In July, 2019, Disney announced that R&B singer and actor Halle Bailey would play Ariel in the live action remake of their hugely successful 1989 film, The Little Mermaid. Sadly, and predictably, there was a backlash against this casting choice. Many fans of the original Disney film could see no other mermaid than a pale-skinned one with red hair. Much ugliness ensued, especially online, from the hashtag #notmymermaid to petitions claiming that a black mermaid was “a betrayal of Ariel’s original creator”. Bailey kept quiet, before eventually releasing a statement saying, “I am beginning to understand this film is something so much bigger than me.”
Indeed. We’ve been dreaming up and writing about mermaids – pre-Christian water goddesses – for thousands of years, but it is notable that one of the first of these folkloric creatures to be written about was a black mermaid. Atargatis was an Assyrian goddess who had a human lover called Hadad, a shepherd, whom she killed by accident. The legends vary on how this happened, but the one I like most is that she overwhelmed him with her powerful lovemaking. They had a child together but so bereft was Atargatis at the death of her lover that she tried to drown herself in a lake. The Gods saved her by turning her into a mermaid.
While mermaids are fantasy figures, a figment of our collective unconscious, there have been many hoaxes and claimed sightings. Columbus was said to have spotted mermaids on one of his voyages and complained they were ugly. Somehow, though, we are drawn to them as a kind of impossible lover, a figure of our own thwarted desires; an alien, unattainable creature.
They are figures of the male gaze, popularised by men from Homer to Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid) to Freidrich de la Motte Fouque (Undine). We have created mermaids as seductive nymphs, alluring but dangerous as they tempt sailors on to the rocks, as in the Odysseus myth. Often the source of blame, or the result of a curse, mermaids are also shamed and exiled. So the mermaid is in some ways powerful and divine but she is also a woman trapped and de-sexed.
In Andersen’s famous story, the little mermaid agrees to a terrible pact; to have her tongue cut out and surrender her charming voice to the sea witch in return for a reunion with the prince she loves. She will swap her fish tail for legs, but the transformation will cause her terrible pain. With every step, it will feel as though she is treading on glass. She goes ahead anyway, and the prince treats this mute damaged creature like a pet, and marries someone else.
Andersen’s sinister fairytale has its critics. The little stone statue in Copenhagen harbour has been repeatedly vandalised – in 1964 her head was sawn off, an arm was removed in 1984 and she was decapitated again in 1998. Then, in 2003 she was blown off her base with heavy explosives. She has been daubed with paint on International Women’s Day and was once given a dildo to hold, so hostile are Denmark’s feminists to their national symbol.
And the Disney adaptation is hardly faithful to the source material. Ariel does make a pact with the sea witch, Ursula, but she suffers no pain as she walks and in the end her voice is restored and she marries her prince. Happy, easy, sweet. In the light of this rewrite, the #notmymermaid hashtag is ridiculous, as is the suggestion that Bailey is a corruption of the mermaid that fans know and love. In many ways the 1989 Ariel is far more of a corruption of the original Danish character, who sought not just love but immortality too. Bikini-clad, love-struck, naive Ariel is a doe-eyed, sugar-coated American teenager. Despite this, the Disney film does remain true to the outsider nature of the mermaid in one way: Ariel’s theme song, “Part of Your World” explores the idea of her otherness and her status as an outcast or exile.
There are many more non-white mermaid myths than there are mermaids who look like Ariel. Black and brown mermaids can be found in the Middle East, Africa and India, and mermaids are often found in Caribbean art and folklore. One of the best known mermaid artists is Canute Caliste from Carriacou in the Grenadines, who swore he’d seen the creatures. Mermaids are also found in China, Korea and Japan; there is an Indian mermaid princess called Suvannamaccha and the African water deity Mami Wata.
Mami Wata, who also appears in Caribbean folk lore, is an ancient goddess who often appears with a mirror in her hand and a large snake wrapped around her; paradoxically she represents both lust and fidelity. She appears to travellers, and often seduces them into her world under the sea. Should she allow them to leave, the travellers return to land with dry clothes and a new spiritual understanding; they grow wealthier, more attractive and successful. In Benin, Togo and Ghana, Mami Wata is revered and there is a complex priesthood associated with her.
The remake of The Little Mermaid goes into production next month. Bailey, a woman of colour, will give Ariel a much-needed update as to who she really is, the quintessential symbol of otherness. She will also signify a meaningful reclamation of the truth, that there are an awful lot more black mermaids in the world’s oceans and rivers than there are white.
• The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey is published by Peepal Tree on 2 April.
