The Racist Backlash to Halle Bailey’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ Is Out of Control
Over the weekend, Disney released the first teaser for its upcoming, live-action take on The Little Mermaid. The brief clip is relatively light on actual footage, but it does give us the goods: star Halle Bailey as Ariel, singing a bit of the iconic ballad “Part of Your World.”
Bailey looks and sounds great, as she puts a little vocal trill on the second-to-last verse and rocks that familiar red mane. Sure, there’s not much else going on here—just the camera tracking underwater, following Ariel as she swims through the caves and growth populating the kingdom of Atlantica. But it’s a perfectly sufficient glimpse at director Rob Marshall’s adaptation of the classic.
Perfectly sufficient, that is, if you are not a so-called Disney stan already primed to hate this movie. It’s one thing to be down on The Little Mermaid because of Disney’s track record with live-action remakes. (Bad. They’re bad.) But since Disney announced that Bailey was playing Ariel in 2019, there has been no shortage of backlash.