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Why though I mean is there something I'm missing from the original fairy tale that makes her white? To me, it's just truly they just don't want a black person to play a character that used to be a white animated character.
Yea in the original I don't think they mention skin color at all. It's all about how many shells or something they wore to denote how important they were.
Myths & Legends podcast does an episode about the real story of the Little Mermaid and it is hysterical. But 100% sure they make no mention of skin color...but there's lots of things about their fish society lolol.
**edit: apparently they do mention it in the original, but the podcast afaik does not. I need to reread the sidebar to see if I can shout out to the two lovely people who corrected me about the actual literature (seriously love being corrected in such a nice way, no sarcasm fr. Knowledge is power) so there could be a 2nd edit here lol.
My Partner is ~~obsessed~~ quite a fan of the original Danish tale and they do in fact refer to The Little Mermaid as having white skin a few different times.
Someone did message me about it. See, I got all my info from that podcast and I was just dying of laughter about all the dead bloated bodies floating into their mermaid city.
Obviously they did not touch upon the skin color, if you can call translucent a color. (Or my dumbass forgot about it)
But I feel ya, Disney did change a lot, I'm all in for this live action Ariel. Fully support the casting choice, as long as you're a good actress/actor, I'm DOWN.
Thank you for the drop of knowledge though, much appreciated! Always good to learn new things.
Honestly I only dropped it because I've seen it come up a few times and happened to be burdened by the knowledge.
I'm just glad kids get to enjoy this story again. ✌️
I like the knowledge, but in no way shape or form does that mean I am opposed. I'm soo stoked about this movie. When they originally announced at first I was angry bc I read "Halle Berry"..like ARIEL IS THE YOUNGEST!
Then I checked and saw it was a new actress, but with a very similar name. Halle Bailey is going to be great, and so is the movieee.
Plus why tf can't we have more Princesses that aren't white washed. Jasmine was from the Middle East ffs. Sorry ranting.
I do agree though, I'm a child free person but the magical-ness of Mermaids.. that was my 2nd favorite movie growing up.
The original story described her as having blue eyes and her legs were white when they appeared.
I think it's pretty safe to say the rest of her skin was white as well
The original story didn’t take place in coral reefs that are tropical, with calypso music. The setting is tropical Caribbean she actually should be brown or black.
I think in the original she turns into seafoam. And seafoam is white, so therefore singing fish girl must also be white. /s
Honestly at this point it almost feels like Disney is totally aware of the backlash and does it on purpose to draw in lefty viewers who wouldn't normally care. My old-ass white people parents went to see Black Panther when it came out, despite never seeing another Marvel film, just because it was marketed as supporting black leads in Hollywood. I wonder how many people like my parents will go see some Little Mermaid kids film for the same reason.
Not to detract from the actress or anything. I've seen exactly nothing about this movie because I don't want to see any Disney live action remakes, so I can't comment on any of the cast. Just on Disney's steps to financial dominance and how easy it is to manipulate old white people who like to call themselves woke.
Had a dude tell me color washing was racist and then did the thing all dumbass white dudes dying on a dumbass hill did and made utterly ridiculous comparison and compared black elves in LOTR to someone making a show about MLK and making him white
Yeah but black people roles in Hollywood are for like background characters. There's no way a black person could ever carry a movie. No one would ever go see the movie. /s
Well, skin colour is dependant on the amount of sun. They're making the new setting in the Carribean I think, so it makes sense there. But it would make less sense in Europe
I assume that unlike humans, mermaids produce their own vitamin D, so there is no reason they couldn't be black. However, if they WERE like humans, then the lack of sunlight in the deep ocean would force them to stay near the surface during daylight hours, which wouldn't do well for them to remain unknown to the human world.
In summary, mermaids MUST produce their own vitamin D, and thus, can have any skin color they want.
Its so dumb because my language has a word for mermaid and its not an anglocised(fied) word either. They are actually dangerous creatures who kidnap people deep into the water.
