What Does Nuance Really Look Like? 

Sorry if the levels are wild XD. Also, I wanted to add one thing, because I got some feedback about it. We deserve BOTH original Black characters and the ability to enjoy/critic race-bending of original white characters into POC without dealing with racism. As someone highly critical of how Blackness and Latine identity was handled in nüCharmed, it is possible to discuss these issues without co-signing anti-Blackness, etc. I also think that the two are not opposed. The desire to see original Black characters doesn't mean that when we get Anne Diop as Starfire, we should expect to deal with racism. Not only does it do harm to the actors, but to Black audiences as well.

People labelling diversity as inherently "woke" is one of the most annoying things to me .

As a redhead, I appreciate you identifying the problems with how red haired characters can be depicted in media and will agree that "red hair erasure" isn't a claim made in good faith but simply a poorly masked anti-Black argument.

Jasmine having a song called "Speechless" in the live action film where she sings about how she's not speechless and is somehow more speechless than she ever was in the animated film will never not be hilarious to me.

My black mother had red hair until it inevitably turned gray. Thank you for acknowledging Black redheads exist. Every time a white fandom person goes on and on about how black people cant play redheads, I have to cringe bc of their ignorance.

It's also annoying because plenty of white actors that play redheads aren't even real redheads! Why is it fine for them to dye it for the role but not a black actress? It's so transparent.

"Nuance does not mean both sides have a point, its about the subtle differences" That's really it right there. I would say this is one of those words the internet has beaten into meaning almost nothing. We've lost the definition. By definition nuance means you have to include the extra stuff. That's...just what it is.

Only thing I thought of when they casted Hallie as Ariel was “thank god they finally cast someone who could sing”. I still get flashbacks of Emma Watson’s horrible auto tune 😱

The thing with Starfire is interesting because she's always been ambiguous in her racial coding, where she could easily be read as a black character. Even in the 2000s animated series there's the episode "Troq" where we see her deal with racial prejudice (the scene where she explains what it means makes me cry every time). So getting mad about her being played by a black actress has nothing to do "respecting how the character has been traditionally portrayed" or whatever, it's just straight anti-blackness.

what takes me out the most is that disney in fact DOES make original work about poc. so the argument of "why can't we just get original disney characters of color" is already out the window cause they are WRONG.

In a sane world, this argument starts and ends with “can Halle pull off the vocals?” And the answer is “yes, she sings like an angel, she’s perfect for this”. But alas that is not a world we live in.

I was absolutely stoked for the new Hallie Bailey little mermaid because I thought the music was going to be amazing, and I'm always tricked by the remakes into thinking that the costume design and story will have SOMETHING interesting to say. The teaser was sooooo dark and BORING. Everything besides Hallie was extremely "go girl, give us nothing," can you imagine if they had made a boring casting decision too? Truly no one would care about it.

Loved your talk about anime representation because I was getting so irritated during the Ghost in the Shell controversy because everyone was saying "she is a robot" when her name is Matoko Kusanagi and "people in Japan were okay with it" when they have their own film industry where they seem themselves represented all the time and don't care about a silly anime live action adaptation with a white woman in the lead the way that a Japanese American would care

A right-wing commentator (can’t remember his name right now) once said that Hollywood has been “captured by leftism” and I couldn’t stop laughing at the inanity of that statement.

8:32 red hair discrimination derives from anti-Irish discrimination, but has been much less impactful since anti-Irish sentiments have gone down and Irish have been accepted as a part of the white majority race instead of a mostly-invisible minority. As anti-ginger hate has died down (but not disappeared!!) ofc people will want to make changes to maintain that position of “this character is discriminated against because of their hair and [presumed in gingers’ case] race/ethnicity” so of course initially-white gingers like Annie and Ariel are prime candidates for the “we’re woke see here’s diversity” adaptation race changes

I remember a book series I loved as a teenager, the Legend series by Marie Lu, had a main character who was of Mongolian descent but had blond hair and blue eyes. People kept referring to him as white or going after the author for describing him this way and she had to post pictures of actual people from Mongolia with naturally blond hair and blue eyes. Additionally, my biology teacher in high school was pacific islander. Her daughter was therefore half pacific islander, but happened to get all of the recessive traits and looked like her very pale, red haired father. People get so caught up on these stereotypes of how certain races or ethnicities look that they forget that genes can manifest in many different ways and make people look different than you'd expect. Having a certain hair color or facial structure, etc doesn't automatically make you a certain race or ethnicity. Just because someone has a eye or hair color usually associated with white people, doesn't mean that character is necessarily white. Loved the video!

