Anti-black racism: "The Little Mermaid", "House of the Dragon", "The Rings of Power" ... the actors attacked online

" She is black !

Huge smile on her lips, fascinated, a little girl watches her television.

On the screen: the trailer for the new Disney adaptation of "The Little Mermaid", scheduled for 2023. What fascinates the little one: Ariel is black, played by American actress Halle Bailey.

“Black like me”, she repeats to her mother who is filming.

Since the release of the trailer, videos of young African-American spectators surprised by the skin color of the heroine have abounded on social networks... as well as racist comments reporting "misunderstanding", even " the scientific impossibility ” that a black actress embodies the mermaid – who, in the Disney cartoon, was redhead with blue eyes.

A xenophobia that affects other recent very popular fictions: the black actors of the series "House of the Dragon" and "The Rings of Power" have also been victims of attacks.

In recent days, the wave has grown.

The angle of attack does not vary: the malcontents do not want a black actor to play a supposedly white character in the original work.

On Twitter, a hashtag “Not My Ariel”

recently accumulated several thousand comments pointing to the skin color of the mermaid.

A "cultural appropriation with Disney

sauce ", tackles a surfer, the following believing that Halle Bailey's locks are "not hair", another denouncing "the ruin of the treasures of our childhood"... Some even launched into pseudoscientific explanations: an American blogger close to the extreme right tried to explain that a black mermaid was

because her skin, protected from the sun by the depth of the water, did not

didn't need to produce melanin.

Another photoshopped Halle Bailey, whitewashing her, believing that he had thus… “fixed” her.

The reflection of a “more mixed” society

Same attacks on Steve Toussaint, aka Lord Corlys Velaryon, key character in "House of the Dragon"—described in George RR Martin's original work as having purple eyes and white-blond hair, but with no details on the skin color.

“When we were criminals, pirates and slaves in the other series

, you agreed.

But since this guy is the richest in the series and he is noble, that poses a problem for you, ”denounced the actor in The Guardian.

The black elves and dwarves of the "Rings of Power", a prequel to Lord of the Rings, were also targeted, so much so that the production had to issue a statement of support to the actors.

How to explain so much hatred?

Nathanael is a Disney fan.

The new Little Black Mermaid is "no problem for him," he says.

“Racism is unbearable.

But I think not all attacks were.

It's more of an attachment to a classic: Ariel is one of Disney's mythical characters, moreover, most people don't even know that there is a book behind it!

However, modifying the aesthetics of what they cherish to such an extent is destabilizing.

They feel like their baby is being stolen from them…”

Read alsoRacist clichés: why certain Disney characters are problematic

However, this is where the shoe pinches, for Tarik Laghdiri, a director from Seine-Saint-Denis, where he co-founded a film school with actor Steve Tientcheu.

For him, to refuse the arrival of black characters in fiction is to refuse to live with the times.

“Works made at a certain time correspond to that time.

Tolkien

, in the 1940s, was probably not surrounded by blacks or Arabs.

Today, someone who adapts his work has other points of reference, he lives in a more mixed society — especially in the United States — so it's normal that he wants his film to stick to that, as long as it respects the original mechanics of the story", analyzes the young director.

Who gets annoyed that we can be "stunned" by the skin color "of a character who does not exist, therefore who can be illustrated as the artist sees fit".

"A business aspect" to address all audiences

A “more faithful representation of life”, it is, according to this thirty-year-old who grew up in Aulnay-sous-Bois, which explains the reaction of the black girls who saw the trailer for the new Little Mermaid.

As Priscillia, a mother from Blanc-Mesnil, explains.

“My 9-year-old daughter had a bit of the same reaction when she saw the video.

She noted with a big smile that the heroine—she has the Disney book on a shelf—was for once the same color as her.

She said it was the first time!

»

Behind these videos of joy that have poured in, hides the sign that young people can finally "identify" with their heroes, welcomes Tarik Laghdiri.

“We were conditioned to white actors, white characters… Even the manga

or

, which were all the rage in the 1990s, are purely Japanese, but drawn like white people.

It didn't shock us at the time… we didn't know it could be otherwise, ”he deciphers.

Noting – in passing – that there is also “probably a business aspect”, since producers like Disney “are now targeting all of society”, he judges.

More simply, says Tarik Laghdiri again, the wave of hatred that swept over these black actors is also the sad sign of a society where racism is latent.

“These people are like snipers, ambushed in social networks.

They wait for the slightest opportunity to draw.

Everything is good for them: even a cartoon, even a child.

They are loud, but they are a minority.

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