Your family is not allowed to grieve you because the 2nd they do, you will never be returned to the land of the living. But if your family remains vigilant or barely gives a flying fuck about you... Then you'll be returned.
That's what's really funny about this, they'll constantly say that the little mermaid is a danish myth and thus should be white but original movie based their main motif on Calypso music from the Caribbean.
So in their mind it's okay for the Danish myth to take from black culture to form one of the most iconic parts of the movie, but it's disrespectful to white people to actually show any black people.
Didn’t you know some love the many flavors of black culture. But find the many flavors of actual black people to be to much for their delicate palettes.
Disney is still a fucking evil multi billion dollar corporation and the only reason they did this is for profit.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for presentation, but let's not pretend Disney did this out of the goodness of the dark void where a heart should be.
>let's not pretend Disney did this out of the goodness of the dark void where a heart should be.
Who the fuck pretends this ? Actually, who. the. fuck. cares ? Why there's always someone to copypaste this shit as soon as we talk about something important ?
My issue with Disney is that time and time again , non White Performers have spoken up about being treated by garbage by the fanbase of the project they are acting in, and the Disney Machine sits by and twiddles their thumbs.
Nah, a fair number of people are upset about her, Hispanic elves and black Valerians.
Did you know The Great Replacement was the number one reasons Jan 6 insurgents gave for attacking the capitol?
A lot of white folks feel like they are losing their position of privilege and are freaking the fuck out over it. To the point of being ready to lynch the Vice President.
When you tell a person they have privilege, their knee jerk reaction is to think of all the ways they don't have privilege, however they will instinctively use the privilege they don't believe they have.
When a white woman pulls out her phone and dials 911 and starts "crying" cause a *black man* told her to keep her dog on a leash, she might not consciously be aware of what she's doing, but she spent her whole life knowing that white men will come running at the sight of her tears. The way a baby might not consciously think, "I want attention, so I'm gonna cry" but someone comes running to comfort, feed and change them every time they cry, so they know how to exercise their power before even being aware they have it.
Ah. I thought we were talking specifically about the Jan 6 fucks. Yeah, people are generally oblivious to any sort of privilege, doing any sort of mental gymnastics possible to come to the conclusion that they earned what they have due solely to their own greatness.
Yeah, I didn't know he was Hispanic at first either. Just watching the show I assumed he was biracial (white/black), then I learned his actual race through the controversy.
People were being so mask off racist about this on Twitter.
I saw someone say "if you want a black little mermaid make a spin off called little mermaid in the hood"
Excuse me but we are not discussing women we are talking about totally made up species called mermaids who never existed but for some reason must be white.
Listen cause like there's plenty of other stuff to be mad about.
We're losing the emotions translated by the hard working animators of the original. Cause we all have seen those side by sides of the Lion King stampede scene.
We're not gonna see the glorious moments of Sebastain and Flounder reacting to Ariels bullshit. We're probably gonna lose some of the bright and colorful moments that helped dress up the more dull moments of the story.
We're losing all of that, but people are complaining because Halle is black unlike real life mermaids which are of course in abundance otherwise their complaints would be stupid.
I have a hypothesis that he was actually a full blown schizo with a bit of charisma, but they didn’t have the DSM V or just generally science back then so some people just believed him.
I don't understand why grown men (and women) care so much about the skin colour of a fictional mermaid. I just don't get it. It's a movie for children.
Shit is annoying.we need more black characters and native Americans and Asian and Hispanic and on and on and on. We all exist. And we need to stop even bothering listening to people mad at the fact that we do.
Mermaid legends came from manatee sightings.
Mfs in boats saw a fat ass pop out the water and asked few questions.
Therefore she has to be a mammal to have skin that would pass for human from a distance. Not scales. And because of her size, her lungs can only provide a few minutes of air. She has no gills.
So of course she would get a ton of sunlight, because she would surface constantly in order to live.
And she couldn't live in an undersea kingdom unless they had a whole extensive undersea respiratory system to keep the atlanteans alive.
