The Little Mermaid: Why Halle Bailey is the best choice for Disney’s live-action

The Little Mermaid: Why Halle Bailey is the best choice for Disney’s live-action


A reinterpretation of classic animation will bring a realistic look to Ariel’s journey.

Since Halle Bailey was announced as the protagonist of The Little Mermaid, the world has once again divided between fans of the character who have turned up their noses at the casting and part of the public who have welcomed the young singer into the version. live of the classic.




The project is part of a Disney makeover with several studio productions. A few years ago, the company started this wave of new releases with Alice in Wonderland, under the direction of Tim Burton. The following years brought remakes of Cinderella, Mowgli, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, Lady and the Tramp and Pinocchio. Together, projects focusing on other classic characters in the catalog also participated in this flow, such as Maleficent and Cruella.

The idea is not only part of the concept of introducing the classics to a new audience, but also to reassert the characters of the popular imagination in order to preserve the rights of use in the market and popularize the franchises in other media, from toys to electronic games.

Plus, there’s the culture of the industry itself. Just look at each year’s major launches – there’s a lineup of remake, it restarts, revival, adaptations, among others. It’s increasingly difficult to know original productions – and this is not just a problem of cinema or TV, but of pop culture in general.

The beauty of bringing iconic characters into current schemes is being able to always allow past mistakes to be overcome, to allow the stories to acquire other nuances and different profiles to be inserted in fantastic universes where the scheme has always been Eurocentric. In this way, there are indeed good reasons to tell these narratives, as long as the gaze is in the right direction.

Halle’s Ariel gets into some of the points mentioned above, such as, for example, introducing Disney’s lead mermaid as a black girl. Why not? Unlike princesses like Mulan and Tiana, who have their storylines rooted in their cultures and ethnicities, the character could very well be any other color and still retain the passionate essence of life as seen in the 1989 animation.

Once upon a time…

Halle has always had a strong connection to art. Before forming a band with her sister Chlöe, she made small appearances in films and musicals at an early age. At the age of 11, encouraged by her father, the two started a YouTube channel covering various artists, including the song “Best Thing I Never Had”, by Beyoncé.

The voice of Renaissance noticed the two and subsequently invited them to sign a contract with their record label, Parkwood Entertainment. Together, the artists have received five Grammy nominations for their two albums, ‘The Kids Are Alright’ and ‘Ungodly Hour’.

Live-action director Rob Marshall watched Chlöe x Halle’s performance of “Where Is the Love” during the 2019 Grammys broadcast. There, he was delighted with the artists’ performance. So he personally invited Halle to audition. “When she’s done [o teste]I was crying because she’s so emotional,” recalls the director. ‘You could tell right away that she was able to tap into Ariel’s passion, her fire, her soul, her joy and her heart.”

According to the director, Lin Manuel-Miranda (Hamilton) and other team members, the actress embodied the character in a unique and charming way. Outside the professional sieve of one of the largest studios in the world, Halle’s talent is noticeable in the most varied forms of art, especially in the field of acting and singing.

Shortly after Halle’s announcement, 1980s animation Ariel’s Jodi Benson came forward in the artist’s defense. “I think the most important thing is to tell the story. (…). The spirit of a character is what really matters. What you bring to the table with a character, in terms of heart and spirit, is what really matters “.

She got early access to the reinterpretation of “Part of Your World” during last year’s D23 and, at the time, she took it upon herself to honor the young actress on her Instagram. “Halle, you were absolutely amazing. I’m so proud of you and your beautiful portrayal of Ariel,” she wrote in an Instagram story. Today the song is already available on digital platforms.

The beauty of diversity

Even with all the support from Disney itself and the Hollywood bigwigs, there are still plenty of people who disagree with this lineup. However, there are other curious points that can be briefly mentioned here. First, Ariel is a mermaid, a mythological being from the fantasy world and part of the folklore of several cultures. Her representation of her is abstract beyond the fact that she has a tail, and that physical appearance is also relative.

There is also an attachment to the direct inspiration of the Disney character, which takes the work of Hans Christian Andersen as the basis for the development of the narrative. But if we take this into account, in the original work there is no exact definition of the skin color of the protagonist, only that she “was fair and delicate like a rose petal”. Until then, there are infinite skin colors among the most varied ethnicities.

His first appearance as a character made countless children and young people around the world feel represented. There’s a sequence of records where little black girls get excited when they see a few seconds of a singer like Ariel. And it is in this place that your choice also makes sense – in the space of representing and changing the public’s conception of different possibilities. After all, if we look back at Disney, most of the princesses have a very similar style to each other.

As Bell Hooks states in the book Black gazes: race and representation, “the images we consume in mass media continue to present the same old harmful representations to global audiences.” The time has come to change that, and Bailey’s presence is one way to do that.

“I want the little girl in me and the little girls like me who are watching to know that they are special and should be a princess in every way,” Halle told Variety. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t be. That reassurance was something I needed.”

Speaking of the spate of racist attacks the actress has received, she has an interesting method for overcoming them — and the advice has come straight from Queen B, Beyoncé. “As a black person, you expect that and it’s no longer a shock,” the actress said in The Face magazine’s cover story. “I know people think, ‘It’s not about race.’ But now that I’m her…People don’t understand that when you’re black, there’s a whole other community. It’s really important for us to see each other.” [neste lugar].”

“When [Chlöe e eu] When we first signed with Parkwood, Beyoncé was always like, “I never read my comments.” Never read the comments’. Honestly, when the teaser came out, I was at D23 Expo and I was so happy. I haven’t seen any negativity.”

In a few weeks, starting May 25, Halle Bailey’s Ariel will hit theaters. Despite the various reasons mentioned in this text, it will be time to investigate why it was the best choice for the live-action The Little Mermaid in the darkroom and how its contagious emotion, seen in the previews, will acquire new nuances in the rereading.

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Source: Terra

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