Free Republic

Disney’s The Little Mermaid star Melissa McCarthy had a starring role at Sunday’s West Hollywood Pride Parade where some participants engaged in explicit BDSM sex acts in full view of the public. One report claimed that children were present on the parade route where the BDSM activity took place. On Sunday, Melissa McCarthy wore a headpiece with the words “Say Gay” as she rode her own float during the parade, which took over a large section of Santa Monica Boulevard running through the heart of West Hollywood. Her headpiece was apparently a reference to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law,...

Critics have clearly responded to the movie with a collective “meh,” since that 67% score above is just a few percentage points away from the site’s “rotten” designation that starts at 59%. However, take a look at that near-perfect audience score. Quite a lopsided response here, don’t you think? The audience score is a very stellar 95%, based on more than 2,500 verified audience ratings (and that “verified” designation is important, which is why we’ll come back to it in just a moment).

When “Batman and Robin” came out in 1997, it seemed like everyone was focused on Alicia Silverstone’s body. The actor who played Batgirl was greeted with misogynistic and body-shaming echoes of “Fatgirl” by so-called fans of the franchise. In a particularly gross quip, late director Joel Schumacher laughed about how Batgirl’s suit came “with nipples. We’re an equal opportunity movie.” When it was announced last summer that an actor of color was going to play Batgirl in a live action film, racist trolls came for star Leslie Grace in the same way they came for Halle Bailey after she was...

Disney’s forthcoming live-action Little Mermaid is set to star actress and singer Halle Bailey, of the R&B duo Chloe x Halle, as Ariel, Variety reports. That means that one of Disney’s most iconic princesses is going to look quite different. This Ariel will be black. That’s a giant deal, and not just because Ariel is a popular Disney princess with arguably the best “I Want” song in the Disney canon. Ariel is also the princess whose character design set the mold for the astonishingly homogenous run of giant-eyed, small-nosed Disney princesses we’ve met since The Little Mermaid debuted in 1989....

[T]he song “Kiss The Girl,” from the Disney hit “The Little Mermaid,” is more misogynistic and dismissive of consent than cute. By performing the song multiple times each semester, the Tigertones elevate it to an offensive and violating ritual ... The premise ... is that the male Prince Eric, on a date with the beautiful female Ariel, should kiss her without asking for a single word to affirm her consent... Lyrics such as ... “she won’t say a word/Until you kiss that girl,” unambiguously encourage men to make physical advances on women without obtaining their clear consent... The song launches...