I notice all the red-haired representation is focused on beautiful girls. Googling returns a bunch of actresses whose hair is red in iconic roles. So am I missing something? This seems to be a very popular hair color for female characters.
I could see how red-haired men are underrepresented, particularly as love interests. But that has nothing to do with a black Ariel.
I did miss that. That’s pretty definitive.
“Brave” is a Pixar movie. I know Pixar and Disney are the same corporation, but the creative teams and processes are different.
Merida is still counted as a Disney Princess. And believe me, her merch sells quite nicely to young girls.
I think that, historically, redheads have been over-represented in movies. And it’s easy to see why: Hair color provides a quick and easy way to visually distinguish between different characters, at a glance. And this goes back long before movies: See, for instance, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the two young couples are color-coded (the two light-haired ones end up together, and the two dark-haired ones). So if you have three characters who you want to be instantly distinguishable from each other, you can give them brown, blond, and red hair, even though redheads are nowhere near a third of the population.
But skin color is also a way that you can make characters visually distinct, and one that’s been under-used in the past, due to the baggage of racism. If your three characters are a white person with dark hair, a white person with light hair, and a black person (presumably with dark hair), then they’re just as distinguishable as the trio which includes the redhead. And that’s a lot closer to the US’s real demographic ratios. So in a way, it makes sense that red-haired characters would be replaced by black characters.
I guess we have to accept that some people will rebel against any changes to the Little Mermaid. Just look at the backlash that Disney caught in 1997 when they dared to produce a live-action version of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella for television. That version featured a black Cinderella, a black fairy godmother, and a mixed marriage king and queen (who somehow managed to produce the very white Jason Alexander as Prince Charming, er, Lionel.)
We know what happened ever after. Sixty million people tuned in to watch, something like 70% of them girls under age 18. When they discovered Cinderella was black, they rioted in the streets. Elementary schools had to bring in grief counselors. There were mass boycotts of Disney theme parks. Sales of Cinderella costumes plummeted as little white girls replaced her with another Disney Princess as a role model. The experiment completely destroyed the appeal of Cinderella to the general public never to be recovered, and Disney’s attempt to tinker with a classic fairy tale cost the company billions of dollars in lost sales and goodwill.
And now, just 22 years later, here they are making the same mistake with Ariel. You’d think a big company like that would learn from its past.
Oh, there are plenty of other reasons to backlash against Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. No matter what races the actors are.
I just want to express one observation right now.
A lot of people are talking out of both sides of their mouth and thus maybe need to sit down somewhere.
Whenever we talk about diversity in Hollywood and the fact that white actors have a huge advantage in getting cast in award-winning roles and films, the majority view tends to always go something like this: “Hollywood executives are driven by profit. White actors get butts in the seats and thus translate into box office sales. That’s just how it is. Casting rando black and brown people doesn’t make good business sense. Audiences simply don’t like that. They want to see Sigourney Weaver play an Egyptian, not a tawny Vanessa Williams. And so be it that Ocar winners are overwhelmingly white, thus ensuring the marketability of white faces. That is capitalism for you. Deal with it.”
So now the prospect that Hollywood executives are finally seeing the profitability of black and brown casting has got people clutching their pearls. As if Hollywood has never catered to racial biases. HOW DARE DISNEY CHOOSE A BLACK GIRL JUST TO MAKE MONEY! IT SHOULD BE ABOUT ART! AND TRUTH! AND REALISM! HOW CYNICAL THEY ARE!!
Hollywood has never cared about art, truth, or realism, so it is rich that only now people are starting to be ticked out about it. And this double standard isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to the minority actors who have worked hard and waited patiently for high profile roles and it isn’t fair to the generations of minority audiences who have waited patiently to see people who look like them be represented as three-dimensionally as white folks have been.
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Who gives a shit?
Its the obnoxiousness that accompanies all this that gives me a headache.
So this is freaking awesome. If someone’s already mentioned it, my apologies.
Anderson, it turns out, was bisexual, and wrote TLM after he was rejected by a man he had a crush on. The dude he loved married a woman; and in despair, Anderson wrote a story about a mermaid who dies* from unrequited love when she watches the object of her affections marry another.
I would watch the hell out of that remake.
Thanks, I hate it.
