Author Archives: Lina Rau

Midterm Discovery Essay: Analyzing humanism in Disney’s Luca

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Lina Rau

Jessica Pressman

ECL 305: Literature in the Environment

3 March 2024 II Discovery Essay on Disney’s Luca

Analyzing humanism in Disney’s Luca

Disney’s Luca is an animated movie set in the seaside of the Italian town of Portorosso at the end of the 1950’s. The sea monster Luca, whose parents forbid him to approach human surface in fear of their son being hunted, one day gets to know another sea monster child called Alberto. The boys soon start to sneak out of their natural environment to travel around the world with a Vespa. On their journey the two young sea monsters meet the young and compassionate human called Giulia, who they soon get friends with. In fear of Giulia having prejudices, too, the two young boys hide their identity. However, Giulia uncovers their secret and responds with empathy and understanding. All together they continue their journey, showing that them looking differently does not make a difference in their friendship. At the end of the movie the townspeople discover the sea monsters’ secret and their former perception on them change. They start to live together and allow the sea monsters to be on land.

In the movie one scene that is crucial to analyze is the situation where the townspeople discover that Luca and Alberto change into sea monsters after it starts raining (Disney’s Luca 1:14h – 1:17h). Alberto first decided to sacrifice himself because Luca did not touch water yet and still looked like a human. When the townspeople saw Alberto in his fish form, they started to hunt him and wanted to catch him, having in mind that they can receive a prize as a reward for catching a sea monster. Even though the sea monsters are not humans they seem to portray different human like emotions and characteristics the townspeople cannot. The question one must ask is, what it exactly means to be human. Are the sea monsters just any beasts that do not have anything in common with humans? Or can we actually see the monsters as creatures that resemble humans and even have better characteristics than humans? Although we as humans are attributing non-human characteristics onto monsters, they should be more seen as being human-like creatures whom humans have something in common with. In the case of “Luca”, the monsters are showing more human like emotions than the townspeople do. Disney’s Luca thus teaches on humanism.

Before analyzing the lack of the townspeople’s humanism, a closer look should be taken on how the sea monsters are perceived in the movie. In the town a lot of rumors have spread that there are sea monsters in the water lurking out. The townspeople are suspicious about their existence and therefore have negative perceptions on anything which they do not portray as being humans. They are gossiping around the sea monsters and have many negative stereotypes connected to the creatures. When the Townspeople see Alberto’s and later Luca’s real form, they initially start a mob with torches and pitchforks in their hand, signalizing that they feel threatened by the sea monster’s existence. Even though Giulia and Luca try to educate the townspeople that sea monsters are not dangerous, they first remain unwilled to listen.

As shown above the townspeople have a deep fear against the unknown. Throughout our classes we have seen that humans have always feared the unknown- especially the unknown sea. The sea was always seen as an environment that poses unforeseeable threats to humans as it has mystical features. The same attributions are put onto monsters. The definition of monster is, apart from that, a creature that deviates from social norms. Furthermore, the word derives from the Latin word “monstrare” meaning to demonstrate or to warn, which means that monsters have a demonstrative quality. Keeping that in mind, a bigger “so what?” of the movie and a lot of interesting aspects can be pointed out.

The first aspect that can be pointed out is the establishment of a class system. The townspeople see themselves as the elite and, compared to that, see the sea monsters as creatures that should be hunted. If the townspeople catch a sea monster they would be celebrated like kings and would keep the dead body of the monster as a trophy, in belief that they have the right to do so and dominate not only the living beings on land but also the living beings in the sea. Similar things can be seen in society up to today where people or animals are exploited or hunted for the benefit of others. One similar example to the one in “Luca” in the real world is e.g. the poaching of big animals such as lions or elephants in African countries just for people’s pleasure. The movie thus deliberately confronts the viewers with the topic of marginalization.

The next point is how the townspeople actually treat their surroundings and especially the environment. Most of the townspeople are fishermen, which shows that they are exploiting the sea without taking care of it. The young sea monster Luca in comparison is taking care of his surroundings and he does not try to violate the nature on land. Him being respectful towards a place on earth he did not really know before makes him be a person that has better morals than the townspeople do.

