Part of Your World: Does Disney’s Culturally Diverse Reboot of The Little Mermaid Get Racial Inclusivity Right?
Woke virtue-signalling, or cultural gamechanger? If you haven’t caught the tsunami of online “controversy” over Disney’s new Black mermaid, you must’ve been living under the sea. Let’s dive beneath the surface of The Little Mermaid reboot to see if it's all just a storm in a clam-shell bikini.
good.film
2 years ago
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What social causes does Disney’s reboot of The Little Mermaid explore?
Racial Equity. Discover other top movies & TV shows that explore this cause - and more - at good.film.
When you think about protests - banners, hashtags, people taking to the streets chanting - they’re usually about pretty serious stuff. You know, matters of global importance - like this year’s Fridays for Future march (where young people led a worldwide, coordinated charge to address climate change), or when people took to the streets in 2003 to protest a globally significant war.
So it’s a bit of a head-scratcher when a similar outcry gets stirred up online… by a movie… about fish people. Are people really upset - like, really upset - about an actress of colour playing a mermaid?!
Yes, it turns out. People take their movie princesses very, very seriously. In 2019, Disney announced they’d found their new Ariel: Grown-ish actress and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Halle Bailey, an African-American who’d hit big in her early teens as half of R&B duo Chloe x Halle. But Bailey’s obvious talent didn’t seem to factor in with the haters, and social media burst into a flame war.
Sure, if a well-balanced, respectful discussion on popular culture is what you’re after, the swirling vortex of negativity that is social media probably isn’t the first site you should hit up. We all know that online opinions can be extreme, with an algorithmically (and commercially) driven incentive to polarise people. But even for Twitter, the reactions were ugly.
So, what actually went down when Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel?
Fundamentally, folks were frothing with fury that Disney had dared to re-envision Ariel, the white-skinned, copper-haired heroine that millions had worn out their VHS tapes watching as they grew up. The hashtag #NotMyAriel exploded online (particularly on Twitter) as social media users heavily booed the new casting choice - often in appalling and vicious terms.
Their on-paper argument was that casting deviated from the character's original appearance; basically, that it was a “woke choice” that wasn’t faithful to the original story by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.
But as Vox pointed out (and you can share with your Uncle at Christmas), this “not faithful to the original!” war cry “usually makes it clear they never understood the creator’s original vision at all, because these narratives nearly always have deeply humanist themes that align far more closely with a progressive worldview than a racist one.”
They also gloss over the fact that Disney’s “original” Little Mermaid was itself updated, to make it better suited to the social norms of 1989 than the fairy tale - in much the same way that the 2023 version has been today. Because, you know, humanity is a work in progress.
Admirably, Disney stuck to their casting guns. They’d netted Bailey as their Ariel, and we daresay they weren’t mad about all the attention, either. Or the potential profits: let’s remember, Black Panther proved beyond ANY doubt the year before that there was a huge appetite for Black representation in blockbuster and franchise storytelling, taking over $1.35 billion at the global box office.
Meanwhile, the haters weren’t going away: when the new Little Mermaid trailer dropped, they reassembled en masse, giving it so many thumbs-down that YouTube disabled the ‘dislike’ button.
Yikes. Think I’m going to live under the sea now, where there’s no wi-fi.
Wait! While this is all pretty depressing, there was a shining silver lining here. The brouhaha surrounding the hashtag sparked some incredible debates about diversity, representation, and the reinterpretation of fictional characters. Supporters praised Bailey’s casting as a step toward more inclusive on-screen heroes, and the whole war of words swung a million-watt spotlight onto the importance of visibility for minority communities.
It’s worth pointing out that Halle Bailey was only nineteen years old when this backlash storm was swirling around her. Perhaps sensing she could use a protective barrier of industry support, a tsunami of joyous posts poured in from celebs of colour.
They included performers like Zendaya, Chrissy Teigen, Halle Berry, Keke Palmer and Tina “Mum of Beyoncé” Knowles, who wrote: “Beautiful Halle - we could not be more excited or proud of you as Ariel. You are changing our little black girls’ perspective on them being not limited to certain spaces and to be seen!!!"
But most glorious of all? The chef’s-kiss clapbacks and satire that found their way online. Some used logic, some used humour, but they all proved that the gaps in the #NotMyAriel argument were so big you could swim a whale through them. Sometimes, the internet can truly still be a place to sip some tea and sigh with contentedness.
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How has The Little Mermaid been changed to be more inclusive?
Obviously, locking in an African-American star for their crown jewel remake was Disney’s most visible new-millenium move. But, to paraphrase Wesley Snipes, they didn’t just bet on black. There were plenty of issues to address, and polishing up The Little Mermaid for 2023 sensibilities was no simple feat.
With vanilla-white leads, some iffy cultural appropriation and a patriarchal mindset, a straight-up conversion of Disney’s 34 year old cartoon would’ve been annihilated by today’s social standards. As The Daily Show host Trevor Noah joked about the original: “it’s a beautiful story… about a young woman changing her core identity to please a man.”
That’s been revised (bravo), with Ariel’s motivations now less about love and more about discovery and her goals. As Bailey puts it, “We’ve definitely changed that perspective of just her wanting to leave the ocean for a boy. It’s way bigger than that. It’s about herself, her purpose, her freedom, her life, and what she wants."
