Poor Unfortunate Souls
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a weird fixation with the Disney movie The Little Mermaid. Maybe it’s because I secretly feel like a fish out of water or maybe it’s because Ariel’s songs are perfectly in my register or maybe it’s because I’m fascinated with Ursula the Sea Witch.
You know, she’s the first fat villian who really has some power. The other fat girls in Disney movies are either fairy godmothers (who twitter a lot) or singing teapots. Up until Ursula, the female villians were all tall, angular women with pinched faces (Cruella DeVille; the Wicked StepMother in Snow White; the aunt with the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp; Maleficient, who is also awesome for rocking that head gear) and she ends up embodying ultimate power (and, you know, getting stabbed by a boat, but whatevs). In fact, I groove on Ursula so much that I spent the better part of 2006 trying to pull together an Ursula costume for Halloween (that fell apart at the 11th hour, so I went with the Hello Kitty costume I’m wearing in my picture on the sidebar instead).
I could wax philosophical about the psychology involved, about the transition of ideal body image over the decades, about how sexuality becomes twisted into the perception of evil (and apparently how Divine influenced the artist’s concept of Ursula… all things come back to Hairspray!) but what has really got my tentacles in a twist is now that they’ve brought a Disnified version of Little Mermaid to Broadway, we were finally going to get to see Ursula stomp around in real life, see those tentacles swish and the poor unfortunate souls cower at her power.
And sadly, the director didn’t even have the stones to let a fat chick to play a fat character. Apparently, the original actor, Emily Skinner, was canned because she was too fat. Her replacement? Not fat.
And that? There are no words.
(Thanks to Fatshionista for the head’s up)
Posted by Weetabix
So she’s too fat to play a character who is…fat? Does that make any sense? I couldn’t see her body from the pic, but I assume that she is just right for Ursula ( who was pretty hot for a evil octopus woman ). Idiots.
One of the blogs described Emily as “normal-sized”, but judging from this picture, I’m thinking size 10-ish, definitely not more than a size 14. It’s been a long time since I worked in retail and I’ve never sized an octopus, but I would guess that Ursula is in the sizes 20-26 range.
I love Ursula too! I’m very psyched that my namesake is such a bad-ass powerful BIG girl!
They need someone who’s in the 250+ lb. range to play her in person (preferably 300+), not that slender blonde chick that you linked to. :(
They will probably just put her in a Fatsuit!!! argh!
On a brighter note, I took a facebook quiz that asked what Disney Villain are you? And I was Ursula, who I also LOVE.
Maybe they didn’t want to go with the fat = bad guy route. I don’t know. Actually, I’ve always hated The Little Mermaid because it’s about a chick who mutilates herself for some dude. Although I guess the Disney version didn’t really play up that angle.
I saw The Little Mermaid when it first came out – I was about five or six at the time – and I felt the same way about it that you seem to. I loved it – it was MY Disney movie. And, you know, I haven’t thought about this in a long time, but I’m fairly certain that Ursula was the very first woman I was ever attracted to. I thought she was incredibly hot and I actually thought Ariel should have just, you know, forgotten about Prince Whatever and become a bad girl or something. Looking back, I think I must have picked my fiancĂ©e subconsciously for that reason… it’s a long story, haha.
Anyway, I’m as ticked about this news as everyone else is. Although, I really think they should stop adapting Disney and whatever and create some original musicals, or revive some good ones again for God’s sake. But if we have to have another one, The Little Mermaid would be awesome, except for this whole “too fat to play fat” thing. Sigh.
The Villians are always the best characters! I especially adore Ursula, whose voice I’ve always longed to possess (ironically). I was about 8 when this movie came out, and to this day most of my girlfriends and I can still sing all of the songs. I get the impression that this was a very personal movie for a lot of women my age.
The Disney movie interpretation of the Little Mermaid has always said “Don’t try to change yourself to please someone else, because it won’t work. Just be yourself and only then you can be happy” to me. It’s just sad to me that this news about the musical really goes against my whole, well, conception of the story as it had been presented.
This actually makes me for once not aspire to have superfantastic red hair … pity.
