The Little Mermaid and a New Controversy

I recently came across a series of Twitter rants about the casting choice for Disney’s latest live-action remake. Honestly, when I saw a picture of the actress chosen, my first reaction was “Isn’t Ariel supposed to be a white girl with red hair?” About 2 seconds later, my brain actually kicked in and the absurdity of my first thoughts became obvious. Duh, fictional character!

In response to the announcement, the internet was flooded with lots of dumb people who seriously objected to the casting. Because of racism, right? Of course, the real shock (not really) came at the revelation that the majority of the viral tweets stirring up the controversy were in large part fake and not tied to real Twitter accounts. Leave it to the media to once again widen the racial divide in our country by reporting on these comments without bothering to check if they were even real.

For the record, the choice for the part is Halle Bailey, a nineteen year old singer/actress known as part of the singing group Chloe x Halle. Although I was not familiar with her, she seems to be an excellent choice and more than capable of handling the acting and performing the songs from the movie. Other casting choices are only rumors at this point and no release date for the project has been announced.

So about my initial reaction. I suppose it could be that I am just another racist white guy full of internal prejudices and hidden bias. (You know, like the media thinks we all are.) OR. Maybe it’s just that I’ve seen so many pictures of the cartoon Ariel over the years that the image is just stuck in my head. Obviously that image is in sharp contrast to the newly cast Ariel. No big surprise that anyone would notice a difference.

But the main thing is that different is perfectly okay. Disney aside, I am generally not a big fan of movie remakes. My frequent complaint is that Hollywood needs to stop copying itself and come up with more original stuff. I will occasionally watch a remake and when I do, I really expect that the new version will be different, in some small ways at least. It just seems a waste of time to remake a movie and follow the exact same storyline or script. If you don’t have anything new to add, or any new twists to reveal, just leave the movie alone.

Anyway, I have plenty of other reasons to not be a fan of Disney, but in all honesty, I hope the new Little Mermaid turns out great. And even though my kids are grown and I’m just an old white guy, I may even go and see it. But first I have to see the new Lion King!