It’s common knowledge that when it comes to the award for Best Original Song, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a sucker for sappy love ballads. So that means “Part of Your World” won the Oscar, right? Wrong. It went to “Under the Sea,” the number we’ve just happened upon. Let’s figure out why that is.
Firstly, the music. Alan Menken drew influence from a song similar in subject matter called “The Beautiful Briny” from Bedknobs and Broomsticks and mixed in elements of calypso music, which originated in Trinidad and Tobago. The result? An iconic melody that one need only play the first few notes of to get people bopping their heads. While the vocals in “Part of Your World” overshadow the music, we get a nice little instrumental this time around that shows off the tune.
Secondly, the wordplay. There are some pretty clever puns in here, both in the lyrics and in the visuals. Most of them come in the second half, when Sebastian rhymes fish with musical instruments as they all come to join the fun and start playing. One of the most memorable is the Duke Ellington fish, which manages to be funny and creepy at the same time.
Thirdly, the animation. It doesn’t reach the extravagance of Disney’s later elaborate numbers due to the limitations of the time, but it’s still vibrant, fun and colorful. Is it essential to the plot? When you think about it, not really. Do we love it anyway? Oh god, yes. :D
Flounder and Ariel, however, do not share our sentiments. They swim off during the instrumental, leaving Sebastian alone when the song ends. “Oh…someone need to nail that girl’s fins to the floor.”
Just then, a seahorse arrives on the scene. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” he tells Sebastian. “I’ve got an urgent message from the sea king.”
"The sea king?"
"He wants to see you right away. Something about Ariel."
Oooh, this can’t be good. Or so Sebastian thinks. “He knows…!”
Back at the palace, Triton is trying to figure out who the lucky merman could be. “Come in, Sebastian!” he says when he notices the crab hiding in the throne room doorway.
Semi-succeeding to keep his composure, Sebastian approaches. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
"Now, Sebastian, I’m concerned about Ariel. Have you noticed she’s been acting peculiar lately? You know, moaning about, daydreaming, singing to herself…you haven’t noticed, hmmm?" Now he starts to get pushy. "Sebastian, I know you’ve been keeping something from me. About Ariel?"
"Ariel…?"
"In love?"
At this, Sebastian finally snaps. “I tried to stop her, sir! She wouldn’t listen! I told her to stay away from humans! They are bad, they are trouble, they — “
"Humans?" Triton snaps. "What about humans?"
Sebastian, realizing how royally he’s screwed, can only laugh nervously. “Humans? Who said anything about humans?” Triton grabs him while angrily swimming off to find Ariel.
Meanwhile, Flounder has taken Ariel back to the cave to show her a surprise. And what a surprise it is; the statue of Eric from before landed right in the center of her collection.
Ariel reacts to it as one would expect a teenaged girl to. “Oh, Flounder, you’re the best! It looks just like him! It even has his eyes.” She’s just starting to roleplay elopement with it when she turns around and sees a very large, very familiar and very pissed figure in the shadows. “Daddy!”
"I consider myself a reasonable merman," Triton says as he reveals himself. "I set certain rules, and I expect those rules to be obeyed. Is it true you rescued a human from drowning?"
"Daddy, I had to!"
"Contact between the human world and the mer-world is strictly forbidden! You know that, Ariel! Everyone knows that!"
They go back and forth for a while, and much anti-human sentiments are spouted until Ariel retorts with the four irredeemable words: “Daddy, I love him!”
Now Triton properly flips out. “No! Have you lost your senses completely? He’s a human, you’re a mermaid!”
"I don’t care!"
"So help me, Ariel, I am going to get through to you!" Triton says, lighting up his trident. "And if this is the only way, so be it.” He starts blasting away at everything in the grotto, turning all of Ariel’s knick-knacks to dust while she screams for him to stop. For the grand finale, he destroys the statue of Eric with an explosion that would make Michael Bay proud. Ariel flops onto the nearest rock and starts sobbing as Triton leaves, clearly upset at what he’s had to do.
Sebastian cautiously approaches her. “Ariel, I…”
"Just go away."
He and Flounder decide to leave her alone, and we get an overhead shot of her crying for a few seconds before two menacing, eely shadows appear. “Poor child. Poor, sweet child,” Flotsam and Jetsam say, pretending to talk to each other. “She has a very serious problem.”