I used to work at disney world so I know all kinds of random crap, the original design for ursula was a tall thin woman reminiscent of maleficient (seriously, I saw the drawing)
well just wow. as a lover of all things musical theatre i am appalled. emily skinner is a RIDICULOUS talent, all should go out and buy her CD’s. sherie renee scott who has replaced her, is, i’ve heard from friends who saw it workshopped, less than spectacular. you know it’s possible to be fat, (not that skinner is by any stretch of the imagination,) and be talented. i hate this business. (and my mother wonders why i don’t move to new york to act! hrummph!)
So now I’m wondering if I should postpone ordering my tickets until they get a larger ursula? I was so excited to see this show. Maybe I will watch Legally Blonde instead.
BTW..Legally Blonde the Musical will be on VH1 this coming Saturday
Wow, “Little Mermaid” producers, thanks for saving me the money I would have spent on tickets! Now I can go see “The Color Purple” again!
WHAT?! You can’t have a skinny Ursula. No. Because you’re right, she really is supposed to be Divine, which added to her hella awesomeness. She’s right up there with Maleficent for me. I’m disappointed because the theater usually seems more accepting of bigger actors and actresses. But maybe that’s just all in my head. I don’t feel like looking info up right now.
I blame my Disney movie loving-ness to wanting to be an animator for my whole life. And then I got to art school and sucked at animating! Ha! Anyway, have to agree with whoever said that they need to stop turning Disney movies into Broadway shows. But moreso, they need to stop the sequels. Dear God, make them stop ruining those classic films with sequels…
I LOVE Ursula. Actually, now I’m singing that Poor Unfortunate Souls song to myself (in my head). She is just such an awesome villain – her and Malleficent are my favorites.
But a skinny Urusula doesn’t work. Next they’ll take away her tentacles and make her a clownfish or something. Ridiculous.
yea, but why does she have to be fat/plus/large? that just plays into that a person’s size makes up the character. maybe the chick couldn’t cut it, maybe she fought with the director, maybe… why do you just allow yourself to read what is said and believe it is because of her size? acceptance means all sizes- not just getting po’d when a big person loses out to a smaller size person- think of all the times actors get replaced and no one gave a thought to whether it had to do with their size. sad that the other actress is getting a bum wrap just because she isn’t larger.
justmythought: So, it’s okay to fire someone from a job because they’re too fat? Because quite frankly, that’s what this boils down to. If you follow the links Mo cited above, you’ll see that it was not a lack of talent or a tiff with the director that caused her to lose the position – it was because she is fat.
Let’s relate this in a different context. You have a black character. Do you cast a talented black person to play the role? Or do you get an equally talented white person to play the role in blackface and then fire the black person because they’re black?
Sounds like a clear case of discrimination, huh?
I don’t know if images are ok here… but I’ll try…
Here is what the Broadway Ursula looks like.
I’ve heard some leaked audio from the show and I honestly think Emily Skinner would have done a better job.
Boo. I guess no images… here is the URL
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/MemoriesofYuna/Thats%20hot/ursula.jpg
Legally Blonde: The Musical is going to be on TV this week. I personally hated it but everyone else seems to love it.
Also, my best friend loved the musical version of Little Mermaid. However, he also loved Starlight Express, so I’m not sure he can be trusted.
Justmythought, I never gave the other actor “a bad wrap” because she was thin. I said that it was unfair that they fired an extremely talented and seasoned Broadway actor for being fat (per the link in the post). Do I believe that it went down that way? Yes. Whether it’s fair or not is your call. I have a suspicion that they wanted a thinner person because when Ursula then takes Ariel’s voice and charms Eric away, she makes herself younger and thinner. They probably didn’t think Emily looked realistic in the non-Octopus half of the show but I can only guess at their reasons.
And people made fun of me when they hired Antonio Banderas to play Pancho Villa. Banderas is SPANISH. What, they couldn’t have hired a Mexican actor to play a Mexican role? Jacob Vargas couldn’t have played that part? I know, I know. It’s really about bank-ability. You try to hire people who will bring in the dollars.
