Do you see this guy? Take a good look. He’s skinny and short, thin necked and barely fills that coat.

This is the “live action” Beauty and the Beast Gaston, played by Luke Evans. And look at this. He’s BARELY taller than the LeFou played by Gosh Gad.

Josh Gad was Olaf in Frozen. Here he was a gay LeFou. Because, what we all wanted, according to Disney, is a LeFou who wants to have sex with Gaston. Ew.

As disgusting as that is, and as ugly and annoying as this movie is in general, the thing that bothered me the MOST about the horrible failure which was 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, was the fact that Luke Evans here looks NOTHING like Gaston.

Gaston is a huge, strapping man with muscles to spare. He is supposed to be the antithesis of the beast. In fact, one of the ways you can interpret the title is that Gaston here is the BEAST, and under the character of the Beast/Prince Adam is the Beauty which is brought out by the love of Bell. We know what Gaston looks like. He looks like a BEAST. But this tiny, skinny little Luke Evans is not strapping nor tall. HE IS NOT GASTON.

LOOK! Look at the travesty that this movie gave us! BARELY INCHES taller than his sodomite sidekick, when the original had a big, hulking man twice LeFou’s size. And the men in this town are going to sing about this BARELY average guy? Not Likely!

I say all of that to say this: I don’t like the casting of Halle Bailey as the Little Mermaid. And it’s for the same reason that I hated Luke Evan’s Gaston.

Look, We’ve seen the SAME Ariel for 30 years. The original movie, the spin off TV show, the Disney park meet and greets and parades, the ride, the merch ALL have the same image.

Let me compare this to George Washington.

In the smash hit musical Hamilton, the character of George Washington is played by a black man. In fact, while every character in the show is either English or French, most of the cast was black or Hispanic. Do you remember the outrage and backlash the show faced because of the collection of diversity hires? No? That’s because there wasn’t any.

Lin-Manuel Miranda (who wrote Hamilton) cast a bunch of people he had worked with in the past, and people who were amazing performers, and because he was focused on excellence, diversity naturally followed. And nobody cared because, while these characters were actually “white” in real history, there was no established imagery for the story of Hamilton, as it had not been a popular stage musical before, nor a movie, cartoon, or series of toys. Also, because the “race” of the characters didn’t factor into any part of the story as it would have in a story about the civil war, and the music was contemporary and so clearly not intending to be a period piece which is faithful to the historical period, casting with no regard to ethnicity completely worked. And NO ONE get upset about it. George Washington can be played by a “black” man if the guy can sing, and the guy Lin-Manuel Miranda got COULD SING. He was amazing.

But the guy in London? Not so much.

The Queen’s 70th gala thing (I don’t care enough to look it up) was this summer and it included a HUGE collection of musical and theater acts, including what looked like the London cast of Hamilton. George Washington was there, and he was black, and he… was pretty bad. Annoying voice, pitchy, and it sounded like they had to adjust the pitch of the song for him. Without looking it up, I can tell you that London cast a black man because they felt they HAD TO, and instead of just getting the best singer/actor they could as Lin-Manuel Miranda did, they apparently only auditioned black actors from a limited talent pool and got… that guy. Meh.

Here’s the distinction: George Washington doesn’t need to be played by a black actor in Hamilton. But if he’s the best guy for the job, he should be. Aim for excellence and diversity will follow. Ariel doesn’t need to be played by a black actress. And unlike Hamilton’s George Washington, we have 30 years of imagery that all looks the same. The primary reason why Ariel should not be a diversity hire is because we have known what Ariel looks like for 30 years. We’ve seen her thousands of times. She is the red head. And just like Luke Evans was wrong for Gaston, Halle Bailey is wrong for Ariel BECAUSE THEY DON’T LOOK THE PART. This isn’t about “race.” This is about matching the image of a VISUAL MEDIUM. Cartoons and movies are a visual medium and when you change the appearance of a LONG established visual character, fans of the original are going to hate it because you are literally changing the thing they loved for no reason. Hollywood is all:

Hey, let’s make Gaston a skinny little guy!

Hey, let’s make Superman Gay!

Hey, Let’s make Gonzo trans!

Hey, let’s make the ghostbusters all women!

Hey, let’s make Dr Who a woman with a black lesbian sidekick!

Hey, let’s make 007 a black woman!

Hey, let’s make Darth Vader a cowboy in a ten gallon hat!

Hey, let’s make Noah a psychopath who wants to kill his own grandchildren because he’s so dedicated to saving the environment from man-made pollution!

Hey, let’s make Peter Pan a Jewish Rabi who ironically works at a non-kosher deli!

Hey, let’s make Moses a delusional Terrorist!

Hey, let’s change Mulan from a smart girl with determination into a witch/Jedi with superpowers!

Hey, let’s change The Music Man from a whimsical musical comedy into a dull, flat drama!

Hey, let’s make a He-Man cartoon without He-Man!

Hey, let’s make a superhero/courtroom comedy with no comedy or action and terrible CGI!

And only two of those are things I made up. The rest are from real things fans hated.

This stuff, comes out and the long time fans of these properties- people who have loved these stories and characters for literally DECADES, hate the changes, and Hollywood can’t understand why. So, obviously it must be racism.

And since only white people can be racist, it shows that all of America is white racists. Which is the only possible motivation to be this bad at their jobs. Leftists want to prove that America is racist and sexist, and since the real world isn’t offering enough evidence to support these claims, they invent them.

I hate the casting of the new Little Mermaid for the same reason I hate the rest of this stuff. It shows a stupid, self-important Hollywood who is so out of touch with reality that they don’t understand that, when you CHANGE something, the people who were fans of the way it WAS aren’t going to be happy that it’s not the way it was. That’s not America being racist or sexist. That’s just Hollywood continuing to be stupid. And that’s why, Go Woke, Go Broke.