OSMIŠLJAVANJE CRNE ARIJEL IZ FILMA MALA SIRENA MEĐU RAZLIČITIM BELIM PUBLIKAMA
THE MEANING-MAKING OF BLACK ARIEL IN THE LITTLE MERMAID AMONG VARIOUS WHITE AUDIENCES

Summary/Abstract: The film The Little Mermaid and the series Rings of Power and House of the Dragon drew public attention in 2022 to the trend of increasing racial diversity among the main protagonists in films and TV series over the past decade. What is common to these productions is that they are all new adaptations of globally popular book-toscreen adaptations, and in all three, the main protagonists were Black compared to the original adaptations featuring a White cast. After the audience noticed the changes in the cast, various discourses were promoted in the public sphere, some of which welcomed the changes while others viewed them as unscrupulous revisionism that should be boycotted. In order to contribute to the public debate on this topic, this paper will utilise psychological theories and empirical evidence to support the thesis that a diverse cast can contribute to a moderate reduction in average racial prejudices in a global White audience. According to the vicarious contact hypothesis, the White audience, based on observing the positive intergroup contacts that Black Ariel makes with White characters, can conceptualize the possibilities of establishing better intergroup contacts in their own lives. According to the mere exposure effect, it is beneficial for the White audience to be simply exposed to Black actors, and according to the parasocial contact hypothesis, what’s beneficial is the intense, hours-long relationship with specific actors or characters mediated through the screen. One obstacle to the claim that the aformentioned studies support the thesis is that in registered average reductions in prejudices, there are always participants who show a significantly greater shift than the average, as well as those for whom there is no change. The thesis is futher supported with situated understanding of narrow White publics that can use the Black Ariel to meaningfully shape their intergroup experiences beyond the screen. I have considered two possible audiences. The first audience is immersed in the meanings of woke culture, which offers a certain number of discourses through which they can position themselves regarding the Black Ariel. I argued that this audience will not conceptualize a diverse cast as a resource to improve their intergroup contacts, only to possition themselves in the discourse of structural rasicm. The second audience will consume these revised contents merely as traditional cultural elements, even as common-sense elements of natural reality, making it easier for Black Ariel to subsequently become an implicit or explicit symbolic resource for the audience to shape better intergroup experiences beyond the screen.

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