The Little Mermaid casting backlash is shameful, ridiculous—and all too predictable
How should Hollywood respond to the latest racist firestorm? By casting even more stars of color
Film Features Mermaid
If you’re icked by this week’s icky internet response to a Black actor playing Ariel in The Little Mermaid, you’re not alone. You may have even felt a distinct déjà vu given the recent response to Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power (which feels like déjà vu from reactions to Obi-Wan Kenobi, which feels like déjà vu from feedback to The Last Jedi, and so on).
Of course, it’s absurd to dictate how fantasy characters should look—this just in, mermaids are not real—yet the latest Little Mermaid footage from last weekend’s D23 event, featuring Halle Bailey and her majestic voice, sparked such intense ire that the clip reportedly generated 1.5 million dislikes before YouTube disabled the counter. And in what is starting to feel like a very rote cultural conflict, it’s likely that more toxic responses lie ahead from the anti-woke crowd. From casting announcements for Disney’s Percy Jackson And The Olympians to Marvel’s reimagining of The Fantastic Four on the distant horizon, the trolls are already sharpening their blades (or maybe they’ll just copy-paste their racist responses to the last Fantastic Four adaptation).
Ironically, many of the same people harrumphing about everything becoming political are the ones dragging their Fox News-fueled views into a debate about a mermaid’s hair and skin color. A, you know, fictional and fantastical character in a kid’s movie.
You know she’s a mermaid, right?
Let’s really put a fine point on this: These characters are fictional! They live in worlds that aren’t our own! There’s this magical thing called the suspension of disbelief: we do it whenever we sit down to watch a movie or TV series or stage show about shit that’s made up. And The Little Mermaid is suspending disbelief of the highest order. Not only is she half-fish, she’s animated. Despite Disney continuing its “live-action” remakes by rendering the 2023 Little Mermaid with apparently realistic underwater lighting, are people really hoping for a documentarian approach?
Some of the resistance seems to come from the idea that source material, like the 1989 animated original version of The Little Mermaid, can’t be updated or reimagined. When Amazon’s gajillion-dollar Lord Of The Rings project was first announced, my first assumption was they’d want every opportunity to distinguish themselves from Peter Jackson’s seminal, Oscar-winning trilogy. The jury’s still out on how well the series is finding that sweet spot between familiar and new, but populating this Middle-earth with nonwhite actors was one no-brainer move.
I’m reminded of producer Dylan Marron’s brilliant video series, called Every Single Word, which highlighted the lack of diversity in Jackson’s (and many other) films and added fuel to the Representation Matters movement’s growing fire. (See here how many lines are spoken by actors of color in The Return Of The King below, and try not to blink.)
It’s worth noting that Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien himself, both inspired by Western mythology and a vocal opponent of Nazism, grappled with race and culture in his work; even someone with a cursory knowledge of his world-building knows dwarves and elves, two different races of beings, have a tense history of mutual discrimination. To ignore real-world influences and pretend an author creates fiction in a vacuum is, as a Tolkien character might call it, folly. And even if fantasy fiction were indeed somehow not a product of its time, assuming every character in that vacuum to be white is, as we might call it, chud behavior.
Besides, this is an adaptation. As Richard Newby has suggested, there is no obligation to adhere to an original artist’s intent, imagined or otherwise. Think of how refreshingly Matt Ruff’s novel and Misha Green’s TV adaptation Lovecraft Country flipped the script and approached the racism of its source of inspiration, H.P. Lovecraft, head-on. Values change, stories seek to reflect their time, and audiences evolve—or at least some do, anyway.
Fans, and artists, respond
While D23’s recent first glimpse of this live-action Mermaid reignited the so-called debate about the title character’s ethnicity, the internet has also been flooded with much-needed reminders that onscreen representation can significantly impact audiences, particularly young ones. Here’s how Bailey responded—make sure you have tissues at the ready:
Following the proliferation of a despicable #NotMyAriel hashtag—a breathtaking example of how poorly some internet users choose to spend their time—Bailey told Variety, “I want the little girl in me and the little girls just like me who are watching to know that they’re special, and that they should be a princess in every single way.”
Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in the 1992 animated Mermaid, gave Bailey her stamp of approval: “What you bring to the table in a character as far as their heart and their spirit is what really counts.” That underlines an important truth: it’s the inside of a character, not the outside, that matters most. Plus, have you heard Bailey’s voice? Listen to that snippet of “Part Of Your World” and try to convince me she’s not the most talented person perfect for the role.
And in a ludicrous side note, another Halle—Oscar winner Halle Berry—got pulled into the backlash too. (Her post, an image from Charm School of Black women looking mildly confused and annoyed, said it all.)
Other artists are responding to these preposterous firestorms in other ways. The hobbits of Jackson’s trilogy cleverly showed their support for the diverse Rings Of Power cast in a fashion display with the added bonus of a call to action. Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen condemned the racist response to Moses Ingram’s inclusion in Obi-Wan Kenobi. And Captain Marvel star Brie Larson has become the leader of her own anti-troll movement, with her recent post indicating how clearly battle lines have been drawn.
It’s time to embrace change, and diversity
Where do all these by-now-predictable backlash cycles leave Hollywood producers and directors debating whether to cast underrepresented talent? Hopefully and ideally, they’ll realize continuing to do so is more than just worth the risk; it’s the solution. As The A.V. Club’s Britt Hayes noted when the racist Little Mermaid backlash first began, “The negative response to Bailey’s casting illustrates exactly why Disney needed to cast her in the first place.”
And hey, if you’re a soulless studio exec only looking out for the bottom line, you don’t have to look at this as a moral obligation. Again, this might be my inner optimist talking, but we’re well past the “diversity equals bankability” argument. Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, and Parasite are just some of the titles that have taught us that; this year’s breakaway hit, Everything Everywhere All At Once, centered a Chinese woman as its heroine, breaking records for its distributor. The ongoing era of embracing talent of color in front of and behind the camera can and should be Hollywood’s norm.
So internet trolls need to be drowned out. Maybe some people need to whine, cry, and go through the five stages of grief about their preferred casting choices. They can’t possibly do that every single time a storyteller dares to reimagine a role in a fresh way, so storytellers should continue to do so. Take Elon Musk’s tweet objecting presumably to the “woke” aspects of Rings Of Power, saying “every male character so far [being] a coward, a jerk or both.” Show this guy enough examples of powerful female characters, flood our screens with them until they become commonplace, and surely he and his ilk will eventually get tired of voicing the same narrow-minded opinion.
