The Little Mermaid animation was set under the sea in the kingdom of Atlantica and its adjacent surface world, both of which were believed to be located in Denmark. It's also where author Hans Christian Andersen, who penned the original story, was from.
Ariel's story really begins in Ancient Greece. According to lore, she is a nereid, one of the dozens of daughters of the sea-god Triton. This isn't the first time that the internet has been set alight over the suggestion that famous figures of antiquity could be anything but white.
Ariel is a mermaid princess and the youngest daughter of King Triton, ruler of the merpeople of Atlantica. She is fascinated with the human world despite never having seen it, as Triton forbids all merfolk from surfacing there after Ariel's mother was killed by a human.
He says they were looking for the best actor for the role of any ethnicity who could not only sing but convey traits such as strength, passion, beauty, joy and intelligence, which they found in Bailey.
Meanwhile, as Ariel explores the Caribbean island where the story takes place, The Little Mermaid even specifically mentions Brazil, another country that was notorious for its involvement in the slave trade in that time period.
First published in 1837, The Little Mermaid was written in Danish and titled Den lille havfrue. The Little Mermaid is a literary fairy tale. The plot is drawn from Hans Christian Andersen's imagination rather than a specific folktale.
While it is known that her mother perished, there is no story attached to the event. However, much later, in 2008, an animated The Little Mermaid prequel revealed that Ariel's mother was crushed by a pirate ship during an altercation between humans and merpeople.
All of king Triton's daughters represent their own seas all over the world and as such they are all different ethnicities in the movie. It is not specified where the movie takes place, i.e. where Ariel lives but it's obvious it's not in Denmark.
Is The Little Mermaid set in Denmark or Caribbean?
“The Disney artists moved the story from the frigid Baltic of Andersen's native Denmark to a warmer, sunnier that suggested the Mediterranean, probably off the coast of southern Italy. Elements in the costumes and building suggest an equally vague time in the late seventeenth or eighteenth century.
The Little Mermaid action takes place under the sea, in the kingdom of Atlantica that is supposedly located in Denmark, where Hans Christian Andersen is from. This may be true for an original story and in fact there is even a statue of Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark.
Rather, Ursula's appearance is radically different from her family, and she sports tentacles that look like a permanent black dress. It's possible Ursula is not a mermaid in appearance because she and Triton did not have the same mother or father. If they're half siblings, Ursula's tentacles make more sense.
Animated by Ruben A. Aquino, Ursula's original design was inspired by several different sea creatures, including manta rays and scorpion fish, before Clements finally decided to base the character on an octopus; her number of tentacles was reduced from eight to six for financial reasons.
Since the animated feature film had a white mermaid as Ariel, some people are angry that Disney has gone with a black actress in the live-action. Some people also believe that Hans Christian Andersen described the Little mermaid as a white mermaid in his book. Therefore, Disney should have cast a white actress instead.
Yes, in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, he describes the mermaid as having a “white skin.” Andersen was a Dane, he lived in a place where anyone who wasn't pasty-white (or the sun-damaged variation of pasty-white) was a rarity.
While Ariel is 16 years old in Disney animated The Little Mermaid film, her love interest is not the same age. The character's voice actor, Christopher Daniel Barnes, was just 16 years old at the time of recording the film, leading to the assumption that the character was intended to be the same age.
As Ariel is half fish, she cannot be categorized by our ethnicities and races. The animated “Little Mermaid” movie only portrayed her with light skin and red hair because that was the American interpretation at the time.
Prince Eric's castle, among other things, also draws from the Caribbean setting. The Little Mermaid actually filmed in London's Pinewood Studios and the Italian island of Sardinia, which is a far cry from the Caribbean itself, though Prince Eric's island kingdom is itself fictitious.
However, their accents are always a clear indication of their true behavior and intention. In The Little Mermaid, for example, dialects range from Ariel's Standard American accent, to the French accent spoken by the evil Chef, and Sebastian's Jamaican accent.
There are several instances when Eric's mother Queen Salina (Noma Dumezweni), who is Black and adopted him as a child when he washed up from the ocean, chastises him for his obvious love for beings that are considered other.
In Anderson's telling and the original Disney film, the mermaid possessed white skin. In Disney's upcoming live action version of the story, Ariel will be portrayed by black actress and singer Halle Bailey.
