Controversy Under the Sea

The thirty-three year old Little Mermaid animated film thought up by the famous Walt Disney is being made into a live action movie due to come out sometime in 2023! Ever since Disney announced that Halle Bailey, a Black actress and singer, would be playing the main character, Ariel, for this new adaptation, everyone went wild. 

Every bit of publicity that this unreleased movie has had is about the fact that a Black actress is playing an originally white main character. Many are outraged at this, and some simply hate the idea of a Black Little Mermaid. Most of these nostalgic fans happen to be hard to know if they’re privileged white people, and a whole controversy has started because of this backlash. 

While most of Disney’s remakes receive early criticism from emotional and critiquing fans, this remake has received outrageous amounts of reviews and commotion from, simply put, racist people. When this live action remake’s trailer came out on YouTube in early September 2022, the video was flooded with 1.5 million dislikes from fans!

Some even went farther than comments and dislikes. One person on Twitter posted a picture of Bailey with her face painted over making her a white redhead. This person assured their so-called fans that he would “correct” the full movie upon release. Really? Yikes. Since many believe that having a Black woman play Ariel in The Little Mermaid is destroying the original movie, some people on Twitter made a hashtag #NotMyAriel in show of these opinions. Even though all opinions matter, these opinions are not exactly what you call a boost of self esteem for the actress. Despite this, she still stays strong.

The original Little Mermaid animated film is about a white mermaid with long red hair named Ariel. Her father, the grief-stricken King Triton, outlaws music in the wake of the death of his wife, Athena. Ariel and her best friend Flounder the fish love music and when they find out the king’s apparently loyal right-hand man (well, lobster) is playing with a band in defiance of the king’s order, they rebel. When Ariel saves a mortal man, Prince Eric, from certain death, they fall in love. Ariel tries to find him without being caught by her father and the evil Marina Del Ray. Somehow people believe that a black actress playing Ariel destroys the whole movie just because of the color of the actress’s skin.

Who knows what will happen when this movie comes out? Will people see it? Will they support it? Apparently, one backlash can start a whole controversy based on the color of one’s skin. Maybe the world isn’t as adapted as everyone thought.