OK, that’s just disturbing. Even if it does make some sort of twisted sense, in a world that’s evolved in response to the presence of humans.
All the Little Mermaid songs become better when you imagine her as the protagonist.
Shockingly, there’s been little reaction to the possibility that Ursula the Sea Witch may be played by the non-purple non-white-haired non-tentacled Melissa McCarthy. Surely they could have found a cephalopod-human hybrid to play her.
No one seems to have been offended by the multi-ethnic mermaids in Pirates of the Caribbean. Nor by the fact thatthey had long sharp fangs and ate people.
As long as they don’t do a live-action version of “Robin Hood”, and cast a bunch of furries. Because that would destroy my childhood.
I’ll be in mah bunk.
… I’ll be in mah bunk.
Kirsten Dunst I’ll give you, though I would suspect those supporting the theory would say she predated the issue.
Zendaya being MJ, on the other hand, is exactly one of the examples cited. To say her being MJ was uncontroversial is to have ignored the Internet. There’s a reason even the movie itself didn’t do it in full, making her not Mary Jane Watson, but another character with the same nickname.
They also cited Meg (and her mom) from A Wrinkle in Time, and Starfire (from Titans, I assume). Wally West from the Flash, and Jimmy Olson from Supergirl. I even found this article saying it’s not only true but a good thing.
I would not agree. Even if Chronos’ reasoning is correct, I would consider it a problem if people with one characteristic were more likely to be racially recast. Especially if that characteristic is being ginger, i.e. one that has actually faced some discrimination of its own (albeit outside the US.)
That said, I’m fully aware of the ability to cherry pick to get a desired narrative. Or to for things that are random to happen to clump together and for people to see patterns where there are none. I lack the personal experience. I had hoped that ywttf’s post would have been decisive–unfortunately, she just linked to a Google image search for red actresses, most of whom I don’t recognize, let alone know if they were in prominent movies recently. Plus a few I do recognize are not natural redheads.
I’m also aware that this whole thing may have started because of a satirical post by a black person that people took seriously. (And at least one example appears to be wrong, going by the comments.) Still, that doesn’t make it not a possibility.
Even if it turns out just to be cover for racists, looking for excuses, I do think the argument has to be addressed. And, if there is any merit to it at all, that does not mean in any way that I do not support this Ariel. It would just be a bit of a wake-up call to Hollywood to pay more attention to any bias in changing the characteristics of characters. It’s almost certainly not due to any anti-ginger bias (as America doesn’t really have one, historically), so it’s not that huge a deal.
To be honest, Ariel being black wasn’t even the first thing I noticed–as the image I saw had the typical “Hollywood lightening” of the girl’s face. The first thing I noticed was the lack of red hair and wondered if she’d wear a wig. Then I noticed her name, which is very close to Halle Berry, so I definitely noticed she was black. (Note, this was like in the span of a second or two.)
Now, BTW, I don’t want her wearing a wig. Her real hair would look great in the water, though I do hope it will be dyed reddish (and more so than Zendaya’s MJ, which I never even realized was supposed to be red). Plus, well, I am aware the issue where black people feel they can’t be represented using their real hair.
Anyways, the second idea I brought up (which no one has hooked on) is the one I thought might be more important: is Hollywood’s attempt at diversification focusing too much on black people, and forgetting about other minorities? How well represented are black people now?
The redhead one I was just hoping to be debunked. I would love to be able to go back and prove that it is just a red herring.
Yes. I never had a problem knowing who Danny Glover was until Donald Glover came along. Now this. What’s next, Duane Johnson? Tim Cruise?
I’ve actually know people who would be upset if she’s not played by a drag queen. I mean, her original design was based on one, and they want representation. They’ve already mentioned how it sucked in the Broadway version.
Just googling “drag queen ursula” to find a source to back up my claim about her design, and the first article is entitled “Disney Erases Ursula’s Drag Queen-Inspired History By Casting Melissa McCarthy in ‘The Little Mermaid’”. (And, despite the title, the article is actually quite balanced, even citing a possible good reason for the choice.)
I am neither surprised by the outrage nor Disney’s choice to ignore LGBT aspects in their remakes. And, while it is not an issue I care strongly about, I do not blame those who do. And I would have liked to see a proper drag performance of the character.
