Last weekend Disney released a first teaser trailer for the remake of the animated classic “The Little Mermaid”. And it wasn’t just very popular at DashFUN. The video was broadcast via the official Disney channels Variety According to the report, it was watched around 104 million times worldwide within the first 24 hours – eclipsing some other trailers for Disney reboots such as “Beauty and the Beast” (94 million) and “Aladdin” (68 million) (remains the undisputed leader). but still “The Lion King” with almost 225 million views).
For the first time, the “Arielle” preview presented us with moving images of the new little mermaid Halle Bailey, who in the short clip also featured her beautiful interpretation of the well-known song “Ein Mensch zu sein” (or “Part Of Your World” in the English original ) excited. But as with the announcement of the casting, some on the Internet felt compelled to storm the lead actress and the project simply because of the skin color of the leading actress – although the plot of the underwater fairy tale does not mean that the eponymous fable creature ( !) must be as white as in the Disney template.
Fortunately, however, numerous reactions on the Internet also go in exactly the opposite direction. Videos are making the rounds on social media in which Black children are excited and surprised at the same time that “Arielle” looks “like her”. This was not lost on the new mermaid Halle Bailey herself, who – just like her African-American actress colleague Kerry Washington (“Django Unchained”) – a compilation of such clips with heartfelt words Twitter shared:
As incredibly touching as the video snippets are, it’s almost a bit of a shame that Ariel’s appearance plays such a big role here too, after all it should go without saying that a black actress can also play an iconic character, whose skin color is for the history is completely irrelevant. The reasons here are of course completely different from the hate comments and unfortunately all too easy to understand. Because exactly the above reactions show that such a casting no taken for granted but is still the exception.
But we really hope that next year’s new Disney remake can help change that: “Arielle, the Little Mermaid” starts in cinemas on May 25, 2023.