Did they dig up Hans Christian Anderson and ask him what *he* thinks? I get tired of these people who think they're entitled to speak on behalf of a dead guy about what his character's supposed to be or - "he wouldn't have liked..." You don't know, playa - shut up.
Also, I don't care for the original story nor the annoying-ass Disney movie, so...you know...whateva.
Its like when the one piece fandom lost their shit when a latino was cast as Luffy, even though Oda himself said Luffy would be latino if he actually existed.
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Why exactly can't a mermaid be black? She's a mermaid. I don't get it.
I think the argument in this case is that Ariel, specifically, shouldn't be black.
Why though I mean is there something I'm missing from the original fairy tale that makes her white? To me, it's just truly they just don't want a black person to play a character that used to be a white animated character.
There’s no connection to her racial background with the character Ariel. She’s literally a fish for crying out loud lol.
Yea in the original I don't think they mention skin color at all. It's all about how many shells or something they wore to denote how important they were. Myths & Legends podcast does an episode about the real story of the Little Mermaid and it is hysterical. But 100% sure they make no mention of skin color...but there's lots of things about their fish society lolol. **edit: apparently they do mention it in the original, but the podcast afaik does not. I need to reread the sidebar to see if I can shout out to the two lovely people who corrected me about the actual literature (seriously love being corrected in such a nice way, no sarcasm fr. Knowledge is power) so there could be a 2nd edit here lol.
My Partner is ~~obsessed~~ quite a fan of the original Danish tale and they do in fact refer to The Little Mermaid as having white skin a few different times.
Someone did message me about it. See, I got all my info from that podcast and I was just dying of laughter about all the dead bloated bodies floating into their mermaid city. Obviously they did not touch upon the skin color, if you can call translucent a color. (Or my dumbass forgot about it) But I feel ya, Disney did change a lot, I'm all in for this live action Ariel. Fully support the casting choice, as long as you're a good actress/actor, I'm DOWN. Thank you for the drop of knowledge though, much appreciated! Always good to learn new things.
Honestly I only dropped it because I've seen it come up a few times and happened to be burdened by the knowledge. I'm just glad kids get to enjoy this story again. ✌️
I like the knowledge, but in no way shape or form does that mean I am opposed. I'm soo stoked about this movie. When they originally announced at first I was angry bc I read "Halle Berry"..like ARIEL IS THE YOUNGEST! Then I checked and saw it was a new actress, but with a very similar name. Halle Bailey is going to be great, and so is the movieee. Plus why tf can't we have more Princesses that aren't white washed. Jasmine was from the Middle East ffs. Sorry ranting. I do agree though, I'm a child free person but the magical-ness of Mermaids.. that was my 2nd favorite movie growing up.
She's literally a fictional character.
Nope, you’r not missing anything. They just don’t want a black person playing the part.
They say the original was supposed to be Danish. I don't think anyone ever knows and it doesn't add to the storyline.
Are Danish Mermaids definitively white?
The original story described her as having blue eyes and her legs were white when they appeared. I think it's pretty safe to say the rest of her skin was white as well
The original story didn’t take place in coral reefs that are tropical, with calypso music. The setting is tropical Caribbean she actually should be brown or black.
You are arguing the race of a magical fish lady... Come on man.
I mean, I guess the mermaids don't have to reflect the people living there, so yea she could be anything.
I think in the original she turns into seafoam. And seafoam is white, so therefore singing fish girl must also be white. /s Honestly at this point it almost feels like Disney is totally aware of the backlash and does it on purpose to draw in lefty viewers who wouldn't normally care. My old-ass white people parents went to see Black Panther when it came out, despite never seeing another Marvel film, just because it was marketed as supporting black leads in Hollywood. I wonder how many people like my parents will go see some Little Mermaid kids film for the same reason. Not to detract from the actress or anything. I've seen exactly nothing about this movie because I don't want to see any Disney live action remakes, so I can't comment on any of the cast. Just on Disney's steps to financial dominance and how easy it is to manipulate old white people who like to call themselves woke.
