Race-Swapping

The topic of race-switching has created an uproar in the black community in recent years and the two articles: “The white nostalgia fueling the ‘Little Mermaid’ Backlash” by Brooke Newman and “I Don’t Want a Black Ariel — Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied with Race Switching” by The Final Cutback dive into the topic of race switching and the controversy surrounding hallie baileys role in the live-action little mermaid. 

“I Don’t Want a Black Ariel — Why We Shouldn’t Be Satisfied with Race Switching” is written by The Final Cutback who as far as I know is a black man who may or may not be British. He dives into his opinion on how the black community seeks representation from the film industry but we just get lazy race swaps where a black person is cast for a known white character. This article is more opinionated than factual and uses ethos and pathos to get his point across. he feels his opinion is valid since he is a black man so he has the right to speak on this issue. He argues that the film industry gives us lazy representation by putting a black character in a known white role instead of making new stories surrounding black people to give us real representation. The final cutback says “Boy, I don’t want a Black Clark Kent”. This could be interpreted differently but what he means is that it’s not okay to race-swap iconic well-established characters to give minority communities representation. For example and this is an example used in the article Spider Man, almost everyone knows Spiderman as Peter Parker a white man but Miles Morales a half-black helf Puerto Rican character is another version of Spiderman. He is not a black Peter Parker he is his own character, and this is the perfect example of proper representation not just turning a white character black or brown. 

On the other hand, the article “The white nostalgia fueling the ‘Little Mermaid’ Backlash” by Brooke Newman is more factual. Newman is a white woman with a PhD in Indigenous identity studies. She is an award-winning historian of early modern Britain and the British monarchy, with a research specialization in the history and legacies of slavery. Her article uses logos and goes into the white opinion on race-switching which is a mixture of racism and nostalgia. They argue that Ariel shouldn’t be changed because that is not how they remembered the character growing up. She gives facts about how Hans Christian Andersens the Little Mermaid was altered to create the Disney animated Little Mermaid so it shouldn’t be an issue to change the race of the character since the story was changed to begin with and that fairytales are meant to be changed. She also brings up how Donald Trump used this controversy to win the presidency by appealing to white, working-class Americans who feel marginalized by the country’s growing diversity. It has been shown that underrepresentation takes a toll on children of color. In the 1940s, an experiment, the Doll Test to assess the impact of discrimination and segregation on African American children’s racial perceptions. When presented with dolls of varying skin tones, children preferred the white doll and attributed positive characteristics to it. This study resulted in the desegregation of U.S. schools.

the arguments that Disney disrespected the people who grew up watching The Little Mermaid by recasting the character are irrelevant because Disney altered the original Little Mermaid story to be more lighthearted. fairytales are meant to be changed over time so the people arguing that Ariel shouldn’t have been changed are wasting their breath. race swapping isn’t the issue itself but the fact that they’re switching iconic and well-established characters in an attempt to people of color representation. I think race-switching is disrespectful instead of making new characters and stories they take old characters that are loved and cherished and replace them with colored actors. I honestly feel that it is just laziness and I’m all for everyone being represented but this is the wrong type of recognition. These actors get no new story and then they get harassed on the internet because they are a person of color playing a character that wasn’t originally. I also think race-swapping is a way to promote these movies. There’s a saying that all press is good press and I think that they know race-swapping characters will create controversy therefore causing people to invest in the conflict which will more than likely lead to them going to see the movie whether they agree with the race swap or not.