The nature of our modern-day news cycles also means that every subsequent project that receives an outraged backlash becomes a bit less newsworthy. The trolling may be more focused and organized than ever this year (here’s a thought: Can we disincentivize content creators who monetize each backlash?), but the fever pitch that toxic fandom has reached with The Little Mermaid and Rings Of Power may signal that their story has become too repetitive and predictable to warrant novel coverage.
It would also be great if Disney’s lawyers or whoever is in charge of inhibiting copyright infringement would be on the lookout for things like deepfake A.I. replacing actors’ faces with other actors … Let’s shut that down because that shit is just weird.
So keep it up, Hollywood! And while we’re at it, upending casting expectations need not, in fact, be confined to fantasy and science fiction. I admire the shrewdly color-conscious casting of Jodie Turner-Smith in last year’s Anne Boleyn AMC series, an invitation to audiences to reconsider real-life history without pretending to be entirely color-blind. Again, this stuff is art, it’s adaptation, it’s an exercise in empathy and imagination. Those of us who value such expansion of our minds and hearts can keep encouraging today’s storytellers to give us more of that.
205 Comments
I was disappointed when they cast a white guy for the prince. I was hoping for a Kpop singer like anyone from BTS. The fact that they now have a BTS concert movie on D+ seems like a missed opportunity.
And the culture war continues to escalate.
my only hope is it feels like people desperate because they know they are losing. they know young people do not believe in their nonsense, so its going to die, and they are flailing against the eventuality that they have no power to resist, its like the people who fought interracial marriage.
Nothing’s a given under the new SCOTUS.
They don’t though. They cling to every bit of news that they can spin to show that “people are tired of woke media.” And it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. They tell themselves that they’re right.
I’ll say the same thing I always say in these situations – a relative handful of assholes on Twitter is NOT THE REAL WORLD. There are 330 million people in America and 8 billion worldwide. I don’t care if some clown rounds up a few thousand people to agree with him – it’s immaterial. It’s just that social media has given that clown a megaphone. Ignore it.
“I don’t care if some clown rounds up a few thousand people to agree with him – it’s immaterial.”
(glances at the timeline since late 2015) You sure about that?
That reminds me of a great joke from South Park about how the FCC believes one complaint represents one billion people, so when a show generated 17 complaints, 17 billion people were offended.
Remember when a bunch of racist fans complained that Rue from the Hunger Games was played by a Black actor, even though she’s described as such IN THE ACTUAL BOOK?
I remember when a bunch of CHUDs got upset that The Sandman cast a non-binary actor to play Desire. It was a damn fine time watching them get laughed out of the room.
She looks and sounds great. I fear the movie is going to let her down, though. The imagery looks dull and washed out.
Not really….
Me, I’m sittin’ here like…”This is gonna blow no matter what race she is.”
While I, someone who has studied the reason behind the coloring of sea animals like orcas and penguins, know exactly the perfect middle ground that would’ve left everyone content…
Cool story.
Is this a black and white cookie kind of solution?
I was thinking the same initially, but seeing that tweet with all the little girls’ reactions to it… it’s safe to say I’m just old and the movie will no doubt kick butt for a lot of kids. Let them enjoy it!
It’ll make money like the other live action remakes, but will almost certainly raise the same question – why??Oh yeah, money. But I’m not holding my breath for it introducing anything new.
Need I remind you of the “Santa Claus isn’t black” nonsense Fox News perpetrated?I want to make a movie about Hitler and cast a black, Jewish actor to play him. Maybe that will get some heads to literally explode.
Still not as dumb as those people who complain whenever God isn’t depicted as some macho male WASP.
Like Morgan Freeman.
I guess you could do it with a hologram Sammy Davis Jr.
What’s Lenny Kravitz up to these days? Probably not much, considering the smallest section of his career on Wikipedia is “2012-present.”Unfortunately he’s also a vegan if we’re going for full opposites.
He has been played by a Jewish Maori.
Yes. … Hitler….. nice argument.
Somebody always gotta go ‘n play the ‘Hitler Card’!
most uncomfortable yu-gi-oh episode ever. not sure what the localizers were thinking.
Where’s the argument?
A Jewish Hitler?
Well, I guess you can’t spell “Ashkenazi” without “nazi”.
But what about the little WHITE girls who want princesses to see themselves in? What about them? Those poor girls only have Snow White, Aurora, Cinderella, Belle, Rapunzel, Elsa, Anna, and Merida. That’s barely over 50% of all the options! Also Alice, Wendy, Tinker Bell, Megara, and Giselle if you count them. It’s not fair!The Little Mermaid is the story of an unlikely romance blossoming between two characters from different worlds and backgrounds. It doesn’t even make sense that one of them would be Black! Let’s use an advanced image processing AI to “fix” it so there are no Black people on my screen! I’m not racist and my complaint is totally coherent!
“The Little Mermaid is the story of an unlikely romance blossoming between two characters from different worlds and backgrounds.” And different species. Ariel is not human. Not humans come in lots of skin colors not directly determined by their physical relationship to the sun and vitamin D.
Like West Side Story!
So, uh, Puerto Ricans are a different species?
“So, uh, Puerto Ricans are a different species?”Racist white cop about to shoot you in the back of the head: “Always have been.”
I’m not following you. Puerto Ricans?
Tinker Bell is a little YELLOW girl.
Maybe she should get her liver checked out.
Also Alice, for girls who dream of being princess of a diner
Let’s be real, little white girls still have Ariel too. No one is going back and recoloring the animated movie. White people aren’t losing anything. We’re just not getting that thing in perpetuity. I think we can share.
Did these purists also complain about the fact that the movie ended with the mermaid happily marrying the prince, instead of being rejected by the condescending jerk and facing a choice between killing him on his wedding bed or dying without a soul? Since they seem so concerned with preserving the original, you know.
Also she dies and goes to heaven and it feels like walking on daggers whenever she walks on land and a hundred other bonkers details from the original that weren’t in the movie…..!
Bonus points for the original story being born from Hans Christian Anderson’s anguish over not being able to be with the man he loved. So there’s something to throw in the face of everyone claiming to care about the author’s intention.
I love that most of HCA’s original stories are so fucked up that faithful adaptations would psychologically scar most kids for life.
