It’s a dream come true for Halle Bailey. She’s one half of the R&B sister duo Chloe x Halle and she is now set to portray Ariel the mermaid in the upcoming Disney live action remake of The Little Mermaid.

Many are applauding the casting choice because Bailey has a tremendous singing voice and is a talented young woman, and some are hating the decision simply because she “doesn’t look like Ariel”. Yes Bailey is a person of colour and the fake character Ariel was drawn to have the upper torso of a young Caucasian girl in the 1989 version of the Disney classic, although nobody seems to be annoyed about the fact that Bailey also doesn’t have the lower body of a fish but, we’ll let them figure that out.

People are trying to make the argument that if characters like Mulan or Jasmin were portrayed by people of different racial backgrounds there would be the same out cry, and yes there should be, but there’s a much better argument there.

  1. If you had someone that was not Chinese play the character of Mulan the story wouldn’t make sense as the story is about the character trying to help the Chinese army, so ethnicity plays a huge role here.
  2. Jasmin is the Princess of  Agrabah, a fake city set in the middle east, so again, you could change how the character looks, but then it just doesn’t make sense within the setting of the story.

Ariel is a FISH from the OCEAN and is not based off of an actual living breathing creature. Now you could go back and say the story was written by Hans Christian Andersen, who might’ve based the located to be in Denmark. But in the cartoon Disney movie, the location is not known, Ariel has a talking crab that has a Caribbean accent, and her father is Poseidon, a character in Greek Mythology. So this thing is all over the place to begin with and at the end of the day Ariel’s skin colour, race and location has no impact on the story whatsoever.

If you really want to get into the details, the Danes owned a bunch of land in the Caribbean for quite some time and they would send important people over there (such as royalty) to check on the colonies. So if you want to give it some real world context, Prince Eric was in the Caribbean on a colony check up trip as he met Ariel who is from the Caribbean ocean.

Also, if a casting choice has you so upset that it ruins your day, you’re probably having a pretty good life and might even consider making your own movie and you can cast anyone you want.

Just a thought.

~Matt

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48864419?fbclid=IwAR0hH0XRHASyNm6k08KWvZaaEoJX2QCYtgjm3JlsEGSdDXuVZVS9-BlyinY