"nuance does not mean both sides have a point" is something I've never been able to verbalise but it's spot on, thanks so much

I’ve been saying this forever but literally every black person would rather have original black characters, people are just tired of the racism that happens whenever they cast a black actor to play originally white characters. Like whenever I have these types of conversations people approach me like they think I’m watching any of these Disney cash grab remakes. Black actors need roles as well, and unless they start hiring more black creators and investing in original black content be prepared for a lot of raceswapping, especially in this era of continuous reboots/remakes. Despite all this not much has even changed, pocs are still very much the least represented.

Honestly the issue with casting Bailey as Ariel is that it turns into a form of exploitation of her blackness as a scape goat to why the live action film did bad. As well as this "colored blind" approach of race swapping characters ignores systematic and culture differences that ethnic groups deal with. Ontop of that it doesn't create a solid representation for minority groups when the character is just poc in a one of film but white everywhere else afterwards. Had this be a new retelling of the fairy tale than just a slightly edit version of the Disney animation it would have less of these issues

This a real easy issue, Korey from double toasted put it perfectly “people say man there aint no black mermaids, bro there aint no mermaids”

I'm interested in the movie, despite disney botching every single live action remake. TLM is been my favorite disney movie since I saw it in theaters at 4 years old. I'm white and I'm excited about the casting. I think she's a fantastic pick. The only thing I'm worried about is disney trying and failing to "feminism" the movie. they don't know what the fuck they're doing. I always took Ariel as dealing with Ursula because she's a human-weeaboo, not "for a man." But i'm a big old queer and never paid much attention to Eric beyond "he's okay, i guess"

I was apart of the problem when I first heard Ariel would be black. I was a little red head born in ‘96, so Ariel was obviously my GIRL! But after a moment of reflection, the new Ariel isn’t taking anything away from old Ariel. I still have her, and if theres a new generation of babies that can have the same relationship with new Ariel I am so excited and happy for them to experience this.

As someone who spent an afternoon charting every single comic book character, I could think of, who was race-bent black in adaptations and contrasted it with every single redhead comic character whose hair colour was changed in adaptations I feel like this particular granular conversation was made for me. After spending time looking at the numbers I can tell you with confidence the people crying "redhead erasure" are insincere. More often than not white people are driving this erasure and even then almost every single character whose famously a redhead in comics is portrayed as such in adaptations.

I was so confused when ppl were crying redhead erasure. I’m from Puerto Rico and red headed black people are common enough that theres has a name for it. It was clearly not about that from the beginning. I’m glad you called it out early on, bc it’s such a dumb argument. Love your videos. Keep up the amazing work.

I saw a video some time ago from a black conservative creator who tried doing the whole redhead to black actress pipeline argument and that this was actually bad for redheads. And as a ginger I was like…. No. Ariel the cartoon character still exists. Ariel in this movie was given red hair. And I’ve seen many people fancast white redhead actresses in the role but for a while it was a popular fan cast to use Sophie Turner- she seems to exclusively get work when she’s a redhead but she’s a natural blonde. You can’t tell me the same vomit emojis and hashtag not my Ariel and massive influx of thumbs down on trailers would’ve happened if they hired a white girl who is naturally a blonde or brunette and dyed her hair red for the role or used a wig. Or screw it, they could’ve hired a blonde and kept her blonde and I know it still wouldn’t have happened. Plus- Halle Bailey is beautiful she has an angelic face and voice to match, she looks right to be a Disney princess but we have to be realistic and acknowledge no one in the world looks like Ariel. No one has a body like that eyes like that and naturally has fire truck red hair.

I think making Arial black is one of Disney's more interesting moments. Let's remember that one of the key innovations in the original Little Mermaid was calypso music, which gives a fun island and sea vibe and also gives meaningful context to these mermaids being black people.

I also find it weird the amount of people that were trying to start beef between Halle Bailey and Jodi Benson. Even though Benson has been nothing but supportive of Bailey’s casting as Ariel.

Red hair prejudice is also related to anti Irish sentiment showing how the concept of ‘white’ is exclusionary and will be used as a weapon against anyone. Great video by the way!

It really just shows people's priorities. People are OK with a superman that kills people, but not OK with a black Superman. Like, pretty sure the not killing people is far more important to his charecter then him being white.