I know the popularized (maybe even original) story was by a Danish author and the animated movie featured white people, but the idea of setting this story in a Caribbean-like setting and having a diverse cast almost makes too much sense.
Kind of off-topic but there’s a musical that’s set in the Caribbean that is (loosely) based on The Little Mermaid (only with the original, unhappy ending). It’s called Once on This Island. Really fantastic score.
Disney already has “Once on This Island” in development.
What?!! Seriously?! Oh frabjous day! *claps hands extremely excitedly*
I’m assuming it’s the kind of people who spend a lot of time whining about “cancel culture”.
I agree and would expand it to add that these are probably people that never gave a flying fuck about Disney or children’s movies before. To me, it echoes a lot of the conservative effort to combat trans kids joining sports teams – I would bet good money none of those idiots give an iota of shit about women’s sports. They never watched them, don’t want them and never will watch them. But it’s another front for the culture war, so they are all aboard.
This movie will be forgotten about in 2-3 months. BUT…nothing on Jean-Luc Godard’s death?
Sad but not surprising. Patrick Stewart was looking super old.
From yesterdayhttps://www.avclub.com/jean-luc-godard-dies-91-breathless-mepris-1849530289
The Little Mermaid is a story about a young girl who learns that to find a man, she needs to keep her mouth shut. No colorization will make its message less problematic. I understand why Disney wants to make its iconic stories more inclusive, and the visual results on social media are moving. I just hope that, after every Disney princess is remade in a non-white image, unique stories will be offered to those non-white actors and characters. The moment you racially version a story, it’s a lesser story and you’ve failed. Black Ariel deserves more than a cut-and-paste reboot of the white Little Mermaid, one that superficially swaps out one race for another. She deserves her own story.
I’ve never understood that gloss on LM. What I saw was, her giving up her voice for a guy was a bad thing. Ursula entices her into it, knowing that her voice is what’s purest and best about her—knowing it’s her strength and without it, she’ll have a hard time getting him to fall in love with her. (Well—he already is, since he wakes up on the beach and sees her.) Giving up her voice is a mistake—the movie isn’t endorsing that.
The Little Mermaid is a story about a young girl who learns that to find a man, she needs to keep her mouth shut.Umm.. It was about exactly the opposite of that, but hey……
This is beside your point (I think) but speaks to the larger point of this article. “The Little Mermaid is a story about a young girl.” No, it’s not. It’s a story about a young mermaid which is a mythical creature—put another way, an entirely different species. A being of a species other than human could potentially be purple with orange spots and yellow stripes. Especially aquatic species. I guess there are some, like Lorelei, that were originally human but apart from that, well…what color are most fish?
The fish part can be the color of any fish. The human part should be the color of a human (which she is).
I would argue that if you colored the human part some weird color she would be some other kind of sea creature and no longer a mermaid.
I remember a few years back an artist did a mockup of what Ariel would look like if she was truly an aquatic species, and it was…horrifying. I forgot that in questioning a Disney movie I was encouraging the wrath of Disney-heads, but I absolutely love your take.
I think The Little Mermaid is a story about a girl who got a guy to see her for her personality, despite a communication barrier. But I agree with the rest. These remakes are lesser works, and the underrepresented deserve better than superficial swaps. However, the Twitter videos are very sweet, and puts a lot into perspective. We’ll see what happens, but let’s not forget Latina Snow White will be next.
10% personality. 90% BODY LANGUAGE.
Part of me thinks live action remakes are an insult to animators, with even companies who built their foundation on animation continually seeing it as “lesser than” live action, or just as something to eventually adapt into a “real movie”.
The other is very excited to see young, talented, diverse actors giving their own unique spins on an older story, and potentially bringing something new to a story we’ve already seen.
But the problem isn’t race, it’s how Disney soulessly uses wokeness to make a drab product and off it as “progressive.” But at the same token, I don’t really care all that much about it. If a little girl sees this movie and enjoys it because someone like her is a disney princess, then who am I to judge.
So the correct answer is…why not both? Make new stories featuring a more diverse cast, while also using timeless tales as an avenue to present diversity to a new generation. Like…The Little Mermaid is such a part of our culture that no new story really competes with it. While I have a lot of issues with how Disney is making their remakes–race ain’t one of them.
Isn’t it the opposite? Her giving up her voice makes it impossible to get the man and she only “wins” him when she gets it back.
Other commenters have covered the voice topic and I agree with them, but you are spot-on about simply changing the race (or gender) of characters and thinking it’s doing something new. The movies the article cites were first and foremost great stories in their own rights, which rendered ethnicity secondary. The inverse is why we got the huge shrug to the 2016 Ghostbusters. It just wasn’t any good.With respect to this remake, I think the portion of the actual target audience (i.e. parents of young children) who won’t go see it because the lead is black is vanishingly small. Once again people need to be reminded that social media loudmouths do not dictate reality.
First, apologies to everyone in the room. I got the voice thing backwards. To be honest, I haven’t seen The Little Mermaid since we rented a worn out copy from Erols in 1991, and it was my little sister’s movie night choice. Me, I was watching Barbarella and Cujo when I was 5. I was born a cynic and not much on Disney flicks.That said, my larger point was that swapping out white Disney princesses with princesses of color is the bare minimum on the part of production companies. I first really noticed this with 2016’s Ghostbusters, and I’m glad you brought it up. Any critique was deemed sexist despite the fact that while not necessarily bad – I liked it better than Ghostbusters II – the story was barely rewritten. In fact, I probably liked it better than the sequel because it was so similar to classic original. And that’s the problem.In Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, four brilliant comediennes weren’t offered their own unique material. Even their characters were versions of the male cast, and in that instance right down to race. Why wasn’t Leslie Jones one of the scientists? Considering 2016’s Ghostbusters was written by Paul Feig, I don’t so much think it was a shallow cash grab as it was a failed attempt to make a statement by appropriating a very male-centric franchise. I do think he had good intentions.Disney, however, I don’t believe to be so genuine. They’ve been cashing in on shallow remakes, sequels, live action adaptations, and Broadway productions for more than 20 years. It’s heartwarming to see young black girls eager to see themselves in a magical, aquatic princess, and the people complaining solely on the basis that Ariel should be white can go straight to hell. But to Disney, race is a revenue stream and I assure you countless PowerPoint presentations and analytic research took place calculating a profit model for a black Ariel. They likely even compared the potential profits from various demographics. After all, the little mermaid’s story is already written. If past reboots are any indication, there’s nothing culturally canonical to this Ariel’s blackness.It doesn’t matter to Disney if she’s black, hispanic, asian, or trans because it would cost a lot more to write a new story that encapsulates race as anything more than a superficial quality. That’s the issue I take with these race- and gender-based reboots. They’re corporate cash grabs masquerading as wokeness and anyone who challenges that sad reality is dubbed racist or sexist, despite the fact that many of the critics are criticizing these superficial adaptations on behalf of the races and genders these films falsely claim to empower.