There’s been updates on the character front, too. Talking eels and singing chefs have been jettisoned to make room for a fuller backstory about Prince Eric being adopted into a mixed-race family, a more organically diverse island where cultures are intertwined, and a new team of sisters for Ariel that hail from “the Seven Seas” - played by actresses of African, Asian, Scandinavian and Middle-Eastern descent. As for Dad, King Triton? He’s brought to life by Javier Bardem, a Spaniard.
As a result, there are moments where The Little Mermaid feels a bit more like a United Colours of Benetton ad than a children’s movie. But while, sure, Disney might’ve been trying just a tad too hard - you have to give them an A for effort. And if anyone starts to sputter at how this palette of skin tones just plain doesn’t make sense, they’re going to sound pretty silly, because as we’ll state again for the record: these are mermaids.
There’s a whiff of have-it-both-ways-ism up on dry land too, when Prince Eric (the whitest element of the movie by far) wants to set sail for exotic wonders, while his Black mother urges caution to protect him. He wants to trade with other cultures for mutual gain, and good on him; it’s all intended to hero his progressiveness, and show the human world as being as open-minded as Ariel. But honestly, this aspect does smack a bit of woke-washing.
As Luke Goodsell writes in his ABC review, “The prince's wan dialogue, about wanting to expand his kingdom into new worlds in defiance of his stuffy heritage, is vague enough to both scan as progressive and appease connoisseurs of colonialism – proof that the studio's inclusiveness knows no limits.”
So while there’s arguably a few missteps in Disney’s attempt, one thing we can’t deny is that the reboot has categorically skewed away from having a white, male-centric worldview. Women of colour have power and goals, and men value consent and inclusion. We’re pretty okay with being Part of That World!
What impact will The Little Mermaid have?
Let’s be honest, inclusive casting isn’t easy to get right, and it’s not always done for the right reasons. As ethics writer Aja Romano points out, “diverse casting can sometimes be a shortcut to appearing progressive without actually being progressive. Studios such as Disney are often more invested in rebooting their existing IP rather than taking chances on new and exciting stories from minority creators… something truly, meaningfully different.”
But there’s also room here to acknowledge the very real joy that people of colour (and of all ages) have felt seeing themselves reflected in a hugely visible movie from a company that’s a global entertainment titan. If you need a smile today - or if you need to convince someone you love why they should have an open mind about diverse casting - check out some of the viral videos that parents shared of their daughters reacting with wonder and emotion (“She’s like me!”) when The Little Mermaid trailer revealed its star for the first time.
For Bailey, she’s pinching herself (or is that Sebastian?) that she’s playing a part in that cultural impact on young people of colour - one that she only had a small taste of when she herself was growing up. “It means the world to me [for them] to be able to see a reflection of themselves. For me it was Brandi as Cinderella and then Anika Rose as Princess Tiana. So the fact that I am getting to continue this legacy… I’m just grateful.”
Statistically, it’s a super visible step in the right direction for accurate diversity on screen - which is improving, but still has strides to make. Studies like the one from Screen Australia below show that while representation in screen stories has climbed for minorities since 2016, they’re still underrepresented in most groups compared to the real population.
Of course, there’s one other big impact: dollar dollar bills, y’all. The Little Mermaid took in over $185,800,000 around the world in just five days, which already puts it at #8 at this year’s global box office. That pretty much guarantees we’ll see more live-action remakes from Walt & Co - so who knows what could be strutting down the representation catwalk next?
What do the reviews say about The Little Mermaid?
- “The film's diverse casting has already made the point about unity, and The Little Mermaid mostly avoids preaching. It remains what it always was: a charming, escapist fairy tale.” ~ Caryn James, BBC.com
- “While it’s still an exercise in re-branding and revenue, the results at least provide some dazzle, some romance, and a handful of pretty-good new songs with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda.” ~ Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict
- “Bailey’s Ariel is just so lovely and likeable, we can’t help but root for her to win true love… and prove that humankind and mer-people really aren’t so different after all.” ~ Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So… is The Little Mermaid reboot a good thing?
Undoubtedly. Hey, we’re not saying it’s the best fantasy movie ever made: at 67% from the Rotten Tomatoes critics, it probably won’t hit that all-time-classic bullseye that the original did (it’s sitting happy as a clam at 92%). But there’s a way more meaningful metric to measure this mermaid media by - visibility and representation.
That’s where the debate from the #NotMyAriel crowd falls apart like a sponge cake under the sea. It’s exposed right there in that hashtag: gang, you’ve already had your Ariel, and it’s time for other kids to have theirs. Way past time.
We’re not saying we don’t “get” the pushback. A lot of that online anger seems to stem from people who feel like, when minority actors get cast in “white roles”, they’re somehow giving up a seat at the table. But really, that’s the wrong way to look at it. Nothing’s being taken away. By inviting others into the spotlight, we’re adding more seats. The table is simply getting bigger.
They say to really understand someone’s life, you have to walk a mile in their shoes. But how about swimming a mile in their mermaid tail? If anyone’s still unsure what Halle Bailey’s casting might mean to others, we’ll leave the last word to the star herself:
“As a child, seeing a black Ariel would have changed my life. I almost felt like I was – and still am, in a way – in my shell. [Being] able to see a person who looks like you, when you’re young? That would have changed my whole perspective, my whole life, my confidence, my self-worth. Because I think, as Black women, we do doubt ourselves a lot. But it’s so important.”
The Little Mermaid is now screening in cinemas Australia-wide.