Patience Xina. You can say her name. She’s a British Black woman who acts as a mouthpiece for American conservatism. She made a video defending racial preferences, talked about people “leaving the political left”, and is one of the many people speaking ill on Harry and Megan. More people need to call her out. Love the video by the way.🥰

"Color-blind casting" is sometimes employed in Plays, Operas, and Musicals because there are lots of talented live performers of color, but not a lot of roles that specifically call for people of color, so this is a way to ensure we get to see people of all backgrounds on stage and in leading roles. (It can occasionally allow for a white actor to play a role normally given to a person of color, but that's extremely rare and done in regions where the population of POC is very small.) I'm glad you brought up the need for more original BIPOC characters. There is a HUGE untapped plethora of interesting and cultural legends, mythologies, fairytales, folklore, and books from POC from all over the world and even right here in the USA that would make for excellent media and content that centers POC. For example, Egyption and Vodou (Voodoo) Mythology are NOT the only mythological traditions and cultures that hail from Africa. Yoruba, Zulu, and Nyanga are just 3 more of them. It's not that there's a lack of stories to tell from POC Culture, it's just there's a lack of people with the power to massively publish and retell the stories who are willing to do it. Just a funny comment to relate to your discussion about Anime, in the Lucky Star Anime, all the girls are light skinned with a variety of hair colors and eye colors, some natural, some not, a lot of them most common on white people, but the characters are Japanese, except there is 1 foreign exchange student character with a very American name. She gets blonde hair, blue eyes, and larger breasts, and is defined as an "otaku." It almost feels meta in a way because they are using fantasy hair and eye colors for the Japanese characters, but not the 1 American character.

They’re definitely going with a brandy Cinderella thing with the casting. Ariel sisters rumored actresses are a bunch of different races. And I actually think queen Selene is Eric’s mom. We saw her in a gown and crown on land on set

I know I've commented this on a different video before, but this same type of phenomenon that bothered me about people talking about Miles Morales, especially before the Spiderverse movie came out. It's okay if you think the earlier version of the character was lacking in some way, (note: I haven't read any Morales comics, but people have described him as lacking in personality, so which I can't either confirm or deny) or if you feel like writers don't handle Miles well as a black character. But you can't just ignore Comicsgate, the people calling Marvel woke just for having a black Spiderman or that the inspiration for Miles was Donald Glover, who himself said in a stand up that people got mad for even the suggestion that a Spiderman, let alone Peter Parker, could be played by him.

I find is extremely frustrating that black female characters seem to be almost shunned in the film and tv industry. It's almost as if studios are afraid to make original black female characters because there's ALWAYS backlash. While I understand the frustrations from people who were upset about Princess and the Frog, I've watched it as an adult and the movie is great overall. It's possible that the harsh criticism has probably deterred Disney from making any more original black female princesses. Whether black girls or women are side characters, or main characters, the attacks never seem to stop. Just look at what happened to Leah Jeffries and she's only the side character of the main character Percy Jackson. I wonder if things will change with Asha

As a pale-skinned (seriously, I'm practically translucent) redhead, I'm confused as to how to react to inflammatory articles and essays regarding the supposed replacement of one underrepresented minority (redheads) with another underrepresented "minority" (i.e. any actor who isn't melanin-challenged). Am I supposed to be outraged because I fail to be. As a lifelong fan of "The Little Mermaid" (both the Hans Christian Andersen story and the Disney retelling), I love that Halle Bailey will play Ariel. Why? Have you SEEN Halle? Her beauty is ethereal and her singing voice is BEYOND gorgeous. She was MADE for this role. In the decade prior to the announcement of her being cast, when rumours were flying fast and furious online about who was being cast as Ariel - under the mistaken belief that many people had when it in fact WASN'T a Disney live action adaptation but instead an adaptation of the original fairy tale which was to be directed by Sophia Coppola. In any case, every single choice of actor these people had for the role of Ariel did not jel with me. And they were ALL white. When the casting of Halle was announced, I took one look at her face and saw Ariel. I don't know how to explain it, but she just did it for me. I rushed to listen to her sing and... good god! I was blown away. I don't understand how anyone can disapprove of her. We have now seen that she is redhead in the movie, so we redheads can relax. I for one cannot wait to see the film next year. I will be the first at the theatre at its very first showing, mark my words! Just my two cents. ✌

Fun fact, I heard from someone who worked on the movie, that Queen Selina is not going to be Ariel's mother. Hopefully, I'm allowed to say that... well they didn't ask me to keep it a secret so maybe it's okay to say it lol

Been feeling the same way for years now. We (BIPOC in general) deserve to tell our own stories, to share our own gifts and have our actors not have to deal with so much hatred they've been knowingly set up to deal with. It feels like they're filling a quota and calling that enough. But the gates are still well kept and its still not nearly as diverse as they're trying to pretend.

First: white redheads are overrepresented in media, and diverse casting is an inherently good thing. I am enthusiastically behind nearly every single case where this has happened. That said, I do wonder if the current trend of casting *specifically* Black actors as *specifically* redheaded characters might have something to do with similar stereotypes? I feel like that's worth at least unpacking, even though we all agree that it's a positive change.

