Director; Rob Marshall (USA). Year of Release: 2023
The middle of the ocean. Sailors are aiming harpoons at whales and mermaids – the latter because they bewitch sailors with their siren voices and pull their ships off course, A handsome man with a pristine white shirt cut to the waist shins down the rigging to stop them. Don’t mermaids also have the right to live in peace? He then goes to the front of the ship to look deep and broody. A lackey appears to tell prince Eric that his mother, the queen, wouldn’t want him to endanger his life so.
Before we go on, could I just ask what the screenwriters were thinking of? Can you think of a less regal, less smouldering hunk name than Eric? Yes, I know there was Eric Cantona, but maybe his Frenchness helped us ignore the name. Generally, Eric makes you think of an earnest middle management type, certainly not the sort of person to make a pretty mermaid consider trading her life in the sea for a joint castle. I’m just putting the question out there.
Anyway, back to the plot. The ship is hit by a violent storm, and Eric takes the helm. It’s a hopeless case, especially after he steers the ship into a rock and it breaks out in fire, but he keeps everything steady, giving everyone else enough time to jump into the sea and get into the lifeboats. Eric is about to leave the ship himself, when he sees his dog trapped behind a wall of fire. By returning to save the dog, Eric puts himself in a perilous situation and ends up unconscious on the beach.
While all this has been going on, it is the Coral Moon and King Triton has been waiting for his daughters to gather. There is an Indian daughter, a couple of Black ones, a couple of blondes. Depending on your level of cynicism, your reaction will be “what a lovely level of multi-racial casting” or “Triton must have been putting it about a bit.” One daughter is missing, and Triton sets his long-suffering crab Sebastien to find Ariel.
Ariel has been hanging around a shipwreck, although she has been forbidden to do this by her overprotective father, who worries that she is showing too much interest on humans, who have caused the merpeople nothing but trouble, not least when they killed Ariel’s mother. This interest is stoked when Ariel witnesses the storm which nearly kills Eric, carrying him to shore and tending him to life, before swimming away when Eric’s courtiers come to try to find him.
Plot happens, most notably including evil tentacled sea witch Ursula, Triton’s aggrieved sister who believes that she has been denied the wealth and power that was due to her. Ursula makes a deal with Ariel, giving her the legs she needs to walk onto dry land, and visit Eric. There are two caveats. First, she must sacrifice her voice. Secondly, if Ariel doesn’t get Eric to kiss her within 3 days, she will remain Ursula’s slave for ever.
Everything has been set up. Both Eric and Ariel have been told that all the people on the other side of the water are venal and cannot be trusted. But each of them is young, and wants to explore and find out for themselves, especially after Ariel sees Eric in a wet shirt, and he hears her beautiful voice. So far, so Romeo and Juliet. The Little Mermaid is clearly on the right side of history, even if its heroes are mainly sassy animals or the privileged gentry.
The amount you get out of The Little Mermaid depends on the amount you put in. The five-year old who I saw it put an awful lot in. After the film, he said that today was the best day in the Universe ever. I wouldn’t quite go that far, and there was a lot of hokum involved, but the film easily exceeded my admittedly low expectations. It looks great, and although I found some of the songs fairly bland, they weren’t really central to the general experience.
It is impossible to discuss this version of The Little Mermaid without mentioning race. Ever since it was announced that Ariel would be Black, the bigots have had a field day, with the hashtag #NotMyAriel trending. And you know what? It is remarkable how irrelevant the skin colour of Ariel – or her sisters – is to how the film proceeds – as is the fact that Eric’s mother just happens to be Black. The Little Mermaid needs the minimum of effort to annoy all the right people.
You can look at the film’s treatment of race in two ways, both of which I think are legitimate. One is that it shows how colour blind casting can improve a film. The hero(ine)’s skin colour is irrelevant – something which is to be particularly welcomed in what is primarily a kids’ film. In providing role models that Black kids are sorely missing, the Little Mermaid is a force for good. It also provides work for Black actors who are often only offered parts as drug dealers and henchmen.
But the race politics of The Little Mermaid is also deeply liberal, in a good and a bad sense. Great that Eric has a Black mother, but why do you need to explain this by saying he is adopted? Why not make both love interests in a mainstream film Black? Or would that be too challenging? There i a Benetton ad feel that the film wants to say that racism would just disappear if we all just love each other. At times, it seems that it is displaying race as a way of avoiding talking about racism.
But how much does this really matter in a Disney remake for which I am really not the target audience? The Little Mermaid is fun, and it is more important that it considers race at all than its occasionally inept way of handling this. And above all it is fun. So, I didn’t like some of the songs? There were others that I found great. So, it has a soppy ending? It’s hardly alone in this. Stop me, I may be getting soft, but please judge the film for what it is, not what you’d like it to be.
CinePhil 