Disney has just revealed a dark and moving first extract from its live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, in which the talented actress and singer Halle Bailey plays Ariel. On TikTok, parents have filmed the reaction of their children to this trailer for the youth film which promises to be so poetic and moving. Irresistible.
Can mermaids be victims of racism? This is the absurd question that we could ask ourselves when faced with the first live action extract of this new version of The little Mermaid Disney sauce. For this live-action remake, the big-eared studio cast Halle Bailey in the title role. This decision had already caused a lot of ink to flow when it was made official, and it has only continued since first images were revealed on September 10, 2022.
Disney Reveals First Live-Action The Little Mermaid Trailer
When some critics dwell on the particularly dark character of the images and the lack of movement of the mermaid’s hair (which may seem particularly legitimate), others block on the fact of having chosen a black actress, as talented and deserving as Halle Bailey, only 22 years old.
Adults’ mixed reception to The Little Mermaid live-action remake
Among the arguments put forward, some believe that a little mermaid could not be black since it would not be directly exposed to UV rays. A scientific explanation that could hold water if it were not a question of explaining the melanin level of a completely fantastic creature. The other argument is that Halle Bailey wouldn’t match the original work. However, it should be remembered, the Disney cartoon in which Ariel displays a pale complexion and red hair is not the original work.
In effect, The little Mermaid is a tale by Dane Hans Christian Andersen. In the work published in 1837, Ariel’s skin color is not specified, and she did not have red hair either… The character of King Triton does not exist there, nor does the crab Sébastien (even less his inexplicable Creole accent in Disney’s VF), nor the Flounder fish. And above all, she dies at the end. We are therefore a long way from happy ending so dear to the studio of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Behind this argument, which clearly does not hold water, seems above all to be looming something quite different…
While racialized people have had no choice but to learn to identify differently with mainstream cultural representations that never physically resembled them until recently, now some others find it unbearable to do this effort for a rare time. And this inability to decenter says a lot about their ethnocentrism, their navel-gazing and their social privileges.
Rather than returning to their dear and tender cartoon, these embittered adults therefore prefer to vent their rage on social networks, and howl at “the dictatorship of wokism and Islamo-leftism”, according to the traditional reactionary amalgam.
The adorable TikTok reactions to the first trailer for The Little Mermaid in live-action
As a corollary to this clearly racist hatred, we can fortunately discover a myriad of videos of innocent children, delighted to discover this trailer. Because it is to them and them that this new children’s film is addressed above all. And you would really have to have no heart not to be moved by it. The proof, in 5 adorable TikTok videos of reactions to the first images of The little Mermaid in live-action, which will be released in theaters in May 2023.
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Front page photo credit: YouTube and TikTok screenshot.