People might go to the movies to escape reality. Yet Barbie and Ariel choose to live in the world their audiences inhabit − and, in doing so, decide to die.
Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
Courtesy of Disney
From Ancient Mesopotamia to Shakespeare to Arnhem Land, humans have been telling tails of mermaids for millennia.
A coffin made to resemble a mermaid at a Ga funeral. The Ga people live along the southeast coast of Ghana.
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Disney’s new Black mermaid has been called ‘inauthentic’ – but fairy tales have always been repurposed across cultures. And Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid was different from Disney’s.