So the new Ariel is black right now

Off-Topic Movies, TV and Entertainment
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Ten characters.

Edit: Oh, my bad. Clearly, you must be talking about someone else, because I’ve given examples in this thread of circumstances in which it would be entirely inappropriate to cast an actor of a differing race (or “color”, if you must) in a role.

Or, in other words, that the apparent country of origin can certainly be relevant to who and how [a role] should be cast.

Not in the Little Mermaid, though. In a cartoon/movie based off a fairy tale, the race, or color, of a character is positively inconsequential. If they wanna change it because “inclusion,” then fine. If they wanna change it because “artistic,” then fine. If they didn’t have any social agenda and simply cast the new actress because she’s excellent, fine. Disney’s intentions are positive, therefore everything is all good.

Their intentions are also capitalistic and commercial, but they were for the original film too, so that’s a different discussion for a different thread.

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This is a good point. Although the original tale was penned by a Dane, the story makes no mention of Denmark or any other Earthly geography.

So, at least in this discussion, we aren’t even talking about preserving the culture contained within the story. We’re talking about preserving the culture of the author. Culture which, incidentally, had no part in The Little Mermaid. That story did not take place in Denmark, or even on Earth.

In any case, the “I, Me, Mine,” attitude when it comes to culture isn’t very beneficial to our maturity as a people. “Share and share alike,” is more likely to result in a positive future for everyone - at least when it comes to art.

HANDS OFF MAH CULTURE is really not the way. I say let the cultures and races and peoples of this Earth mix together, grow and learn and evolve together. This is the natural progression of humanity.

If someone of a different race, color or culture tries to re-tell a story from your ancestors, perhaps you should judge that person on their overall intention and message, rather than micro-managing the details and getting caught up in minutiae.

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Not to mention that at the time of writing of that story, Denmark had colonies in both the Caribbean and near India for over 100 years, so it’s not like they were culturally isolated and there wasn’t such a thing as sailor’s tales of weird and amazing things in the far flung corners of the earth.

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the blackening of every fictional or non fictional character is done by (((goblins)))
its becoming more obvious to most people

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I appreciate the way you think, because in turn it makes me think.

Honestly the whole argument becomes increasingly asinine the deeper you get into it. You’re right, Andersen didn’t have any kind of a “cultural monopoly” on mermaids; he simply wrote one of the hundreds or thousands of stories about such creatures.

Mermaids are neither a Danish creation or exclusive to Danish culture.

Further, Andersen’s tales are in the public domain. So, even legally, they’re up for interpretation, in a no-holds-barred free-for-all kind of way.

This includes cross-culture interpretation of any kind.

Here’s some interesting tidbits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid

Globally, “mermaid tales” have included creatures with skin the color of ebony, creatures that are completely covered with scales, and yes, creatures with fair, white skin, among many other varieties.

Mermaids were featured in One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Arabic folk tales dating from the 8th to 14th century - hundreds and hundreds of years before Andersen’s tale was published in 1837. Mermaids are described in One Thousand and One Nights as “identical to land walking people, but with the ability to breathe and live underwater.”

These are Arabic tales. It goes without saying, then, that their “mermaids,” being identical to “land walking people,” had brown skin, not white.

Who appropriated whom now? Who is “whitewashing” whom?

The whole thing is so silly.

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Speaking of silly, there is the one argument for how they actually look.

sadly I couldn’t find one with no watermark and I have lost so many collections of this series.

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Alita Battle Angel’s movie adaptation suffer from this “outrage”, even though the manga and anime took place in Neo America and the actress that played Alita is of Hispanic decent. Guess these facts don’t matter to the thin skinned, easily triggered trolls that weren’t ever going to see it anyway.

You should give Ghost in the Shell a watch. It is a good movie.

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Sorry Vegana changes only go a certain way " White → Black or Male → Female or Straight → Gay , welcome to PC world enjoy your stay

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Simon compa always killing,
100% Mermaider!

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They complained about that, because she is white while her character was supposed to be Asian. What they didn’t complain about was how Mordo, who was also supposed to be Asian, is now black. Funny how that works.

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The director of Dr. Strange said that he gender/race swaped the ancient one because he thought that the original comic character was racially insensitive and that it relied on crude stereotypes of asians being strange, mystical, and exotic that he felt would offend some asians watching the movie. I don’t know why Mordo was changed to black. Perhaps to avoid stereotyping asians as well?

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It doesn’t really matter to me, but I think it might matter to me if I was Asian. They don’t get a whole lot of representation as it is. I can’t speak for them and won’t try to, but all in all it just seems a bit hypocritical for people to be mad about one and not the other, yet many were, and only about the white one. Just pointing out an observation. Oddly, of the many people I saw complaining, none of them happened to be Asian.

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the live action adaptions are absolutely terrible so i dont care what they do. beauty and the beast live action was awful compared to the original. same with lion king and aladdin

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I think they said they made Mordo black because Brother Voodoo needed an in for a later film and there was no creative introduction for him in the set up. Which makes sense because the Sorcerer’s Sanctum is made up of like Merlin types, but Voodoo is a Haitian Lord of the Dead type. Wouldn’t make sense for him to join aesthetically. If he’s Mordo’s brother, it makes much better sense that he replaces him.

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Nothing wrong at all with her skin color being changed. It may even be more accurate than her being portrayed as white actually, it is possible in the past that the seeds for civilization in northern europe were put there by travelers from Africa. Ariel may just resemble how some ancient people in northern europe looked like, the ones who spread civilization to there to begin with.

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Yes:

Also:

It’s not just possible, it’s accepted as fact, proven by archaeologists and historians planet-wide, that human life as we know it began in northern and eastern Africa, and spread from there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#/media/File:Homo_sapiens_dispersal_routes.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

Of course, there are other theories, somewhat less accepted, such as the Multiregional theory, but even that simply includes southern Europe along with Africa and Indonesia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiregional_origin_of_modern_humans

It must be mentioned that this particular view of the evolution and dispersal of modern humans has fallen out of favor in the last twenty years or so, due to lack of supporting evidence and increasing supporting evidence for the “Out of Africa” theory.

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Being white is bad. Everyone knows that

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In the category of ‘trying too hard’, only one other beats you out for top position.
He posted just below you.

Also, and specifically, the ‘Africa as sole origin’ THEORY is full of holes. It would be nice to have all that we wish labeled as ‘fact’; credible archaeologists have learned better over the years. Just mention the word ‘Piltdown’ and watch them wince.
A few bone fragments that happen to fit pet theories does NOT good science make.
Skäl.
:beer:

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Is that a sympathy wince for someone bringing up a hoax that happened over 100 years ago, was called out as a fake the next year, and definitively disproven 60 years ago as some sort of proof against their profession when it really was more of a problem of popular science taking off with it and not the people who knew better?

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You left out the part where it was included in textbooks, advanced studies and many of the ‘scientific’ journals of the time.
And yes, it was about 40-50 years before the pundits of All That Is Known and Wise admitted they’d been had.

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