There was never any need for this self-inflicted error by Disney. It will only serve to cause pain and division in society and for the company.
The Little Mermaid Controversy
Representation can be a wonderful thing. Diversity can also be a wonderful thing. Most of us want to see a society that is kind to one another, uplifts one another based on our infinite human dignity rather than based on skin color or some other silly immutable aspect, and we want to see our media do the same. Entertainment should uplift all.
At the same time, I think there’s danger in constantly swapping the races of established characters. I mean, from my perspective, I just don’t care enough about The Little Mermaid or Ariel to feel strongly about swapping a red-headed, pale-skinned Mermaid to a dark-skinned creature with burgundy dreadlocks. But for Disney, they probably do care that this is not being readily accepted. The trailer has come out for the movie at D23 and the response has been predictably poor. That sets up the same situation we’ve seen so many times in the past, and again it was completely avoidable.
At the time of publishing this article, the trailer has 150k “likes” and 625k “dislikes”. You might not be able to see that on your browser unless you install a Chrome extension that “unhides” the vote tallies.
Now do I think that society has stepped back in time and is now utterly racist, hating a dark-skinned mermaid?
Nope.
I think this is all a contrived, engineered situation that is made to hurt feelings on both sides of the issue. By taking a red-headed character (one of the most underrepresented and genetically limited-in-numbers demographic) and changing to an actress of African descent, the perfect storm is created to make people be divisive, saddened, frustrated and more. For those who see this change as nothing but a positive, they’re sure to see the very worst in society as people come out against the decision. For those who like Ariel because maybe they’re of Irish or Scottish descent, it may feel like a slight that a character has been removed from their likeness. For those who know The Little Mermaid is a Dutch fairytale, they may feel that this is historically and literarily inaccurate. And all of this is designed to inflict as much pain as possible to our society.
[Author’s note: The original article says this is a “Dutch fairytale” but that is incorrect. It is Danish. We apologize for the error.]
There was never a need for this. If we wanted to do a live action remake with an actress of African descent, The Princess and the Frog is crying out for a live action redo. And when it comes to The Little Mermaid, not only is it crazy difficult to make such a movie (it’s underwater after all), but you’re going to have to outdo Jodi Benson, the original voice actress of The Little Mermaid. So the chances that you can make this movie and have it be as good as the original animated movie… it’s not going to be easy. By then adding a race-swap to the equation, you set up the whole situation so that when you fail, it’s all going to devolve into race arguments.
Thanks, Disney.
And for those of you who just can’t understand why any of this is a problem… for those of you who think all of this is based on bigotry… think along with me on something that I had enter my mind this morning.
I was considering whether any of this bothers me earlier today. I was analyzing if there is actually anything wrong with race-swapping Ariel before I came up with a comment on the subject. At first I just didn’t see a reason to care too much. But then I considered, would I feel the same way if they race-swapped Black Panther? Would I feel the same way if they race-swapped Tiana.
And then I realized, I would think that was very inappropriate. So maybe there is something wrong with race-swapping a Dutch fairytale about a little mermaid. I don’t know.
Even if there’s nothing wrong at all, however, there’s something strategically wrong for sure. Anytime you pit your fans against each other and create a racial conflict that would not exist otherwise, you’ve probably screwed up.
Thanks, Disney.
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