MovieChat Forums > The Little Mermaid (2023) Discussion > It's funny because in the live action Be...

It's funny because in the live action Beauty and the Beast they cast...

posted a year ago by FootOfDavros (6758)
26 replies | jump to latest

... that really unattractive girl from the Harry Potter films as the BEAUTY, even although she clearly is not beautiful (apologies, I appreciate we aren't supposed to be able to differentiate any more and can't even use words like ugly).

And no one complained! Yet here we have this stupid tirade of nonsense simply because of the actress's skin color in this one!

So, don't follow a fairytale character's written, erm, characteristics in one film = that's okay 👍.

Then don't follow them in another = Outrageous!

Utter hypocrisy of the highest order.

[–] [deleted] a year ago

Emma Watson is very beautiful.

[–] Burk48917 (10993) a year ago

The vast majority of heterosexual men would consider her beautiful.
https://fashionandstylepolice.com/2021/04/16/beauty-muse-emma-watson/

[–] FootOfDavros (6758) a year ago

It's kind of funny you referenced heterosexual men and then posted a link to a fashion and style website!

But seriously, perhaps calling her "really unattractive" was a bit harsh but I still think the logic of the argument is sound - she's hardly what the vast majority of heterosexual men would consider an incredible "beauty". In fact forget men altogether, she's hardly what many women growing up with Disney Princesses would have considered as the personification of the Belle either.

And that was the point. If you can have a Belle who isn't a particular beauty without too much complaint, why are people getting angry about the skin tone of a fictional mermaid character...

[–] HarveyManFredSin (4877) a year ago

I think both complaints are theoretically silly (mermaids can be any race FFS, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it's arguable that Belle's beauty was spiritual just as much as it was physical), but also, to some degree, valid, if one assumes that these films are supposed to be *direct* live-action facsimiles of the original animated films (where Ariel is a red-headed white woman, and Belle is perhaps more classically beautiful).

Clearly, some of the people complaining about Ariel are racists and simply offended that a 'Black actress is taking a white role', but I won't deny that my ideal casting for Ariel, Belle and Cinderella would be actors who more accurately resemble the original animated characters, because I'm weirdly particular about those types of things (I mean, with Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, they're clearly going for a type who more closely resembles the original character, so to speak, but neither Halle Bailey nor Javier Bardem look much like their original counterparts).

[–] Truthtalker (1871) a year ago

you must be gay