Referring that back to the pivotal scene mentioned earlier similar results can be found. The most interesting fact is that the townspeople’s fear of the unknown is used as an excuse for them not being open minded. The townspeople more or less believe that it justifies them having prejudices and unreasonable hate against the sea monsters. Apart from that both Luca and Alberto possess emotions or relationships (e.g. their friendship) that are similar to the ones humans have. Alberto even considers sacrificing himself for the safety of Luca. When Luca’s and Alberto’s real identity is discovered, the townspeople instantly start to objectify the young boys as something they want to hunt and to capture, even though they got along with them before the boys transformed into their natural skin. With their weapons in their hand, the townspeople are quite literally the monsters of society: their willingness to destroy, to murder and to being ignorant, is more monster like than anything else.

The movie in general therefore uses the figure of the sea monster to show (just like in “monstrare”) that it covers more humanism than humans do. In reality, the real monster in the movie is the human that destroys and exploits the environment or other living beings. The scene in the movie must thus be seen as a self-reflection of society today. We humans need to be aware of the importance of ecosystems in the sea again and need to work on the problems society has today (greed, hate, egoism…). Instead of thinking about the difference between sea monster and humans, sea monsters should be seen as an extension of humans that could possibly portray what humans do wrong.

Week 7: The Little Mermaid

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Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” covers a lot of what he have learned about different mermaid myths so far. The first thing I have noticed is how a connection between mermaids and sirens were made in the text, “Like her story ancestors, the Sirens, this little mermaid has the most beautiful singing voice, but she trades it for legs so she can be with the prince in the human world, and entertains him by dancing” (p. 107). Giving up something which is quite literally defining herself shows us a lot about what it means to be a mermaid and what it could mean to become human like, which is why I think that this part is definitely one of the strongest metaphors in this tale I want to elaborate more on.

The Little Mermaid wants to transform herself to find a sense of belonging in a human like environment. She is willing to give up her whole identity to find love and affection of the Prince and believes that she could not assimilate into human society without doing that. The question now is, whether that now has to be seen as a sacrifice for what we now understand of romantic love or whether it rather is a sacrifice. More possibly the metaphor shows us a hierarchical structure of natural beings on our earth showing that humans are believed to most powerful with everything else being inferior. But is it really worth to give up everything and not find happiness in what you are? I felt like this part of the story has definitely have to be read as some part of cautionary tale.

Week 6: Undine

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This week’s excerpt on Undine reminded me of the tale of Melusine from last week’s class. In both stories, the husbands are in charge of either accepting the women’s secret/ otherness or not. On the one hand we have Melusine, whose secret is only revealed through her husband not giving her her space which leads to her flying away from the castle, and on the other hand we have Undine, who openly shares her origin of being a water princess that was only given a soul by marrying Huldbrand. Undine in the end transforms into a body of water surrounding the grave of her husband. Both Undine and Melusine are described as being beautiful. But the biggest difference I saw is the following: Melusine was able to flee and live her life, whereas Undine had to vanish into the sea which leads me to the following:

Undine has given her husband the choice of accepting her origin or not: “Such as we are, however, can only obtain a soul by the closest union of affection with one of your human race. I am now possessed of a soul, and my soul thanks you, my inexpressibly beloved one, and it will ever thank you, if you do not make my whole life miserable. For what is to become of me, if you avoid and reject me? Still I would not retain you by deceit. And if you mean to reject me, do so now, and return alone to the shore” (p.105). While reading that I thought that I must be reading a tragedy. Undine seems to be highly dependent on her husband. I thought that her being dependent on her husband might be an aspect worth a discussion. Even though Undine is a half-human-half-water being, she is almost craving to become a human that has a soul. Why would she want to do that? Does that mean, that all water beings are inferior to humans? In the last weeks we often learned that half water beings have the power to allure men by their sinful creature. Where does that shift now come from, that it is a WOMAN that is dependent of a man? Why does she even have to vanish if her husband does not stay by her side? I would be glad if we can discuss that in class!

Discovery Blog: Fortunio and the Siren

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For my preparation of next week’s class, I did not read the right/ the assigned tale. Nevertheless, as I found it highly interesting, I thought that I could write my discovery blog and share my findings:

