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Disney's Black mermaid is no breakthrough – just look at the literary subgenre of Black mermaid fiction

12 Comments
By Jessica Pressman

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I am sorry, but Black Ariel is so wrong.

It's entirely OK with Disney creating more of African American centric content, like more Lion King(The voice acting cast of the original animation was mostly African American), more Black Panther, more Blade, etc and such movies are well-received without controversies. Disney can do more of War Machine, Falcon, or X-men's Storm stand alone movies as well.

It's not OK for Disney to co-opt existing non-African American characters into something they were not just to please the SJW crowd.

But please, spare millions of people's fond childhood memories.

1 ( +6 / -5 )

I doubt I'll see the movie for a long time because I don't go to theaters much anymore and I don't have Disney +. Nor do I have young children anymore. That being said, I have seen pictures of Halle Bailey, and she looks to be a very beautiful woman. Why anyone would refuse to see this movie because of her is beyond me. I'm looking forward to seeing it someday with my grandchildren (assuming I ever get any).

2 ( +3 / -1 )

I am sorry, but Black Ariel is so wrong.

But please, spare millions of people's fond childhood memories.

Agree.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

How dare they change the fictional race of a fictional character of a fictional species. They really think they can just make things up?!

3 ( +5 / -2 )

I think she’s beautiful. Mermaids, you understand, do not exist outside fiction. So, is the problem here “fictitious fiction”?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Seriously, people can get upset about anything. They chose one of the lightest skinned black women too, and people are still whining. My fictional character is a slightly shade darker than usual, wah wah wah. Honestly these people are ridiculous. But I guess racists are always going to be like that.

Anyways, if they also did like an underwater African Atlantis, that would be a really fun movie too. Like Wakanda but underwater

0 ( +2 / -2 )

A black mermaid is novel at being racially correct ??? The advertising and marketing world has gone overboard with trying to make everything so politically and racially correct in their view regarding ethnicity and diversity in media. I am Caucasian, married to an oriental (Japanese) woman and over the past few years I have noticed that almost all marketing visual imagery in North America and Europe are now biased to the non Caucasian peoples of the world. This is fine in theory but when you look at the racial demographics of the target audience you might think that non Caucasians make up the majority of the target audience which is not accurate. What if 50% of Japanese media depicted non Japanese (Caucasians and peoples of non Asian ethnicity) in their media. The fallout over that would be monumental.

As a test, watch North American and European media (television, movies, printed materials etcetera's) and count how many people in those media are white and non white. You will be surprised. Do the non Caucasians really represent the target market for the products they show in media? The answer is no. Someone is passing around the Kool-Aid and the average "Joe" is drinking it in copious amounts.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Americans can turn anything into a race row, especially if there is an academic grant up for grabs. It's like 4chan on a Friday night: Bros, Mermaids - black or white. Discuss. Note 'black or white', because American 'diversity' often cheerfully excludes other races, especially Asians.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Americans can turn anything into a race row, especially if there is an academic grant up for grabs. It's like 4chan on a Friday night: Bros, Mermaids - black or white. Discuss. Note 'black or white', because American 'diversity' often cheerfully excludes other races, especially Asians.

Sadly, race is not an only American issue.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Mermaids serve as signals, in both senses of the word – as an emergency alert and as a medium for transmitting a message about humanity’s increasingly oceanic planetary future

Err, no they don’t as they are mythical creatures…

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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