Racism in Reboots and Remakes
A look at the racism and misogyny targeting Black actresses in recent film releases
The Little Mermaid live action film adaptation from 2023 was a commercial flop, leading to almost $5 million dollars at the box office. There were, of course, several valid reasons for this—the film went over its production budget, it was released in a line of unwanted Disney remakes, and of course the super-realistic, giant Flounder was nightmare worthy. However, if you were to ask certain fans of the original movie, they would say the issue was the casting of Halle Bailey, a Black actress, as Ariel. Layota Lee writes in a MsMagazine that the trailer, published in September of 2022, received 1.5 million dislikes on Youtube within the first two days of its release, forcing the site to disable the dislike button completely.
Throughout the movies campaign and release, several hateful hashtags circulated online, such as #StopRaceSwapping and #NotMyAriel. A rationalization made for these racist hashtags was that it was “inauthentic the original character,” and of course, the age-old argument that “Well, it wouldn’t be okay if a white actress played Tiana,” to which the response is that there is a difference between whitewashing a character whose story revolves around her race, and race swapping a mythical mermaid whose story revolves around her coming-of-age. It would be remiss to not point out that her story also centered around her voice being taken away, which lends itself well to the real experiences of many women of color.
This combination of racism and misogyny crops up often when a Black actress is introduced in a remake role, from Quvenzhané Wallis as Annie in 2014, Laci Mosley as in the 2021 iCarly reboot. The hatred for reboots, remakes, and unimaginative sequels is fair—these multibillion dollar companies owe their fans the creativity their earlier years promised—but this call for new content is often used as an excuse to spread hate and racism when these are two separate, incomparable issues.
The hate doesn’t stop at actresses either. In her article for the Guardian, Tayo Bero explains how Marvel director, Nia DaCosta, was the only Black woman to have directed a movie in the top 100 grossing films of 2023. When her part in the film-making was made public, she had to face a severely racist and misogynistic hate campaign, where Disney made no moves to protect her.
The bottom line is that the pressing matter isn’t whether or not mermaids and directors can be black or not. The problem is how hard the industry and audience make it for Black actresses to win. If they play an existing role, they’re accused of “ruining the integrity” of fictional characters, and if they create or partake in fresh, new projects, they are still accused of being “too woke,” all in the name of hiding blatant racism. While the audiences are part of the problem, it is also important to hold companies and the industry accountable to protecting their hires and creating more diverse content as a whole.
