Some thoughts on wokeness and the arts.

Andrew Sullivan

Jun 9, 2023

Out of a no-doubt misplaced sense of civic duty, I went to see The Little Mermaid’s live-action re-make this week. And it was curiously deflating. It was about 20 minutes too long; the new ballad, penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda, for Prince Eric, was a melody-free, obviously auto-tuned dirge; Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula was strangely flat with bad makeup (no gays were involved); and even the crab, the bird and the fish tag-alongs worked much better as cartoons. The one saving grace was Halle Bailey’s spectacular performance — and her early show-stopper, “Part of Your World,” brought a classic gay Disney lump to my throat.

Her race? Completely irrelevant to the plot — but, it seems to me, a case study in why minority representation is well worth doing, if done right.

There was no clunky, ideological message attached. And there’s no reason a mermaid has to be “white”. Giving the starring princess role to a non-white actress was a completely cost-free way to give young girls of color a sense they belong in the Disney universe — try to watch this reax without tearing up. The casting also had the advantage of giving us an inter-racial (as well as inter-species!) love story. And that love story, by the way, was very old-school, with Prince Eric a near-model of gentlemanly grace — a teenage girl’s fantasy of a non-threatening male.

And then, this being 2023, the movie decided to have the prince’s stepmother be a black woman with an English accent, and her benign prime minister be a South Asian. And so a movie that in one important respect transcended woke excess, then sank back right into it, with bells on. Sigh.

One of the routine smears of those of us who oppose wokeness is that we do not believe in minority representation. But we do! Making movies and television that can appeal to a wide variety of people in the most multiracial society in human history is a good thing — and capitalism will reward it. However terrible most “gay movies” are, it’s wonderful when gay characters can be integrated on screen the way we are in life — think of Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, or Barry Jenkins’ shockingly brilliant Moonlight. Or more recently, there’s the best episode from The Last of Us, when a gay male couple’s post-apocalyptic love affair took poignant and realistic flight. The ferociously edgy White Lotus did the same, including hilarious, fully realized gay characters who just seemed a natural part of the story.

When it comes to race, the creator of the excellent Netflix show Beef, Lee Sung Jin, has the right idea:

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