If Disney cast their new, upcoming The Little Mermaid Live Action movie with an actress who looked like this:
we would hate that too.
BECAUSE ARIEL IS A RED HEAD.
This isn’t about race or racism. This is about THE MAIN CHARACTER in a BELOVED VISUAL ARTWORK which has been the same FOR DECADES in THOUSANDS of representations, from cartoons to theme parts, toys, shirts, Legos, dolls, home décor and park meet and greets being changed FOR NO REASON other than to be able to claim that America is racist.
Every time Hollywood changes something from an existing, popular property, people who were fans of the original HATE IT. But they keep doing it. It’s not because we’re racist, it’s because Hollywood keeps going, “You Love this, don’t you? We’re changing it.” And then they’re surprised when we’re not happy.
In summary, America isn’t Racist- Hollywood is stupid.
A Bit of Orange 
I actually could care less if they change the story, but I do understand what you are saying and yes Hollywood is stupid. I don’t know why they don’t make a new story about a new mermaid and just leave Ariel alone, but maybe they aren’t that bright.
Amazon came out with their own adaptation of the Lord of the Rings called the rings of power. They added in black Elves and black Hobbits and I was talking to some people about this change and one guy started gatekeeping a literary work he did not create. Tolkien never stated all the races in Middle-earth were white. This guy tried to say that Elves had to be pure and so they could only have pure white skin with no melanin which would make them albino which would make it hard for them to go out in the sun. It also smacked of racism to say they could only be pure if they were paper white.
So many people get so upset over things like this and in reality it is nothing more than a distraction from more serious problems in the world. I say if the author did not say one way or the other what the race of their characters are then it must not have been that important to them. As for Tolkien if race had been important he would have said so I mean the man did create at least two languages when he wrote Lord of the Rings.
People on both sides of this debate just want something to complain about in my opinion.
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Well, I can’t argue with you. People do love to complain. It’s a sport more popular than baseball and football combined.
But there are several reasons why people hated the “diversity” added to the Lord of the Rings. First, because it’s completely unnecessary.
Elves are not human, and dwarves are not human, and so there is no reason to make them diverse to represent the different human races. One of the world building actually from the source material is that humans have a hard time telling these other species apart, even not knowing that there were dwarf women because they also have beards. I’m not saying that they all have to be played by white actors, but having a small population of elves who live for thousands of years who have snow white elves and black elves makes no sense. Whatever the elves, dwarves and hobbits are, they should all look pretty similar within their own populations because they are similar. They are distinct species. They aren’t human.
Also, the only reason we think having a diverse population is normal is because we live in an era of cars and planes. Before you could travel a thousand miles in an afternoon, most populations had similarities because there was not a constant flow of genetic diversity into them. So since this was at a time when horses were the fastest mode of travel, any particular city would look all pretty much the same. there are only so many family lines in a city where no one can fly to the next country and get a job. this is why Asians look asian, and Africans look African. For MANY generations, there was LIMITED contact to each other, and so family traits were exaggerated until we have what we wrongly call “races.” But in American cities where everybody is here and everyone marries everyone else, there is a lot of diversity, and it’s increasingly hard to tell black from white because we’re all mixed and mingled and melting potted. But in Middle earth, those situations aren’t likely to happen and are shoved in merely to make Rohan look like Los Angeles. But who wants Lord of the Rings to look like Urban America? There’s no reason it would, and lots of reasons why it would not.
And the biggest complaint I think people have about the diversity hires is that it only goes one way and shows the racist, hypocritical nature of the woke left. Make Ariel a black mermaid and the Left twitter mob champion DIVERSITY and INCLUSION! and call anyone opposed to it RACIST! But make Tiana anything but black and those same leftists would be screaming racism yet again. Several non-white actors have been attacked by these nuts for not being brown enough, or being the wrong shade of brown, or being the wrong kind of asian in a movie where they are only the voice of an animate character. But Lin Manuel Miranda makes all of the founding fathers black and Hispanic and we’ve all been clamoring for tickets for five years. I never even heard a rumor about people complaining, and these are real historical figures who really existed. But no one complained because it worked, and because the left are a bunch of irrational hypocrites.
Make Middle earth diverse and the twitter mob cheers for diversity, but make Wikanda diverse and they would scream racism. And I wouldn’t call it racism but if the MCU arbitrarily made half of Wakanda white for no plot important reason, I would think that was stupid too. Why is Wakanda almost exclusively filled with black characters? Because it’s a closed nation in Africa. No one has migrated into that nation for generations, and so it would not make sense to demand that white people see themselves on screen in Black Panther merely to make the movies diverse like modern America is. The cities of Middle Earth are like Wakanda. Pretending they are Los Angeles shows a lack of respect for the material they are pretending to build on, and a lack of respect for the property they are making.
