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.
There is nothing new about a shoe fetish. Fairy tales have long featured amazing, high-tech footwear: from seven-league boots to glass slippers to red shoes.
The Industrial Revolution choked English cities in smog, filled rivers with waste and spread disease in crowded cities. At the same time, fairy tales about humans destroying nature proliferated.