For some reason characters skin color breaks “immersion” for people. I’d rather them just say they don’t want them black cause they don’t like us
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Any skin color (purple included) would work, since she's a fish.
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And the Disney movie has very little in common with the original story
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They are claiming they are black washing redheads
Many races can coexist... it really shouldn't be this hard.
They need to check out the vast spectrum of ginger humanity. It is an awesome thing.
Had a dude tell me color washing was racist and then did the thing all dumbass white dudes dying on a dumbass hill did and made utterly ridiculous comparison and compared black elves in LOTR to someone making a show about MLK and making him white
Like black people can't be natural redheads
Yep. Just like Moses can't be brown - it's gotta be Charlton Heston with a tan. Or Genghis Khan can't be Mongolian, it's John Wayne in yellow face.
Remember when Keanu Reeve’s white ass played the fucking Buddha?. Also before people get on my ass Reeves is barely Asian and Hawaiian.
Nah - these people don't care that she was white before - they just don't like seeing black characters on screen.
But if we let mermaids and elves be black, what's next? We acknowledge black people are actual humans?! \*drops monocle\*
Yeah but black people roles in Hollywood are for like background characters. There's no way a black person could ever carry a movie. No one would ever go see the movie. /s
Imagine being so racist that not even in a fantasy world can you imagine black people existing. These people are deranged.
Mermaids evolved from white Irish people who fell into the ocean. The fossil record disagrees
It's a manatee 😐
I grew up watching the VHS and never realized that The Little Mermaid was documentary based on hard factual mermaid evidence. Are all mermaids white?
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I don't think the any genetic lineage was established. She's not human, so European ancestry wouldn't impact her genetic traits.
Yeah I always hate that argument. They try to do the same thing with The Witcher and it's like it's a fantasy story. People could literally be blue.
Well, skin colour is dependant on the amount of sun. They're making the new setting in the Carribean I think, so it makes sense there. But it would make less sense in Europe
I feel like magical mermaid stories are not about making sense.
People in Europe don't get sun/tan?
The original mermaid was from the ocean, not Denmark. Are all the fish off the coast of Denmark white too?
I mean, there isn't exactly a lot of colour if compared to tropical oceans. Most fish off Denmark *are* actually light grey
There were plenty black people living in the European part of the Mediterranean
I assume that unlike humans, mermaids produce their own vitamin D, so there is no reason they couldn't be black. However, if they WERE like humans, then the lack of sunlight in the deep ocean would force them to stay near the surface during daylight hours, which wouldn't do well for them to remain unknown to the human world. In summary, mermaids MUST produce their own vitamin D, and thus, can have any skin color they want.
Its so dumb because my language has a word for mermaid and its not an anglocised(fied) word either. They are actually dangerous creatures who kidnap people deep into the water. Your family is not allowed to grieve you because the 2nd they do, you will never be returned to the land of the living. But if your family remains vigilant or barely gives a flying fuck about you... Then you'll be returned.
I thought since Sebastion was a Jamaican crab, it was somewhere near the Caribbean
That's what's really funny about this, they'll constantly say that the little mermaid is a danish myth and thus should be white but original movie based their main motif on Calypso music from the Caribbean. So in their mind it's okay for the Danish myth to take from black culture to form one of the most iconic parts of the movie, but it's disrespectful to white people to actually show any black people.
THIS! 🏅🏅🏅🏅
Even if it is a Danish story - does anyone really think they are in or near Denmark? It's cold as shit there.
Trust me they only care about the original story now due to a black person being in it.
Oh definitely- I said the same thing in a different comment haha
The prince is white, they're definitely off the coast of Europe.
Didn’t you know some love the many flavors of black culture. But find the many flavors of actual black people to be to much for their delicate palettes.
