The Little Mermaid (2023)

 

Disney's live action remake of its 1989 animated feature The Little Mermaid, which was also staged on Broadway in 2008, has opened to large audiences.

When Disney announced that Halle Bailey was being cast as the lead underwater damsel who longs to walk among the humans, fans got to work crafting posters.

To my eye, the fans' renderings of Ariel, which looked sort of like Bailey but not really, were much more provocative, featured more decolletage, than what Disney's artists had imagined.

Few had imagined that, as in the case of Bailey, that the winsome mermaid would have braided hair in the style of many Black women.

And Disney, who introduced the idea of the high-concept motion picture boondoggle with accompanying merchandise, has a number of Ariel dolls for sale. One has brown rotini hair.