When Disney announced that they would be making a live-action interpretation of “The Little Mermaid”, I’m sure they weren’t expecting a sea of so much controversy.
Ever since it was publicized that Halle Bailey would be starring as Ariel in the movie, the internet has been in a frenzy.
The whole promotional period has been a mess, with people complaining about her hair not being red enough and her complextion apparently not being white enough.
According to the human fans, Disney’s unrealistic depiction of a half-fish creature that is in fact, not real, is greatly offensive to the mermaid community.
Who knew they were so vocal.
This entire Ariel debacle is genuinely baffling to me considering there is another character that was entirely wronged by the live-action interpretation of “The Little Mermaid”.
When are we as a society going to stop turning a blind eye toward the sin that is live-action Flounder?
In the original animated film, Flounder is Ariel’s best friend. He was a happy young fish, who stayed in his bubble and never did anything to hurt anyone else. Disney didn’t care though. They went out of their way to make Flounder a victim of modern day beauty standards and CGI crimes.
They drained him of his beautiful, saturated colors. They coerced him into getting all of his buccal fat removed and demanded that he become a devotee of extreme fitness and diet culture.
They even ripped his cute, joyous smile and his animated expressions away, leaving him with a permanent, lifeless grin reminiscent of those plastered onto the faces of your average 9-to-5 office workers who truly hate their jobs.
While he was once a young fish who was ready to explore the magnificent, deep ocean blue with his mermaid friend, he is now a flat, soulless, automaton of a fish who is en route to becoming a filet for someone’s Sunday fish dinner.
If you were wondering if any bold person tried to step in and fix this, don’t you worry. The heroes of society, anonymous Twitter users, thought that they would be able to rectify the situation at hand by giving CGI Flounder a makeover and designing an improved version of Ariel’s best buddy.
If you know anything about the revolutionary platform that is Twitter, not to mention all of the wonderful people who use it, then you would be totally correct in assuming that they made a bad situation even worse.
I mean so much worse.
The Twitter version of CGI Flounder can only be described as an abomination to the fish community. Its dark, soulless eyes were replaced with equally soulless green orbs that stare through your soul.
Unlike the live-action version of Flounder, this new version is actually expressive. By that, I mean he was given a borderline villainous smile paired with arched eyebrows plastered way too high up on his face, which makes it seem like he is going to harass you into giving him your lunch money.
Either that or he’s auditioning for the Jack Nicholson role in a remake of “The Shining”.
Flounder’s mistreatment is blatant. I propose we launch an investigation into Disney regarding the inequality that certain characters face on set because while Flounder looks like he is two steps away from being deep-fried, CGI Sebastian is the cutest little guy I have ever seen.
It’s pretty clear that Disney isn’t even trying to hide their favoritism.
It troubles me to no end to see how such loveable childhood creatures are being treated so poorly, while Disney puts all it’s undivided focus on their half-fish like characters: Ariel and Ursula.
Disney’s prejudice against real fish is being shown in full force, and it is up to us fans to make our voices heard loud and clear.
So instead of focusing on Ariel’s race in the upcoming live-action film compared to the original animated version, or nitpicking note changes Bailey makes in her version of the song ‘Part of Your World’, we should all be focusing on getting Flounder some justice.
As a Flounder supporter and well-wisher, I am hoping he will find peace someday.