Part of whose world? How The Little Mermaid (2023) attempts to revise the racist tropes of the 1989 animated film musical

Abstract

The Little Mermaid (1989) has been the subject of much critical discussion but there has been little attention paid to its representation of race. Utilising textual analysis and drawing upon relevant critical paradigms from Disney studies and scholarship of film musicals, this article argues that The Little Mermaid was an implicitly racist narrative. Through analysis of the musical sequences this article shows how The Little Mermaid created a dichotomy between an exclusively white land life that is coded as superior to multiethnic Mer life. While white society on land is represented as postindustrial, well ordered and crime free, the multiethnic culture under the sea is coded not only as sexually unbridled, where promiscuous fish all “get the urge and start to play” with each other’s bodies, but as a thoroughly corrupt society racked with Welfare Queen coded villainesses dealing in black magic. The article contends that the 2023 remake attempts to revise many of the racist tropes of the original song sequences but, in its depiction of a society in which racial difference is devoid of socio-political significance, The Little Mermaid (2023)—especially in its Berkeley inspired dance sequences—reduces racial difference to a mere aesthetic of colour.