Fall is upon us and with it comes the annual season for new TV and movie announcements. Typically, this media expects a good mix of positive and negative opinions from viewers, with those of positive regard trumping the opposition. We’ve all certainly been on one side or the other. But sometimes, this matter becomes unusually vicious, which has been at the forefront of recent conversations in the past couple of weeks.
Recent news of a new Little Mermaid movie with singer and actress Halle Bailey starring as Ariel has sparked an amalgam of responses, a sea of which was negative. I’m sure we have all scrolled through Twitter and Instagram and seen the backlash Bailey and the creators have gotten simply for casting the fictional mermaid as a Black woman. This backlash had already been circulating the internet, but it has flared with the release of a new teaser featuring Bailey singing the iconic “Part of Your World.” Unlike in other movies, the stances are outright disparate. While one side of the internet has little Black children in awe, pointing, giggling, and marveling at Bailey playing one of their idols, the other is much darker. The opposition has been characterized by their talk of boycotting the film and fervent defenses that claim to be in the name of scientific and historical accuracy. Nevermind the excitement the Black community is experiencing as mothers, fathers, and guardians get to celebrate with their children and the rest of us treasure this as a win for our inner child selves. The worst part is, this is far from the first time a move to diversify media has been met with such a reaction.
The new television adaption for the beloved middle-grade series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, has received similar backlash. This came after author, Rick Riordan, cast Annabeth, the main character’s friend and love interest, as Leah Sava Jeffries, a thirteen-year-old Black actress. As a longtime fan of the series, I can’t even describe how happy this news made me. One look on social media told me my reaction was in the minority. Many complaints that Annabeth was not going to be “book-accurate” plagued my timeline. It did not matter that Annabeth’s only specified characteristics were blonde hair and gray eyes. Fans were still outraged. Riordan’s decision to cast Grover, another friend of the main character, as South Asian actor Aryan Simhadri was met with the same ire. This “book-accurate” defense has been used in the past as well. J. K. Rowling’s sudden claim that Hermione was written to be Black led to its Broadway adaptation, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, having Black actress Yanna McIntosh portray Hermione in her later years. Many of Rowling’s defenses surrounding Hermione’s intentional Blackness brought a lot of suspicion. Given her track record of pushing diverse characteristics onto other characters that were never previously stated to be diverse, such as Professor Dumbledore, I, like many others, viewed her claims as a move of artificial, responsive diversity.
By “responsive diversity,” I am referring to the rewriting of characters in response to complaints of books, television shows, movies, etc. not being diverse enough. While creatives often do this to satiate complaints, it’s a double-edged sword as they only receive more from fans who value preservation of a work’s original details over emphasizing representation in media. This begs a few questions. First and foremost, why are people so angry when their favorite white characters are preserved in every other way except for their race? And why are these changes sometimes not enough for the minority communities they are being catered to? I often find myself being left dissatisfied even after a character has had their race, sexuality, or gender rewritten for diversification. Why, you ask? Because diversification of media should not be responsive. It should be proactive.
I want to see characters written from the jump as Black or queer or non-male. Characters like Miles Morales, the teenage Afro-Latino successor to Peter Parker’s Spider-Man. Olivia Pope, the law, politics, and media consultant portrayed by the renowned Kerry Washington in Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal. Princess Tiana from The Princess and the Frog. What do these characters all share in common? They were written as Black—not rewritten. They were given their own original space instead of being forced to fit that of their white counterparts. I always think of characters like Miles, Olivia, and Tiana fondly. Some of these characters brought me felicity as a child. Other characters from Shonda Rhimes’ universe like Annaliese Keating of How to Get Away with Murder overjoyed me in my later years. Seeing these empowered Black characters lead on screen, assuming a space I had mainly seen occupied by their white counterparts, was very important to me in my youth, and it remains something I am ever hopeful and excited to see. However, this excitement always holds reservations; for, these same beloved characters always come with a few drawbacks. Instead of facing just the average conflicts that their white counterparts might encounter, I often see proactively written minority characters facing issues related to their identity. Scandal’s Olivia Pope is a badass political figure, yes, but she is also put in the degrading position of playing mistress to the country’s president, a white man. This racial power dynamic is apparent enough that she compares them to that of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, though he only disregards this as her “playing the race card.” Princess Tiana faces racism as she tries to purchase a space for her dream restaurant and is turned away with a comment from one of the white realtors stating she would have struggled anyway, being “a little woman of your background.” Robbing these impactful characters of a storyline not hyper-focused on their race in turn robs Black viewers of a viewing experience in which we are not being constantly reminded of our marginalization. Even more, it characterizes these experiences of Black trauma to these Black characters and the Black community as a whole. We deserve better.
You might ask yourself, “Well, what is the solution to this problem?” More minority writers and creatives. Behind many of these minority characters, even those I have named, are white creatives attempting to portray the Black experience and perspective without having the ability to properly do so. #OwnVoices, a term and a movement, sparked by young adult fiction author Corinne Duyvis, is a new effort to uplift and encourage the creation and consumption of books centering around marginalized characters written by authors that share these identities. I believe that this movement stretching into the world of film would be a great improvement. Black children deserve to see themselves in the media. They deserve to experience and view Black joy on the big screen and in their soon-to-be favorite books. The Black community as a whole deserves this. By creating our own stories and encouraging others to do the same, you and I can help achieve this.
Other Sources:
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/p/the-princess-and-the-frog-script.html
https://libguides.ocls.info/ownvoices/about
I Feeling A Little Sally Hemings Thomas Jefferson About All This