Again, I’m a cynic, and I’ll admit that. But I do love that young black girls are excited about this movie and I want them to go to the theater and enjoy it. I want them to dress up like Ariel for Halloween without worrying white classmates might tell them they can’t be Ariel because “Ariel’s white.” But we’re the adults in the room, and I hope that for future generations, Disney and other production companies can move beyond race and gender swapping and write unique stories that pertain more specifically to those races and genders.
This is an incredibly bad take, and you should feel bad for perpetuating it. The whole concept is predicated on accepting the villain of the movie as its moral compass.I’d suggest that The Little Mermaid is the story of a girl who, because of family and societal pressure, is forced to make dangerous choices to follow her dreams (both being on land, and following the dude she’s into) and then she can’t speak to her dude about her history.Ariel’s happy ending is when her dad realizes he’s pushed her into this situation and gets his head on straight, gives his blessing, and she regains her voice so she can be entirely honest with Eric!
Exactly. Her relationship with her father is the heart of the story
Can we disincentivize content creators who monetize each backlash?Uh… What would that look like? Because at this point, all of G/O Media’s sites have reported on one backlash or another, and the posts about them run ads just like every other post.
For the last week, I thought they had cast Halle Berry as Ariel and I was so deeply confused.
Manufactured outrage. Love it.
Black Ariel is a huge slap in the face to all red haired, white skinned Northern Europeans whose ancestors fucked enough fish to produce genetically red haired, white skinned mermaids.
That’s Deep.
it’s better down where it’s wetter…
nice…
Its culture appropriation….
Mermaid culture isn’t real
Tell that to the manatees.
Lets do a new version of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, no one will watch it, but we’ll do it any way…because…. Race.
Well put some white guy, an SNL standout
The screams, and screeches of CULTURAL APPROPRIATION and racism would be so loud it woul be unbelievable….
Slak over here in the corner muttering to themselves incoherently
*Thor voice* Because that’s what hate-filled bigots do.
You alright, man?
Why is it so hard for Disney to make a princess from Africa? We literally have a new one, she has a movie, she is the next Gladiator…..Why, honestly, do we need to recast Disney Princess to fit a culture?
Newsflash: black people can’t just be, like, people. They have to be “a culture.”
Why is there an English-speaking animal with a Caribbean accent? He doesn’t belong in Scandanavia!You know, Disney did make a major movie set in Africa. Almost all of the leads were played by white people. Did you whine about that too? (No, of course you didn’t.)
Why, honestly, do we need to recast Disney Princess to fit a culture? Why, honestly, do you give a fuck about a Disney princess?
“What is ‘Who could possibly give a shit other than virulent racist pricks?’”
“Correct.”
“I’ll take Stupid Fucking Questions for $400, Ken.”
Because they were recasting her already anyway?
Jesus Christ.
Deal with it white people. No one cared when they remade “Cooley High” with Jonah Hill and Michael McLovin
Cochise died!!
Jesus is still white though, isn’t he?
If a white man plays even music, from black culture, it’s appropriation. When a Disney Princess black, it’s progress
You can stop now. We were all well aware of your casual racism several comments ago.
he’s the modern version of the guy standing outside 711 talking loudly and yelling at himself about the people who are out to get him but now with twitter
Did you know – just about every successful musician working today and in the past 50 years is basically playing music that originated in black culture? And like, they still do it? And they’re still successful?
Sorry, every time I see Halle Bailey written out, my mind converts it to Halle Berry. I can’t help it.
You and everyone except Hailey Berry’s immediate family.
Same, especially after that article yesterday where she mentioned how she’d love to someday play Storm in the MCU!
Wouldn’t it be better if Storm was played by a white Jewish trans boy from Jersey?
I doubt you’re the only one.
Geez I literally thought that’s who was in this. “Hmm, rather old… still, she could probably pull it off. Does she sing? I don’t remember her singing.”
I just think of Mary Berry and then I want some cake.
given that halle berry seems to have something of a nerdy sense of humor, i would totally see her doing a little mermaid homage set of pics at some point. not before as that might be seen as trying to overshadow bailey, but afterwards, she may find that funny.
Is it white girls saying these racist things or are white incel dudes seriously coming out to bat for this?
Angry incels, I think? But probably a lot of angry white women, too? Scanned some comments earlier (dumb mistake, obviously) and most were roughly like- incoherent ranting about how pissed black people would be if they recast Black Panther with a white male actor. So. Very connected to reality, these people.
Wait, what do deepfakes have to do with this?
When the story itself isn’t outrage-y enough, speculate on how it could be worse!
Some racist incel did a deep fake of the trailer making her white.
Just reminder, this is Disney’s Live Action of Famous Animation. It made some money but nobody will like it.Now let us discuss why Tom Hank shouldn’t be in Pinocchio.
these anti-wokers should be more upset that Disney keeps desecrating their classics with these disgusting, creatively bankrupt and utterly soulless live-action remakes
As opposed to the wholly original, non folk tale and/or literature derived features that were made for the love of the art, and not intended to turn gigantic profits that the originals were?
Find out what annoys your audience and double up on that. Solid plan. Better than making new content where casting people of colour would attract a new audience.
By now it’s apparent to all but the most ideologically blinded that race-swapping has become a hoary cliche that big studios use to shill a terrible product and silence any legitimate criticism of said product via accusations of racism.
Legitimate criticism would wait for the movie to come out.
Bull on the Tolkien stuff. There were several human peoples in Middle Earth and they were are White as they were modeled after northern European cultures – which are white because SUN (or lack thereof). Elves, dwarves, trolls all existed in Northern European cultures for hundreds of years before Tolkien created his Faery Stories. They are not allegorical references because Tolkien categorically says he hates allegory. It is a story written about a Europe-like place so the people are Europe-like. I bet in the new Woman King movie there are not a lot of asians cast.
