Posted on 09/18/2022 1:43:34 PM PDT by Ennis85
A teaser for the forthcoming live action remake of The Little Mermaid has been released. There’s a brief glimpse of the underwater kingdom — fish, coral and the wreckage of a ship — then a swish of red hair and a glimmering green tail as we hear a snippet of Halle Bailey’s glorious rendition of Part of Your World.
Social media has been flooded with videos of parents showing the trailer to their young black children, capturing their reactions when they realise this version of Ariel looks a lot more like them than in the original Disney movie. “That’s Ariel?” one little girl asks, wide-eyed. “Mommy, she’s brown like me,” another says, grinning.
Their delight was incredibly moving, one of those rare moments when the internet is united in pure joy. Of course, because we can’t have nice things, it was followed by a swift and brutal backlash. Bailey might have all the necessary prerequisites to play this character. Beautiful? Check. Incredible singing voice? Check. Red hair? Check. But the mere idea of a black mermaid was enough to add fuel to an increasingly unhinged culture war.
Between the cost of living crisis and rising energy costs, we are facing a true winter of discontent, and yet all some people can get energised about is the skin colour of a Disney princess. An “artificial intelligence scientist” decided to “fix” the trailer and, according to one Twitter user, “turned the woke actor into a ginger white girl. He says he can fix the whole movie when it comes out . . . It’s over for wokecels.” The Twitter user quickly clarified: “This is for purely educational purposes, please do not misinterpret this in a racist way.” Because what could be racist about literally whitewashing a black woman’s face?
The Little Mermaid isn’t the only remake attracting this kind of deranged criticism. The Rings of Power, Amazon’s much-anticipated prequel to the Lord of the Rings movies, features a more diverse cast, with women and people of colour playing key roles. Online trolls have been “review bombing” the series — Prime Video had to suspend reviews as a result — and some of the actors have been subjected to “relentless racism, threats, harassment and abuse”, according to a statement released by the stars of the show.
Tolkien would be rolling in his grave, the fanboys bemoaned, despite the fact the author rarely mentions skin colour in his texts. In the Oxford don’s own words: “I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all, I detest the segregation or separation of language and literature. I do not care which of them you think white.” I would love to see a Venn diagram featuring people who cannot cope with elves of colour; people who are perfectly happy to believe that Jesus, a Jewish man from the Middle East, had light hair and blue eyes; and people who threaten to bomb movie theatres if a black man is ever given the chance to play James Bond. I imagine the intersection between the three would be tight. “But James Bond isn’t black,” some racists cry. “It would be like if a white actor played Barack Obama in a biopic. Have you ever thought about that?” I wonder how long it would take to explain to these poor unfortunate souls the difference between fictional characters and real people? Would it be like an episode of Father Ted? “These are small,” Ted tells Dougal, picking up the plastic toy cows on the table. “But the ones out there are far away.”
While, yes, there’s an argument to be made against Hollywood’s recycling of old intellectual properties rather than creating new ones, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do their best to ensure that these retellings reflect the world in which we live. Representation matters. We all deserve to see ourselves reflected in the culture we consume. When Halle Bailey told her grandparents about the criticism she had faced when she took the role of Ariel, they told her: “You don’t understand what this is doing for us, for our community, for all the little black and brown girls who are going to see themselves in you.”
She told Variety magazine: “I want the little girls just like me who are watching to know that they’re special and that they should be a princess in every single way. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be.”
Quite a reach to suggest Tolkien was in favour of inclusive revisionism of his work.
Mommy, she’s brown like me,” said no kid ever....so obviously said by an adult
I DEMAND that Jeremy Renner be the KING OF WAKANDA in the next movie featuring that place. It needs a dollop of inclusion.
Really?
I think they are finding a problem that doesn’t exist.
“they should be a princess in every single way”
How many boys want to marry a girl who has been raised to think of herself as a princess?
Their terms are acceptable...
(I don’t care what color a mermaid is, but if that person wants to leave. lets support their choice)
“Mommy, she’s brown like me,” trained one adult to make their child say.
Perhaps it is time to remake black panther but with a white cast. Maybe call it white cougar. A society isolated in the mountains free of crime. Powered by energy as a result of decades of research and development as opposed to the discovery of a magic substance that can literally do anything the plot requires.
The only racism happening in our society is blatant racism against white people.
“While, yes, there’s an argument to be made against Hollywood’s recycling of old intellectual properties rather than creating new ones,”
But that is the entire point; isn’t it? I suspect that the objection isn’t to the color of fictional mermaids, but the self-conscious and self-righteous substitutions. People don’t consider it entertaining to be lectured at, and are quite aware of the reaction of these smug hypocrites if the color substitution were made in the other direction.
I say they should do a new movie of “Snow White”, only make her black because being white is racist today and call her “Coal black”. When she comes across the 7 dwarves have her talk like a black rapper which so the children can relate “Yo! What the F is these 7 mofo Hobbit doin’ around me yo? Git the F outta my face yo mofo rapist mofos!”
Disney in particular and the entertainment industry in general clearly hate White people.
Exactly. This issue is that these works are be changed ….. just because. The narrative that we need to rewrite a book, film whatever to “right” a “wrong” is plain virtue signaling. Nothing more nothing less
I have not heard anyone in real life or in the media complain about the color of Ariel.
I have heard people in the media, liberals in the media, say that conservatives are upset about the color of Ariel.
But I have not heard any conservatives say that they are upset about this.
This is an imaginary manufactured issue, where the Liberals are claiming that conservatives are upset about something which conservatives are not saying anything about.
If we were to take a traditional African fairy tale and depict it with White characters, the Wokesters would be screaming "racism" at the top of their lungs.
Why isn’t Ariel Latino or Asian if you really want diversity?
Gingers, redheads, are also “an oppressed minority.”
Maybe Ariel should be nonbinary, and be referred to by the appropriate pronouns for someone who is non-binary.
Most conservatives don’t give a rip one way or the other, it’s not my money.
I think Disney ginned this up themselves for publicity to help their failing company.
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