Hans Christian Andersen's (and MG's) "The Little Mermaid"

I wanna be where the people are. 🧜‍♀️

Hans Christian Andersen dominates Denmark. I saw his home while strolling down Nyhavn, his characters in the whimsical DNA of Tivoli Gardens. I ran into statues of him everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, and every time I saw that gangly weirdo my heart nearly burst. Because despite my blistering feet, my emptying wallet, and the fact that “my parents hate that I solo travel hahahahaha,” I had made it to Copenhagen, land of fairy tales.  

For months I’d announce (to anyone who would listen) that I was going to Copenhagen to “study fairy tales,” it practically became my OOO message. Then I’d ask, “What do you know about Hans Christian Andersen?” before launching into the following spiel:

Hans Christian Andersen was a prolific fairy tale author, he wrote banger after banger. His unfuckwithable catalog includes The Princess & the Pea, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling (featuring my favorite revenge fantasy “everything will turn out fine as long as you grow up to be hot”), The Red Shoes, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Thumbelina. Like, HCA was so beloved in Denmark they paid him an annual stipend for being a “National Treasure.” Add that to my list of dreams.

I became fascinated with HCA when watching the gorgeously bonkers 1952 musical Hans Christian Andersen. It’s perfectly cast, as if someone asked “Who should play this famous perpetually-rejected chaos bisexual?” and Danny Kaye pirouetted down from the heavens. But the film is upfront about murking fact with fiction, opening with, “This is not the story of his life, but a fairy tale about the great spinner of fairy tales.”

This much is true: the small harbor town of Copenhagen was his Bright Lights, Big City, and he moved there with and only 13 rigsdalers and a dream. He cycled through several artistic pursuits and relationship attempts, failing at all of them. 💙 But that desire to want “more” became the channel to tell his stories. The most famous example? The Little Mermaid, believed to be a queer allegory, covertly inspired by HCA’s unrequited love for Edvard Collin, the son of his benefactor and guardian.

“Wait,” I’d usually pause here to either raise or lower a beer the size of my head. “Do you know the real story of The Little Mermaid?”