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[Early Access] The Little Mermaid & The Limits of Nuance (Patreon)

Published:
2022-12-14 19:17:50
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

A few more weeks are coming, but I hope you enjoy this <3 Two more videos coming before end of the year break, but I've loved making them all. 


Any notes and feedback will be tried to be adjusted before final edit xx


Princess

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When it comes to the live-action 'The Little Mermaid,' we can have the conversation about Disney using diversity as a tool to market films without treading the act of diversity as a bad thing or being racist about the actors who get cast. Because diversity and actively working to diversify your output is not a bad thing. The problem is when it is only surface level, which Disney has been. That is nuance and a discussion worth having. Trying to make it seem like anti-Blackness and redhead prejudice are the same is not. Sources: https://www.vice.com/en/article/exq5jp/documenting-black-and-mixed-race-gingers-243 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-28872927 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/3498766/Facebook-Kick-a-Ginger-campaign-prompts-attacks-on-redheads.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nielsen-study-reveals-significant-growth-of-asian-representation-on-tv-in-2021-301550193.html https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/UCLA-Hollywood-Diversity-Report-2022-Television-10-27-2022.pdf https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/UCLA-Hollywood-Diversity-Report-2022-Film-3-24-2022.pdf

Comments

Samuel Nguyen

In a world full of bad takes and blatant racism, thank you for being one of the few pockets of nuance.

Rachel N

this is a great video, on the whole I agree with everything you said. I don't think you said anything here you haven't said before but it's certainly necessary due to the culture war surrounding black Ariel. one thing I think could use a bit more explanation is the difference between this situation and your article on why we don't need black Buffy. because I can see the logic for how a black person would still be under a white person's shadow via racebending, but I don't fully understand why we can't apply that same logic to Little Mermaid. emotionally/ethically I know that black Ariel is fine, but I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this.

run_away

Hey, so I'm neither irish-american nor black so please take this all with a fine salt glaze. One of the things that is missing from the discussion of racebending red-headed characters is England and the US's history of anti-irish racism. That probably sounds crazy, but the more retro pulp fiction I read the more the similarities between the portrayal of irish-americans in the 20s and 30s and the portrayal of black americans today jump out. I'm not an academic and I don't know if this is something discussed in academic circles, but just as someone who consumes media from that era and is paying attention to the media landscape now it's crystal clear. I think that people who don't specifically consume irish media or study irish history don't realize that irish people were and sometimes still are excluded from whiteness. The country was brutally subjugated by the english for hundreds of years, and the english intentionally othered and degraded the irish people, specifically irish catholics, during that time, and in some ways still do. If any piece of literature of sociology comes out of england, particularly in the 18 and 1900s and references redheads, it's probably referring to irish people in the same way that american discourse uses 'urban' to mean 'black.' There was even a weird, racist push during which english 'scholars' tried to claim that irish lineage had more in common with the 'negroid races' (sorry, direct quote) than with western europeans. Here's an interesting collection of cartoons encompassing that attitude, fwiw: https://flashbak.com/the-simian-negroid-irish-depicted-in-english-and-american-cartoons-12727/ For an indication of this in modern times, viewing the first season Downton Abbey and paying attention to how the irish-catholic maid is portrayed is an easy example. She is essentially the series' villain, and she hits many branches on the stereotype tree in terms of irish portrayal in british media. We here in the states don't recognize her portrayal as 'racist' against irish people, because nearly all americans simply accept irish people a white in-group and therefore the same race as the rest of the people in the show. and yet, british perspective on that traditionally does not. If we mentally substitute her character with a black character in a house of white characters, though, her portrayal might seem much more troubling. when the mass migraton of irish people to the US happened due to the famine, anti-irish sentiment caught fire in the US. It didn't help that the irish who migrated over here were mostly unlanded members of the middle class who spent their savings to get their family here ended up with little money and fewer job opportunities stateside. There was already an employment shortage in the US, and resentment toward the immigrant population skyrocketed. US history likes to emphasize italian organized crime, but for whatever reason we don't talk very much about irish organized crime, which was prevalent during the prohibition era, and shows up in tons of media written contemporaneously. Because of these stereotypes and attitudes, portrayal of irish-american men in popular literature was often as violent, lazy, untrustworthy drunks, and irish women were often portrayed either as prostitutes and highly sexualized women of loose morals, or glaring, matronly women with tangled hair, beaten by their spouses, with too many children. There was also the 'comedy' character of the drunken irish man and the hyjinks he gets up too. All of which should probably sound familiar to the way that black (and latino) americans have also been portrayed, right? For an example of irish-american portrayal in media during the time period, The Maltese Falcon is prime. The most icon femme fatale in all of american literature, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, was not a leggy blonde but rather a mysterious irish-american, who is a deceptive seductress and ultimately ends up being a murderer and a criminal who tempts the white main character and nearly leads to his moral downfall. Note that she is replaced by a blonde actress in the film adaptation and her general irishness is downplayed heavily, however. WWII changed this notion, and irish-american participation in the war seems to have been the turning point for americans to fold the irish into our general notion of american whiteness. However, tropes about red hair that were derived from anti-irish discrimination remained. The trope of the sexualized woman (mary jane), the trope of the tempermental women (everyone), the trope of the funny red-headed comic-relief character (jimmy olsen). This legacy carried forward, even if the public doesn't remember where it came from. I really do think that stereotypes about red hair in american media come more from the anti-irish sentiment in the 10s-30s than from any ancient historical tropes about redheads in general, for whatever that's worth. And I think a lot of tropes about red-heads in general come from anti-irish british racism. So... I think it's interesting that yeah, black roles are now replacing 'red-headed' roles. When the reality is that those roles were once, in a way, also minority roles. Not generically red-headed but specifically irish-american. But now that minority has been folded largely into majority whiteness, south park bits aside, and has in many ways transcended minority-hood. And so the role of the comedy relief sidekick and the sexy girlfriend can now be passed to black characters; one minority replacing moving in to replace another who has left that social rank behind. I have no takeaways or conclusions, but I do know that anti-irish discrimination is something that seems to have been forgotten by the us in general, despite the fact that it shaped some of the most classic genre fiction and cultural mainstays of all time, and despite the strong parallels between black representation and both pre- and post-WWII irish representation. Even racists don't often claim that 'wokeness' is erasing irish-american portrayal, when that seems like a low-hanging disingenuous talking point. I think this topic is just that forgotten. Which is strange, right? Don't know if all of this is worth the space it takes on the page, but I hope it's at least a little interesting in relation to the little mermaid thing.

