Approximately three years ago, Disney made known its intentions to make a new adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Initially, actresses like Lindsay Lohan said publicly that they were willing to get into the role. What many of the Hollywood professionals did not know is that Disney wanted to give a little twist to the character. That's how we learned that in this new live action movie, Ariel would be played by a black actress. Since then, there are people on the Internet who have taken this movement as a personal attack, as we are going to see in today's case.
People have lost their sanity with The Little Mermaid
A few days ago, Walt Disney Studios made public the primer teaser from The Little Mermaid on your YouTube account. The video begins by showing part of the CGI of the corals that are under the sea. Immediately afterwards, we see the protagonist of the film, but the choice of lighting and camera angle prevent us from seeing her face. Finally, at teaser closes with a small clip in which we see Halle Bailey's face while she sings a song. Obviously, each plane has been treated precisely so that the viewer has time to adapt to the character. Once it's obvious you're looking at Ariel, they show you what she's really like.
This, which should not alarm anyone, has become a debate both in the comments and on social networks. In just a few hours, the trailer racked up half a million thumbs down, and we can take it for granted that this is one of the most disliked videos in history. It already accumulates more than 2 million 'I don't like', while the likes do not reach a million.
A 'faceswap' to 'deswokeize' Disney
And this is where our protagonist of the day comes in. A few hours after the trailer was made public, a Twitter user named @vandalibm proudly posted on the social network a modified video in which he had 'fixed' the trailer. It was the same clip that appears in the official teaser, only @vandalibm had replaced Bailey's features with a white girl with red hair.
The video flew through Twitter like wildfire, and this user wanted to add fuel to the fire. He said that he had done it thanks to artificial intelligence, and that when the movie comes out, he could 'unwoke' it in less than 24 hours with a team of 4 Nvidia A6000 graphics cards.
Reports began on Twitter, and @vandalibm found himself quite cornered. So much so that after his racist allegation, he began to justify himself by saying that he was doing it solely for educational purposes. Later, he admitted that the video was not his work, but it did not matter exactly. twitter is over closing the account for incitement to racism. However, the video continues to circulate on the social network by some supporters of the "artist":
https://twitter.com/OccupyWpg/status/1569435787833520128?s=20&t=Jk6o6KCcYpnyR_TH4XRrpw
Let's face it: Disney doesn't care about all this
In recent years, Disney has shown a certain commitment to making minorities visible and giving a twist to some of its most mythical characters. Every time they announce a project like this, the Internet is filled with outraged people calling for a boycott of this company.
However, Disney calmly goes his way and doesn't seem to have any intention of budging. His productions are aimed at children, not adults. Seeing the reactions of the children that appear in the video that we leave below, it is clear that so bad they are not doing it:
Yes it should, I don't like changing the characters and it seems uncreative to me, new characters can be made to make them more inclusive instead of changing all the existing stories now