MY biggest problem is that the diversity hires are constantly being added for the express purpose of encouraging people to be selfish and racist. “We get to see OURSELVES on the screen!” Disney expects that terrible parents are teaching their daughters to be racist, and to DEMAND that their princess LOOKS LIKE THEM! But, do they expect little white girls to like Anna and Elsa BECAUSE they are white? Did those little white girls refuse to watch Moana because she was not white? My daughter loved the Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles when she was 5 years old, and she was not a teen, a turtle, a ninja or male. I never questioned it. She loved Moana and the girls from Frozen. We never even thought about it. But we have friends who know that if they let their little preschool girl dress as her favorite Disney princess- Moana- they will be attacked for “cultural appropriation” because she is white.
Which is the other side of this. All of this is intended to encourage racism and cause segregation. YOU have YOUR princesses and THEY have THEIR princesses, and you pick your princess and you choose your Halloween costume based on your skin. That’s what this woke nonsense is- it’s the politics and policies of the KKK in new marketing. Divide by “race” define by “race” make different rules based on “race” and separate people by their “race.” But instead of the KLAN we have the Twitter mob calling this “inclusion” and “diversity” or “cultural appropriation” and other bumper stickers. But the end result is the same. We constantly shove the lie of race down people’s throats until they can’t even think in other terms. And we encourage everyone to think of themselves and each other as different races, and then start to make different rules and different places and different Disney Princesses for each group. The left will let girls be boys and boys be girls, but they won’t tolerate a white preschool girl dressed as her favorite Disney princess because THAT princess isn’t white.
Also, it seems that the Rings of Power is REALLY terrible, Like, even the Woke reviewers who are trying to pretend they like it are saying things like, “in the next episode, no doubt we’ll start seeing some action or plot develop.” Which is their way of accidentally admitting that it’s boring and bad. I refuse to watch it. I’d rather play video games.
God bless you my friend.
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I do understand what you are saying, however Amazon never said they were going to do their adaptation strictly from the books. That to me is expected when it is an adaptation as was Peter Jackson’s version which I love too. He literally mixed things up by using some things in completely different areas of the story, killing off characters that didn’t die in the books and even changed the way some things looked. Adaptations aren’t told exactly as the story was originally and that is what makes it and adaptation (wow how many times can I say adaptation). For instance Peter Jackson put Legolas the elf in his version of the Hobbit and that elf and others were not in the Hobbit. That is the reason it really doesn’t bother me now if they said that they were making the story exactly as it was written I might be salty about it.
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The original tale of The Little Mermaid before Disney robbed it of all it’s richness, is fabulous, intense, and even more controversial. Probably not for small children. She sacrifices her life to protect the prince (from herself) and joins the mist to await God’s gift of a human soul. She is not looking for romance, red hair, or racial equality, she just wants to know what it truly means to be human and therefore made in the image of God.
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A lot of Disney movies are based on material which is DARK and SPOOKY. But, kid’s books were apparently horror until the Mickey Mouse Club made us all soft. Personally, I can’t even watch the Return to Oz. That movie freaks me out.
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Everyone thinks that movie is freaky, orange.
You’re not alone.
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Have you ever read the original Mother Goose or Brothers Grimm? I have and I wouldn’t let a child read either of those books they way they were originally written. I think it is good some things are tamed down and not giving little ones nightmares. I do have a problem though with a lot of things Disney does like having a girl fall in love with a beast and other things. So many people think Walt Disney was a good man, but he really wasn’t. Having said that I love Mickey Mouse I have since I was 3 years old, but the rest of the franchise nah not so much.
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I find the Disney classics, like any great story that resonates with people, makes more sense as a spiritual allegory, which a lot of old stories were intended to be. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and I think Beauty and the Beast are all pictures of the Gospel.
The beast is us, sinful humanity which is ugly and desperately in need of love. Belle is the beautiful love of Christ, who comes to us, gets abused, but continues loving us until that love transforms us from the ugly beast into beautiful royalty.
At the same time, Belle is us, and the prince she is destined to be the bride of is the one no one would expect. Under the false appearance is a prince, the hidden Jesus, the baby in the manger, the poor carpenter. Gaston meanwhile is the anti-Christ, the true beast, but while in the form of everything the world praises is inside the ugly beast who seeks only to steal kill and destroy. Belle can wed herself to what the world praises and become his slave, or wed herself to the one the world hates and become a princess.
So, it’s layered.
But if you think about it literally, yeah, it’s all kinds of messed up. Young girl becomes the prisoner of a creature that looks like a buffalo dog and she falls in love with him because… he gives her a library? That girl needs all kinds of therapy.
As always, thanks for your thoughts. 🙂
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I can see what you are saying about those tales and some of them I do love like Bambi, The Fox and the Hound, etc. If the world at large could see those tales as you described I wouldn’t as much wrong with them. Too many girls grow up with princess syndrome that as adults turns into queen syndrome and then wonders why they cannot keep a man in their life. You made me laugh with the “Buffalo Dog” and you are right that is exactly what he looks like. A lot of young women that grew up on those stories today need therapy Beauty and the Beast for one makes them believe they can change a real man that acts like him in the beginning and other such problems with the rest of those princess stories. I always love a good conversation and you never fail to give one.
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I think Sleeping Beauty might be a Christ metaphor. The others i’m not so sure.