*sigh* We’ve already established that black and brown people have existed in Europe for a very long time.You can’t in one breath claim that Tolkien hated allegory and that Middle Earth was a Europe-like place so the people are “Europe like.” It’s a fantasy. It can take inspiration from Europe and Northern European culture AND include people of color.
In Northern Europe extremely small numbers most of which would have been absorbed by the larger population within a few generations. I can say he hated allegory because he said he hated allegory and I can say it was modeled after northern European civilizations because he said it was modeled after northern european cultural stories. It can do lots of things but it doesn’t. It is very specific. You want a different story, make up a new one. Set it somewhere else and you will be golden. I wiuld watch.
So you can suspend your disbelief for completely made up races like elves and trolls, but people of color is where it loses you? JFC. It’s the same goddamn story, just with some brown and black actors.
It is not the same GD story. The story they are currently showing has no relation to Tolkien’s story other than the names of a few characters. But you would know that if you read the books. And if the race of the characters why would you care if some were brown or black. The wriers could have moved that action south where there are black and brown but they didn’t.
That’s not the flex you think it is
Sorry, wasn’t meaning it to be. Meant it is pretty self-evident if you read the appendicies. The books and this series are not at all alligned. They could have moved the action to the south and had an almost all black and brown cast with a few legacy characters looking for Sauron (because that is where he was) but they decided to go with the legacy side for no reason and basically rewrite every single thing. They were the ones that set the location and for their own reasons decided to put it in a totally white environment and then change it.
It’s a shame their story isn’t worth getting worked up about either way. Mediocrity doesn’t inspire much.
So much potential wasted.
Gondor is climatically Southern European. So I’m not sure what you’re babbling about. Also, as I said elsewhere, Tolkien explicitly described some of the Edain as “swarthy” so I’m not sure what you’re talking about there either.
The far south of Gondor is sort of Southern Europish but the tales are set in an Englandish environment. Tolkien was writing a myth for the English so why would he set it in Southern Europe? He is quite clear about that.
Which “tales”? The imaginary ones in your head and not the ones he wrote?Maybe he understood that myths tend to be bigger than one country. Like, have you actually read a myth?
Regardless, he did include those things. So raise his ghost and whine to him about it if he didn’t make his stories white enough for your tastes.
He specifically said he was writing a mythological past for the British peoples so rant all you like.
Yes, Tolkien set out to write a mythological past for the British peoples as they were almost a century ago. The thing is, these days many “British peoples” are not white. And if you don’t like that fact, blame British imperialism. So Tolkien’s mid-20th c. British mythology might have matched the demographics of mid-20th c. Britain, but it doesn’t match Britain today. Why shouldn’t a modern take on that mythology match the reality of modern Britain?I think Tolkien would be proud that his mythology has been able to adapt to still be relevant to modern times. That’s what makes something a real mythology—its ability to be mutable and timeless, not rooted in specific ethno-nationalisms.
Ah, I disagree with stuff you think so I must be a racist. Even though I said it would have been good if they moved the action south to the more “diverse” south. Zero points for originality. As for the other Tolkien states that his work should not reflect the real world. Zero points for facts.
Um, I didn’t call you racist and don’t think you’re racist based on what you’ve posted here. I’m more interested in all this from an originalism vs. death of the author perspective, with the added wrinkle of Tolkien (as you rightly said) self-consciously positioning Middle Earth as a mythology. And mythology is an inherently mutable form. There’s no one definitive statement of Greek mythology for example, but many overlapping and sometimes contradictory stories that changed over time and in different contexts. So to me, the idea that Middle Earth is proving so flexible is a sign of Tolkien’s SUCCESS in creating not just a book but a mythology. That was my whole point.If you’re more interested in waging a belligerent culture war, though, that’s cool. Just know that making people into your straw men doesn’t encourage them to engage you in good faith. In fact it does the exact thing you implicitly accused me of doing: oversimplifying and shutting down discussion.And I’ll add I have my own issues with the show, though mine are more that Jeff Bezos is a modern Saruman if ever there was one, making Amazon a very uncomfortable fit for LOTR. Treebeard would have razed Amazon to the ground by now.
“these days many “British peoples” are not white. And if you don’t like that fact, blame British imperialism”This implied to me that you believed I do not like the fact that there are non-white Brittons. If I misunderstood that, I apologize.The Illiad and Odyssey are definitive versions of Greek Mythology – though not all of it. You could say the Bible, Koran, etc are definitive versions. The sagas are definitive versions of Norse mythology (or history). If therevis one version it is definitive Tolkien’s mythology is absolutely structured. All parts of the story depends on other parts. It is absolutely not flexible. He stated he did not want the parts he wrote changed but there was room elsewhere in the world for additions. He stated he did not want Middle Earth to reflect the real world. He stated he did not like allegory. He gave very specific descriptions of the peoples of the west of Middle Earth. He included family trees of all the major players. If you pull at those threads you are breaking the mythology. Death of the Author could be looked at as a way to usurp somebody’s fame and then put your own message/ideas on it.
First off, I see how that bit from my first post could be interpreted as calling you yourself racist. I meant a more universal/rhetorical “you,” and was trying to point out that the idea that British = white just factually isn’t true anymore, and therefore it makes sense to me that a modern take on a “British” myth wouldn’t be entirely white either. But I totally own up to the unclear language and conflation there. Sorry about that.Back to the mythology thing, I don’t see why Homer is any more definitive than Hesiod, Apollodorus, the Athenian dramatists, or archaeological sources like pottery. Homer is more famous today, but it’s not like all those other sources were derived from Homer. They were different takes on the same oral tradition and therefore equally valid. And which of the many Biblical authors are we to believe about the nature of, say, Satan: the author of Job who described him as a loyal prosecutor for God or the later writers who describe him as an evil fallen angel? And then there’s the matter of translations, which often fundamentally disagree about what was said and meant. Point is, mythology is always in tension with itself because it’s a snapshot of an evolving oral tradition, not the work of one person’s imagination. That’s a large part of what makes it mythology.LOTR is of course not that. It’s a book written by one man, so in the anthropological sense it can’t really be mythology. But from a wider perspective, I think you could argue that the countless fantasy novels and D&D campaigns derived from Tolkien over the last half century constitute a new sort of “oral tradition” that Tolkien doesn’t have sole authority over.Basically, I think either we can say it’s mythology, in which case it’s mutable, or we can say it’s a fixed novel with fixed rules that Tolkien has sole authority over. But then it’s not mythology, it’s just a book.
