Once again, Disney has proven that they don’t care about the cultural origins behind the inspiration used for their movies. They also went on the controversial bandwagon to get more views.
So, what is the problem with the new Ariel actress?
The original, physical appearance of Ariel in the book and animation is:
„Her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea;”.
Her looks are emphasized in the book because of her unique coloring.
This matters because her red hair and fair skin with blue eyes represents a minority of 2% of the population. Gingers have also been historically persecuted as witches, devils and mutants.
The fair skin is a trait that was specific to the nordic countries ( vikings had more redheads there at that point in time). Why? Science shows the skin pigmentation came from the low sunlight as they have a geography with rocky, high altitude and low sun.
Back to the Ariel from The Little mermaid matter. Her came from the dutch culture hence why the physical appearance is specific to them. The rarity and historical events of ginger people were rooted in the book as well as in the animation.
The whole action is also happening on the sea and the boat itself. Anyone with two braincells knows that it is a refference to the viking, sea faring idea that nordics have historically had.
Also, there are a few more symbols:
The character Ursula was inspired by a famous cross-dressing performer Divine. She/He was associated with the openly gay filmmaker John Waters.
Eric’s crew in the animation as they are introduced, they do an irish dance. This leads us back to the historical point of the Vikings opening up the sea faring trade routes from Ireland to England and Europe. The marriage between Ariel and Eric enforces that as it happens on a boat.
Triton has atmokinesis powers which Triton didn’t have and his appearance is very similar to Odin or Aegir (knows as the god of sea in norse mythology). Both norse gods had atmokinesis powers.
Another aspect i have seen is: people confuse Hans Christian Andersen’s inspiration. They say the little mermaid was inspired by african folklore and i tend to disagree for this very reasons:
The little mermaid book was released in 1837 and Hans’s first trip to Africa was in 1862 so there is a discrepancy of 25 years in the timeline.
The story is more similar to the folklore of Selkies. It originated after scottish settlers encountered native Saami women on Finish islands.
One of them is from Faroe Islands and presents us with a selkie that retrieves her skin to save her husband from a tremendous storm. She can no longer take part in the human world after retrieving her skin (sounds simmilar?)
What about the singing? In his biography, Hans Christian Andersen is known for his love of singing and dancing so why wouldn’t he incorporate those elements in his books?
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/legends-selkies-hidden-germs-sea-mythology-006409
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/03/01/red-hair/?chrome=1
Disney has claimed s that the only actress that fit with the voice was Halle Balley which makes me sincerely doubt their intentions .
Disney is known for producing kids shows by requiring actors to also be singers. You simply can’t honestly tell me that this is the only actress that fit the voice standard, but not fit the physical appearance of the character.
It is not the first time that Disney decides to disrespect well written characters and the culture behind them. Somehow now they did it on an actual iconic character that people grew up with and it’s symbolic value was much highly rooted.
Now, that we have established why Disney is disrespectful towards the author, culture and certain minorities, let’s talk to why it is also disrespectful towards the black community.
Every culture, minority deserves to have it’s story told in my opinion. A story with their specific cultural inheritages represented by symbols.
How can you use a a character that doesn’t fit the age period of the story, the symbols, the culture, the geography at that point. It simply looses substance and it looses all the iconic traits it has that used to make it a good story. Most of the acclaimed movies have accuracy and good acting behind them.
Disney used blackwashing as the centre point of being inclusive towards their community. For so many years, the black community has complained and deemed whitewashing as being a wrong act. Is Disney trying to make an irony towards their complaints? Is it a reaction test to prove that they are hypocritical enough to accept wrong racial things as long as it puts them in a spotlight? I would hope not although there are a lot of tweets that seem to find nothing wrong with it. It only shows again how much America has fallen socially and lives in a bubble with 0 consideration from the cultures they take stories from.
So why is this disrespectful towards the black community? Because Disney decided to be inclusive using whitewashing, destroying a symbolic trait of the culture it took the story from and clearly being aware of the controversy it would stirr to gain more publicity on their behalf. Did it work? Let’s see the stock prices over the weekend of 10th september. As you can see they were going down before that.
Their website traffic grew but also, when i searched for keywords, i suddenly found this on their new paid keywords list:
And this is the growth regarding the keywords mermaid and Ariel and how they grew in positions after the controversy. Unfortunately the site doesn’t let me check the traffic by day but i’m sure we can all agree how much traffic they took in after this:
How did the media react after this?
A lot of the media such as Huffpost, Variety, Forbes and Vox decided to jump in the bandwagon and call the people whom disagreed racists. They ignored the fact that the premises of the change is racist itself (whitewashing) but showed mostly tweets of excited children. They did not necessarily show the „racist” tweets they claim were posted.
Sure, there are tweets that are simply racists but from both parties, not just one. The media decides to ignore that. Most of the people have an issue with Ariel because her physical appearance is symbolic to the nordic countries (vikings had a bigger percentage of redheads than other countries). Also because it was armonious with the other cultural symbols in the animation and that was disrupted and it just doesn’t make sense now.
Here are a few examples of the other party and how their racist words are not being shown because the media doesn’t care:
Also, here are some top tweets from the #notmyAriel so you can see the „racism”. now it is boycotted by people calling other racists…because they just can’t seem to get themselves out of their „American issues” to realize this is about culture.
This is not a white vs black problem and people don’t seem to be willing to understand that but it’s more of a cultural appropiation . Unfortunately the physical appearance is quite symbolic because of it’s rareness.
Like many other American viewpoints or controversies, the people are showing ignorance towards foreign cultures. They make a cultural problem into a race problem but fail to aknowledge the racist means used that made the problem in the first place (because it’s not American and who cares about non american issues).
They call out people who disagree as being racists because again, that’s what the black community does. I’m from a country that literally, historically had nothing to do with the colonization of America. if i disagree on any topic with an American person of color (rarely happens with a person of color living outside of America, wonder why) I’m called racist.
It goes to show how rooted certain aspects are and the present decline and barriers formed between the communities. Why barriers? Because again, they don’t care about the outside cultural issues of other countries unless it is American (socially speaking). If they do, they always bring their own views or make it a racial aspect even if it isn’t. I honestly feel like Americans and i mean all Americans give 0 shits about foreign culture and just project their own issues in ignorance. It’s demeaning and i’m disgusted by their double standard reaction but also by their superficial mentality.
miculcritic 