Great video. Unfortunately we live in a world where history constantly affects us while so many people are also simultaneously ignorant of it.

finally an actually nuanced take about this. i watched the same video by patience xina and i saw so many people praising her for her nuance and i just couldn't put into words why all of that felt so hollow to me.

I'm multiracial, and a redhead. I would like to add, I have felt both the sting of assumptions about temper, and the weird aspect of people fetishizing me because of it. People often see those with red hair as extremely sexualized, and it's been frustrating.

Pretty sure I know the video you’re responding to and while they made some okay points, it was extremely… Odd™ to me that they (originally) all but said there’s simply no racism at all behind some people’s aversion to Black Ariel. A lie of omission that kind of does, as much as they might not like to hear it, give cover to those racists. 😕

Loved this video, thank you for sharing your thoughts! Ariel was, and always will be, a redhead. Just this time, she's black. I can't see any reason to be against her casting. And seeing all those young black girls reacting to the trailer, man, if you didn't shed a tear, I don't know what to tell you. I'm so glad more and more kids can get to see themselves on screen. It really is so important.

"we don't have to acknowledge racists to acknowledge that capitalism and marketing are fucked" 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

16:10 I just want to offer a quick correction here: Ashitaka is not Ainu, he is Emishi. Emishi were an ancient people indigenous to Honshu, primarily the Tohoku region. Ashitaka's capability in horse-riding is a direct reference to this; the Emishi, were highly skilled in their own unique style of horse archery. There are theories that they were historically related to either the Jomon people or the Ainu, but both are highly contentious arguments. Ashitaka's village is referred to as an Emishi village, and he is their last prince. The film is set during the Muromachi period, and Ashitaka's heritage is really important for the parallel of the dying natural world--the Emishi resisted the Yamato Empire for years, but were eventually overcome and absorbed under Imperial rule. Both he and San are the last vestiges of their worlds. Also, in the future, you might consider using the term "ethnic majority" to refer to mainland Japanese identity. The modern Japanese ethnic majority (generally descended from the Yamato people) is indigenous to Japan just as the Ainu and Ryuukyuuan peoples are, but the relationship between these indigenous groups is one of imperial violence and cultural genocide. The Emishi no longer exist as a cohesive group, but there are still Ainu and Ryuukyuuan people trying to preserve and promote their unique culture and heritage. I completely understand why you used the term "Japanese society default," it's probably a pretty fair assessment for how most Japanese people would think of it, but I think it's important to challenge that idea of homogeneity. Some people may not agree with me, but I thought I would mention it. :) Re: pronunciation, think of Ryuukyuuan as extending the vowel in Ryu (from Street Fighter), saying a long letter Q, and the word inn, like a bed and breakfast! :D Great video as always, I hope you have a lovely day!

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the upcoming Percy Jackson series and race-bending Annabeth, just because from what I've read it's been done for what seem like the right reasons; Originally she was written as Blonde to combat the 'dumb blonde' trope, and now 20 years later they cast a black girl to combat something of the same trope now that 'dumb blonde' has kinda died off. Series ain't out yet so no idea how it plays out, and as a white person I'm not the right voice to say whether or not those reasons *are* the right reasons, but I'll be watching to see the dialogue about it for sure. The actual dialogue, not the sugar-coated racism.

every time someone tries to argue the “don’t racebend, just do original POC/other marginalized group characters”, I know they are lying through their teeth because they have no intentions of supporting those original characters, they’ve never supported original characters, and they don’t care to. The original characters of marginalized groups only exists as a “gotcha” argument tool. Their “care” for the originality of marginalized groups and their stories only exists when they perceived those marginalized groups as encroaching or threatening their space.

I watched her video and it was LAUGHABLE. I became a subbie of the person she made a response video to. When he said some of these same things he was attacked by her zealot followers. She is the UK Candance OwensI hope that she sees your video, because it is so good. Thank you for covering it.

Can we talk about how redheads aren’t a race and is just one specific trait. The argument isn’t even about redheads. It’s about white redheads. People want a very specific version of a white person to be represented when we can’t even get the average looking black person half the time.

The most pertinent thing stated here that completely gets overlooked was the comment regarding BLM and random things being done because as she stated "thar's not what we were talking about". People try to give us things that we were never asking for primarily as a way to ignore what we are actually talking about

People forget about merida and Anna who are actually real gingers. The creators just did ariel hair red cuz it goes well with her tail color. They were actually thinking of making her blond. Ariel hair is a fake red color. No one has that hair color in real life so the ginger eraser argument is stupid. Also there are alot of ginger actors in Hollywood.