You do know the Woman King movie is based on a real people from a real time and place in history, and Lord of the Rings, for all it’s apparently “non-allegorical but also based on exactly the Europe Tolkien existed in” is entirely fictional, right?
Tolkien existed in a Europe with Elves? It is based on a mythological Europe that never existed. There were no Orcs or magic in Europe. As for Hollywood caring about portraying real life events in any way like they occurred, that never happens.
I mean I was following your logic based on your statement that “It is a story written about a Europe-like place so the people are Europe-like”. My point (which you missed) is it is a very dumb take to say that a movie based on historical events and people is comparable with a show that takes place in an entirely fictional fantasy world.The Woman King features Black actors playing Africans because of the historical basis of the film. Rings of Power features different ethnicities playing its elves and men and dwarves because it’s a completely fictional realm that did not actually exist, even if Tolkien was writing “about a Europe-like place”.
The writer set up the world. That world has rules. If you want to set up a different world with different rules, go ahead. Tolkien’s world is set by Tolkien. It is a disservice to the author’s legacy to randomly change things for no reason. You want diversity and stay in Middle Earth, go to the southern realms – lots of opportunity there. Saying “its fantasy so it doesn’t matter is dismissive of the millions it does matter to.
It’s still very dumb to compare it to a work based on actual historical time periods, people and events.
Perhaps. On the other hand do you think the Woman King movie will be anything like the actual historical events?
You can actually find that out, if you want. It’s really easy. Like, ridiculously easy. The Wikipedia article has a whole section on historical accuracy.
So not very. Main character is fictional. Much of the plot is fictionalized. Colonization at that period is fictional, slavery angle is partly true but not fully. More accurate than I expected though.
Wow, that blew up quickly. Did not see that coming…
Tolkien: “I hate allegory”
Also Tolkien: “Here’s a story about dwarves, who are a displaced people perpetually othered by most in Middle-Earth, and whose language is based on Hebrew, trying make their way back to their homeland.”
The guy worked professionally in folklore and fairy tale. Allegory is baked into the DNA of the genres, so methinks he protested too much.
How were the dwarves “othered”? They and the Elves had mutual hostility dating back to the first age. Both sides did terrible things. They had on-again-off-again relationships with humans but rarely came out of their underground cities to mingle. Then their cities were destroyed by dragons and a balrog and they kept trying to recover them. Lots of stories are based on that sort of thing. As for the hebrew thing I find no references to that but I don’t think Hebrew uses runes. Dwarves have been in northern mythology for 1000 years.
I guess it’s more accurate to say that the Dwarves kept to themselves and that there was a mutual othering. Anyway, here’s info on how their language is based on Hebrew and other Semitic languages, including a few quotes from Tolkien about how the Dwarves in his story took at least some level of inspiration from the Jewish people. Mainly in how they participated in the greater culture (Christian Europe and Middle-Earth, respectively) but also remained apart from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzdul
Thanks. I found the info on the languages. It does appear the Dwarves were modeled in part after the jewish situation in Europe. Lots of Elf/Dwarf strife comes from such things as the murder of Thingol. That was resolved by the Dwarvish help at the Battle of Sudden Fire. So it is an on-again-off-again thing.
I just want to Disney to stop blandly remaking their classic movies. How about take some of their less well received movies and remake them. Atlantis would make an awesome live action movie. If you are going to remake the classics they need to at least be visually interesting and not just a shot by shot remake. How Disney hasn’t approached Baz Luhrman for one of these I’ll never understand
Can we use that deep-fake AI to insert visible minorities into very white movies?
Show this guy enough examples of powerful female characters, flood our screens with them until they become commonplace, and surely he and his ilk will eventually get tired of voicing the same narrow-minded opinion.I agree with idea, with a caveat: make them good-to-great, for the most part. Otherwise, you risk accidentally proving their dumbass point. I’m fine with these projects starting out as a cynical calculation to attract more butts in movie seats—make no mistake, internet ghouls, studio execs aren’t making these decisions because they really just believe in some “woke agenda”—as long as someone with creative vision (and the will to see it through) can make it work.
This is why Patty Jenkins left Thor: The Dark World, as she knew she’d never be able to save the script and the entire narrative around the movie would be “this is what happens when a woman directs a superhero movie.”
It’s too bad she avoided that, just to swerve right back into it with WW84.(FWIW, I don’t hate WW84. It has a multitude of problems—most of which go away if you heed the final lines of the MST3K Love Theme—but I really dug the “Richard Lester directing-Superman III” goofiness of the whole production.)
Ah yes, the Ghostbusters effect. I really, really wanted the 2016 version to be great just to shut up those in desperate need of shutting up. Alas…
Same here. I really think someone needs to tell Columbia Pictures that the original movie really was just lightening in a bottle, an unreplicable success.Thankfully, we did have Mad Max: Fury Road around the same time to shut them up.
Unfortunately, even Fury Road had a bunch of basement dwellers shouting a la Comic Book Guy “a g-g-g-g-g-girl!”
Here’s what’s happening here.A portion of the people reacting negatively to this (leaving out the pure and simple racists) are responding to a very real discrepancy in how the left (who, at this point, are essentially the victors of the culture wars) treats these types of casting decisions.When a historically white character gets cast as a PoC, it’s considered good, righteous, even necessary – see James Bond, Doctor Who etc. When a historically PoC character gets cast as a white person, it’s bad, it’s whitewashing, it’s cultural appropriation.
The message this sends is: ‘PoC get to have their own stories and their own cultures that are theirs and theirs alone. White people don’t.’There are a shit ton of legitimate reasons why this discrepancy exists; cultural segregation is not the answer; and I don’t give a single quadrant of a fuck about The Little Mermaid being black. But it’s annoying that we can’t acknowledge this very obvious component of the reactions to LotR and TLM, because that’s where there are some interesting discussions to be had, that’s where we can actually alleviate some of these reactions, and all the discourse we have surrounding these things sidesteps it completely in favor of reinforcing the ‘representation good’ ‘black person bad’ dichotomy this conversation’s been mired in since forever. That and, I guess, insisting that Tolkien always meant for his characters to be mixed-race, even though a few years ago everyone was accusing LotR of being racist ‘cause only the orcs and the bad humans had dark skin.
