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Yellow millet
Disney's intention to make the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid", like the previous remakes of "Aladdin", "Dumbo" and "Mulan", is to trigger the audience's nostalgia for the original animated film and soundtrack, so as to re-hype the classic IP, and then leave elegantly at the beginning of the summer file.
The Little Mermaid (2023)
But the film sparked the fastest controversy and insult since the wave of "rewriting the classics with a new stance of political correctness".
Because Disney chose black people to play the mermaid.
Too many people disguised or undisguised racial arguments on the grounds of "ruining childhood" and "mermaids from Denmark", and many viewers accused Disney of insufficient improvement in ethnic awareness, suspecting that its various corrective practices over the years were mainly driven by interests.
The above controversy caused by this film fully reflects the fact that in an increasingly fragmented cultural environment, it is absolutely impossible for a top international brand, especially one whose main target is future consumers, to be outside the political context.
Disney has already made a choice — it clearly doesn't want to be on the side of cultural conservatism.
This choice can first be understood from the perspective of economic interests, after all, diversity and inclusion means more consumers. But Disney has no choice — and without going down that path, it won't be able to retain the best talent in Hollywood and the global entertainment industry. It's no secret that the luminaries in the creative entertainment industry are almost all supporters of cultural diversity.
Disney, like other established Hollywood production companies, has had to go back and reprocess its own dark history — including founder Walt Disney himself, who was dug out of anti-Semitic, misogynistic conservative personal tendencies, and racial stereotypes and stereotypical gender stereotypes in Disney's old animations, such as brave, rebellious princesses often marrying early.
Disney's correction of content is not something that has happened in recent years. As early as the nineties, under pressure from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Association, the film deleted the lyrics in "Aladdin" that described Arabs savagely cutting off their ears. At that time, the media also regarded the growing sense of racial equality in society as a result of the globalization process, which awakened American society, and now the same consciousness is regarded by other people as American-style "political correctness".
Aladdin (1992)
Unlike previous passive remedies, Disney has been more proactive in making changes in recent years. After the launch of the broadcast platform, some old films were added to watch warnings, such as the use of a derogatory term for Indians in "Peter Pan" in the fifties, and the Siamese cat character in "Miss and the Bum" who was suspected of insulting Asians.
Although Disney claims that it will not remove these works, "Southern Song", which is suspected of seriously glorifying slavery, is still completely hidden even if it won an Oscar that year.
"Song of the South" (1946)
Under Disney's pluralism policy, a series of productions dominated by non-white characters have achieved good response, such as Pixar's "Coco" and "Metamorphoses of Youth". The problem is that new titles are not enough to strengthen the brand's position, and Disney will never let the classic old work lie in the archive with the limitations of the times, and from time to time it needs to be stitched up according to the new standard.
"Metamorphoses of Youth" (2022)
It is not difficult to guess the reason why Disney insists on remaking stock classics, although there are many people in Hollywood fried cold rice, but Disney's other businesses outside of movies, from peripheral goods to project settings in the park are closely related to IP, first of all, each generation of children must be familiar with the characters, remake is a necessary means to help classic IP continue its life.
Driven by this kind of profit that has to be served, there are a series of remakes with production costs and long-term super-originals, but the creative energy is far inferior to the original, and "The Little Mermaid" is no exception.
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Almost the story structure and essence elements of the original work are continued, and some paragraphs even have the same lines and expressions, but the flexibility of the animation is lost due to the limitations of the live-action version. And the method of patching up for possible problems in the old version is clumsy, and the interesting parts have been deleted and changed, like a tie-up imitation.
"The Little Mermaid" was the beginning of Disney's animated renaissance in the nineties, and in addition to the sophisticated animation design, several songs were highly sung and were the key to the success of the film.
The live-action version starring Hailey Bailey performed the temperament of the mermaid princess Ariel's innocence and charm, especially when showing the body of the mermaid swimming, her underwater shots are like a man dance. Among the supporting roles, the crab Sebastian and the octopus witch Ursula (whose identity was changed to Chuanton Sea King's sister and Ariel's aunt) still steal the scene, and the angelfish is more miserable, and has no sense of existence after becoming a real proportion. Skator, who changed from a seagull to a booby, is voiced by Awkwafina, adding her unique ruffian to the stupid cute.
