anyway" when I am CLEARLY being bothered by a cold. I'll just let Idina do it for now. She's more impressive, anyway.)

I harbor a lot of resentment for Peter Pan.

It’s not an out-and-out hatred. I mean, I was willing to see the Disney movie, and the movie version of Mary Martin as Mr. B Natural as Peter Pan, and I read the book version that my aunt had around the house, and I wasn't exactly furiously chucking the book across the room or anything. But I did always leave feeling ... rather put off.*

It took me a long time to articulate why. There were a lot of reasons. For one, Neverland seemed to be made up of a bunch of random elements that JM Barrie vaguely remembered finding appealing as a kid--the old-timey equivalent of something that nowadays would cram robots, aliens, superheroes, princesses, ponies, zombies, ninjas, and okay yeah pirates into a world without any logic or reason.** It was clearly a nostalgia’s-eye view of pretend time, and it was grating.

For another, Peter Pan was a schmuck. I could never tell if he was supposed to be endearingly self-centered and egomaniacal--like kids can be--or if it was meant as a slightly darker commentary on those same characteristics.*** No matter what, though, he seemed far too self-centered. Kids aren’t all that one-note shitty.

But mostly, it was the ladies.

I could not stand the female characters in Neverland. They were all written with such malice. Their automatic hostility toward Wendy was inexplicable and pointless--especially if it really was centered around the fact that they all wanted Peter’s attention, because the hell with him. Not a single character was likable, but the females got some extra attention paid to detailing their unlikability. And Wendy herself was an obnoxious load--whiny, helpless, codependent, and prone to forget that, you know, SHE COULD FUCKING FLY.

Which is still true in most adaptations. I stand by the fact that Wendy is a terrible character as originally written. However, I tend to run all the permutations of her together, so I missed something kind of excellent about Disney Wendy until my brother pointed it out: unlike with the other Wendys, Disney Wendy’s main character arc is the dawning realization that Neverland is bullshit.

And my brother is right.

When you watch it with that in mind, it's actually pretty great. In the beginning of the movie Wendy’s all for going to Neverland, and she’s clearly crushing on Peter. And then every single experience she has is a miserable disappointment. Woo, mermaids! Oh, hang on, mermaids are bratty and cliqueish. Woo, fairies! Oh, wait, they’re bratty too. Woo, Lost Boys! Holy shit never mind they just straight up tried to murder me. Woo, Indians! Oh GOD they are racist stereotypes and also they won’t let me join the party but keep making me gather firewood. Woo, pirates! Oh, right, they’re FUCKING PIRATES. Woo, Peter Pan! Oh, wait, this kid is a god damn SOCIOPATH. Everyone else acts stupid and childish, and finally she just can’t TAKE it anymore. So when she goes back to the real world--with, might I add, no implication that she’s gonna be trapped in some stupid one-sided relationship where Peter flies back to collect her for “spring cleaning” each year—she’s pretty much like “GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THIS NURSERY; I AM SO READY TO BE A GROWNUP.”

And suddenly the reason I still had a soft spot for Disney Wendy (well, that and the fact that I’m in love with Kathryn Beaumont’s voice work) was clear to me.

So yes, I still very much dislike Peter Pan. But it’s rather heartening to realize that Disney Wendy feels kind of the same way.


*Especially by the Mr. B Natural one, because I know stage rules are different, but man, they weren’t even TRYING to make the illusion work.

**I’m not saying these things can’t be awesome together, but you’ve got to WORK on it.

***Yes, I know they touched on that in the more recent live action movie, but it still didn’t quite fully grasp it.

Watchin' Fantasia again. Ah, this brings back memories. For example, the memory that while I was totally cool with the Satanic orgy from Night on Bald Mountain, with the giant demon-mountain casually tormenting his misshapen subjects, I was absolutely terrorized by one shot of the unstoppable broom army from The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I also remember being absolutely bored senseless by Deems Taylor's intros to each piece, so much so that I always fast-forwarded them.* Which means that I was unaware just how darn uncomfortable Mr. Radio there was in front of a camera. Poor dope has no idea what to do when we can see him.

Anyway, yeah, there was definitely a synesthete working on the Toccata and Fugue in D short. I know there's been some question about whether it was deliberate or not, but good GRIEF, it looks an awful lot like what would happen if you tried to animate the Synesthesia Dimension. I have this image of Disney and Co. struggling to describe what they wanted in the abstract piece, and some synesthetic animator going, "So, just draw what it looks like, then. Gotcha, Diz. I'm on it." Not quite the same level of research put into the dinosaurs in the Rite of Spring,** but as scientifically fascinating in its own way.


*Which took dedication on our old-ass Betamax. We had no remote for it, and you had to actually hold down the fast-forward button. And the button didn't make it go forward any faster, but did distort the screen with interesting lines of static. Those were tough times.

**Yes, they look rather derpy and lumpy now, but hey, this was the 30s and 40s. It was totally SCIENCE! at the time.

Good lord. I ought to just start liveblogging my PMS Movie Adventures, because it seems that my reproductive organs have taken my blasé attitude toward them as a CHALLENGE. The last few lycanthropic cycles have been a tour de force of hormones messin’ with my head.

This month, I could feel it coming on. Now, you may recall that last time I was in this quadrant of the month a goddamn Tinker Bell movie made me cry, and I am not just taking a crack at the bad voice acting.* A throwaway joke honestly made me choke up. But even though I was an emotional minefield, I still wanted to watch a movie. “So,” I asked myself, “to avoid this problem, what is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Tinker Bell?”

The answer, obviously, is David Cronenberg.**

So I figured I’d watch the ’80s version of The Fly, as I’d only seen the ’50s version with Vincent Price before. Slimed-up remakes of old-timey sci-fi, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing, may inspire a lot of emotions, but weepy sniffles aren’t among them.***

And such was the case, mostly. Then I got to the end, and Howard Shore had attached a tender love theme to the bittersweet moment when Geena Davis blasts Jeff Goldblum’s grossly deformed head clean off with a shotgun, and my body chemistry was all “THIS IS MOVIE IS THE SADDEST EVER MADE. Also, disgusting.”

And that’s how I found myself misty-eyed over the kind of movie that normally makes my black little heart go “Hooray for body horror!” How do I know it was the hormones responding? Because the teleBrundlepodfly didn’t make me think “What a horrific fate!” but rather “I WILL TAKE IT HOME AND CALL IT GEORGE, BECAUSE THAT HIDEOUS MISERABLE AGONIZED THING IS ADORABLE. Also, disgusting.” Which I’m pretty sure would not be my response the OTHER 75% of the time. But I suppose my responses then would be far less entertaining, too.

So! Tinker Bell and David Cronenberg are out. Let’s experiment and see what unlikely movies’ll make me cry next month! Any recommendations?


*Dear Rob Paulsen: Yes, even you. I expect this kind of bullshit from Jesse McCartney, but you are a voice acting king, my friend. I'd expect you to do at least a passable Scottish accent, but let's face it, the one you're working here is about on par with Eddie Izzard's attempt at an American accent. You may want to practice, is what I'm saying.

**Other acceptable answers: Stanley Kubrick, Jason Statham, the Alien Queen, Batman.

***Although a certain level of discomfort is. What is with so many ’80s movies’ commitment to staggeringly creepy gender dynamics? I seriously want to call the police while I watch.