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It used to be "doctors and college professors are not women". You're just asserting boundaries for a category without arguing why they should be there. But my argument is that this is the wrong level at which to have the debate in the first place.
Ariel isn't a category, she's a concrete character with defined traits.
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Let's have a look at the proposed cast:
Halle Bailey as Ariel, a mermaid princess and King Triton's youngest daughter who is fascinated with the human world: Black, the bone of contention here
Jonah Hauer-King as Eric, a human prince whom Ariel falls in love with after saving him from drowning, after which he becomes determined to find and marry Ariel: White (British with maternal Jewish ancestry)
Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, a treacherous sea witch whom Ariel makes a deal with to become a human, which is secretly part of Ursula's plan to conquer Atlantica: White (American of Irish descent)
Javier Bardem as King Triton, Ariel's overprotective father and the King of Atlantica, who is prejudiced against humans: White (Spanish) (No, not Hispanic, born in Spain)
Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina, a new character for the film: Black (British-South African)
Art Malik as Grimsby, Eric's loyal butler and confidant, who sees to it that Eric finds the right girl to marry: Pakistani (British)
Lorena Andrea as Perla, a new character for the film: Hispanic (British of Spanish and Colombian parentage)
Kajsa Mohammar as Karina, a new character for the film: White (Swedish)
So if King Triton and Queen Selina are Ariel's parents, that means Spanish and Black African parents of Black African-American daughter who falls in love with a white prince, is tricked by a white witch, and interacts with Asian, white and Hispanic characters. Very diverse. The main objections, so far as I see, are that the original Ariel is white with red hair, and they've simply swapped actors for the same parts in the same story with the same plot, and crucially have changed nothing else about Ariel but her skin colour - they've kept her as red haired, in the blue costume, and everything else identifiable from the original movie and marketing ever since of the Disney princesses.
Disney are definitely trying to eat their cake and have it: if they had made a new mermaid with a new Black mermaid called Serafina or something and let her fall in love with an Indian or Hispanic or Black prince, changed names, changed the plot a bit, but most crucially changed costuming so that Serafina is a new character of her own, then people wouldn't be fighting over this. But then they would have run the risk of the new property not being as reliably profitable as the old one, which is already established and has a ton of marketing in place. So this is all about the bottom line, not about "hey let's give little Black girls Representation" (not if Representation eats into profitability).
I think we're in violent agreement here: we're both claiming that Disney is doing this for political reasons. I love that you researched the whole cast to make your point, but they're not being cagey about it at all. I think the place that we might disagree is that I claim "Ariel isn't black" and related arguments get too easily sidetracked into questions of artistic license. I think a better argument is "you're making political casting decisions, you're also doing exactly the same racist shit that was the reason people complained in the first place, just with different races, and we know this because you won't stop talking about it".
The pre-planned focus-group-tested battle lines are about artistic merit, and they'd love it if we argue about "who is Ariel, really?" forever. There's a better argument to have, and it's the one that advocates a world where lefty hippy screenwriters are expected to write good literature, black people are allowed to be mermaids, and Disney doesn't get to conscript half the populace to watch a stupid remake of a kid's movie because that's somehow owning the Nazis.
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