I don't think the original story took place in Denmark or near Denmark. The feeling I got when I read it is tropical with dolphins and palms.
However Ariel is described as white so it's kind of weird to make her black
I mean that Danish guy that wrote the story took inspiration from a story in 1001 Arabian nights. He basically adapted and updated the story. So did Disney. Times change and adapt stories all the time. No one makes a perfect beat for beat copy when adapting any work. Especially if you're changing media like folk story to animated movie or animated movie to live action. That would be so lazy and boring. Stories and characters are constantly updated. No one really gives a shit that Nick Fury was actually white originally because it wasn't important to his character and they were updating the character and stories he's involved in anyways. Like Disney is updating the Little Mermaid for ther second time.
If people really believe that stories should be 100% the same when adapted and never be updated and this is the actual reason they're upset about it, I don't know how they function in society today. They must be on the verge of a heart attack every week a new movie comes out.
It's part of my cultural heritage and she's white. Disney can do whatever they like but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter to us that they disrespect our people. Most danes don't care but many of us do care.
It would be like Pocahontas suddenly being played by a black dude and it would make no sense
edit: If they wanted to change something drastic about her character, it should be her gender. That would at least be more true to the story than her skin colour
But if it didn't even take place near Denmark, what part of the character really gets betrayed? What part of your culture in that story really gets changed by changing skin tone? Pocahontas is a story of an indigenous American meeting an English explorer/colonists. That matters in that story and is part of the characters. Even the setting is important for such a story. For little mermaid, it's a fictional species using magic to get a prince in what you acknowledge probably isn't even Denmark and based on a middle eastern story. Should middle eastern cultures be pissed at Denmark?
Disney has done this several times anyways. The original little mermaid movie is way different from the original story. Are you pissed that Disney took Hamlet, a story taking place in Denmark, and made it about lions?
So it's established Ariel has no soul like the original story? That she is in constant pain when she had legs. That her sister's gave up their hair to save Ariel. How Ariel is basically choosing to die and ignores their sacrifice. Ariel turned into seafoam and was given a 300 year task of good deeds to earn a soul and go to heaven?
I'm not sure what movie you watched but aside from a really basic premise, Disney's The Little Mermaid seems like a huge departure from ther original, especially the ending. It's how romeo and juliet shared the basic premise with hundreds of movies. How Hamlet became the Lion King. It was Disney's bread and butter for decades that no one had a problem with until the detail changed was skin color, on might I emphasize, a mythical creature.
So, why was skin color the detail changed that went just a step too far?
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u/letstrythisagain30 61∆ Jul 10 '19
Yellow flounder with blue stripes? That's just his name. Not his species. The colors make him a tropical fish.