"If only there were something we could do."
"But there is something!”
At this, Ariel looks up. “Who…who are you?”
"Don’t be scared. We represent someone who can help you. Someone who could make all your dreams come true. Just imagine, you and your prince, together forever."
"I don’t understand…"
"Ursula has great powers."
To Ariel’s credit, she isn’t too crazy about the idea of making a deal with the infamous sea witch and tells the eels to beat it. As they start to leave, they flick the disembodied head of Eric’s statue back towards her. Seeing it is what convinces her to change her mind.
Flounder and Sebastian are waiting outside the cave when Ariel passes by with Flotsam and Jetsam. “What are you doing here with these riff-raff?” Sebastian asks.
"I’m going to see Ursula."
"Ariel, no! She’s a demon! She’s a monster!"
"Why don’t you go tell my father? You’re good at that."
This is indeed what Sebastian should probably do, but we need to have a plot, so he and Flounder just follow her to Ursula’s cave instead.
The little tan things try to grab Ariel as she enters, but Ursula shoos them away. “We mustn’t lurk in doorways. It’s rude! One might question your upbringing.” She sits herself in front of a vanity and proceeds to apply her makeup of live fish (as if we needed yet another reason to find her disgusting) while explaining that she already knows all about Ariel’s problem and that she’s already got the solution; “The only way to get what you want is to become human yourself.”
This astounds Ariel. “You can do that?”
"My dear, sweet child, it’s what I do! It’s what I live for! To help unfortunate merfolk like yourself. Poor souls with no one else to turn to."
And so the Disney villain song is born. :)
While “Part of Your World” and “Under the Sea” are mostly the same throughout, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is all over the place, suiting Ursula’s crazy nature. It starts out slow and stately (with more than a tinge of ominousness) while Ursula goes on about how she’s good now and uses her magic to help the miserable, lonely, depressed and pathetic (the last one being an aside, complete with a little sting). From there, it starts to get a little faster as she sings of how someone couldn’t pay up “once or twice” and had to be dealt with, but “on the whole, I’ve been a saint!” This line gets a brief bit of choir vocalization to accompany it.
During the interlude, Ursula conjures up a scroll and lays out her deal. You all know it, but I’m going over it anyhow; she can make a potion that will turn Ariel human for three days, and before time is up, she’s got to get a true love’s kiss from Eric. If that happens, she’ll stay human. If not, she turns back into a mermaid and belongs to Ursula forever. “Do we have a deal?”
Seeming to totally miss that “your soul is mine” bit, Ariel briefly angsts about how she’ll never see her family again if she becomes human.
"But you’ll have your man. Life’s full of tough choices, innit? Oh, and there is one more thing. We haven’t discussed the matter of payment." She doesn’t ask for much, really. Just Ariel’s voice. She won’t need it! She’s got her looks! Her pretty face! "And don’t underestimate the importance of body language!" So this is the horrific moment in time from whence twerking evolved.
The music keeps getting faster as Ursula sings about how guys don’t care about conversation and that “it’s she who holds her tongue who gets her man!” I know people don’t usually think of this as a feminist movie, but I think it’s telling that the villain is obsessed with appearances.
Anyway, Ursula starts flat-out berating Ariel until she signs the scroll, at which point she briefly celebrates her latest catch with Flotsam and Jetsam. Flounder and Sebastian watch in horror as Ursula creates a green vortex that surrounds Ariel while chanting something about the Caspian Sea and laryngitis. “Now sing!”
Ariel does a little vocalizing as a golden ball of light begins to shine from her throat. A pair of hands reach down her gullet and rip the ball out, leaving her mute. Her voice flows into Ursula’s necklace, and Ursula conjures up some kind of yellow bubble to surround her with. Light flashes, and Ariel’s tail splits apart and turns into legs. Ouch. The bubble disappears, leaving her unable to breathe. Ursula laughs as Flounder and Sebastian help her swim up to the surface. She bursts out of the water with a loud gasp, and the music dies down as she and her friends swim to shore.
Wow. We’re, like, halfway through the movie now and the big turn in the plot has only just now happened. Weird.
