The racist backlash to The Little Mermaid and Lord of The Rings is exhausting and extremely predicta

Naah - not the facts - People Having Meltdowns Over 'The Little Mermaid' Need to Get a Grip

A few days ago, Disney released a teaser trailer for its live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel. As far as teasers go, it was standard fare. For 55 seconds, an orchestral version of “Part of Your World” played in the background, with glimpses of Bailey’s Ariel and her underwater world flitting by. As the title appears on the screen, you hear Bailey sing the words, “Out of the sea / Wish I could be / Part of that world.” The camera focuses on her as she sings the lyrics, pulling back to show her with a mermaid’s tail and a purple top. It fades out as the words “May 2023” appear on the screen. And that’s it.

Teaser trailers don’t typically tell us much about a movie. In fact, sometimes teasers can be downright misleading (see: The first teaser for Frozen was just a clip of Josh Gad’s Olaf fighting Sven the reindeer over a carrot). It’s hard to tell exactly what this iteration of The Little Mermaid will look like when it comes out next year, but that didn’t stop people from having some extremely strong opinions about it.

As I write this (noon Central Time on Monday, September 12), The Little Mermaid teaser has been viewed more than 9.5 million times on YouTube. It has 360 thousand likes… and 1.2 million dislikes.

 

Ableism

 

(Gasp!) Is there some reason you are suggesting that she would not be able to swim?!

 

That's definitely not true.

 

In a thread about The Little Mermaid, no less. Where the villian is a female octopus thing

 

And based on a drag queen! From Wiki - Ursula's appearance was largely inspired by American actor and drag queen Divine, who was best known for his frequent appearances in several films directed by filmmaker John Waters.

If they only realized that the villain was was a drag queen they got killed, they would suddenly love the story. Of course, the villain may be reimagined the the new work. And you could argue that even in the old work, Ursula's henchmen, the eels Flotsam and Jetsam came across as so clumsily stupid and evil, they were perceived as white guys

 

Yeah, I mean in Black Panther, they team up with a white male CIA guy against a black villain with "woke" ideas

 

Well to me it is no different on either side of just about any issue these days. If you are against something there must be a tinge of racism, misogamy, bigotries, etc.. Can't we just dislike something or like something just for what it is??? I could care less about this film or any other Disney makes but it hardly makes me racist.

 

I don't doubt that you are speaking for your own instincts. But that's not what was happening on a mass level and that's not what made it a national story. Clearly that was racism. A trailer came out that revealed nothing about it except that Ariel is black and it got a lot of attention, way more than trailers a year before the movie ever get.

 

If misogamy is hatred of marriage, it should be a litmus test for sanity if you are male.

 

I don't care if people like the movie or not generally. I am sure I won't see it. But the White Nationalists are down-voting it because they're so mad about it. Others may just be upset because they think it's too "woke," but even if they're not White Nationalists, that's a pretty odd thing to get worked up about and reflects a high level of feelings of racial grievance at the very least.

 

Of course that raises the issue as to what they constitute is "woke". Because the trailer revealed absolutely nothing about the movie except the casting of Ariel. So someone who decides they don't like this version because it's too "woke" is defining woke as meaning that a fictional nonhuman character previously cast as white is now cast as black

 

I hear you and understand how that conclusion could be drawn but what I'm saying is I would dislike this trailer simply because it is Disney no matter what color any actors are. That is all I'm saying, I haven't wasted time to read replies to draw a conclusion that it had to be racism. It may very well be, I just hate jumping to conclusions because we know what is in people's heart and minds.

 

Post 61 tried to address that with numbers. Not much else to say. It's not jumping to conclusions.

 

I think simply ignoring it/not seeing it and not having a strong opinion is quite a bit different than having a visceral reaction to a minute long trailer then jumping online to review bomb a movie you haven't seen

 

BTW, there are very valid non racist reasons to hate Disney's Live Action remakes, which apparently do well commercially even if they are bad. Pinocchio was "review bombed", so to speak, but that was AFTER it aired. So no one thought that was racism

 

This racist hatred creates a real dilemma. If past is prologue, the quality of this new remake will probably be close to crap. But I will feel compelled to support it so as not to give unintended support to the racists.


Damn them. They are probably going to make me watch something crappy. But it won't be crappy because Ariel is black, but probably because the writing is crappy


By the way, if someone is looking for something seemingly childlike but delightful in the world stop action animation, may I heartily commend Marcel the Shell with shoes on.

 

Maybe cuz the little mermaid sucks no matter what color she is.

 

Now it's... Butch Cassidy! Latest uproar on all victim channels.

Bridgerton's Regé-Jean Page to star in a 'TV reboot of 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' | Daily Mail Online

 

So, you think 1.5m people were unsure as to whether the little mermaid sucked until they went & watched the trailer?