Re: anime characters being written as japanese by default. Yes, these characters are written as Japanese, while their appearance is an aesthetic choice (yellow, pink hair etc), not an indicator of race. But I think there's an important *semantic* distinction to be made - the word "Japanese" here describes how the character acts, relates to others, speaks etc. It marks a more complex "cultural" (for lack of a better word) identity, rather than a racial one. Yes, there is a strong correlation between cultural behaviors and race (race, as in a person with certain physical attributes, ancestry, ethnicity), the two are not always one and the same. In an increasingly global world, there are people born and raised in Japan with different skin tones, with descent from many places in the world, who still grow up in and are part of the Japanese society. Of course, any person who's considered a minority based on appearance (or other stuff) has a different experience than the group seen as default in a society, and often times these differences correlate with cultural differences, that's a whole different topic. But I'm questioning the plasticity of terms like "Japanese" to describe race, with the implication that it also refers to nationality /ethnicity /cultural attributes. I feel like in this case, referring to the character being racially Japanese is misleading and reductive in the sense that it erases people who don't "look" Japanese but are. It also complicates how Asian people in the west are "supposed" to be seen as related to Japan by default regardless of whether or not they have cultural ties to that country. It brings up the question of what is it to be Japanese? - To be born in Japan? , in East Asia?, to look like the majority of Japanese people? To have Japanese citizenship? to speak and act in a certain way? I agree with the broad argument that it would be highly preferable for white actors not to be cast in movie adaptations of anime. But my reasoning for this is increasing east Asian representation (specifically people of Japanese descent, as mentioned in the video) in western media and honoring the cultural origin of the anime art form. But being too broad with these words like "Japanese" and "race" offers a particular set of pitfalls as well. Casting Asian American actor of Japanese descent with little cultural connection to Japan or animes also poses interesting questions. Do we assume a Japanese American person should be automatically culturally acquainted with anime? Is this necessary to play an anime character? Should they be just a face for the sake of representation? Is there "A" Japanese - American face? What is different in casting a Chinese American actor or Korean American actor? Or a British/Canadian Asian actor? Does the actor's connection to the culfure matter? Or is it just the face? How much and why? So, as remarked further in the video, things change when the context of what race /person of color is, based on what the perceived "default" is in a given society. I used the east Asian representation example as a template. My main point is about the conflation of race, ethnicity, appearance, cultural behavior and expectations when we talk about the representation. My intention is to add some nuance to that portion of the video. I agree with its main points.

Thanks for making this. I've been afraid of someone missing the word "nuance", especially by people in bad faith to twist the original word's meaning (which tends to be a pattern on social media and annoys me so much, first intersectionality, and now nuance). Cause it needs to be said

Now hold up a minute...what if Tiana had stayed human through the movie, and it was Charlotte that got frogged, that could be an interesting adventure?

The only casting I can consider miscasting is Melissa McCarthy's Ursula. There are so many queens that would have been perfect for that role

I talked about anime on a podcast last year and how white people center themselves in the anime fandom because of the aesthetic. Like, if a character isn’t Japanese, you will definitely be told.

That South Park episode was the bane of my existence in school. Back then my hair was lighter and had a decent amount of red in it. Idk if I would have even been considered as a red head but my bullies, and even friends, still latched onto it as ammo to tease me, belittle me, harass me. It was fucking crazy. I still always supported the new Ariel movie.

I must’ve forgotten Noma’s casting in Mermaid, but I do find it funny that she’s in it considering that she originated the role of Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. She’s a hell of an actor, and I can’t wait to see her in this.

It's worth noting with the example of Ashitaka that Miyazaki's character designs are very mukokuseki - that is, he doesn't tend towards displaying ethnic phenotypes in his works. Ashitaka could stand next to (black-haired) Howl and Pazu and you wouldn't really be able to guess what anyone's ethnicity was. In fact, Ashitaka's skin colour is a little darker than Howl's - atypical for depictions of Ainu. In works which focus on the Indigeneity of Ainu characters, they tend to be portrayed with black or blue hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. Examples include Nakoruru from Samurai Shodown and Asirpa from Golden Kamuy. It's probably more common to see it invoked indirectly with characters like the protagonists from Pokémon Legends Arceus, Konayuki from Katanagatari, and Sitonai from Fate/Grand Order (an Ainu deity channeled through an explicitly Germanic character). Essentially, the same way white Spanish and Portuguese characters are depicted as more or less "swarthy" depending on the context in American cartoons. Golden Kamuy in particular is further evidence of your point, in case you haven't seen it. The main character is a Yamato man, and he reads as Yamato to someone used to Japanese character design, but without context he could easily be mistakenly identified as white by a white audience. When white characters do appear in the story, they have tarame (drooping eyes), eyebags, or sanpaku (white space under the iris). These are so ubiquitous in Western Europe that two of them don't even have English equivalents. When racialised features differ so strongly dependent on culture and context, it's basically impossible to apply standards from one country to another.

