The Skin Color Of A Mermaid Doesn't Matter
Yes, you're racist if you're against a black Ariel.
Let's get one thing straight.
MERMAIDS DO NOT EXIST!
So their skin color can be anything. They can be black, they can be white, they can be green, they can be pink with purple polka dots. Because they're mythical beings.
So whining because Disney cast Hallie Bailey as Ariel is racist, no matter how you try to justify it. It's not like they cast Merle Streep to play Martin Luther King Jr, they cast Hallie to play a creature that does not exist.
You shouldn't be mad over that. What you should be mad at is the fact that Disney has stopped making 2D animated movies in favor of soulless remakes in order to hold onto copyrights. They're no longer interested in telling a good, compelling story. It's all about keeping those dollars rolling in with their established properties. Be it this, The Lion King, Mulan, or any of their past remakes, they don't care about good storytelling or good movie making. Just money.
There's millions of fairy tales they could be adapting into their classic 2D animation instead. I would love to see musical film adaptations of some of my favorites such as The Samurai's Daughter, Sukey And The Mermaid, The Way Meat Loves Salt, or The Faun And The Woodcutter's Daughter.
Anything but another crappy remake in order to hold onto copyrights. And you know it's going to suck, just like all the other live action remakes have.
The arguments against a black Ariel is stupid. For one thing there's the whole "It's not canon that she's black." Well, honey, in actual Little Mermaid canon - THE MERMAID DIES! SHE KILLS HERSELF! Disney canon doesn't matter here because Disney did a terrible job adapting The Little Mermaid in the first place. It was never a love story. The mermaid wanted to marry the prince so she could have a human soul so she could go to Heaven when she died instead of becoming seafoam. The prince marries someone else and when the mermaid sees how happy he is, she chooses to kill herself rather than destroy his and his new bride's happiness. She then turns into a Spirit Of The Air and is told if she does 300 years worth of good deeds she'll gain entry to Heaven.
Next up, "Hans Christian Andersen was Danish and Danish people aren't black." Um, hello? Anyone with that argument is dumber than an anti-vaxxer, and that's pretty darn dumb. Besides, if you're going to play that card then honey, we might as well change it so Triton falls for Eric, not Ariel, because guess what? Hans was gay. He wrote The Little Mermaid when the family of the man he wanted to bang told him to stay away from their son. He decided for the sake of the happiness of this man he would stay away. Hence why The Little Mermaid is about sacrificing your desires - in the mermaid's case, her desire for a soul, in Hans' case his thirst for the D - for the happiness of others.
So by turning The Little Mermaid into a love story with a happy ending, Disney ruined it and completely missed the point of the story. So their original adaptation was crap that should never be watched anyway. So who cares what they do in the remake as it'll be just as terrible as the original. Hey, they can't all be as good as Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, and The Princess & The Frog. I can accept the massive changes to the latter since they put it in a whole new era and location, plus Dr. Facilier is, in my opinion, the best villain since the original Maleficent. Don't even get me started on how much I despise Beauty & The Beast and the changes they made there.
(And as long as I'm out here ruining childhoods by telling you the mermaid is supposed to die in the end - in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame Phoebus is actually a villian. He just wants to bang Esmeralda because she's pretty. She dies, hung as a witch, and Phoebus doesn't care. He marries another woman for her money because money is more important to him. Quasimoto also dies.)
At the end of the day, we should not be angry about something as pointless as the skin color of a mythical being. If that's what upsets you, then yes, you are a racist scumbag. What you should be angry with instead is Disney's giving us poor quality movies, abandoning good storytelling, in favor of holding onto copyrights.
Boycott the live action remakes, not because of skin color, but because Disney needs to stop doing the soulless remakes to grab every dollar they can, and go back to 2D animation.
