On the racist backlash over Halle Bailey's casting in 'The Little Mermaid'

Disney princesses are notorious for having bodies of uniform proportions that in no way reflect the bodies of actual human women. Part of their uniformity is found in their whiteness; since the first princess, Snow White, was introduced in 1937, only five of the 12 princesses have been of color, and two of those, Tiana and Moana, didn’t exist until 2011 and 2017 respectively. Many young viewers of color, therefore, have found it hard to internalize the princess’ stories when so few of them reflect how they look.

That’s also why so many people rejoiced when, on July 3, Disney announced that it had cast black singer and actress Halle Bailey as Ariel in their live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. 

“After an extensive search, it was abundantly clear that Halle possesses that rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance — plus a glorious singing voice — all intrinsic qualities necessary to play this iconic role,” the film’s director, Rob Marshall, said of the choice.

Since the 2015 live-action remake of Cinderella, Disney has been remaking a number of its classic animated films — many of which have given the company the opportunity to cast more actors of color than they have in the past. Movies like Aladdin (2019), The Lion King (2019), and the upcoming Mulan (2020) all boast casts with high proportions of actors of color. But while these movies were all originally set in nonwhite locales, and featured animated people of color, many assumed the famously red-headed Ariel would remain as such in the live action version — and Halle Bailey clearly does not fit that image. Shortly after Bailey was cast, #NotMyAriel started trending on Twitter.  

Clearly, fans have had trouble reconciling Bailey’s race with her ability to embody the character of Ariel. Rob Marshall, however, identified Bailey’s “spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance” as pertinent reasons that she was cast, signaling he cares more about the actress’ ability to depict the character believably than mimic a red-headed cartoon. Disney itself classified the upcoming movie as a “reimagining,” which implies that the movie is not meant to be an exact replica of the original. 

This is hardly the first time a young woman of color has faced backlash for being cast in a role some fans determine is “white.” Perhaps most infamously, when black actress Amandla Stenberg was cast as Rue in The Hunger Games (2012), fans took their outrage to Twitter, going so far as to say the casting choice ruined the film for them. In 2017, actress Zendaya was cast as Mary Jane Watson in Marvel’s latest Spiderman movie, and fans attributed their racist backlash and frustration with her casting to the deviation from the source material rather than embrace a black MJ. 

The backlash to this casting choice, however, raised a relatively new question. Why, some protesters asked, is it OK for actors of color to play famously white characters, but not OK for white actors to play characters of color? 

Hollywood has whitewashed characters of color for decades. Backlash to this longstanding practice is a relatively new phenomenon. Performers of color’s inability to be cast even as characters of their own race and ethnicities only added to the lack of representation in the entertainment industry and falsely reinforced the idea that performers of color simply aren’t as marketable or as talented as their white counterparts — in turn stifling the kinds of characters being written, and performers being scouted, throughout the entire industry. And even despite this backlash, studios still continue to whitewash characters that were POC in a film’s source material. 

This begs the question: If white actors are still cast to play The Prince of Persia, Othello, Tiger Lily, Tonto, Ra’s Al Ghul, Goku, Speed Racer, Moses, Ramses, and Jesus, why can’t a black girl be cast to play a hybrid fish-person?

The bottom line is that an actor’s race should be considered a relevant factor to being cast in a role only if it fundamentally changes the fabric of the story. In the cases of the stories of the princesses of color, the ethnicities and cultures of each one — Mulan, Tiana, Jasmine, Moana, and Pocahontas — are integral to their respective stories. Their struggles and growth don’t make sense when divorced from the context of their racial and ethnic identities. Conversely, Ariel is a mermaid — a mythical creature. She could be played by just about any human without her story changing in the slightest, unless Disney were able to find a real mermaid to take that human’s place. 

What’s more, changing Ariel’s race arguably only makes her story more accessible to more viewers. In a way, people clinging to the #NotMyAriel trend are correct: Halle’s Ariel will not be the same one these protestors grew up with. Now it’s someone else’s turn to see themselves as The Little Mermaid.