If someone can sing a role — if he or she can carry out the functions of a role well — weight doesn’t matter to me. Authenticity counts for something.
People made fun of me when I complained that they hired Banderas to lpay Pancho Villa, I mean.
I thought a “bum wrap” is one of those “treatments” those places’ll try and sell you for weight loss.
My guess is the skinny actress was hired so that when she takes the octopus suit off to play Ursula disguised as the sexy girl who tries to seduce the prince away from Ariel, it will be convincing. Because we all know a genuinely fat woman can’t be sexy! *eyeroll*
Okay, here’s what I don’t get about the “Yeah, but Ursula gets all skinny to seduce the prince” argument. Doesn’t Ursula have Ariel’s voice in a bottle and *that’s* what seduces the prince? And in that case, does it matter what she looks like?
(I can’t believe I’m debating plot points in The Little Mermaid…)
That story, and that movie…I have SUCH problems with nearly everything concerned with them. I mean, I love the Andersen story, because it says that the virtue of love is not in the happy ending–love makes you walk over razors, love cuts out your tongue, which is not a bad rendition of what it does to us, especially as young women–but because love gives you a soul. In the original, the mermaid does not get the prince, who is, probably, not really worth getting, compared to her. She dies, and will spend the next millenia, in Christian Andersen’s mostly Christian cosmos, earning the soul which was what she wanted most from humanity. She wasn’t just a woman mutilating herself for a man she barely knew; she was a fish yearning to be a human being. And without love, she’d never have it; love hurt her and destroyed her, but it made her human.
What I love about the story, and will never forgive the movie for bowdlerizing: the sad ending, so much more true to most loves than the happy one. The lack of malice on the part of the sea witch (who, in the story, is just an entrepreneur, who has to get paid before she delivers–she doesn’t hate the mermaid or even want what she’s getting). The stuff about the soul, which is terribly poignant. The way that, barring that stupid prince, it’s a story about WOMEN: the mermaid, the sisters who cut their hair for her, the grandmother who tells her (as so many of our mothers told us) that we must suffer to be beautiful, foreshadowing that ending in which we must suffer to build our souls. The way the mermaid won’t kill the prince when she gets the chance to save herself by doing so.
Things I don’t love about the story: that it’s a woman who’s made human through love (men, it seems, are already human, even though they’re far less tender or spiritual.) That her pagan, semi-eternal sea life is subsumed in what becomes, ultimately, a very Christian fable. That her fish half has to be destroyed for her human half to live. Those are some big flaws…but the movie was a thousand times worse, even allowing that Ursula could sing. There, it IS all about the love of a man. There, love DOESN’T silence her or make her bleed–it’s all the work of the obligatory villain…ess. Because in this story, women hate and hurt each other for love of men. In this story, there are no sisters or grandmothers–just a surrogate mother who’s trying to take Ariel’s man and a father who will make everything all right as soon as he understands that this is what his little girl (who’s nonetheless stacked like a Vegas card deck) really wants. No amount of powerful, fat sea witches could redeem those losses for me.
If we want a powerful fat character, how about one–ONE!–Disney mother who’s actually there, who actually supports her daughter rather than trying to destroy her, who puts that great voice and those spiffy tentacles into showing her that the animal self is worth having too, that it’s part of us just like the soul, that a prince who can be fooled by a voice alone isn’t long-term material? When are we going to get THAT sea witch?
Until we do, it’s hard to get too excited about who plays Bad Mommy for the fifty thousandth time.
Ursula is freaking awesome my favorite character of all time from any disney movie and i love that she is overweight bc its about time they represent us chicas who arent size 0. I love Ursula!
Actually, I think the awesomest thing about Ursula is that her body is a giant vagina/womb form. Most of the Disney villainesses are, at best, hoydenish (the queen from Snow White could be Katherine Hepburn) and, at worst, totally angular and mannish (Cruela DeVil). Ursula makes flesh the real and frightening power of womanhood in all its curvaceous and liquid grandeur.
It’s worth noting that the model for the original was a drag queen. American audiences are not ready for that much woman unless they can be reassured that she’s a fake.