Contributing author: Yifei
Editor: Ya Ting
The 2023 version of "The Little Mermaid", which has held "racial equality" high since the casting was announced, was finally released recently. The controversy and expectations since 2019 have put the heroine Halle Bailey under various pressures, and finally become a nonsensical political show farce. Compared to the original animated version of 1989, this live-action (real fish?) The failure of the version of the film is multifaceted.
The fantasy and lively beauty of cartoons is completely lost in this movie. It is obviously a live-action movie, but it uses a lot of CG technology; It is clear that so much CG technology is used, but it is used so crudely, making the entire underwater world look like a children's photo studio that lacks sets and props. It is obviously the bottom of the sea, but there are not a few fish. The glowing and magnificent golden underwater castle is gone, replaced by a dimly lit, low-saturation underwater. The first gathering of King Chuanton and the daughter of the seven mermaids was originally a kingdom scene of song and dance in the anime, and in the movie it was like a meaningless ordinary family dinner in the living room under the sea.
High-definition technology restores the scene of the shark chasing halibut like a real thriller, but it cannot restore the dazzling magic of the animation 30 years ago. In the anime, Ursula, the witch of the sea, twists and sings while throwing out her bottles and jars that are used as alchemy materials, the golden contract that needs to be signed by Ariel, her pair of dark green smoke hands take out Ariel's voice, and then chant incantations with wide red eyes, turning Ariel into a human in a maniacal laugh... These carnival and horror scenes once stunned me in my childhood, and they are still unforgettable.
However, the live-action version of Ursula has lost its original oiliness, sophistication and cunning, and is just a domineering villain with a cross-eyed eyebrow, almost all the tricks are revealed, and it is even more doubtful why Ariel has heard her say those unfortunate souls "pathetic" (the original anime said this line with her mouth covered to two electric eels so that Ariel could hear it), and would choose to believe her.
In fact, Ursula is already a bright part of the film. Because for other characters, even if the camera is already shooting in the face, the actors still lack acting skills, which brings the stiffness and flatness of all the characters' personalities. Chuanton no longer has the leisurely and majestic dignity of a king, but has become an old father who is always frowning: Why do I often have tears in my eyes? Because I love my daughter deeply.
What's more serious is that the shoddy CG has completely ruined Ariel's animal friends, the originally chubby flounder, now an ordinary fish that can't blink; Sebastin completely lost his confidence and seniority as a "worried old minister" and "music conductor", and was just a sluggish crab; The seagull friend, who calls himself a "human expert", actually dives into the water and eats another fish in front of Ariel and the flounder (does it really not leave a psychological shadow on the flounder?). In another scene, the seagull flies towards the camera with a crab, and it is even scary to see its glass-ball-like eyes up close - this is the completion of the special effects technology of this film.
Since there are no highlights in the special effects and acting, the whole film has to rely too much on saying lines (including the lyrics of the song) to advance the story. When Ariel lost her voice, on the one hand, it challenged the acting skills of the actors, and on the other hand, it was also to present Ariel's dilemma in the human world, and the inability to speak itself also represented "loss of identity", "inability to express true self", "language barriers between different cultures" and other issues. However, in this movie, these problems do not exist, because the director let the voiceless Ariel still sing loudly in her heart, and in essence, the difference between "singing" and "not being able to sing" is meaningless, after all, this has to be a song and dance film.
Another reason why not being able to speak no longer bothers Ariel is that she has completely forgotten what she will do after becoming human. She can't make the prince fall in love with her anymore, she can't make the prince kiss her without verbal consent, and more importantly, having love shouldn't be a motive for a contemporary mermaid – although in the original game, Ariel had to do it to pay for the magic, because getting the prince to fall in love with her was a mission impossible that Ursula deliberately set up in order to frame King Chuanton.
In the plot of the original work, the absurdity and pathos of Ariel's situation are obvious, she needs to pay a heavy price in order to integrate into another culture, including exchanging "temporary visas" with "black agents" like Ursula, including sacrificing her mother tongue, her voice, and her true expression, including being far away from the ocean and her family; And getting married, especially with someone like the prince, is a prerequisite for her to be able to obtain a "land green card" as a female foreigner. This was originally a sober and painful racial story, and its reflection can be seen today, and the setting added in the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid" is that Ursula makes Ariel directly "amnesia", she forgets that if she does not get the kiss of true love within three days, she will become a slave of Ursula, this change not only makes Ariel's behavior on land unfocused, but also has no room for compromise and pain in order to become a member of another culture. The new version of Ariel seems to have just come to human society for a vacation.
The princess is no longer a real princess. Look at this Ariel, there is nothing special about her, and even singing is not her talent. Once the youngest daughter of King Chuanton who was "the most beautiful and has the most beautiful voice", she was not mentioned in the whole film that she had beauty (in the anime, Ursula hinted that after Ariel had no voice, she could rely on her beautiful face to attract the prince, and in the live-action version, these lines have been deleted), nor did she hint at how beautiful her singing is, originally Ariel's personal specialty became the mermaid's racial skill: "Siren's song" - didn't the writers consider the evil hints in the original "Siren" story, How incompatible with the core of the game? If Ariel's singing after saving the prince is just playing the demagogic talent in "Siren Singing", then is the rescued prince not really in love with Ariel, but just like Ulysses and the crew, he is seduced?
