Ponyo and The Little Mermaid

I've been writing my Japanese final about how different media is received differently in America and Japan, citing examples like One Piece, various Jump series, Harry Potter, Twilight (cough), and I find myself most interested by the comparison of Ponyo and the Little Mermaid.

As you may know, "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea," or 「崖の上のポニョ」 is Hayao Miyazaki's latest movie, released last Fall in Japan, and this past summer in America. The story for this movie is a loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale, "The Little Mermaid," wherein the heroine is a little fish girl known in the movie as Ponyo. The story more or less keeps to the same overarching plot, but really changes a lot of the events leading you to the resolution. Without spoiling anything, that resolution is very light and jovial kiss, probably designed to leave the audience with a good feeling about the future of these characters.

Now, consider one of Disney's last great masterful animated films, "The Little Mermaid," which first saw theaters in 1989. This film also delineated from the source material a great deal, allowing for a happy ending to an otherwise bleak tale. The heroine, Ariel, adventures her way to her goal, with a happy ending where marriage defines the pinnacle of romance.

First off, it's interesting to note that the key difference between these movies is their ending. Each is a romantic tale, with a likable male lead, but Ponyo ends with a simple kiss, suggesting an endless stream of possible outcomes. The Little Mermaid, however, in order to deliver the full experience to its audience, insists upon showing the marriage of these two lovers. Only then can the romance be complete.

Let's take a quick look at some of the numbers for these films. For simplicity's sake, I'm only going to consider box office sales, since the data is more readily available, and I don't want to hurt my brain. Ponyo opened in Japan making 11.7 million US dollars, and stayed in theaters long enough to accumulate a gross of $153 million. Compared to Miyazaki's most successful film (and the highest grossing in Japanese box office history), Spirited Away made $8.9 million opening weekend, and $230 million gross. Spirited Away was brought to America by Disney upon the insistence of Pixar bigwig John Lasseter. However, Disney didn't put much stock in the film's ability to succeed and barely marketed it. Unsurprisingly, having only opened in 38 different theaters, Spirited Away made only about half a million dollars that first weekend. It spread to a variety of theaters over time, though, and its gross sales were about $10 million. Disney kind of went overboard when they got their hands on Ponyo, assuming it had the same profitability Spirited Away had, in spite of their lack of marketing. They pumped the voice cast full of big name celebrities like Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, and Tina Fey, and put the movie in touch with its relatively young demographic. Opening weekend, in 927 different theaters, Ponyo made $3.5 million, and eventually grossed $15 million total. Compared to Spirited Away's performance without the backing of strong advertising, this is kinda crappy.

Consider Disney a bystander in this comparison of success, as they're really just a powerful enough company to get the licensing rights for a Miyazaki film, trying to suck Miyazaki's golden teet as much as they can. They made some ...odd... choices in terms of localization, such as turning an otherwise cutesy children's song into a techno-remix atrocity. Hey, if you like auto-tuner... Anyway, onto the meat of what I want to say.

The Little Mermaid, when it first came out, accounting for inflation, made $146 million in 2009 US dollars. Clearly, the movie is better suited to an American audience than Ponyo. Why is that? Boobs. Americans like their female protagonists to have exposed midriffs and hyper-sexualized features. This is not a bad thing at all. In fact, I appreciate that I'm being marketed to effectively. This does, however, very vividly demonstrate the difference between Japanese and American sexuality. The aggregate idea of beauty and appeal in Japan tends to focus on cuter features, younger and more doll-like idols. Even Japanese men are subject to such judgment, as on the streets of Japan, a majority of the men you see will appear rather feminine. But, that's not really what Ponyo shows...

For a general Japanese audience, cute characters sell. Duh. It seems like every anime, manga, or TV show has some token cute character that appears most often in merchandising. Ponyo takes this concept and runs with it, providing an experience entirely centered on the adventures of a single cute character. And, this approach falls flat when it comes to the American market. American girls aspire to become more like celebrities and popular female figures in other media as they grow up. And, there's an overwhelming tendency for those popular figures to extol "womanhood," or the ideal American vision of female beauty. As such, the dolls and toys available to little girls tend to have sexualized features, like the Barbie doll, or these newfangled Bratz dolls with the giant lips (bigger targets for punching). In Japan, dolls at these levels of popularity are much more ambiguous in shape, designed to be cuter.

So really, now that I've shown you some evidence for a relatively obvious fact, I wonder what you think is the better situation. Japan, a country where cuteness and youth equates to beauty, or America, where flaunting your junk makes you more attractive. Both have their extremes and perversions, but each provides a rather different environment for entertainment. Nothing like the Little Mermaid will ever be produced in Japan, while nothing like Ponyo will ever come out of America.

Or, we could just accept the dichotomy and appreciate the variety of media we get to experience because of it.