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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   38182 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Can You Guess Why The Little Mermaid Is a Huge Hit But Not In China?

The backlash is due to Halle Bailey being chosen to portray main character Ariel.

...

According to Box Office Mojo, Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has only grossed $3.6 million in mainland China since it opened there on May 26. The Chinese box office tracker Endata confirmed that the film made 19.5 million yuan ($2.7 million) in its first five days. In comparison, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse made 142 million yuan (nearly $20 million) in the first five days after its release.

Now I may be a simple country hyperchicken, but it seems to me that Spider-Verse also featured a black main character. Seems like an odd comparison to make, given their narrative.

Now I may be a simple country hyperchicken, but it seems to me that Spider-Verse also featured a black main character. Seems like an odd comparison to make, given their narrative.

Spider-Verse's black protagonist is a character who has always been black starting with his original incarnation, AFAIK. Ariel in the original adaptation in 1989 was a ginger, and in the remake is black. So possibly Chinese audiences are rejecting the race-swapping of existing non-black characters to be black, rather than rejecting black characters in themselves. This rejection of such race-swapping is considered anti-black racism just as much as rejection of black characters in themselves by the "woke" ideology.

Spider-Verse's black protagonist is a character who has always been black starting with his original incarnation, AFAIK.

This is disingenuous. Miles Morales is a race-swapped Spider Man, exactly like Ariel. The paper-thin excuse of "Umm ackshually we've not retconned him, he's, err, an alternate universe version" is obviously just that: a paper-thin excuse, to remove white heroes from their stories.

Miles Morales was developed by writer Brian Michael Bendis. No prizes for guessing what I found oh his Early Life section of Wikipedia.

Yeah, I think Miles Morales was definitely an early example of wokewashing, although not quite as blatant as in recent years. But when we're talking about movies there is one, rather important, distinction: Into The Spider-Verse was really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY good. (I haven't seen Across yet, but I have high hopes.) Frankly, if all these woke race swaps and girlboss Mary Sues and deconstructions of white male privilege were accompanied by movies that were even close to the quality of Into The Spider-Verse, I don't think I'd have such a problem with them!

This is disingenuous. Miles Morales is a race-swapped Spider Man, exactly like Ariel. The paper-thin excuse of "Umm ackshually we've not retconned him, he's, err, an alternate universe version" is obviously just that: a paper-thin excuse, to remove white heroes from their stories.

It's a lot more acceptable when Spiderman's comics history is absolutely littered with clones and alternate-universe spider-men.

I'm not all that familiar with the Spider-Man lore, but given how common alternate universes are in comic books, I would think it'd be normal to consider an alternate universe version who's black as a separate character unto himself. IIRC from the Into the Spider-Verse film from a few years back, the white Peter Parker was there as a character, along with many other versions of Spider-Man including a female one and a cartoon pig one. This is in contrast to The Little Mermaid remake which is presented as a straight-up remake showing a reimagined version of the characters from Disney's original adaptation. Halle Bailey's Ariel running into the original ginger one from the 1989 animated film while being separate characters like in Into the Spider-Verse isn't something that'd be within the realm of possibility in The Little Mermaid universe, I think.

A quick peek confirmed my suspicious: Chinese movie posters (and probably much of the advertsing) show Miles prominently mostly while masked.

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2Bu6z6asFL.SL500_AC_SS350.jpg

The film also has a big cast, including some Asian spider-people iirc.

Chinese Little Mermaid posters don't prominently feature Halle Bailey's ethnicity, though (which some on Twitter and elsewhere complained about).

the image link is broken, copypasting the whole thing works

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