THE RIGHT TO KITSCH ON

Of all things that are wrong about Andersen's original tale The Little Mermaid, the subsequent literary versions / variations / adaptations, followed by a whole slew of cinematic adaptations (I saw a site that lists no fewer than 21 of them, including one, in 1989, that has widely been credited with financially saving Disney animation for eternity), a story of the undisguised male fantasy of a half-female / half-fish character who falls in hetero-erotic love with a presumably full-human male, a semi-transgression of species boundaries . . . how risqué . . ., a female lead character almost totally locked in a near-total lack of female agency (an ages old male sadist fantasy), not to mention the overall re-articulation, again and again, of the male gaze,  probably the worst thing is the nagging sense of Kitsch (as, with Călinescu's "Benevolent Monster", that "specifically aesthetic form of lying"). The Little Mermaid is Kitsch, Kitsch, Kitsch, it's Kitsch everywhere . . . 

. . . so, with all that said, . . .

. . . the context of cultural consumption in the US is now reacting, very nervously, to the -- apparently, in the early 21st century, still too super-risqué -- directorial move that the newest cinematic adaptation of the story features an actress who is not "White". . . thus adding "race"-transgression to the species-semi-transgression of the original plot. . . featuring . . . 

. . . Halle Bailey, a young actress whose name makes her well-nigh indistinguishable from Halle Berry, one of the most popular African American actresses of another generation.

So what?

Well, after the release of the latest film version, (anti-)"social" media space is suddenly shot through with a slogan designed to create a political climate to reject the new Mermaid--why?

- Because the story, clearly, degrades women / girls by its half lecherous, half condescending male gaze?

- Because of its by now unbearable 19th-century, north European, Protestant, self-policing, heteronormative crap affirming the peak desirability of the worst bourgeois institution called conventional marriage?

- Because it's Kitsch. . . and Kitsch is bad for you?

Nope.

The "NotMyLittleMermaid" campaign bears the unmistakable character of a "race" riot. The thing that upsets the film's opponents is that, in the latest version, Ariel, the Little Mermaid, is not White. That goes to the point of employing online ratings bots, apparently designed to suppress the measured audience reception of the film, essentially aiming to kill it through the box office by decreasing its chances for distribution and advertising. Somebody has put considerable energy and money into destroying the perceived "race" transgression of the newest Little Mermaid. The whole story really broke because one of the ratings servers detected activity that seemed like a bot attack. As it turned out to be.

So, there's the inevitable countermovement, claiming her to be "MyLittleMermaid," etc. But does that help? In what?

Is US society, still, (re-)fighting Jim Crow in the symbolic realm? Is the collective mind still troubled whether / not, and if so, how, to segregate the right to partake in a particular identity construct? Is it really possible that nobody cares that the object of identity desire is female-subject-degrading Kitsch? Are people still fighting to prevail in their conflicting (???) identity claims for a sense of comfort in lying through art? When shall we reach the point of, I don't know, radical truth?

This is 2023.

THE RIGHT TO KITSCH OFF

#notmylittlemermaid #mylittlemermaid #Kitsch #racewar