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I am not so sure I would agree with that. While C.S. Lewis used animals such as Aslan that way I cannot see Disney doing any such thing.
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Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to imply that Disney intended to share the Gospel. I only mean that great stories that pull at our hearts do so because we hear the truth somewhere in them. They appeal to us because we can hear the ring of God’s truth in them, somewhere under the costumes and music. This is why a billion dollar work like Rings of Power can fail so badly, because while it’s pretty and expensive, it doesn’t SOUND TRUE, like the gospel. Yet, Harry Potter pulls at the hearts of millions because, under the Halloween decorations, we find a story of evil being defeated by the love a person has that moves them to sacrifice their own life so that another can have life. JK Rowling didn’t mean to tell the story of the Gospel, but it’s those connections to the Gospel that made Harry Potter ring true with so many. The chosen one gives his life so that, by his sacrificial death, the power of evil is broken and those he loves are protected from death- AND THEN HE RISES AGAIN!
I mean, it’s basically plagiarism.
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I actually like Rings of Power is it Peter Jackson quality? No, but it is not horrible either and I have seen much worse. Harry Potter was fine first time around, but would I watch them again? No, probably not on the other hand I will watch Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and even Rings of Power more than once. Maybe I just didn’t see in Harry Potter what you did especially after they were children.
I have consumed a lot of fantasy fiction in my life and Harry Potter wasn’t that great to me at least. I see how that the Gospel can be seen in Tolkien and how much he hated the industrial age I believe he felt it was evil. J.K. Rowling used actual spells from a witches spell book in the writing of her books which didn’t set well with me since they are marketed to children.
I think I prefer that Rings of Power isn’t like the Gospel because I feel the Gospel should be able to stand on it’s own. Yes there is the struggle between good and evil as all good stories have and as long as evil never wins it is okay with me. I have watched all the episodes so far and enjoyed watching the pre-Hobbits and their meeting of Gandalf to help explain their very close bond. I love the Dwarves and their non bearded wives and even the elves. It is a loose adaptation, but I can live with it.
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You are welcome to enjoy things I don’t like or hate things I enjoy. We can certainly still be friends.
But I have to ask- J.K. Rowling used actual spells from a witches spell book? Where did you hear that? Because I’ve heard a lot of things, and I never heard that. If you have a source to pass on, I’d like to look into it.
And for the record, Dumbledore was never gay in the books. She made that up after the fact when some random fans gave her a hard time for not being “diverse” enough. An then they decided they hate her anyway because she things men aren’t women. Go figure.
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I have actually never heard Dumbledore was gay and I find that very odd I could not find the original article about it, but I did find one that explains how very wrong the books are from a Christian standpoint and how they are tied to the occult. Here is a link to the article https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/harrypotter.html in the article there are people that used to be in the occult and New Age that weigh in on the research she would had to do to have what she has in those books.
It is not so much I didn’t enjoy the early books so much as they made my heart uneasy especially in the last few books. I have read a lot of fantasy fiction as it is my favorite genre and in all the books I have read I do not remember any others that recited spells in the books it was said they preformed magic, but spells were not written out to be recited by the reader. Now it could be that she was ignorant of what she was doing, but somehow I doubt that she is an intelligent woman. I do not hate her in anyway, but I hope that someday she will see what is wrong in these books. I think she has talent and could write a better world that doesn’t have children reciting spells.
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I Think Halle Bailey as Ariel In the live adaptation of Disney’s The Little Mermaid Is the Worst Casting Of all time
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I appreciate your point of view, Adelyn, but I have to disagree. Melissa McCarthy as Ursula is doubtless going to be more painful to watch. How can Disney claim to care about Diversity and then replace Queen Latifa with Melissa McCarthy? Talented black actress who can sing replaced with annoying “white” actress who no one has liked in 15 years and, to the best of my knowledge, has never had a singing role in anything? I say we hit Twitter with #NotMyUrsula
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I Think Sadie Sink would bet the perfect choice as Ariel In The Little Mermaid” live-action remake
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I Think Da’Vine Joy Randolph would bet The Perfect as Ursula In In The Little Mermaid” live-action remake
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I’ve never heard of her, so I googled it and found this: https://youtu.be/EQCpp3Wjg2Q
And from her first note… And this isn’t a studio, cleaned up in post performance, this is LIVE! I agree. She’s amazing. Her voice gives me chills!
Or maybe I need to turn the fan off. Either way, she’s a vocal powerhouse, and I would love to see her as Ursula. But… Disney went with Melissa McCarthy.
WHY DISNEY?!?!? WHYYYYY?!?!?!?
But thanks for this insight. You’ve just introduced me to a new musical talent I’m glad to know!
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OK, we need to start a new petition to put you in charge of Disney casting. Apparently you know how to spot talent better than they do.
#AdelynShouldRunTheHouseOfMouse
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I Think Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in film adaptation of Wicked is Great Casting of All Time
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I would love to see a good film adaptation of Wicked. I saw it on stage, and I had literally the worse seats in the theater, and it was still an amazing show. Also, as long as they paint her green, literally anyone talented can play Elphaba. She just has to be able to SING!
🙂
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