The red hair discussion is really funny to me. I'm Scottish, and red hair is common enough here. I've never thought that they were overrepresented in media, but then I have 3 family members on both sides with red hair.

what really baffles me about this is, like, changing a character's ethnicity isn't just about race, it's about culture. if you made Tiana white, but changed nothing else about the movie, you'd have a white woman living a black life in New Orleans. and to make that tonally congruous, you'd need to remove any expression of her being an Afro-American woman living in New Orleans. The Little Mermaid may be based on a Danish fairy tale, but the way she's depicted in the movie, her culture is entirely fictional and thus has no attachment to any particular appearance or race. a live-action remake of Moana or Brave would struggle with ethnicity because the cultures they depict have particular context. casting Merida as a black woman would require either losing or reimagining the environment of her Scottish upbringing. rewriting the German fairytale of the Frog King was, evidently, not that hard because it didn't have enough necessary indications of any particular culture. cause that's the thing, Tiana WAS a black princess replacing a white princess, but like with Ariel there is hardly enough of a cultural context to actually make the switch stand out as in any way unusual. Unless you explicitly expect them to be white. However, taking Tiana now, now that the story was adapted into an explicitly black social context, that's the only thing that would make re-imagining her weird - and the fact that there are still way few Disney princesses of colour is the only thing that makes such a re-imagining problematic, that, and the fixation on preventing representation where there could have been.

A character being original has never ever stopped racists from being racist…

as a redhead, that South Park episode ruined middle school for me. I was bullied mercilessly for it and it sucked; people called me diseased and ran away from me in the hallway. that being said, some redheads take this "redhead erasure" thing WAY too seriously. I really do think a lot of people are just using the hair as an excuse (and it's not even all redheads who are saying this, which is wild to me. you probably bullied kids in school for being a ginger and now you're upset because Ariel isn't a redhead?? ok, sure. not to mention, as you said in the video: SHE IS A REDHEAD.). It's just plain racism lmao. I'm not offended by Halle Bailey being Ariel - in fact I think she'll make a great Ariel and I'm excited to see her portrayal!! Still worried, because, y'know.. it's Disney.

This outrage over the casting of a black actress feels so ridiculous because The Little Mermaid won an Oscar for its calypso style music, written by two white men who were deliberately mimicking a genre dominated by black artists. A large part of The Little Mermaid's success came from that soundtrack and the only non-white coded character in the film was a Jamaican crab. Ariel and even the Disney Renaissance would not have had the same success without "Under the Sea." Why shouldn't the presence of black artists in The Little Mermaid finally be visible?

It’s rather funny that black people when questioning casting decisions for decades have been told “ they hire the best actor for the part” up until that best actor was black, now for some strange reason the black actor is never the best actor for the part, because they wanted someone else instead.

"Nuance does not mean both sides have a point. Nuance is about the subtle differences, the distinctions between 2 things that can seem similar." Can we get that on a mug please? It'll have to be a big mug, but I can accommodate.

"Redhead representation" is such a bad faith argument. As you rightly pointed out, redheads are actually over represented in media compared to their prevalence in the population. And in many places where they have experienced discrimination (like the UK), it's not actually because of the hair color, but the fact that Irish immigrants (many of them poor) were more likely to have red hair.

Full confession: I spent 2 weeks thinking they had cast Halle Berry and thought that the controversy was that she was too old.

I will admit. When I first heard of the casting, I was apprehensive. I thought Disney was doing a "look at us giving representation" (not even going to get into the lgbt "representation" they failed at in Beauty and the Beast LA). And then I heard her sing... so then I was apprehensive because it was unknown if she would be a redhead or not... and then I saw the trailer. I am a happy camper. And others that have an issue with it honestly need to get over it. I'm happy for Halle Bailey and I'm sure she will be amazing. (Provided Disney's writing isn't complete crap.)

I just found your video on the community board of Jessie Gender, and she was right this video is amazing and I absolutely agree with everything, you say In the video and you definitely earned yourself a new subscriber!

Describing 2000's Disney hot takes as the "starter pack of feminism" is so perfect.

I really appreciated your argument about preferring new black characters instead of just recasting old roles and I think that's one reason why Miles Morales in the recent comics and especially the Spider-Verse films is resonating so much stronger than if he was "just Peter Parker but black." He might have a lot of similarities with traditional white Peter Parker Spider-Man, but his background, personality, history, etc. are so much more interesting because he's his own character. Plus that has the added benefit that the new character can coexist with the original white character and explore that interaction dynamic that you can't do when it's just a casting choice (minus all the multiverse stuff that Hollwyood has latched onto now).

