‘The Little Mermaid’ Remake is Right on Race…but Still Not Quite Right for Me
Representation matters, and so I’m paying close attention to Halle Bailey’s turn as Ariel, aka, the little mermaid, in the upcoming remake of the classic Disney film. Since they released a teaser last week, my attention has been particularly celebratory, besotted, motherly: the TikTok videos of young brown girls beaming with astonished, unfiltered joy as they realize that this Ariel is brown/Black, like them, are revelatory and gorgeous.
But it’s not all roses. For one thing, I’ve taken some very deep breaths after seeing the asinine outcry from people who cannot handle the idea of a Black little mermaid. Black Twitter has served up trenchant, pithy, and hilarious responses to the nonsense, and I have just two things to add: (1) This is nothing new — we see the same complaints when Black characters appear in Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Thor, Titans, Superman, The Witcher, and more; and (2) the reason this is nothing new is because attempts by white people to define what can, cannot, or must be “white” are deeply and inextricably rooted in the racism and white dominance that underwrites our culture and country; like, that right there — the insistence that whiteness is a thing from which some people must be excluded and in which other people must be wrapped and protected at all costs — is…