Emily Karrmarshall

This was excellent! I'm a ginger, so I found the red hair discussion really interesting, and I think you did a great job with it. (God I hate that South Park episode!) I will say that when I saw Airel in the trailer, it made me happy she still has red hair. But if she didn't, I agree that red hair representation wouldn't be lost.

Princess Weekes
>>97604316

Oh right, I didn't clarify that. Imo, I don't think we need a Black Ariel—but we have one, and I think we need to judge her based on her talent. We can want Black princesses and we should have them, but that doesn't make this inherently bad. Where as Black Buffy was just a concept at the time (and the idea never went anywhere), so it was me saying from the jump we should do this differenlt. I don't think we knew about the open casting before Halle was cast.

Rachel N
>>97604316

ah so it’s more that you don’t care for “what if [white character] but black” as opposed to “what if [white character] but open casting?” that makes sense, thank you for clarifying. I do think that there’s some merit to exploring how changing an aspect of a character’s background/sexuality/culture/etc would change that character. it’s one of the things I felt A League of Their Own explored beautifully, for example. and there’s also the frustrating aspect of how people naturally cling to characters they already know and love more than they open up to new characters. but I understand your perspective.

Jovan
>>97648474

That's a fair point, but as Princess points out in the video and I can attest to in my own family, black ppl can and do have red hair. Saying that they are racebending redhaired characters specifically isn't true as it presumes that blacks/ppl of African descent can't have red hair. Ppl are upset that Ariel (who is not given a nationality and is a fictitious character) is PORTRAYED by a black actress. Ariel can still be as white as ppl want her to be; original Disney version Ariel isn't being erased by one portrayal by a black actress in a single movie. The multiple movies and theater productions have literally added dozens of caucasian Ariel portrayals to the pantheon. Hailey is not taking anything from anyone or erasing bigotry towards another group. She still has red hair, but ppl are adamant that she shouldn't/can't be black. Anti-Irish bigotry, while yes a problem, is not actually relevant to the discussion and the outcry against the casting.

Daniella Lumpkin
>>97648474

I think you make some very good points. Racial assimilation, anti-blackness, colorism, etc. are all wrapped up in that and are all valid interpretations of the perspective. I also think it’s a very interesting way to read the original movie allegorically.