With the new live action remake of Disney’s The Little Mermaid hitting the headlines as some so-called fans unhappy with Ariel being black, a marine biologist has now said that it “makes sense”.
Disney have cast the role of Ariel as a black woman, while the 1989 animated film depicted the fictional mermaid as a white woman with red hair
Played by Halle Bailey and with a film trailer released, some fans have been outraged with them taking to Twitter to fume #NotMyAriel.
READ NEXT: Disney’s The Little Mermaid trailer sees Halle Bailey take on iconic song
The unimpressed people online have been sharing theories online and urging people that Ariel “can’t be a black woman”, seemingly forgetting that mermaids aren’t real and fish can’t speak.
(Image: DISNEY)
Karen Osborn, curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History spoke to Buzzfeed, where she shut down the theories that the mermaid “can’t be black”.
“As you move through the water column – as you dive deeper and deeper – right at the surface, a lot of things are blue, because you blend in with the sky behind you for predators that are down below looking up,” explained Karen.
“And then you have a bunch of mirrored animals, so they just reflect whatever’s around them and that’s a good camouflage in shallow water,” the marine specialist continued.
(Image: Press Association)
“As you get deeper, you see animals that are pigmented or deep red [because] there’s hardly any red light in the deep sea, so being red is effectively being black.”
Karen explained how in the sea there are lots of “ultra-black fish”.
Speaking hypothetically, she said that mermaids would likely be “transparent” and if they were, this would mean they “can blend in pretty well”.
(Image: Getty Images for IMDb)
Although there has been an array of #NotMyAriel tweets, with people calling for the character to be portrayed as a white woman – lots of people are shutting down the hashtag.
One person recently penned: “#NotMyAriel, has a racist tone to it. It’s a fictional character which y’all don’t have no ownership to choose. So [what you mean] it’s not your Ariel? Or she just doesn’t fit your description?”
As well as Halle Bailey starring in the live action remake, Melissa McCarthy will appear in the movie playing the role of sea witch Ursula, and Javier Bardem will play Ariel’s dad, King Triton.
For more of the latest showbiz news from Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.
READ NEXT:
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
