Given how Disney has been converting many of its animated princess movies into live-action versions, I’d like to pause my focus on literary retellings to look at how songs translate in the retelling process. What I’m talking about is the multitude of changes that songs in animated movies seem to undergo even when they appear in the live action version of the same film. For example, something that was sung in the animated version might have the same lyrics in the live-action version yet sound completely different.
Some might say that the song is simply being sung differently. And yes, that is definitely true. But it’s more than that! What I’m trying to get at (which keeps with the theme of this blog) is that the song is being retold – with certain implications.
Different singers might have different interpretations of the same song. More specifically, they might believe that some phrases are more important than others, and thus emphasize certain lyrics more than others. The speed of the song might also vary from the original. Even the instrumentation being played in the background would probably change depending on how different conductors interpret what’s written in the sheet music. As it happens, even discernable accents might change depending on what actress is singing the song and what location is being represented.
One example of the same song undergoing many such changes in its retelling is the opening song “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast. One of the first things one notices in the live action version is that much of it has been sped up considerably from the original, which one could argue relates to modern movie audiences craving faster pacing and having shorter attention spans. Given that the song is interspersed with spoken words, another basic change is that Emma Watson brings a British accent to the retold song, something which slightly changes the flavor of the song to being a melding of French and American vibes to instead melding French and English vibes.
The delivery of certain key phrases is also different in the retelling. For example, in the original the third phrase, “Little town, full of little people,” is sung in a fairly straightforward manner. However, in the retold song Emma Watson lingers on the word “little” and then inserts a significant pause before finally singing the word “people,” which calls into question whether the character’s seeming need to think about what word comes after “little” during that pause is foreshadowing the fact that not all of the characters in and around the town are, in fact, actually people – at least not until the ending and climax of the movie when all of the characters again become people. I believe that inserting this pause therefore represents a form of foreshadowing that constitutes one of the ways in which the retelling, or live action version, of Beauty and the Beast is consciously seeking to display more literary qualities than the original, even down to how identical lines in the same song are sung.
The same type of analysis can be applied to songs that appear in both the animated and live action versions of other Disney movies as well. Going a step farther even the lyrics are subject to change throughout the rewriting – or retelling – process. For example, in the animated version of The Little Mermaid, the song, “Kiss the Girl,” contains lyrics that display a lack of concern for whether a man should seek a woman’s consent before kissing her, something that reflects prevailing social attitudes when the animated version first debuted. The live-action lyrics have been very noticeably changed to make it more apparent that Prince Eric should gain consent from Ariel to kiss her. This modernized shift makes it clear that times are changing, and even songs must change to keep with present opinions.
Can you think of any examples of ways in which a song in the animated version of a movie has been changed for the live action version? Why do you think the song-writers made the changes they did in the retelling of the song?
Fairy truly yours,
Grace W. Wong
The Retellings Review (and Fairy Tales Too!) 
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