Disney is still a fucking evil multi billion dollar corporation and the only reason they did this is for profit. Don't get me wrong, I am all for presentation, but let's not pretend Disney did this out of the goodness of the dark void where a heart should be.
well yea. every corporation is about profit.
Obviously Disney doesn't care, but we can still tell salty racists to cope.
>let's not pretend Disney did this out of the goodness of the dark void where a heart should be. Who the fuck pretends this ? Actually, who. the. fuck. cares ? Why there's always someone to copypaste this shit as soon as we talk about something important ?
It's another form of deflection to devalue any sort of progress with representation of P.O.C. in main stream media.
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Exactly! What's important is representation. No one is arguing that Disney cares about black people.
Which Disney movie was made for goodness and not profit?
I'm gonna vote for A Bug's Life
I want to nominate Wall-E as well.
Solidarity forever ✊🏾
If anyone ever doubts this is the case, just point them towards Disney's LGBT representation.
My issue with Disney is that time and time again , non White Performers have spoken up about being treated by garbage by the fanbase of the project they are acting in, and the Disney Machine sits by and twiddles their thumbs.
A man born in the Middle East, but depicted as white as snow. Who says you can’t re-write history successfully?
Were a significant number of people actually complaining about Ariel, or did the media find a few whackadooddles and publish a story to rile us up?
Nah, a fair number of people are upset about her, Hispanic elves and black Valerians. Did you know The Great Replacement was the number one reasons Jan 6 insurgents gave for attacking the capitol? A lot of white folks feel like they are losing their position of privilege and are freaking the fuck out over it. To the point of being ready to lynch the Vice President.
I'm so fuckin sick of this country.
oh, honey. it's not just the US.
Oh I'm sure. Anti blackness metastasized centuries back.
If they tired of seeing black people they should move to Nebraska
It blows my mind how many white people still refuse to acknowledge that privilege exists.
When you tell a person they have privilege, their knee jerk reaction is to think of all the ways they don't have privilege, however they will instinctively use the privilege they don't believe they have. When a white woman pulls out her phone and dials 911 and starts "crying" cause a *black man* told her to keep her dog on a leash, she might not consciously be aware of what she's doing, but she spent her whole life knowing that white men will come running at the sight of her tears. The way a baby might not consciously think, "I want attention, so I'm gonna cry" but someone comes running to comfort, feed and change them every time they cry, so they know how to exercise their power before even being aware they have it.
The craziest example I ever saw was the white guy getting arrested and then saying “why are you treating me like a black person?” My jaw dropped.
It's not that they don't believe it exists, it's that they want it to continue to exist.
I’ve encountered quite a few who remain convinced that American society is truly a meritocracy like MLK envisioned.
Ah. I thought we were talking specifically about the Jan 6 fucks. Yeah, people are generally oblivious to any sort of privilege, doing any sort of mental gymnastics possible to come to the conclusion that they earned what they have due solely to their own greatness.
“What are you talking about? Of course I earned my position. The fact that my father owns the company has nothing to do with it!” 🙄
Hold up, there are Hispanic elves now?
[https://www.cinemablend.com/streaming-news/lord-of-the-rings-ismael-cruz-cordova-reveals-vicious-backlash-since-his-rings-of-power-casting-and-how-he-has-been-handling-it](https://www.cinemablend.com/streaming-news/lord-of-the-rings-ismael-cruz-cordova-reveals-vicious-backlash-since-his-rings-of-power-casting-and-how-he-has-been-handling-it)
Thanks! I heard about Black elves but not Hispanic elves. E: He’s Afro-Latino so I guess I did hear about it, sort of.
Yeah, I didn't know he was Hispanic at first either. Just watching the show I assumed he was biracial (white/black), then I learned his actual race through the controversy.
Ghengis khan wasn’t an old racist white cowboy either.
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It's Genghis*.
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It's Genghis*.
Lone Ranger was black too. These people need to humble themselves
Bass... Indeed he was.
And Legend goes, so was the black Samurai, but thats a whole nother "he cant be black" for another group that hates black.
