Since the trailer for the 2023 live-action remake of Disney’s 1989 animated film “The Little Mermaid” was released, the decision to cast Halle Bailey as Ariel has sparked an intense backlash, primarily because Bailey is Black and Ariel was drawn white in the original animated film. While some feel that this is a “betrayal” of the original film, I honestly could not care less. It is a cartoon. Oh, and one other thing to note: MERMAIDS ARE NOT REAL!
I have seen so many ignorant takes on casting a Black woman as Ariel not being “faithful to the source material” or “it does not make sense.” How are you actually going to sit there and tell me something does not make sense when we are talking about mermaids?
The biggest fundamental flaw in their logic is when they make some strawman argument like “what if they remade “The Princess & The Frog and cast Tiana as white?”” First of all, being white is in no way part of Ariel’s character or identity, while being Black is a part of Tiana’s character and journey throughout the movie. Second, Tiana is the first Black Disney princess, whose film was only released in 2009, 20 years after “The Little Mermaid.” You cannot say that the two are equal when it took over 50 years to have the first Black Disney princess. Third and most importantly, the people who are so up in arms about this do not understand what it is like to grow up watching Disney movies and not seeing anyone that looks like you on screen. I, along with every other white person that grew up watching Disney movies have seen a plethora of white characters on our TVs and been able to identify with them. This is why representation matters, especially when it comes to film and television. Since the trailer was released, there have been numerous videos of parents filming their Black daughters’ reaction to the trailer and being both surprised and overjoyed. One girl in particular smiled and looked at her mom and said “she looks like me.” That is something that these trolls will never understand, and although I do not want to paint with too broad a brush, if you are telling me that the reason you are so enraged at a Black woman pretending to be a mermaid is because of a 13th century Danish fairy tale (which itself is also wildly different from the animated film,) I think you need to have a frank conversation with yourself.