My Hot Take on the Ariel Controversy
Let me Preface this by saying I am a white man. I am not a member of the Black community, so I am looking at this controversy from the outside. As a little kid, The Little Mermaid wasn’t just my favorite Disney movie, it was my favorite movie period. This movie damn near made a marine biologist of me. I grew up absolutely in love with water because of this movie. Didn’t matter if it was Water type Pokemon, Waterbending, or Water Attribute Yugioh decks. This movie basically shaped me in a lot of ways. So, I’ve been excitedly waiting for the film to come out. I would say the only Disney live action remakes I’m as excited for is Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Black Cauldron because both are actually flawed enough that it’s a chance to atone for those movie’s mistakes and make them stronger films.
So a live action remake of my childhood favorite movie in an amazing underwater setting with live action depictions of what mermaids look like? Hell yeah, I was excited for this movie. And then the news came out that Halle Berry got the part, only to find out the correction that the part went to Halle Bailey. My general reaction is honestly conflicted. I can fully understand both sides of the argument. On one hand, Ariel isn’t pulling a Hamilton. It’s not taking real life people that actually existed and altering their ethnicity for a political statement. Which just makes the historian in me cringe. Ariel is not a real person. She’s a fictional mermaid. Even in the original book, I don’t think her appearance is ever described, so even in the original fairytale, you could say that she’s black and it wouldn’t change anything. But I think the reason there’s such a backlash isn’t the fact that she’s black, so much as the fact that Ariel is already a recognized brand name character. In this case, you are not changing the race of a fictional character, like when Brandi was cast as a black Cinderella. That was a separate adaptation of a fairy tale. It was its own standalone thing. But, if that Brandi movie was made by the Disney corporation as the live action remake of their Cinderella, it becomes a bigger issue because Disney already has a canon version of Cinderella. And thus, this dips back into Hamilton syndrome, because it is altering the ethnicity of an existing character. I don’t believe the outcry is just that Ariel is black, so much as the fact that Ariel is an established face in Disney marketing. Ariel was the first ginger Disney princess, and she’s looked that way for 30 years. We’re used to her looking a certain way, and now this new movie is in a way, disregarding that 30 year legacy. She’s looked that way for 30 years and now out of the blue and for no real good reason, Disney is repackaging Ariel as an entirely different ethnicity, and I think it sort of draws the movie into the Uncanny Valley. It’s Ariel, but it doesn’t look like the Ariel we’ve been seeing for 30 years, thus causing people to react negatively.
As for myself, I’m indifferent. I’ll admit I was very disappointed by this news. I’d been looking forward to a live action remake of the movie I watched as a kid, so I expected a white redhaired actress to play Ariel. This isn’t how I imagined Ariel would look if she was a real person. It’s not the faithful adaptation of my favorite kids movie that I’ve been excitedly waiting for since I first heard about the live action remakes. It’s very underwhelming because it’s not what I wanted for a live action retelling of this story. But, that doesn’t mean I hate it. It’s just disappointing and not what I was hoping for. But if anything, Into the Spidervirse has already taught me not to trust these initial beliefs. When I saw the first commercials for Into the Spiderverse, I questioned why Spiderman was just suddenly and randomly a black kid now. I don’t really follow the comics, and I was completely unaware of the existence of Miles Morales. To me, it just looked like they turned Peter Parker into a black character for no reason. But the art style looked cool, and I was at least mildly intrigued. Then the movie came out, and suddenly everyone was calling it this fantastic movie. I finally got a chance to watch it, and yes, every last drop of my uncertainty was eradicated because it was a genuinely amazing film. I think even if he had just been a black version of Peter Parker, I would have still fallen in love with the movie because the end product was way more amazing than my initial reservations toward it. So, I’m hoping black Little Mermaid is the same way. That my reservations toward it won’t matter. That the visuals will still be amazing. That it will still look and feel like The Little Mermaid.
And frankly, if Disney was fine with repackaging Ariel as a minority for the sake of the movie, I would genuinely have preferred it if she was in the LGBT community over being POC, mostly because the Little Mermaid is flooded with LGBT themes and symbolism. See, The Little Mermaid was written in 1836 by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen at the time was in love with his financier’s son, Edvard Collin. But Edvard was in love with Henriette Tybjerg. Andersen wrote the Little Mermaid as a covert love letter, recasting himself as the mermaid so that it would be acceptable in their era. So, the fact that Ariel herself is a gender-swapped version of a bisexual male author, it would make far more sense from a literary and history standpoint to cast either a gay male star with a prince love interest, a lesbian star with a princess love interest, or recontextualize Ariel as being transgender, whether it be the male transitioning to female just as Hans wrote himself as a woman to publish the story, or as an assigned female at birth mermaid becoming male upon becoming human. This to me just feels more in line with the actual context of the story and makes the change to Ariel feel less out of the blue. If Disney was ever going to make one of its fairytales gay, this is kind of the perfect one to do it with.
So, in summation, it’s not the look I wanted. It’s not what I was hoping for, but I’m not foaming at the mouth threatening to boycott the movie either. Frankly, I’m just gonna wait and see how it looks in the first trailers. If I end up passing on this movie, it’ll be because it looks bad, not just because they decided to make Ariel black. Although if they don’t cast a drag queen to play Ursula, I will be mad at this movie for missing a golden opportunity to make itself fabulous. But until I see more, I’m just kind of indifferent. Not happy, not angry. It’s just a thing that exists. It’s the quality of the film that’ll make or break whether or not I like it. Because even a seemingly perfect casting choice, like a certain 2017 live action remake, doesn’t guarantee a good product. And at least this casting choice can sing.