I had never heard the anime protagonists blonde hair/blue eyes explained so perfectly before. This is why I love your videos - your point of view is literally eye-opening. ❤

I love that you’re back to uploading more content 🎉

Thank you for going into detail about “redhead representation”. Especially funny take given that Disney has 3 redhead/ginger princess, but literally just one black Princess who’s a frog for the majority of the movie and not even a princess until the end??? Whereas in reality a percent of natural redheads in the US population is waaaay less than percentage of black people. Also, changing a character in a new adaptation doesn’t take away the old version.

Jessie Gender sent me here. Great vid, and I see more great vids for me in the future. Always great to find a new channel. Thanks.

There's this black creator on this site that says children fawning over a black Ariel are going to grow up being unable to empathize with characters of other races because they only care about black representation. UM HELLO?? little kids of color ALREADY know how to empathize with characters not of their race because of limited representation. What about the empathy for black characters from white kids hmm?

The "redhead erasure" thing reminds of something I read when the Daredevil show first came out. Someone pointed out that no one cared that Charlie Cox was a brunet when Matt Murdock is a redhead in the comics, but if Marvel had decided to cast an actor of color, you can bet that everyone would've shrieked "BUT MATT IS A REDHEAD!" to the heavens.

"Nuance does not mean both sides have a point. Nuance is about the subtle differences, the distinctions between two things that can seem similar"

20:05 Then there’s a missing layer of nuance about what if the fancast/actor is Black-Japanese in heritage. The same way that Black people can be red heads, Black people can also be East Asian

Thank you for discussing this! It’s so a true, a nuanced conversation can’t be had if you deny or ignore the racism. 💜🦋

I hope that this little mermaid is the best adaptation so far and it's as magical and whimsical as the original. I think the Haley Bailey deserves to be the most beloved mermaid. Wouldn't it be awesome. She's been through so much I would just hate if Disney had also given her a crap script.

I find it quite telling that the people complaining about redhead discrimination when it comes to stuff like The Little Mermaid remake have nothing to say about a South Park episode making jokes about bullying redheads. In fact, how many iconic redhead characters are based on stereotypes about redheads to begin with?

As a natural redhead, the fools trying to make "redhead erasure" an important thing to talk about vs the systemic racism and lack of representation for the BIPOC audience are frankly laughable. Ariel was always *my* princess as a kid because of my hair, but Halle Bailey doesn't take that away from me and I think she looks amazing as Ariel. I wish Disney was willing to do a deeper dive in the reimagining, maybe with a black woman director, where this movie could explore what it means to trade your voice for mobility from that perspective, in the way that many women (especially women of color) have to suppress their own voices to pursue successful careers. It could make an interesting metaphor for racial and gender based power structures in society and what we give up when we try to break through glass ceilings.

I still like the new saying “There are two races, White… and political.” Seriously, I feel like if Alien came out today, it would be flamed as too “woke” for having a female protagonist. (It was woke, but still didn’t the smoke it would get today, and that makes me sad that our society is getting more regressive as a result of algorithms creating far-right movements)

I'm glad you're touching on REAL ginger prejudice here. I hate it when people use ginger erasure as an excuse to be racist toward black people. Not only can people of ANY ethnicity be gingers, but ginger erasure in hollywood has been going on since long before we started casting people of color in those roles. Matthew Murdock/Daredevil is a ginger in the comics yet both his live action actors have been brunette white men. That is STILL ginger erasure, yet no one seems to care as much. Almost none of Superman's Jimmy Olsens have been redheads, and on the rare occasion Hollywood actually lets a character have red hair on screen they almost never hire a ginger to play them. Instead they give KJ Apa or some young actress a dye job and call it good. Because real gingers with their freckly skin aren't "hot" enough.

that ungodly hour clip was such a little blessing

I know this is off topic but I love your aesthetic in this video. Your nose ring and makeup are so cute!

Great video but just one small correct. The study you cite is from University College Cork which is in Ireland, not the UK. I believe the study surveyed people in multiple countries but the researcher and what he talks about in the article is an Irish perspective

All of your points are bang-on, Princess. Excellent video! If all of these "being underwater would deprive a person of the evolutionary need for melanin, and thus all mermaids would be white" RU-vidr bigots actually cared about the reasonableness of the Little Mermaid, they'd also point out that it makes no sense for an aquatic species without gills to never need to go to the surface to breathe. And since they don't go to the surface to breathe and therefore aren't mammals, it's also ridiculous that they have breasts. Also, how do they sing underwater with human voices? But they don't raise any objections to mermaids. They only focus on the blackness of _this_ mermaid, which is why their smokescreen of "but lack of sunlight --> no melanin" argument is a hideously weak front for their bigotry. On the technical side, I really wish you would revert to your more natural speaking-to-camera approach to video essays. Reading directly from a script on a monitor that's very visibly lower than the camera is a bit distracting, I have to admit. I know it isn't easy to do (having attempted some speak-to-camera videos myself), but it really makes a difference. All the best!

