Oh no!
Racists suck. On a separate note, live-action remakes of classic animated films are the unwanted-direct-to-video sequels of our time.
My niece’s favorite person in the world is Ariel the fish-chick. On one hand, I don’t care about live action Disney movies. On the other hand, I know my brother will have to see this dumb movie 50 times (or 500 times if my niece likes this movie as much as the cartoon), so that makes me happy.
My only problem with this is I am apparently old so I have trouble remembering Halle Bailey is not Halle Berry. I am not the only one.
Anyway, good luck Halle! I probably won’t see this because I haven’t seen any of the live-action remakes yet, but I do have grandaughters getting old enough to go the movies, so you never know!
Man, I just saw someone pop up on my discord about this.
“so I’m a little pissed at the casting for Ariel
Chris Kattan would have been perfect for the role
I’m definitely not letting my kids see that horrible movie now”
Now, I know I shouldn’t jump to conclusions and assume the guy is a racist, but that would be an easy conclusion to jump to.
Chris Kattan? I’ll just admit the Discord user’s joke and/or your joke is totally lost on me.
I don’t get it either.
I saw an image – which I now cannot find – that said something along the lines of “Keanu Reeves. The Right Choice” with an amazing image of him as the little mermaid. I wonder if it was in that vein.
There is an image of Terry Crews as the Ariel’s dad. I’m all in favor of that.
Although not in favor of the movie. In fact, this is probably a movie I will skip unless is massively departs from the original horrible story line.
A friend of mine, Diana Huey, played Ariel in the first national tour of The Little Mermaid, and was the first non-white Ariel. (She is Japanese-American.) She went through some of what Halle Bailey is going through, albeit on a less national level. It was interesting to hear her reactions to the controversy, but it seemed like the responses were more positive than negative overall.
Making Black Little Mermaid will hit an Internet rage nerve? I can’t say that wasn’t very predictable.
And probably fairly cynically staged too. I can’t imagine that Disney is really going to get too upset about losing the InCel Racist audience, and the free publicity they’ll get from the Twittersphere boiling over for 4.26 days is just gold.
I’ve personally got no problem with having a black Ariel, but I don’t mind if a black/Asian/whatever character is acted by a white actor/actress either. If you can have one, you can have the other.
Ariel isn’t a white character. She’s just a fish. The appearance of her humanoid half is meaningless. As long as she gets scales, flippers, or a tail and shit they’ve done right by the character.
I saw that they’re considering changing the lower half the mermaid portion to either an alligator or a tadpole, which seems to have stirred up more controversy.
They could go with Tadpole if they want to be outright disgusting. Tadpoles are all sorts of gross.
Disney mermaids are almost universally depicted as having hair. We can’t be sure if they bear their young “live” as opposed to laying eggs; although Ariel had a daughter in the direct-to-video second movie, we’re not shown the birth/hatching. However, we can largely assume that Disney mermaids have mammary glands* and likely secrete milk for the purpose of nourishing their young.
So evidence would suggest that they are mammals.
*To be fair, the fleshy growths shown on Disney mermaids (as opposed to mermen) can’t be definitively said to be mammary glands. It is possible that they have some other function (such as supporting their ability to breathe underwater without gills) and their position on the torso is a coincidence.
I’m not sure why this is still under discussion: The reproductive cycle of the Little Mermaid has been clearly explained in the Saturday Night Live episode with Reese Witherspoon. (In case the below link doesn’t play: Saturday Night Live - NBC.com)
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/little-mermaid/2870527
Sheesh it’s like you people have never heard of science!
Most of the peer-reviewed media on this subject is behind a paywall.
Let’s pray to god that it stays there.