“I Don’t Want a Black Ariel.” — Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied With Race Switching | The Final Cutback
Now, wait a sec. I don’t like the recent casting of Halle Bailey in the upcoming Disney remake of The Little Mermaid. I am black, I’m not a coon but I have my reasons. Hear me out.
For those of you who live under a rock or maybe Facebook is your primary social media app and word hasn’t reached your village yet, Halle Bailey was cast as ‘Ariel’ a little over a week ago and the internet was a war-zone. From Twitter to the comment sections of Instagram and the National Treasure the Daily Mail, the race war was alive and kicking. The divide typically fell with one camp elated at the increased representation in the bigger Hollywood movies, whereas the other very messy (racist) side led with arguments of reverse racism, black-washing and all sorts of malarkey. Well, the unfortunate thing is I find myself on the messy side of this divide and here is why:
First off before I dive in, none of my opinions have anything to do with Halle Bailey’s talent. I’ve only seen her act in few episodes of grown-ish so I can’t comment on her acting ability but if she’s been cast by Disney I’m sure she’s well able and of course, there is no debating her vocal chops. But if you follow me on twitter, you might’ve seen that my immediate reaction to this casting news was “Boy, I don’t want a Black Clark Kent”. My issue is not with this Little Mermaid remake alone, but is with the recent trend of race-switching iconic and well established characters in an attempt to give us ‘representation’.
While representation of minorities in Hollywood is needed and I’m happy we’ve reached a point where studios are starting to take note and take action, ‘this ain’t it’. Characters such as Ariel and Clark Kent (Superman), live in established universes and their identities, down to their iconic looks, characteristics and backgrounds are well known to fans of the each respective character’s universe. Switching the race or gender of titular and iconic characters such as these should only be permitted in three cases. Firstly, in franchises that survive on the reinvention of their main characters and new iterations of the story (such as James Bond or Doctor Who), or to rectify an initial mistake, e.g Gods of Egypt but this time with people that look Egyptian (and a good script) or lastly, where it is necessary to the new story to see things from this different perspective. Personally I prefer characters remain as they were created, or in this case, as they’ve manifested on screen; they became popular and loved as they are and I’d rather they stay that way rather than being altered for the sake of it. That is though a personal preference in the treatment of characters and I can understand people forsaking that to see more races on-screen.
Now, I hear a bunch of you shouting “She’s a mermaid, it’s not that deep!” “He’s an alien! Why can’t aliens be black?!” and I’m with you! So let’s get to the meat of it all. My main gripe with race-switching and what I don’t think people realise is that we are getting the short end of the stick. A very short end. A stub. Representation is not something that should just be visual i.e through seeing a black face in place of another on screen; it should be through diverse stories, characters, settings as well as the casting. Changing the race of Ariel is nothing but cheap, second-hand representation that I’m not backing. Ariel’s story is one that has already been told through Hans Christensen Andersen’s fairy-tale and the 1989 Disney adaption and she’s been a little white mermaid. I don’t see why it’s time she is now black and why this had us as a race so happy . Now, above I did say that if we are given a new story and being asked to see things from a different perspective, race switching is fair and justified but this doesn’t apply here. It’s been well reported that Halle Bailey has been cast as Ariel and the supporting characters are those of the original Disney movie so no, I still don’t want it.
To give you an example of why I don’t like this casting, I’ll use that lil Oscar winning Indie film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Now widely branded as the go-to Spider Man movie (we can debate this elsewhere), it was film that featured a Black Spider-Man. Not a Black Peter Parker, but Miles Morales. A half African-American, half Puerto-Rican kid from Brooklyn. Can you imagine if in 2011 rather than create a new story with new character Miles, Marvel Comics decided to just make the original Peter Parker Black ? We would’ve been robbed of this great movie and wouldn’t have the chance to expand the universe. You see, what WOULD have been adequate representation would have been a NEW Little Mermaid movie, featuring a NEW Little Mermaid, with a different moniker, a different background and a different story to give to us. There are so many black stories being written that don’t make it to the big screen that I just can’t be satisfied with a rehash of an old story with a face that’s a little more like mine, and yes unlike Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse there is no Black Little Mermaid story to adapt but arguably that gives them more freedom to create whatever the hell they want. I’ll even start them off, name her Mami (please don’t), it’s not that hard. Oh and that Black Superman ? He exists. In fact there’s two! Calvin Ellis and John Henry Irons. Rather than pretend Clark Kent hasn’t always been a white man let’s put on for the characters we have at our disposal. There really is no excuse, race switching is a quick and cheap way to satisfy us and we eat it up every time.
So yeah, I don’t want a Black Ariel or Black Clark Kent or a Black version of anyone . Give us that new original content! And listen, I damn well might still enjoy the performances as this has nothing to do with the actors and actresses who get cast in the roles. Sometimes the performances can put me in a forgiving spirit (Brandy as Cinderella) other times I want to commit sue of side (MBJ as Johnny Storm). I’ll be watching The Little Mermaid regardless, but let’s not let ourselves get taken for mooks.
Peace and blessings.
Peekay (written July, 2019)