I mean, Tolkien could be somewhat racist and he could have intended some of his characters (e.g. the “swarthy” people of Beor – Beren’s people) to be mixed race. Those are not mutually exclusive – especially given his age.
his age being 200? yeah things might have been a LITTLE different
That’s totally fine, and I agree, but based on my understanding both the prior accusations of racism and the current brouhaha over Rings of Power weren’t/aren’t about that.
Of course in Tokien’s generation, “swarthy” could also apply to Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards — who were seen as not quite “white” as compared to Northern Europeans.
Which still contradicts all the “Tolkien wrote ME as strictly Northern European because it’s supposed to be British” sniveling.
I don’t see how anyone can ignore the Haradrim (the people who rode “Oliphaunts” into battle in the battle of Pelennor Fields) as anything other than analogues of either Indians or North Africans, whose cultures had war elephants historically. Then again, they were evil servants of Sauron, so maybe not the greatest endorsement of diversity.
There was also the backlash against Magic The Gathering for the card, “Destroy All Black Creatures,” when Black meant Black cards, not back people. Fucking idiots. A whole swath of cards have been banned because of this. I’m glad I haven’t played for 20 years.
Since they’ve not banned a bunch of other cards that specifically target Black creatures, I think the main problem with that specific card is the name (Cleanse) in conjunction with its effect. The other cards that have been banned also had troubling art or names. And it was 7 cards. Hardly a swath.
I mean, isn’t the answer to this ‘discrepancy’ obvious? Even though the industry is trending in the right direction, there are significantly fewer opportunities for actors of color. That’s why people celebrate proactive attempts to provide more opportunities for actors of actor and are disappointed when those opportunities are squandered. Also, in many cases, whitewashed roles were written specifically to highlight minority cultures, the most obvious example being The Last Airbender. There was no justification for making the leading characters white in that film. But is there anything about Doctor Who or James Bond or the Little Mermaid that demands a white actor?
Misreading the headlines, I thought Halle BERRY was playing Ariel and I kept thinking “Who cares that she’s black? Why aren’t people talking about the fact that she’s supposed to be a teenager and she’s 56 years old!”
Now that I realize I’m wrong I’m going to just go with “Who cares that she’s black?”
Forget about fictional characters being wokified. The real fun will be when real life people start getting replaced by people with different characteristics. Like, what if Elizabeth Warren or Meryl Streep become incapacitated or want to retire but they’re just both so magical and we want them preserved, but for inclusion and to take advantage of a built in audience, we are introduced to Black Elizabeth Warren or Hispanic Meryl Streep. Sure, some people will resist it, but re-imagining the past is how to move society forward.
Hey dude, what the fuck are you talking about?
I’m talking about shape-shifters and impersonators man!
You basically described Hamilton.
The manufactured outrage is what’s too predictable. “You’re racist for not liking raceswapping” oh really says the racists who think black people are only worthy of table scraps and sloppy seconds. Truth is this crap is racist and spiteful itself with one in the chamber ready to fire off “you’re a racist” the second their laziness is called out. There’s less redheads in the world than black people but they’re seen as “as white as it gets” so when it seems to be a concerted effort to remove redheaded characters it’s pretty obvious that what’s being done is just spiteful, the need to remove anything too white. But in reality, what’s worse, is the fact that we’re all meant to go up in arms about “racism” that’s purposely exaggerated and put under a microscope over table scraps, unoriginal cheap cash ins with bad writing, lazy production which actually do a disservice to black americans all the while the billion dollar corporation who’s boots you’re licking are pandering to racism and sexism over seas, turning a blind eye to real life modern day concentration camps etc. etc. You really expect me to take Disney seriously about “racist trolls” after what they did to John Boyega? I don’t even agree with Boyega on allot but what he suffered was real racism and it wasn’t because of north america, it was from foreign markets. STFU you corporate bootlicker.
Everything I’ve seen about it is positive but the dark corners of the internet are gonna have bad opinions about everything.
Fuck live action remakes of animated Disney movies and fuck racist assholes who get mad when a character isn’t portrayed by a white person.
There is an interesting twitter thread about Disney and other studios fan baiting – deliberately using casting decisions involving sex or race to deflect criticism from terrible products – “oh you hate this movie, you must be a bigot!!!”. I think websites like this should stop being part of this BS altogether. Disney put this actress into this situation knowing they’d get a reaction. They wanted it too, to use as a shield against legitimate criticism. So I would suggest that AV Club and others stop being party to either side. Ignore the bigotry and and also ignore the cynical exploitation of the same by Disney.
“I’M TiReD oF DiSnEy ReMaKiNg FiLmS” 🥴Yeah, I get it, you’re a middle aged man with or without kids and somehow prefer a 30 year old animated movie made for little girls.I probably saw The Little Mermaid (1989) twice in my life while in elementary school and then pretty much never again. I don’t care what color Ariel is and neither should you. It’s making black and brown children happy and that really should be enough. But no, the killjoys of the world are always looking for something to hatefully decimate and for some reason they decided to pretend to like some Danish chap’s story about a mythical fish woman to the point of immediately hating everything about it that’s different, as if they’re the target audience, when they’re absolutely not.“This is gonna blow no matter what race she is.”Wow, cool. And you built that entire opinion from a 1:24 long trailer? And let me guess, you already prefer the 30+ year old original, right?God, people are tiring. It’s like they have a dull-witted disposition to just hate ______ because it exists. Why care this much? Who gives a fuck if it’s a remake? The first movie wasn’t original and was already extremely different from the Danish fairy tail. The movie’s clearly made for children… and it’s mostly targeted at little girls. If this was a damn Peppa Pig movie trailer, any adult commenting about how much it’s gonna suck this quickly should probably talk to their physician to up their meds.Stop caring about kid content this much, seriously. I understand that I’m also here: seemingly caring, but I really don’t care. The backlash and vocal hate it’s garnering is just sickening, and it’s mostly just adults critiquing the hell out of a movie/story that they should have grown out of decades ago.
I feel pretty much the same way, except the thing I care about are the bigots. Fuck those people, with some of them trying to hide behind “the movie is going to be shit!” Bitch, the movie ain’t out yet.
It’s no problem when John Wayne plays Genghis Khan but a great part goes to a Black actress and racists lose their shit. Someone who says “woke,” they 99.9% of the time really want to say the n-word.