At the same time, the prince is no longer a real prince. The prince is adopted, so the prince does not have any blood superiority and is not a real "prince" anymore, so you can't say why Ariel can't marry a human commoner and only fall in love with the prince? In the latest movie in 2023, this man can be both a commoner and a prince at the same time. Disney has succeeded in "both wanting and wanting".
It seems that the story of Prince Eric and Princess Ariel tries to illustrate that two ordinary people can also shine and love each other, but they only happen to be born or adopted into a royal family. Therefore, this movie is looking forward to the audience's recognition, after all, they seem to be allowing every girl who is not a princess and a boy who is not a prince, regardless of skin color or racial class, to "see themselves" from the common feelings.
This is not the case. Race and power are no longer issues worth exploring in this film. After all, the film has reached a "racial peace" by "skinning" various details and settings in a sufficiently historical nihilistic way: an English-speaking black queen can adopt a white prince; King Chuanton had only one wife, but gave birth to daughters of seven races; There are not a few fish named during the underwater concert, but at the end, there are suddenly many mermaids of different races and skin colors, and the camera sweeps over each mermaid equally, and the smiles on their faces represent that people of every continent and race have always lived together in harmony. I've never seen such a politically correct ending of a film about a family on Earth.
For example, the new setting of the movie is that King Chuanton does not trust humans because the queen was once killed by humans. In the face of humans who have killed their mother, Ariel just lightly said "just one person killed it, it has nothing to do with other people", and gladly accepted the human world. This story does not dare to delve into the fabric of pain and hatred to find a true way of reflection and transcendence, but only denies the existence of problems through light words, denies that the past can have any impact on itself. Finally, the reconciliation between humans and mermaids also seems meaningless.
How does Disney explain The Little Mermaid's zeitgeist? The answer is girl power. A girl wants to do what she wants, pursues what she pursues, and accomplishes all the feats alone. Another adaptation of the climactic scene in the live-action film is for Ariel to kill Ursula instead of Eric. Not to mention how a mermaid who cannot stand can suddenly know how to operate a large ship like a prince who has been sailing for a long time; In the sense of love, when Ariel has done everything, where should the prince's return and love for Ariel come from? Before defeating Ursula, Ariel had saved the prince's life twice (including the shipwreck at the beginning of the film, and Ariel rushed to deflect Ursula when Ursula used the staff), making Ursula targeted to retaliate against Ariel. If the prince hadn't saved the life he owed Ariel, proved his ability and true love, and solved a problem that King Chuanton and the other mermaids had failed to solve, how could he impress King Chuanton at the end of the film and change the king's stereotype of humans? Such a so-called girl power of "girls do everything alone" is not avant-garde or trendy, many people have long discussed its irrationality, but it will add weight and isolation to girls' shoulders.
So, what exactly is this film doing? Does Disney really need to prove itself "racial diversity" and "aesthetic diversity" in this way? Long before the live-action version, Disney already had Princess Jasmine of the Arab Kingdom, Mulan of China, Indian Princess of "Stranger in the Wind"... Children have never been prejudiced against them because they are not blonde looks. Disney's princesses, just in terms of skin color, have long been "diverse". Therefore, Disney's reasons for choosing Halle Bailey are completely untenable.
They can obviously create a new, truly non-Western princess from the original black native culture to carry the narrative of the female power of this era, but they prefer to "change skins" on the original work. When we finished watching this perfunctory work, combined with a series of publicity methods with "black" as the keyword, we saw that the producer's choice was to push the skin color and appearance of the heroine into the spotlight, rely on being scolded out of the circle to accumulate wealth, and spoil Disney's precious classic IP in the name of diversification.
Disney used to be the best at telling a story, and now it constantly "corrects" the script for various slogans and cleverly sets traps for the audience - but in fact, no matter what race and appearance of the girl is used to play Ariel, the audience will not buy it. Minorities need to be truly seen, what they need is a story of culture, plight and courage that truly belongs to them, and we don't mind seeing a new-age black princess with dirty braids, singing R&B, and daring to resist, rather than giving a typical Western story to a few black actors to play perfunctory.
Rob Marshall, who has directed excellent films such as "Chicago", "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Pirates of the Caribbean", is so worried about the various finishes in this film that it seems that even the director has abandoned the film and the farce it inevitably causes. We can all see that Disney is lazy to make innovative reforms like "Sleeping Curse" while playing the "childhood filter" card, and only creates hot spots in casting, relying on black and red to increase box office and topicality. In fact, the most disrespectful to the new version of Ariel, the least respectful to racial issues, is Disney itself.
About the Author: Effie is a freelance writer with a background in literature and sociology, with a focus on literary criticism, cultural studies, equality in education, gender rights, etc.