For The Love of Tinker Bell...LIGHTEN UP!

    Years (and years) ago, living in the Boston area, the young lady I was dating at the time, and I, were asked by dear friends if we would watch their two young girls one night while they tried to go into Boston and have a date night. "Sure," we replied. "Love to. Just give us the ground rules and the time. No worries." Now, you might think I'm going to write about some type of impending disaster due to the fact that I'm a dope! I know that I am, boss! Not to worry, Sancho. These kids were great...angels, even!! I brought a couple of movies for the VCR...Jaws (I mean, what adolescent girl doesn't want to see an out-of-control, blood-thirsty shark!), and the first two Godfather films. I wanted to make sure the girls learned that you "never...take sides against the family." We were off and running! Bedtime was stretched a little (c'mon, it was a Friday!), and ice cream was served just before said bedtime! Yep, we were voted the greatest baby-sitters ever! By the youngsters, of course. You're unbelievable! Oh, please. We kid because we love! But as I look back on that evening, one of the movies we did watch was the original version of Disney's The Little Mermaid. The girls loved it, which made for a relatively quiet and successful baby-sitting experience. That was some time way, way back in the early 1990s.

    I share that memory with you, dear reader, because it seems that all hell has broken loose with the remake of that adorable film. Idiots on both sides of the aisle have weighed in on this remake - so much so, that I continue to wonder where we grow these people. For the record, I have not seen the remake. However, I have read the long-version synopsis (isn't the Internet grand?) and, unfortunately, have tortured myself reading review after review. So, this is not a film critique; it's a stupid critique...and you know how much I love stupid! 

    "I do not think we do our children any favors by pretending that slavery didn’t exist," wrote Royal Academy of Dramatic Art chair Marcus Ryder, in a blog about the movie. "Setting the fantastical story in this time and place is literally the equivalent of setting a love story between Jew and Gentile in 1940 Germany and ignoring the Jewish holocaust." Huh? Jews and Gentiles and the Holocaust? Really?? It's The Little Mermaid for crying out loud! I don't even know how to respond to that. I know that it seems we always come back to the Nazis, but really? For this?! As if that wasn't bad enough, some singer named Paloma Faith, who's greatest claim to fame is...well...nothing, says, "As a mother of girls, I don’t want my kids to think it’s OK to give up your entire voice and your powers to love a man." She went on to say that this isn’t what we should be teaching the next generation of women, referring to the fact that in the film, Ariel traded in her mermaid tail for a pair of legs in order to marry her prince and sail off into the sunset. Well, now. I'd like to publicly assure Ms. Faith that fairy tales are not real; and that no woman will EVER be faced with such a decision. Trust me.

    The loudest bitching and moaning that you might read about is that for this remake, Ariel is...wait for it...black. What? People want every Disney princess to be eternally "ivory-skinned" with blonde or red hair? Is this what it has come to in 2023? We can't just enjoy a film anymore? A film is now made to be picked apart and found politically or socially wanting by one idiot group or another? We're supposed to sit in the theater with our check-list to make sure enough demographics have been represented, or worse yet, demographics have been changed to satisfy X, or Y, or the gods forbid, Z? Because Disney princesses are real and should be cast appropriately?! I'll tell you the two biggest reasons for not seeing this film: 1) It seems that it drags on for 135 minutes. Let me repeat that for those of you on the West Coast. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE FREAKING MINUTES! The original was 122 minutes and that seemed like FOREVER!; and 2) it has the unbearable Melissa McCarthy in it, or, at least her voice. Enough said. 

    The actress playing Ariel, Ms. Halle Bailey (who, by the way, has received wonderful reviews and seems like a nice kid), spoke of her pride in playing the role and that she hoped such a representation would be helpful to young black women. "If I would have had a Black mermaid [as a girl], that would have been insane, that would have changed my whole perspective, my whole life, my confidence, my self-worth. You’re able to see a person who looks like you, when you’re young? Some people are just like, ‘oh, it’s whatever,’ because they’ve had it their whole life. It’s nothing to them. But it’s so important." That's fine, I suppose, and good for Ms. Bailey for being cognizant of issues like that. But at the risk of sounding like an old man, I can't imagine why anybody gives a damn what color a mermaid is. We're talking about a film whose raison d'être is talking fish, magic curses, and young love (Pretty cool how I threw in a French phrase there, huh? Three years of French, baby! Such a dork!). Moving on...Please Peter, move on!

    Here are a few more tidbits of criticism from the aggrieved of the world; "The Little Mermaid is crying out for a structural retelling drawing on racial dynamics," wrote another critic named Pravina Rudra. I have no idea what her quote even means. Ms. Rudra went on to talk about how Ariel's father "doesn't want his daughter dating someone of a different race," in which she is referring to the races of sea creatures and humans. And critics/journalists wonder why they are so despised nowadays! Not to be outdone, Scuttle the Seagull caught all kinds of crap for rapping in the film. She was accused of appropriating black culture. Again, not to put too fine a point on it...Scuttle's an animated seagull. These people bore me. The lack of depth and meaning in their lives is frightening. Do us all a favor, will you? Learn how to read. I mean, really read. And read great literature. Idiots...

    Last but not least, there's Prince Erik. This poor bastard didn't stand a chance with the aggrieved. In this remake, he's a privileged white kid who was fortunate enough to be taken in by a black royal family who finds his soulmate, who happens to be black. He's been accused of fetishizing black women (and I can't believe we're talking about a CARTOON CHARACTER!) while at the same time, being attacked for not understanding Ariel's journey. Again, say it with me now...she's a cartoon mermaid. 

    Look, I'm all for metaphor. It's what gives the best poetry and fiction its power. The ancient myths and stories of The Iliad and Odyssey, and the most ancient myths and stories in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. They are the literary/cultural foundations of Western Civilization. Metaphors abound in these great works. But c'mon. Really? The Little Mermaid? Did Disney go overboard in trying to update it and veer light-years away from Hans Christian Andersen's original tale? Maybe...but who cares? It's a story about young love, sea-creatures, and magic. And in the end, the kids set off together in a rowboat into the sunset! An ending like that does this old romantic heart good. Take the kids or the grand-kids and enjoy. And everybody...please...lighten up!

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com