If I were to say that the discussion around the Disney live-action parade has been contentious, I would be roughly the 84,297th person to propose this. Historically, this sort of thing has just been the general opposition to Hollywood’s penchant for repackaged material, and how the Disney machine is specially equipped for this purpose. That's old hat. But something happens peculiar happens when the Disney machine shows a different face--when it looks like the parade might actually be leading the charge toward something like progress. When Disney announced on July 3, 2019 that the highly coveted role of Ariel, The Little Mermaid, would go to African-American actress, Halle Bailey, you saw a lot of excitement from crowds championing fair representation. You also saw a lot of outrage, most clear in the trending hashtag #NotMyAriel, revealing a face of social fury that ca...
“But isn’t it time we stopped accepting in film criticism an anti-emotional, phony rationalism which we know to be not just harmful, but absurd, in any other context? Isn’t it time we plucked up our courage and allowed our hearts as well as our heads to go the pictures?” Raymond Durgnat (Films and Feelings) 1971