I remember, back in '98, there was a controversy when Disney cast Toni Braxton as Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" on Broadway. I didn't get the hoopla about it--it's a fairytale, why couldn't Belle be Black? Not to mention the addition to the score of the wonderful song, "A Change in Me," written for Braxton, which has remained a highlight of the show ever since. The issue is largely of Disney's own making: they create animated features, and attach to them tons of merchandising and branding using the images of the characters as icons--so of course a certain amount of consternation is going to be because of the fan attachment to these images. I have no issue at all with Ariel being Black. The Broadway musical employed diverse casting--Norm Lewis played King Triton, Tituss Burgess was Sebastian, etc. The difference in 2023 is that color conscious casting has become politicized and enforced by the industry. Once that happens, audiences, critics and the like are going to view these choices skeptically and feel they're being imposed by ideology (preaching or scolding viewers) rather than being creative innovations. This ends up being unfair to the performers (Halle Bailey shouldn't have to defend her casting--she should be assessed purely on her talent and performance) and the audience. Up until the recent firestorm over Netflix's "Queen Cleopatra," people were timid to criticize "race-swapping," for fear of being labeled as racist--but now there's a global conversation about these choices--the good, the bad and the ugly. And I think that's a good thing.
The Little Mermaid and the question of racially-conscious casting
I remember, back in '98, there was a controversy when Disney cast Toni Braxton as Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" on Broadway. I didn't get the hoopla about it--it's a fairytale, why couldn't Belle be Black? Not to mention the addition to the score of the wonderful song, "A Change in Me," written for Braxton, which has remained a highlight of the show ever since. The issue is largely of Disney's own making: they create animated features, and attach to them tons of merchandising and branding using the images of the characters as icons--so of course a certain amount of consternation is going to be because of the fan attachment to these images. I have no issue at all with Ariel being Black. The Broadway musical employed diverse casting--Norm Lewis played King Triton, Tituss Burgess was Sebastian, etc. The difference in 2023 is that color conscious casting has become politicized and enforced by the industry. Once that happens, audiences, critics and the like are going to view these choices skeptically and feel they're being imposed by ideology (preaching or scolding viewers) rather than being creative innovations. This ends up being unfair to the performers (Halle Bailey shouldn't have to defend her casting--she should be assessed purely on her talent and performance) and the audience. Up until the recent firestorm over Netflix's "Queen Cleopatra," people were timid to criticize "race-swapping," for fear of being labeled as racist--but now there's a global conversation about these choices--the good, the bad and the ugly. And I think that's a good thing.