In July 2019, Halle Bailey was casted to play Ariel in the live action of the Little Mermaid, what sparked a huge amount of online discourse, most if not all this controversy was centered around Halle, a black woman portraying Ariel, a traditionally white character, led to a worldwide discussion of race and representation. Various articles and forums responded to this topic, each using different strategies to get their point clear to the audience. 

One of these articles was titled “The white nostalgia fueling the Little Mermaid’s backlash” an opinion-based article published in the Washington Post by Brooke Newman, a British historian with a big interest in subjects about race, the abolition of slavery and today’s politics, it is important to mention that she is a white woman for us to understand more clearly her point of view and where she might be coming from. 

The article was written surrounding the #notmyariel hashtag being the number one topic across social media at that moment, with hopes that those using the hashtag might see it and be persuaded into acknowledging that race-switching characters may lead to good outcomes. We can see how Newman uses white nostalgia to try to explain why people might be making such a big deal out of it, and emphasizing that today’s America is way more diverse, and children deserve to have representation on TV.

Newman uses two out of the three rhetorical appeals in her article; LOGOS as she uses scientific facts and studies such as Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s Doll Test from the 40’s, and ETHOS as she makes a great use of her PhD in history and politics by talking about how Donald Trump campaign as an example of white nostalgia. 

On the other hand, we have a completely different point of view in “I don’t want a black ariel – why we shouldn’t be satisfied with race-switching” an opinion-based post published in Medium, an online publishing platform, by an Anonymous movie reviewer, despite being anonymous we know that the author is a black man, which makes it even more surprising due to the content being in disapproval of Ariel being race-switched to a black mermaid.

Even though the title explicitly expresses how the author doesn’t want a black Ariel, he later says that it has nothing to do with Halle Bailey, but more about film studios doing to bare minimum for inclusion. It is a way to tell those film studios who might see the post that instead of race switching characters they should focus more on making new stories with proper cultural significance and portrayals.

In this case the author only uses one rhetorical appeal; PATHOS, as he uses more of an informal way of expressing his ideas, making the audience feel more comfortable reading the post as opposed to how they might feel reading it in a more formal way.

Now, from my perspective I can see what both authors are trying to achieve and why they might feel how they feel, but even though I agree with both to certain extent I see myself leaning more towards the Anonymous movie reviewer point of view, not because of Halle Bailey, on the contrary I thought her portrayal of Ariel was amazing and her voice was definitely the best fit for the role; but just like the author I believe that there’s better ways to  introduce representation and inclusivity without making it feel forced.

Some stories are not meant to be changed, not even to make them more “approachable,” so instead of race-switching well stablished characters as a way of inclusion, film studios should start focusing on creating new stories that display the diversity of humans. Movies such as Encanto (based in Colombia) and Coco (Mexican culture) are great examples on how new movies can be made that properly portray a culture and its people, and then there’s also movies such as The Princess and the Frog that show that new characters can be made for representation instead of taking what was already done and just changing their race.