Who Has a Right To Fantasy Stories?
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
-Toni Morrison
When Disney announced over the weekend that singer and actress Halle Bailey would be taking on the iconic role of Ariel in their live-action retelling of The Little Mermaid there was a definitive split amongst those of us who are far too invested in stories: those were elated and those who were enraged. Now, there were — quite naturally — those who couldn’t be paid to care about the casting, but the voices of those who were angry seemed to rise to a fever pitch (at least on my Twitter feed). Why? Well, the uproar occurred because Halle Bailey is a young Black woman.
The complaints were subtle at first , ranging from “The Little Mermaid is a Danish tale!” to
“Ariel is a redhead! This is redhead erasure!”
At once erasing the existence of people of color born with red hair, and the fact that the Disney tale is very, very far removed from Hans Christian Andersen’s tale. Spoiler alert: it’s super sad. Then, we graduated to the absurd: “What if we made a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. and cast Ryan Reynolds?”
The classic whataboutism that dares to compare a Black woman being cast as a fictional character with the erasure of our real-life-actually-lived-historical-figure whose race is central to his story. Unlike a mermaid, which is a fantasy character. This was honestly a fool-proof allegorical choice, but still not as hard-hitting as the final nail, which was:
“Ariel is WHITE!”
This is the war call which rings across the world-wide web whenever stories, specifically adapted from fantasy or science fiction tales, dare to insert non-white characters into the fray. We heard it when grown-up Hermione was a Black woman on stage, when Rue was a young Black girl, and when Sir Idris Elba graced our screens as Heimdall. Nevermind the characters are fictional, we the audience apparently are only capable of seeing magic and wonderment being executed by white characters.
Right? No, I didn’t think so.
For many years the people who have held the power and access to creative positions in the world of film have been very male and very white. So, the films they chose to put out were, naturally, in line with their sensibilities. Children were raised to see themselves in the big-eyed, fair-skinned, and light-haired heroes splashed across our screens. For some of us that is easy, but for a growing majority of the world that required suspension of disbelief that the angry folks on Twitter are incapable of channeling. Much of the uproar goes back to a sense of ownership and beauty standards that have reigned supreme for far too long.
However, now we’re seeing the world shift; our heroes are coming in more colors, shapes and sizes. With that shift comes the realization that we all have ownership rights to these tales. Sure, they might have originated in Denmark, Germany, or England, but as we move toward retelling the fables of the past, doesn’t it make more sense to adapt what was beloved then to what we see today? If we are to have our tales outlast us, they will have to embrace the changing and blooming world or suffer the agony of becoming something worse than diverse — outdated.