Centrists really will be the death of us💀

On the subject of anime characters "looking white", I heard a Japanese person once explaining that blonde hair specifically is the the signifier of a "rebel", doesn't who doesn't follow the rules. That is the hair color of Usaki, Katsuki, Naruto... characters who are very different from each other but still do their own thing, they aren't strict on themselves based on rules or society's expectation. As to the blue eyes... aesthetically speaking, especially with Usaki and Naruto, it just fits their overall aesthetic. I once saw a video trying to argue in favor of race bending literally said that Usaki was "the european ideal that the creator made", which I can only imagine how much that would have shocked the Japanese creator who made a Japanese character living in Japan. I don't care about race bending, sometimes it can give very creative and interesting results, but maybe don't whitewash Japanese characters in order to defend it. You can just race bend while aknowledging some characters, no matter how pale, blonde or blue eyed they are, are not really white in the first place.

Your content is amazing as always, Princess. I just wanted to pitch in something regarding the anime/phenotype perceptions at 14:40 As you say, we westerners have a sensitivy to picking out eye size and hair colour as "evidence" that anime characters are "white." But there's two phenotypic features westerners gloss over: MOUTH and NOSE size!! In the perception of an east Asian viewer, white people are considered to have "big" noses and mouths. Sometimes a "white" character in an anime will have these features noticeably enlarged, even to the level of caricature. The Japanese airline ANA got in hot water for playing into this caricature in their advertisement where a Japanese man wore a fake nose and wig. "Default" anime characters almost always have small noses and mouths compared to western animation. This is unfortunately also a toxic beauty standard, especially for women. Having a mouth that's "too big" is traditionally considered unfeminine and ugly. I'll never forget seeing my (asian) mum show visceral disgust at a poster of Julia Roberts because her smile was "too huge" and she was "so ugly"

We've really been seeing this "Black person on screen = woke and bad" garbage sweeping through fandom spaces lately. I've def felt like I lost a former safe space as a Black Tolkien fan for example. It's kinda hard to carry the "oh but it's not just racial" views when it's the same outrage reaction to every piece of media no matter how effectively or ineffectively they cast someone. It just never matters when it's about racism.

My biggest disappointment for the live action Little Mermaid (beyond my general disappointment at Disney continuing to make remakes of things that don't need them) was that they didn't cast ueen Latifah or a drag ueen as Ursula.

An Indian rapunzel would be amazing, her main feature is looooooong hair, and the longest most beautiful hair I've seen, is on indian women.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new interview with the vampire adaptation and them changing Louis and Claudia to be black. Personally I really enjoyed it and I think it added a lot to the characters and the story. I think there were some book fans that were skeptical of the race change at first but from what I've seen it seems to be a universal success!

Leading with the fact that I'm white in case I say something just. Insensitive or unnuanced or like. Flat Wrong, but they're having the same argument over in the Percy Jackson community also about the live action show they're working on when they cast Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth Chase. Like there were (and honestly, probably still are) so many people justifying their racist outrage by saying that because she's not blonde she's taking away representation for little blonde girls and defying the dumb blonde stereotype, like she did in the books. It's the same hair color representation argument being used to disguise racism, complete with the same pretending these two issues are equal. The PJO stuff also just showcased that it's also a misogynoir issue, because Grover, who is also white in the books, is going to be played by Aryan Simhadri, and he did not get nearly the same level of fixation or pushback. Not to say there was None, I definitely saw some, but most of the ire and outrage was directed at Leah Jeffries specifically.

21:57 fans have already tried making Tiana white back when race bending Disney princesses was super huge on IG. It was not good.

On the topic of Starfire and the Titans they could've always used black characters like Static Shock or Rocket and Icon, but then they'd have to pay for use of those characters since they're owned by their black comic creators. Then there's having Cyborg being in every team in different media(Justice League, Doom Patrol) except the Titans where he's originally from, taking away opportunity from characters like John Stewarts Green Lantern. It's almost as if they wanted to diversify these white superhero groups without actually looking up or using characters that they all have owned for years now. I'm not sure if James Gunn is the guy DC needs, but at the very least he did a great job highlighting a character like Bloodsport even giving him a look that is now iconic in its own right. Edit: Casting Idris Elba as Bloodsport was also *chefs kiss*