Nothing to do with blacks, "The Little Mermaid" was scolded for not being wronged

The live-action version of Disney's classic animated film The Little Mermaid flipped. Six days after its release, the mainland box office was dismal to less than 20 million, with a Douban score of 5.2, which is a world away from the high score of 8.4 in the 1989 animated version.

Eight months ago, Disney's official "The Little Mermaid" trailer released on YouTube received more than one million likes and more than three million "steps", and The Little Mermaid's actor Halle Bailey also suffered a large-scale online storm - just because her skin color is black.

If the scolding before the release was a preemptive crusade by netizens on the "political correctness" behind the black actor fairy tale princess, then the word-of-mouth reputation after the film's release is enough to prove that the simple words "poorly filmed" are the reason why "The Little Mermaid" was scolded.

After all, political correctness is not suitable for use as a label, but it is the greatest opportunism to look specifically at what effect each "political correctness" has had on the "incorrect" mainstream white male rights – in this regard, The Little Mermaid has no credit – only changes the color of the skin, without any sincerity to explore deeper issues of women, power, and race, and without any innovation at the textual level.

In the past, Disney has always been good at remaking live-action versions of its classic animated movies, but it is clear that this time the arrogant experience did not work, and the Disney century-old custom logo at the beginning of "The Little Mermaid" also looks like a joke full of irony.

Of course, black people can play The Little Mermaid

While Disney's trailer was trampled on and negatively praised, a black mother tweeted her daughter's reaction to seeing the trailer, and then more and more people began to post similar videos: children excitedly shouting "she's black" and "she's so beautiful", young black girls muttering "like me" - Ariel's skin color moved and uplifted them.

Racism stems from appearance, black girls cannot become white anyway, but black girls become princesses of fairy tales, and there is a certain healing effect. What's more, actors, regardless of skin color, have the right to play any role, just as they have the right to become doctors, lawyers, and politicians by their own efforts.

In this dimension, there is no point in discussing the skin color and appearance of Halle Bailey, there is nothing wrong with black people playing the Little Mermaid, and it should not be the reason for being scolded. And report headlines and comments such as "It's not that she is black, but she is ugly" are themselves hypocritical cover-ups of racial discrimination, and in essence they are malicious attacks on women.

The director of "The Little Mermaid" once said in an interview that hundreds of actresses came on casting day, and at first Halle Bailey did not attract her attention, but was immediately attracted by her singing "Part of Your World", "I think Ariel can only be her." ”

Starring Halle Bailey and director Rob Marshall

The decision is certainly good. In the history of Western literary works, the proportion of white and male characters is much higher than that of other skin colors and women, and if all films take skin color matching as the highest criterion for casting, there are few opportunities for actors other than white people - it is fair that any actor, regardless of age, appearance, skin color, gender, can equally get the opportunity to play any role.

So using "black people can't play the Little Mermaid" to attack casting is like saying "the hammer can't screw the screws, so the hammer is useless."

What's more, the fact that a black actor played the Little Mermaid does not mean that the actor played the Black Little Mermaid, because when it comes to the core of the story of "The Little Mermaid", it will not be changed no matter what color the actor plays:

Falling in love with someone who "shouldn't" fall in love with, wanting to be someone who "shouldn't" becomes, every step closer is like being pricked by a thousand needles, losing your voice and memory and unable to express true thoughts, and the metaphor of the original author Hans Christian Andersen as a sexual minority and the hatred of this group in his time - these in the story of "The Little Mermaid" have nothing to do with skin color.

Little black mermaid doll on Amazon

Disney had a lot of princesses and used to be all white. In 1992, "Aladdin's Lamp" began, and the first non-white princess appeared - Princess Jasmine; Indians in 1995 "Stranger in the Wind", "Mulan" in 1998, and the first black princess appeared in "The Princess and the Frog" in 2009; To this day, Disney's choice of the Black Little Mermaid is no coincidence.

"The Little Mermaid" released in 1989 is a representative of the transformation of social values after the second wave of feminism in that era, and Disney before that, represented by Snow White and Cinderella, the greatest value is still beauty and kindness, meekly waiting for the arrival of the prince, waiting to be saved, "since then the prince and princess have lived a happy life."

By "The Little Mermaid", Ariel has become a young woman with independent ideas and dares to resist patriarchal orders, yearning for the outside world instead of obediently staying at home, actively pursuing and fighting for love. Although the story still revolves around love and marriage due to the limitations of the times, Ariel has been shaped as a new era female figure different from "saved", projected into the hearts of child audiences.

Animated version of "The Little Mermaid"

While Disney has never been an advocate of ideas, it seeks to be a representative of the audience's new needs and ideas. In the past decade, when Disney's overseas market even began to surpass its home market, it decided to turn to diversified mainstream values, and The Little Mermaid is undoubtedly one of the more suitable works: in 2017, Japanese-American actress Diana Huey played the protagonist Ariel in Disney's musical drama "The Little Mermaid", and like Harley Bailey, received a large number of negative reviews from American audiences.

In this year's live-action version of "The Little Mermaid", black people playing the Little Mermaid were originally given the expectation that racial issues, identity and patriarchy could be explored more deeply through the appearance of skin color, but it is clear that Disney did not do it.

It is not unjustly scolded to be scolded

The reason why "The Little Mermaid" both box office and word-of-mouth Waterloo is simple, that is, the film is not good-looking, and it is a superficial packaging of stale content.

First of all, based on the animated version of the live-action version, Disney's main energy is still focused on the creation of visual effects wonders, but in a well-known story to create new wonders and shocks for the audience, it requires a breakthrough at the production level, and the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid" has almost no innovation compared to the animated version in 1989, and the audience cannot get a tense and exciting look.

Whether it's the underwater world or the castle on the shore, the magic of the "sea witch" or the expensive hair of the Little Mermaid are not enough reasons for today's audiences to buy it - Disney's visuals on "The Little Mermaid" are not new to audiences who have seen enough big scenes and spectacles on the big screen.

Secondly, "The Little Mermaid" as a song and dance genre film is not enough to impress Chinese audiences. It is undeniable that because there has been no high-quality song and dance film that can combine song and dance and narrative in China, the audience's aesthetics for this type of work have not been cultivated, the audience base is weak, and it is naturally difficult for song and dance films to obtain good box office results.

In addition to the objective factors at the audience level, in the mature genre of song and dance, singing and dancing should not only set the atmosphere, but bear the burden of narrative, but this "The Little Mermaid" did not do, the song and dance part often gives the audience the feeling of playing, and the rhythmic singing voice of Harley Bailey, the star chosen for singing, is also not perfectly adapted to the big screen.

Most importantly, Disney's remake is very unenterprising at the level of the text content of the story - in essence, the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid" is still a somewhat inexplicable teenage love story.

The patriarchal oppression represented by "Sea King" is still "adults educate rebellious little girls" in the film, and finally reconciled and fulfilled because "I am your father and I love you"; Women's consciousness awakening and struggle for freedom and happiness, as well as the power structure behind it, are also more worthy of discussion; Social topics such as identity and racial discrimination brought by skin color can also be fully explored in the context of American movies.

But Disney didn't do that — nothing changed except the skin color of the Little Mermaid, which was Disney's opportunism.

And back to the story itself, women can only be rescued by the kiss of true love with the prince, it is too trite and offensive male imagination, no matter what country and what color of women, such fairy tales have long been needed.