This reading focuses on Fortunio. Fortunio was adopted as an orphan by a loving family, who could not have children on their own. Due to his secret power, he has wished for a sibling, so that his mother got pregnant. Years later, in a fight, Fortunio’s brother Valentino tells Fortunio that he is not the legitimate son of their parents. In his sorrow, Fortunio decides to leave his home, when his mother comes up to him and curses him to be swallowed up by sirens if he ever went on an adventure on the sea. Fortunio ignores his mother’s curse and travels to the west, where he encounters a dispute between a wolf, an ant and an eagle, that were discussing over eating a deer. Fortunio helps them dividing the food properly and they gift him the power to turn into each of the animals whenever he needs to and they part ways. On his adventure, he sees the Princess Doralice of Polonia, who is now promised to a bad looking man called Saracen that won Doralice as a bride. In the following days, he uses his power to transform into the different animals to get to know Doralice better. Doralice and Fortunio thus fall in love with each other and they marry. After they have married, Fortunio decides to travel the sea, where he gets caught by a siren’s song and gets swallowed by the sea, just as he his mother predicted it. After two years of her husband being gone, Doralice and their son decide to look for him to get him out from the siren. Doralice manages to free her husband from the siren’s hostage, when he suddenly uses his power again to turn into an eagle to escape to the ship. Back home, he lastly turns into a wolf to devour his mother and brother. (cf. Penguin, pgs. 89-100).

Reading this tale especially caught my interest, because it made me aware of the deep connection humans and the natural environment have that we now lost. Besides of the fact that the “dangerous” siren caught Fortunio and held him into hostage (and that he was too greedy to accept that he has everything he has ever dreamed of and did not want to stop), I found it even more interesting to see how deeply connected humans and animals can be. Fortunio never, not even a second, thought about the danger of approaching dangerous animals such as a wolf or an eagle. By helping them and approaching them with curiosity, he got to be a part of their world and could understand better, how both humans and animals can coexist together without harming one another. He even cares about a smaller animal such as the ant to get a fair share of the food. It is, as if Fortunio was able to recognize everybody’s existence in this world. Through respect, they become part of one world and there is no us-vs-them society. When I thought about that a little bit more, I got aware that we humans have lost the mutual respect to our nature. If we were a little bit more respectful towards our environment, we would be able to all live in peace together. Instead, humanity’s greed causes severe effects on our natural surroundings. Deforestation which causes the loss of the natural habitats of animals or anthropological natural disasters were only a few of the examples that directly came to my mind. We should all be a little bit like Fortunio and appreciate our coexistence with other living beings on this world.

Week 5: Melusine

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Understanding this week’s European folklore was honestly rather difficult to me. In the last couple of weeks, when we have read about other folklores or sirens, I could make up a certain pattern: the half human being was either presented as beautiful, dangerous, or sinful, or as knowledgeable, meaning that it can teach the humans something deeper. While reading the stories about Melusine, I was confronted with other themes where it took me a longer time to think about it. In the last weeks we have never actually read something about crossing the line between the mythical and real world. What I mean by that is that never in the stories, the merperson was actually in a relationship with a mortable human. With Melusine, it is different. Even though it is depicted that Melusine’s husband Raymond does not know about her transforming into a serpent as she hides when it happens, they still fell in love with each other. This shows to me, that love can transcend the boundaries of both the real and the divine world. I had to think about the romantic idea, that love can overcome any obstacle.

Even though this sounds great at a first glance, I am still more than confused to put the folklore into its historic context. The people in the Middle Ages were highly religious. How can it be, that a human has fallen in love with a serpent? How can it be, that Raymond has never doubted about her being “different”? Does this story want to teach humans about the power of love, of acceptance, or of understanding?

I honestly did not found answers to my questions above. First I thought that Raymond must have been blinded by Melusine’s beauty, which could mean that his attraction to her was rather superficial (he did not see her true personality). An evidence in the text could be: “In a long and wide pool set within the dark blue mosaic, decorated here and there with the green leaves of violet and black irises, was the flawless figure of a woman, forever young, whom he knew well. Her bent back magnificent in profile, her breasts raised, as she combed her long golden hair, and the exquisite flesh, more pale than usual, pearled almost to transparency” (p.125). But then I started to think about this Christian image of a forbidden desire. Did the story maybe want to warn the people about pursuing relationships which are unaccepted by society? Or is it rather about the image of forgiveness I have mentioned earlier??

I am eager to hear about your opinions in class. Maybe we can find answers together!

Week 4: Oannes

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Even though in this weeks’ reading we have learned about different water beings or other half-human half-animal monsters from different cultures, I liked the first reading about Oannes the most. Through the text I gained a better understanding of the relationship between humans, nature and half-human beings. Oannes was described as an amphibious being which had the form of a fish with the head of a man under his fish’s head and the feet of a man under its fish tail that allows him to exist on land and interact with humans (p.3). Apart from that Oannes was able to articulate and communicate in a human language.

