Seeing the new live-action movie “The Little Mermaid” was terrific, especially because Halle Bailey, a Black woman, portrayed Ariel.
When people learned that the new little mermaid would be Black, people had a lot of different opinions. Many people were excited about seeing a Black little mermaid and could not wait to see the movie and applauded Disney for showing more diversity in their films. However, a lot of people were skeptical due to these changes and had very absurd ideas and hated the idea of their being a Black mermaid. It was deemed too extreme of a change.
But the movie was great. Diversity was clearly at the forefront of the film. Even though the movie did stick to the same plot as the original movie, it had unique differences that made things even better and more diverse than the animated version. Some of those changes were Eric’s mother being present in the movie, her being Black, and Eric being adopted. There was also Eric’s crew who were no longer mainly white like in the animation but composed of more people of color. The Caribbean music played when Eric and Ariel were dancing also felt like a nice cultural representation. Plus, all of the new music created in the movie was amazing.
One thing that I was skeptical about was Triton’s daughters. In the ocean all of Ariel’s sisters are present and even though they have the same widowed father and dead mother they are all of different races and ethnicities. It is clear Disney was trying to be more inclusive and diverse in the movie, but it got confusing knowing that they supposedly had the same mother and father but looked nothing alike.
The movie did live up to the expectations. There were some moments of confusion and questioning, but in general, the movie did what it was supposed to do: It reimagined a classic for an audience in 2023.