Ariel's "Your World" and Sebastian's "Under the Sea" are not inferior to the original, but I thought that I would change the style to more R&B for Hailey Bailey. One of Scanto's rap songs was scolded as Disney's worst soundtrack, but it actually fits the rough bad voice of the "character" and is the most impressive of the new songs.
The live-action creator obviously felt that the role of Prince Eric in the original version was too weak to make Ariel give up her mermaid identity just because she was greedy for beauty. So he spent a lot of time supplementing Eric's background and psychology, making them all yearn for the unknown and rebel against authoritarian parents, because of the common goal to come together. The film also emphasizes the background of the feud between humans and mermaids, but the tragic murder of Ariel's mother by humans does not cause many important plot turns.
Also because the main plot cannot be moved, Eric's story becomes irrelevant. Ariel didn't know before making a deal with Ursula that he yearned for the unknown as she did, and still agreed to change his legs with a song because he yearned for the human world. At the end, Eric's wish to explore the unknown sea is fulfilled, and he sets sail with his wife, will Ariel be willing to help catch the same kind of sea creatures of yesteryear?
It's better to let Ariel achieve her wish to be a human being and marry her lover naturally. Moreover, Eric's era and geographical background seem to be a nineteenth-century Caribbean island, which is inevitably reminiscent of the colonial history of the region.
Let's look at how the live-action version precautions possible racial and gender issues, like asking, "Do you see this going to work?" In terms of casting, in fact, it is possible to learn that the theater industry ignores the character race, and there is no need to explain, not to mention that most of the characters are still non-humans. But the film makes redundant explanations for the appearance of minority actors, such as the white prince has a black queen because he was adopted; The mermaid princesses have different skin colors because they come from the "Seven Seas".
In the animated version, Ariel had long hair with big bangs popular in the eighties, and wore a shell bikini on her upper body, and was known as Disney's sexiest princess at the time. The live-action version may feel like objectifying women, Ariel no longer tries to get the prince to kiss her in three days, and Ursula drugged her to make her forget the task of "flirting". It is not allowed to play sexy and Ariel's father, so that the original Poseidon-like King Chuanton wears a top, and finally the picture of him surfacing to complete his daughter is real, but very embarrassing, and his hair does not have the flow in the animation, and can only be wet against the scalp.
The lyrics of the assist member's song "Kiss That Girl" that asks the prince to kiss her before saying it are changed to ask him if she wants to kiss before kissing. In Ursula's title song "Poor Soul", Ariel coaxed Ariel to say that it doesn't matter if she loses her voice, and the lyrics of men like quiet women are deleted, obviously not trusting the judgment of small audiences, afraid that they will listen to the crooked reasoning of bad people.
These alterations and interpretations are almost like a mermaid walking on its legs, and every step is as hard as a knife cut. By the way, this does not appear in the Disney version. When the old version of "The Little Mermaid" was released, the discussion often mentioned the film's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's original book. Changing the Faustian deal between mermaids and witches into being deceived, secularizing the mermaid's religious desire to pursue eternal life through love, changing unilateral pain to equal love, etc., can be understood as Disney-style adaptation of children's orientation. Like a live-action film shot in the Soviet Union in 1976, it's just an adaptation of this fairy tale.
Daughter of the Sea (1976)
More than thirty years later, because of Disney's brand effect and continuous marketing, this version of "The Little Mermaid" replaced the fairy tale and became the authoritative version of this story in the hearts of many people. The most relevant thing about the new version with the original is the performance of the stormy waves at the beginning, which creates a dark atmosphere, and the quote: "Mermaids have no tears, so they are more sad".
And the controversy caused by the filming of this new version has more effectively helped the original film to be canonized, no matter which version the young audience is brought to watch by their parents, as long as the plot and characters leave an impression on a new generation of audiences, Disney's remake has achieved its goal.
The controversy surrounding "The Little Mermaid" seems to have little to do with Chinese audiences, but it is not.
Although the cultural and political context is very different from that of the West, and it has always been difficult for Chinese people to empathize with European and American racial issues, at least the impact of the rise of feminism on domestic literary and artistic creation is real, and who can ignore the controversy surrounding the female perspective of "The Long Season"?
There will be more tangible and intangible things in the future, waiting to be reshaped.