In Defense of Ariel's New Hair

The idea of a remake can be alarming to a lot of people. But the whole point of a remake is borrowing an old tale and making a new spin. There are some people that might not know the history of Ariel’s hair

The little mermaid is one of my favorite animated movies. Hearing about the live-action has made me more excited for a Disney remake than I’ve ever been because of my childhood love for her. I’ll admit it caught me off guard with the news about Ariel’s casting, but then I had to look at a different perspective that I’m going to share.

But here’s the strange thing, there was a Tumblr post where someone shared that they were alarm to see the black actress sporting red hair by saying and I quote, “Black women don’t look good with red hair”

Thankfully the Internet was pretty quick to cut down the critique by showing a collage of various women all sporting hot red locks.

If the black actress was going to be sporting red hair, it was going to be accepted.

However to the shock of everyone when the teaser trailer was released of Hallie Bailey with a different hair color than what was expected. People thought they were going to get the redheaded Ariel, and I don’t blame the audience because it says on the IMDb page a remake of the animated tale.

After the trailer dropped, the news spread around about how they did not like how the new Ariel looks in any way. It was an abscess of animosity. Disgusting to see that this woman is paving the way for other black actresses by being the first African-American to portray a Disney princess that is a dominated white character.

When I was asking my friends their thoughts about the Little mermaid, their focus was also on the hair.

See, here’s the thing. Ariel was not supposed to have red hair.

During the production, it was an executive decision to have her hair red because there was already a mermaid with blonde hair in the 1980s. When Splash came out, the Disney studio was afraid that audeinces would see this as the animated remake of Splash. Even though the original story had Ariel with long blonde locks, the studio needed to make a change. There has to be an end easy indicator for audiences to differentiate the characters. With two blonde mermaids, people would remember the redheaded Ariel and never think that it’s supposed to be a remake of splash. The risky move paid off, and people always associate Ariel with red hair. However now everyone thinks Ariel supposed to have red hair. With the remake, people were disappointed.

This is supposed to be There were certain creative liberties that some of our new remix have taken from the old remix to pay homage. There’s nothing wrong with that and it does help tie everything together. It’s too soon to judge the movie just because the main character does not have red hair. There’s been numerous famous characters that I’ve had a hair color change like Vicky vale in the Batman series, Lois Lane in the Superman series.

We still don’t know what Ursula looks like, we don’t know what flounder looks like we don’t know what Sebastian looks like. I’m still scared to know what Ursula looks like but I would hope that she would have purple skin and white hair. But if there’s a change to Ursula that means she won’t have purple skin or white hair, so be it. It’s just going to have to happen with what the production decides.

The thing that I hope audiences can take away from is this is a new chance to have a fresh new spin on the little mermaid, that’s what the whole point of a remake is about.

This little mermaid still has a unique look. Ariel has always looked unique. Of all of the characters that have been created have you ever seen one that has actually looked different? Sleeping beauty looks the same, Cinderella looks the same. It’s rare that we get a character that deviates from the original form, look at Snow White and the Huntsman. That was a different version of snow white with long black hair and a rugged appearance.

With Ariel's original design of blonde hair, and then the change to red in the 80s, and now we have the new look of Ariel. In my opinion, (you don't have to agree with me on this). This looks like a compromise to combine all the different ariels. It still looks blonde, it's not dark red, but it's not like the other two which is a good thing.

The new Ariel’s hair being a different color, that’s going to help make every Ariel unique. Ariel is one of the few characters to be remade.

Can we all stop being poor unfortunate souls about this whole thing and let Hallie Berry impress us in the new upcoming mermaid movie?