Looks Can Kill

Why Live Action Remakes Should Cast Actors That Fit the Original Characters

Photo by Lydia Turner on Unsplash

Over the last few years, Disney has been on a roll producing live action films of old Disney princess movies. These live action movies bring back the nostalgia of now teenage girls' childhoods, who grew up with these princesses. While the new movies have been a hit, there are some details in the most recent Disney live action movies that have some viewers questioning Disney's judgment. While it is important to be inclusive of different ethnic groups, there are other ways to go about it that benefit all groups involved. Keeping characters similar to their original appearance keeps the original magic of the animated film. If Disney added new characters with more diverse backgrounds instead of recreating the original characters, the effort for diversity would be much more significant.

This summer Disney released a live action version of “The Little Mermaid.” The movie was successful, breaking viewing records when it came out on Disney Plus on Sept. 6.  However, for those who watched the original animated version of “The Little Mermaid” as a child, they remember one of the main characters a little differently. The actress casted for the main character, Ariel, was actress Halle Bailey who is a Black actress. Even though Bailey did an incredible job as an actress, she did not give the best portrayal of the original character of Disney's animated “Little Mermaid.” While younger Black girls viewing this character can gain a feeling of inspiration by seeing a Disney princess of their ethnicity, Disney could make a stronger statement towards their efforts to include and represent all groups by adding to their princess canon.

“They [live action Disney movies] would hold more nostalgia because you could look back and compare the characters,” senior Hannah Murphy said. “You would be able to feel the happiness of seeing one of your favorite childhood Disney movies in a more relatable way now that we are grown up.”

This has not been the only issue with casting in live action Disney movies. After the announcement of the live action casting for the movie “Lilo and Stitch”, fans were disappointed. The actress playing the role of Nani, Lilo's older sister, is  biracial and light-skinned, yet the character in the original movie  was shown having darker skin, black hair and stronger features. A similar case was made about Disney’s “Aladdin'' remake, where Disney was accused of white-washing the characters instead of casting darker skinned, Arabic or middle-eastern actors and actresses. If Disney truly wanted to tackle their lack of inclusivity, they would have honored diverse groups by casting actors and actresses that represent those groups, not light-skinned actors that vaguely fit the narrative. If Disney preserved the features of characters from the original Disney films, there would not be as much of an uproar about these new films.

It appears that Disney is taking shortcuts to seem inclusive by merely casting diverse actresses in roles that were white in the cartoon versions. To elaborate, it was not until 1992 that Disney inducted a non-white princess into the Disney canon. That princess was Jasmine, and it had taken Disney 55 years to include a non-white princess. Since then, Disney has included four more non-white princesses, bringing the total to five. It is hard to determine how many princesses there are in total as Disney continually changes the court of “official” princesses, but it is not wrong to say that Disney needs to close the gap. Disney comes out with new characters on a fairly regular basis; This year in November, for example, Disney will release a new movie “Wish” with a new princess Asha, who will be Afro-Latina. Instead of changing the race of characters who already exist in the Disney universe, it would be more culturally meaningful to create new characters with different ethnic backgrounds.

“I think they [Disney] should just make a whole new story and plot line overall,” junior Bella Feijoo said. “And just leave the originals alone and come up with something new.”

Most people know “The Little Mermaid” as a popular Disney film, but the story was not originally Disney's. Hans Christian Andersen first wrote a fairy tale about a mermaid who fell in love with a human prince. Published in 1837, this story was called “The Little Mermaid” and is very different from Disney’s saccharine version. In Andersen’s story, the little mermaid cuts out her tongue, fails to make the prince fall in love with her despite the excruciating pain after obtaining legs from the sea witch and dissolves into seafoam after refusing to kill the prince. Disney changed a great amount of details to produce their sanitized “The Little Mermaid” movies, which brought them millions of dollars, which increased even further after the most recent live action version of “The Little Mermaid.” It may appear to some that Disney is not to diversify their cast in the spirit of inclusivity and representation, but to drive profits undercutting the very core message of diversity and inclusion.

“I was very hesitant about them [Disney live action films] as someone who grew up in the 90s with a lot of these Disney Movies,” upper school history teacher Christine Piepmeier said.  “And just didn't really feel like they needed to make a bunch of these movies because the originals were so good. It just kind of felt like a way to try to get more money than really try to make an effort to redo them.”

Disney's original panel princesses have not included nearly enough diversity. It is important that different nationalities are represented and included, but there are better ways to go about it than what is currently being done. There are ways to add more diversity without changing the theme of original disney characters.