The Little Mermaid - Official Teaser Trailer. Video / Walt Disney Studios
OPINION:
Every week, there is no shortage of people getting mad for ridiculous reasons on the internet. This week was no exception.
A bunch of racists took the week off to get mad at the fact that, in the new The Little Mermaid movie, Ariel will be played by black actor Halle Bailey. Because how can a woman who is half-human and half-fish, and whose best friend is a chatty flounder, be black? Wokeness gone mad, right?
I do try, I promise, but I can't for the life of me understand what they're mad about - because it sure as hell can't be historic accuracy. Yet here we are, in 2022, with a black mermaid accused of being "woke".
She can be half-fish, and sing like an underwater angel. But how dare she be black? Photo / Walt Disney Studios
On YouTube, the teaser trailer for the movie reportedly clocked more than 1.5 million dislikes before YouTube had enough of it and disabled the counter (no doubt sending racists into meltdown over this assault on their free speech, or something). In 2019, not long after Bailey was announced as the actress who would play Ariel, the #NotMyAriel hashtag started trending.
Honestly, this is exhausting. I don't want to have to have an opinion about a mermaid and I sure don't want to have to defend a children's movie in which a woman gives up her life for some dude. I'm also under no illusion that I can change the minds of the people that say it's "unscientific" for the girl with a fish tail for legs and a flounder bestie to be black so, instead, let's ignore them and focus on the good that comes of it. Because, let me tell you, there is a lot of good that comes with casting a person of colour for a lead role, particularly in a children's movie.
Counteracting all the racism, parents have taken to social media to post clips of their black children reacting to the trailer for the new Disney movie. The reactions will warm the coldest hearts.
TikTok is full of clips showing children and teens all reacting in wonder and joy. "She's brown like me," a child says in a video, posted with the caption: "representation matters".
The actress also addressed the controversy in an interview with Variety magazine: "I want the little girl in me and the little girls just like me who are watching to know that they're special, and that they should be a princess in every single way."
Through all the vitriol and rubbish online, we can choose to focus on these reactions, from the children, the actual target audience of the movie and the only ones whose opinion truly matters.
As for the grownups wasting their internet connection complaining about the skin colour of a mermaid, I don't know if they realise it's not good for their blood pressure to get so angry every time they see a fictional character represented by a person of colour but I do love to see their commitment to our underwater creatures and look forward to their activism to save our oceans. Unless they only really care about fictional ones?