This casting is outrageous. I cannot believe that in our progressive times, Disney has the audacity to cast a human in a role playing a mermaid. It is truly unfair and quite frankly a slap in the face to all of the mermaid actors out there struggling in the business, being forced to wear prosthetics and take roles as dolphins in so many Flipper knock offs. This injustice cannot stand.
Pearl-clutching snowflakes: frothing at the mouth about a mermaid being re-cast as a Black person in a modern-day re-telling of a classic fairytale.
Also pearl-clutching snowflakes: totally fine with Jesus Christ being re-cast as a white dude in every modern interpretation of a classic fairytale
I like how the pseudo-scientific trolls want to talk about how living under the sea would make mer-people pale, as if they’re all apparently clamoring for a pallid, slimy, Innsmouth look Ariel with translucent skin and maybe some other sexy pelagic features.
Humans who spend a lot of time on or near the ocean have darker skin. Considering stories about mermaids began by sailors talking about seeing them on the surface, human-like sea creatures probably get a lot of sun too.
I don’t have any interesting in Disney perpetually selling us the same set of songs in a less-charming live action package, but Ariel’s skin tone certainly isn’t the issue.
Well, I for one would be pleased to see this remade with all the undersea mer-people resembling Abe Sapien.
mermaids are not real Oh yeah?! Well who did I sleep with last time I was stranded on an island with a crazy drunk guy who was sometimes Poseidon?!? Huh?! Stupid seagulls.
Willem Dafoe?
HARK!
Don’t care who’s in it at all. Just care about how the movies gonna suck. Like all the other live action trash before it. New ideas I know we have them.
everybody knows real mermaids have blue skin and green hair! Where is the dedication to realism?!?!?!
So besides the fact that this is a Danish fairy tale, and essentially every Dane is whiter than rice on a paper plate in a snowstorm, I think the major challenge here for everybody is that Disney insists on fixing what isn’t broken. Rebooting their IP is honestly such a transparent coke-fueled C-level decision that I kind of want to hire a skywriter to fly over Disneyland to spell out “HOLLYWOOD IS FULL OF WRITERS WITH NEW STORIES WHO WANT TO WORK FOR YOU”.I mean, all the “new” material coming out is Star Wars and Marvel, so it’s hitting me right in my Gen-X solar plexus, and that’s fine with me. And watching people flip out over a black mermaid is hi-larious. It’s an unnecessary move, for sure, but if it tweaks the nose of a bunch of uptight racists then I guess that’s all the reason we need, right?
Are they Danish in the 1989 film?
Gotta, be honest: I do not agree at all with the non-traditional casting.That said, f@#& the bigots.
How do you traditionally cast a mermaid? With a mermaid?
With an actor that more accurately matches the nigh-iconic appearance of the character being played.
Oh, so an animated person.
Not quite. 🙂
Something people tend to forget, or ignore, when it comes to popular culture is its history, although I wouldn’t include the Little Mermaid in this. However, when it comes things like comics, there are so many that have been around for decades, some as far back as the 1930’s. Those images are ingrained into the memories of fans. If Hollywood wants to change a character from a comic from ten years ago, go for it. If it happened in the comics, like the Falcon becoming the new Captain America, go with it. On the other hand, if you want to change Bruce Wayne/Batman’s race, sexual orientation, etc? Hell no!!!! Those who clamour for representation should quit trying to change existing characters. Here’s an idea, create your own. Stop trying to destroy something that so many of us have embraced and loved for several decades. If you can’t do something original, get a job in another industry. Stop ruining existing materials because you aren’t creative enough to come up with something new. Hell, I say that to Hollywood in general. Spend an hour in L.A. and you’ll meet thirty so-called “screenwriters”. Stop screwing up books, comics, older movies and TV shows. Why not be original?
I’m so sorry you’re so fucked up that a black woman playing Ariel destroys the origins l for you.
Plus, have you heard Bailey’s voice? Listen to that snippet of “Part Of Your World” and try to convince me she’s not the most talented person perfect for the role.”yeah, I don’t care she’s black, I care she’s not singing normally and does all the tricks. Hate rnb Mariah Carrey adlibs with a passion
Without reading through all the comments… Diversity in film is probably not best served by a remake that, judging by Disney’s track record recently, will probably get forgotten soon after its release. Now that I have kids who devour all of Disney’s animated library, I recently rewatched The Princess and the Frog, and honestly, I’d forgotten how good this movie is. It shows that Disney can craft a really good and original black-focused movie when they want to take the time and effort (I’m still disappointed in Soul, though, which was a well-intentioned misfire).
Not sure how many people know that the Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Andersen, a Danish writer. My mom is Danish and her family moved to Canada. I grew up loving that I was half Danish and that the Little Mermaid was also Danish. We had a small replica of the little mermaid statue that is in Copenhagen Denmark that my sisters and I loved. I loved that she had red hair because I have strawberry blond hair. All I’m saying is that was I disappointed with the casting of the Ariel? Yes, I was, but I’m not racist. (I love the diversity they are including in the Rings of Power.) I have just grown up loving that Ariel was also Scandinavian and Danish, part of my heritage. I realize this is probably an unpopular opinion. Will I watch the new movie? Of course I will. Just wanted to give another side as to why someone could be disappointed about the casting. Also, people should read the real story – not the Disney version. It is not a happy ending.
What about the Caribbean crab in the 1989 version? You and your mom get upset about that?
No one is taking the original from you, you will ALWAYS have that. Now little girls of color will grow up feeling the way you did about Ariel, there is nothing wrong with that.
So people are really trying to convince us they believe that the Ariel in the 1989 version is supposed to be Danish? How did that Caribbean-accented crab get all the way up there?
They should double down. They will just lose more money faster and speed up the alternatives.
Oh and for the Lord of the Rings. Let’s not act like nerd culture wouldnt bash something for not staying true to the source material before the woke agenda was a thing. The true fandom always got mad about things not being canon. This is amplifying it to another level.
Live action remakes of cartoons are always terrible and are cash grabs. No mainstream critic ever would raise this as an issue and Disney knows the reviews will be terrible. So they desperately look for any post possible that says something about one characters race or sexuality and then says everyone hated it because “everyone is racist”, instead of, it sucked. Audiences do not care what the race of a character is, pro or con, it is completely neutral to audiences, so not only does changing the race of the lead not cost you money, more importantly, it doesnt make you money either, as no one cares. But you guys act like they do because you find a handful of articles out of a million.Literally the entire internet is on to you since you have been doing this for years.