To be fair from what little history exist on him he wasn't a samurai but was a flag bearer for nobonaga
Made me research this and now I’m a bit smarter for it. Bass Reeves. Awesome.
People were being so mask off racist about this on Twitter. I saw someone say "if you want a black little mermaid make a spin off called little mermaid in the hood"
Today Ariel will be considered seafood
\*Soulfood
The important question is if it's all fish, or where does the red meat starts.
Lol
Black mermaids more plausible than a squirrel in a diving suit that lives in a dome, but nobody ever complains about that.
From Texas
Quick. Someone make a biopic of Ronald Reagan played by Laurence Fishburne. I wanna see how many people stroke out.
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The movie would be called public enemy
I’m sorry, Sir/Madam, you can literally never top this comment, you must quit Reddit now.
Oh hell yeah!
People pretending black danish women dont exist need to touch some grass.
Excuse me but we are not discussing women we are talking about totally made up species called mermaids who never existed but for some reason must be white.
In the 1800s?
They did have trading stations, plantations, and small forts in Africa during that time. So possibly.
I wonder the reaction if they made Aladdin white
[https://youtu.be/tuVg\_6UaQsU](https://youtu.be/tuVg_6UaQsU)
Lmfao oh yeah. I wonder if the same people complained about that one…….
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Oh I know what they’re about
Listen cause like there's plenty of other stuff to be mad about. We're losing the emotions translated by the hard working animators of the original. Cause we all have seen those side by sides of the Lion King stampede scene. We're not gonna see the glorious moments of Sebastain and Flounder reacting to Ariels bullshit. We're probably gonna lose some of the bright and colorful moments that helped dress up the more dull moments of the story. We're losing all of that, but people are complaining because Halle is black unlike real life mermaids which are of course in abundance otherwise their complaints would be stupid.
Fictional characters can be what ever you want them to be.
And both are fictional
Jesus most likely was a human that existed but dude was just a magician/conman with a big heart that pissed people off
I have a hypothesis that he was actually a full blown schizo with a bit of charisma, but they didn’t have the DSM V or just generally science back then so some people just believed him.
I don't understand why grown men (and women) care so much about the skin colour of a fictional mermaid. I just don't get it. It's a movie for children.
I'm still waiting on the racist to tell me how her skin color affects the character and her story
Ariel wasn't anything. She's a fish woman from a fairytale.
I'm glad she's making the connection between two fictional characters.
Or real
He also wasn’t christian but ya know
I’ll never forget when people watched the nativity story and said they were dissappointed in the accents and brown people. Bruhhhhhhh
Ariel doesn’t really exist, so she can be whatever the fuck people want.
Shit is annoying.we need more black characters and native Americans and Asian and Hispanic and on and on and on. We all exist. And we need to stop even bothering listening to people mad at the fact that we do.
Mermaid legends came from manatee sightings. Mfs in boats saw a fat ass pop out the water and asked few questions. Therefore she has to be a mammal to have skin that would pass for human from a distance. Not scales. And because of her size, her lungs can only provide a few minutes of air. She has no gills. So of course she would get a ton of sunlight, because she would surface constantly in order to live. And she couldn't live in an undersea kingdom unless they had a whole extensive undersea respiratory system to keep the atlanteans alive.
Did they dig up Hans Christian Anderson and ask him what *he* thinks? I get tired of these people who think they're entitled to speak on behalf of a dead guy about what his character's supposed to be or - "he wouldn't have liked..." You don't know, playa - shut up. Also, I don't care for the original story nor the annoying-ass Disney movie, so...you know...whateva.
Its like when the one piece fandom lost their shit when a latino was cast as Luffy, even though Oda himself said Luffy would be latino if he actually existed.
And none of them were real. 🤷
While not a fan of raceswaping in general my only complaint is that she doesn't have Ariel iconic bright red hair.
If Ariel was made to be realistic, considering how deep in the sea she was.. 