When I first read about that I was thinking about what we discussed in class. We came up with the conclusion that every monster figure has human characteristics. It was striking to me to see how this time with Oannes it is not a water being which is split into half but that it rather has the whole body of a fish and then a whole body of a human conjoint into one figure. Through that we can see that the fish body represents Oannes’ deep connection to the aquatic life through a special focus on the fish’s body

I have tried to look up further information on the value of water in Mesopotamia and found it highly interesting that the name itself is a Greek word meaning “between rivers” which according to my research means that the region itself is in between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Soden 2023). Undoubtedly that already shows that Mesopotamians valued water. But what I found even more interesting is how it is emphasized that water was used not only for drinking but also for irrigation, construction, and trade, which emphasizes that water and especially the environment Mesopotamians found themselves in are a source of life. Oannes is in my opinion like an intermediator between spirit and earth and can bridge between the human world and everything which goes beyond that.

What I thought even more interesting is that Oannes is the keeper of knowledge who gave men “an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art” (p.4). But not only that.  Oannes also “taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws […] and showed them how to collect fruits” (p.4). Oannes was thus humanizing mankind and helped the humans. When I thought about that statement a little bit longer, I was pleased to finally say that we found a water being which is not only shown as something dangerous or sinful. The Mesopotamians have looked up to Oannes as someone who is God-like and as someone who has a lot of wisdom. Reading the story made me realize that the people have a deep appreciation for the nature and especially for the ocean, as they actually recognize and value what it has to offer. Through the help of Oannes, you can learn to work with the nature and to even stay alive through the nature in difficult times. That makes Oannes’ work wholesome to me!

Works cited:

Bacchilega, C., & Brown, M. A. (Eds.). (2019). The Penguin book of mermaids. Penguin.

Soden et. Al (2023). history of Mesopotamia. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-Asia

Week 2

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This week’s reading on Vaugh Scibner’s Merpeople has made me realize how long the myth of merpeople already exists. Having known basically nothing, I would have never thought that the history of mermaids and mermen has deep roots in the Christian Church, with merpeople characterizing “hybridity, contradiction and power struggles” (Scribner, p.29). In medieval churches, mermaid sculptures were often used for decorative purposes. It is grotesk to believe that churches put mermaid sculptures into their holy halls, even though they were afraid of mermaids having a sinful creature and being dangerous to men. That leads me to another aspect that puzzled me, which is the difference in how mermen and mermaids are perceived. When people nowadays think of mermaids, they have this image of a beautiful half-human and half-animal in mind, which has a feminine outward appearance with for example long beautiful hair, a pretty face, … just like Disney’s Ariel.

The question which arose to me was, whether mermaids in western cultures have always been presented in this way. After reading this week’s chapter. I came across the interesting fact that mermaids were first perceived as dangerous aquatic females who intend to bring men to death (cf. Scribner, p. 31). Apart from that, mermaids were not described as being beautiful, instead they were having “twelve feet […], and six necks […], and on each one an awful head” (Scribner, p. 31). Only a few centuries later the mermaids were repeatedly shown as “dangerous, passionate, sexual beings, with topless torsos” (Scribner, p.40). This image might also be the one that coined our current image of mermaids. Mermen in comparison were portrayed as being predominant (Scribner, p.34), as well as in religious self-control (Scribner, p.51). It would be interesting to get a little bit more knowledge on how this shift has happened.

Another topic worth a discussion is in how far mermaids are a figure of misogyny. Even though I think that everyone knows about misogyny I will still put a little definition into this post: Misogyny is the “hatred or prejudice against women, typically exhibited by men. It is generally accepted that misogyny is a consequence of patriarchy” (Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/misogyny). As mermaids are regarded as sexualized and sinful creatures in church, one could also argue that misogyny must be part of how we see mermaids now. It might be interesting to discuss in class, how women in general were degraded and seen at that time.

Week 1: Introduction

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Hi everyone! My name is Lina Rau. I was born and raised in a small village in Germany and came here just two weeks ago. In Germany, I am studying two majors at the same time. The first one is English and the second one is Geography. After my bachelor’s and master’s Degree, I will be an English and Geography teacher for high schools. This is also the reason why I chose to come to the U.S.

Besides of studying, I love taking strolls and discover new places. Especially then if the day ends with a great coffee! 😊 Apart from that, I love reading, playing guitar or meeting my friends. Reading something about the mermaid myth has never come to my mind, but I’m so excited for everything we will learn this semester.

Let me say that I am so thankful for your warm welcome in class and that I am looking forward to meeting all of you. I am already so excited to learn more about mermaids! This semester will be great!

Viele Grüße!