Girls’ heartwarming reactions go viral amid 1.8 million dislikes on Little Mermaid trailer

Disney has been forced to disable dislikes on its trailer for The Little Mermaid, as racist objections over casting a black actress in the lead role flood Twitter.

Disney has had to disable dislikes on its teaser trailer for new live-action film The Little Mermaid after backlash due to casting a black actress in the title role.

However parents have been flooding social media with clips of their young daughters delighted that Ariel “is brown like me”.

The official trailer was posted on the Walt Disney Studios’ YouTube channel on Friday, quickly amassing 17 million views in a matter of days, reports the New York Post.

The video currently has more than 800,000 likes and counting, but Disney was forced to disable dislikes after receiving 1.8 million thumbs-downs in just two days, Daily Mail reported.

Singer and actress Halle Bailey stars as Ariel in The Little Mermaid. Picture: Disney

Some of those detractors have taken to Twitter to complain about Ariel being played by a black woman using the hashtag #NotMyAriel, but many others have called out the racist reaction, poking fun at the ridiculousness of the backlash.

Comments expressing disapproval of Bailey’s casting have noted that the original 1989 animated movie The Little Mermaid portrays Ariel as being white. But others have pointed out that she is a fictional character who lives in a magical world – and race does not factor into the character’s story.

Actress Jodi Benson, who voiced Ariel in the 1989 film, has supported Bailey’s reprisal of the iconic role since Disney first announced the casting.

“The most important thing is to tell the story,” Benson said.

Young girls’ reactions to Ariel go viral

Meanwhile, social media was flooded with adorable videos of little black girls excitedly discovering that the new Ariel, played by Halle Bailey, looks just like them.

One viral TikTok, captioned, “When your favourite Disney princess looks like you,” shows a three-year-old girl immediately sitting up once Ariel swims across the screen.

The girl gasps and becomes completely entranced by the trailer. She puts her hand over her heart and says, “I think she’s brown.”

Beaming, the young girl then says: “Brown Ariel is cute.” The video quickly amassed 5.3 million views and thousands of comments from people expressing their love for the heartwarming video – including a comment from Bailey herself.

“Oh my goodness, my heart,” the star wrote.

@preciousavery I love this for my 3 years old 🤎 #littlemermaid#toddlersoftiktok#hallebailey#girlpower♬ original sound - Precious & Emery

In another viral video, a baby girl becomes mesmerised by the trailer. When Ariel arrives on the screen and begins singing, the infant puts her toy down and stops playing, completely captivated by the trailer.

“Thank you for giving my baby this @halle,” mother Cheryl Neufville captioned the video, which has amassed 7.3 million views in less than 24 hours.

Bailey herself has reshared some of the adorable videos on her personal Twitter account.

“I just sobbed watching this. Thanks, she’s so sweet,” the singer commented on a video of a young black girl grinning throughout the whole trailer.

“That is Ariel?” the girl asks her mother in the video as she giggles excitedly.

Young girls lit up seeing a Little Mermaid that resembled them. Picture: TikTok

The actor also shared a video compilation of young girls overjoyed to see that the new Ariel “is brown like me”.

“People have been sending these reactions to me all weekend and I’m truly in awe. This means the world to me,” Bailey said on Twitter.

Disney announced in 2019 that the Grown-ish actor would star as the mermaid princess in the live-action remake of the classic children’s story – and was immediately hit with a range of reactions.

The film is set to be released in May 2023.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission