Right Wing Media Fishes for Racial Controversy in ‘The Little Mermaid’

By Amanda Coopersmith, July 9, 2023

Since Black R&B singer Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in the new live-action remake “The Little Mermaid” almost four years ago, the Disney film has been in the crosshairs of right wing media.  Yet despite some ho-hum reviews and the attempts of conservatives to drum up controversy ,“The Little Mermaid” is expected to become one of the ten highest-grossing films of the summer.

Early Buzz

Following the initial casting announcement in 2019, the tag #NotMyAriel began trending on Twitter. Breitbart reported that the mermaid had been “race-swapped,” but six days later, they changed their tune, claiming that the media had fabricated the racist backlash against the film. “There is almost no racism in America,” said Breitbart’s John Notle.

When the film’s trailer was released in September 2022, it received over a million dislikes on YouTube. Breitbart again dismissed the hate as a symptom of unwanted remakes. They pointed to similar issues surrounding the female-led “Ghostbusters” and the live-action “Pinocchio”, which received only an estimated 120,000 dislikes according to their own reporting.

Following the trailer, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said that while he doesn’t mind color-blind casting in fictional stories, his issue was the “double standard thing” of allowing indiscriminate casting for only some races. He went on to add that “from a scientific perspective, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean. I mean if anything, not only should the little mermaid be pale, she should actually be translucent.”

After the statement got picked up by Media Matters, The Daily Wire published a piece mocking “the tax-exempt liberal organization” for not getting the joke. “Translucent rights are human rights,” Walsh allegedly said in a request for comment.

Fishing for Controversy

In early coverage, right wing publications made sure to remind readers that among the multicultural cast, the film’s villain was still white. Breitbart dropped the talking point after reporting that star Melissa McCarthy said Ursula was “100% inspired by drag queens.” The original animated Ursula was also modeled after the drag queen Divine.

In April 2023, the film triggered a minor flap after it was announced that some of the original song lyrics had been updated and  “woke-ified.” The song “Kiss the Girl” had a lyric changed to explicitly ask for consent. Ursula’s number “Poor Unfortunate Souls” was edited to remove a section that could encourage young girls to be quiet and demure.

Film Release

The film was released on May 26, 2023, and right wing media continued to assail “The Little Mermaid.”  Armond White, the National Review’s culture critic, produced one of the more scathing critiques.  He cited the Danish roots  of “The Little Mermaid’s” author Hans Christian Anderson, calling the fable a “touchstone of Western Culture.” The anti-Black sentiment increases across the review, going so far as calling the movie segregating and claiming that making representative characters is “cultural narcissism.”

Other reporting on the film focused on Disney  pro-LGBTQ+ policies rather than the film itself. Breitbart pushed the narrative that Disney’s leadership is full of “perverts,” picking up a Toronto Star story on one of the film’s merman who allegedly had worked as a gay porn star. While reports say Disney was unaware, Breitbart posits that “it wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about Disney to discover this was some in-joke.” They also reported that a drag queen was present at the film’s Hollywood opening and that star Melissa McCarthy participated in a Pride parade that included an explicit BDSM float.

Other controversies brewed as well.  On May 31, Variety reported that IMDb had weighted the movie’s ratings following a bout of “negative review bombing.” Breitbart called the adjustment “corporatist affirmative action.”

Even the New York Times was targeted after reviewer Wesley Morris used the word “kink” in his review of the children’s movie: “Joy, fun, mystery, risk, flavor, kink — they’re missing.” The New York Post reported on the “sexually-charged word” but noted that it can also mean “a clever unusual way of doing something.” Fox and The Daily Wire both glossed over this definition.

Not All Negative

But not every voice on the Right expressed negative opinions about the so-called “wokeified” remake of “The Little Mermaid.” Amala Ekpunobi, a rising GenZ conservative commentator and the host of PragerU’s podcast “Unapologetic,”  *reviewed the movie and  gave it a score of 20 out of 25 in the “anti-woke” category. “I was shocked that, in fact, the movie was far less woke than I thought it was going to be,” said Ekpunobi.

She docked points for the fact that King Triton had daughters of every race to “meet its diversity quota” and agreed with right wing comments regarding the film’s lyric changes (who needs verbal consent when “we can all read the room.”) She also disliked “girlboss” plot changes, but overall didn’t think that kids would notice any “explicit indoctrination.”

The film’s star Bailey and director Rob Marshall have both addressed the racist backlash. In an interview with UK media outlet The Face, Bailey said, “as a Black person, you just expect it and it’s not really a shock anymore.” However, Bailey has mostly been met with support. “People don’t understand that when you’re Black there’s this whole other community. It’s so important for us to see ourselves.”

Amanda Coopersmith is a Stanford-techie-turned-journalist who writes at the intersections of tech, gender, LGBTQ+ issues, and politics. She is a Master’s student in Cultural Reporting and Criticism at NYU Journalism. @acoopersmith4

Interested in more news about right-wing media curated especially for mainstream audiences? Subscribe to our free daily newsletter.

*Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story had the wrong link to the review and incorrectly stated that only the trailer was reviewed.