| Shatts said:
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It's ok in every world.
Game companies, movie companies, or whoever, are business people. It is perfectly within their rights to make whatever changes they want to a character they own (setting aside the morality of how much control a company like Disney has over a character as opposed to the artist that actually does the work) to make it marketable. And, the audience can vote with their wallets. Personally, I would have been more likely to see the Little Mermaid if Ariel looked more like Alyssa Milano (who she was modeled after), because that would hit my nostalgia buttons more. If the market tends to agree, then I suspect Disney will adjust accordingly. But, I don't feel I have any right to be offended about Ariel being played by Hailey Bailey. And if people like this better, that's cool too.
Lets not forget that this is what companies have ALWAYS done. For example, gay people didn't really exist in movies or TV until the 90s. This was done specifically to appeal to a certain demographic who would get very upset if you had lbgt characters. Disney Princesses where white until Aladdin. I don't think that was simply a coincidence, that was what they thought would sell. And, again, companies can do what they please, but people can't complain about companies catering to a certain demographic now when they hadn't been bothered at all when they were the ones being catered to.
But what's more troubling is that these kinds of arguments only pop up when a character is changed to become part of a marginalized group. For example, let's take a look at Aunt May in the new Marvel movies.
Rosemary Harris, Aunt May in the Raimi film, was basically a perfect representation of Aunt May from the original comics. She was bizarrely old (why is Peter's Aunt his Grandma?) and mostly existed to worry about Peter to make him think twice of being Spider-man. On the other hand we have Marissa Tomei, who is a total smokeshow, encourages Peter to Spider-man it up, and is considerably younger than Aunt May was ever portrayed.
They really changed Aunt May, but nobody really had much of an issue with it. In Disney's Beauty and the Beast remake, the French Belle spoke in a British accent, and nobody cared. Batman in Batman vs Superman was shooting up motherfuckers in the most anti-Batman way possible and there really wasn't a huge outcry. In fact, many of the Snyderverse people who accepted this drastic change that completely alters the character are likely the same that are upset by a black mermaid.
Point being, we're ok with all kinds of changes and new interpretations. It's only when race, sexuality, or gender gets involved that people start clutching pearls and talking about the integrity of the source material.
And, it doesn't even seem to matter if a character is actually being changed or not. Ghostbusters had entirely different characters that were now females, and got the same kind of vitriolic reaction that went far beyond whether it was a good movie or not. She-Hulk and Ms Marvel had always been females and were pretty comic accurate portrayals, yet they also got the same kind of treatment. When Pixar made Turning Red, a film with a female Chinese-Canadian main protagonist going through metaphorical puberty, again there was lots of hatred, this time justified by talking about how the film was not relatable, because we can relate to toys, bugs, fish, and physical manifestations of abstract concepts, but not an Asian girl having her first period.
Point of this rant, which isn't necessarily targeted at you but is more of a general rant, is that there is pretty often a harsh and hateful response when a woman, person of color, or LBGTQ person is the star of a movie or sometimes just in the movie. There are various legitimate sounding explanations. Historical accuracy, source material accuracy, etc., but when you take a closer look, people really don't make a big deal of these things in other circumstances. It really seems like these are just pretenses for people to avoid the saying what they're actually upset about.
As for the actual topic, not much to add really. There is certainly room for valid criticism of Anita, but that was not what happened. And that's something that I think happens a lot. Kind of like with the stuff I mentioned above, people find some justification to be upset about something involving a minority group and use it as an opportunity to just vent out all of their hatred.
Video games have brought me tons of joy in my life, and it fucking sucks that so many in the community try to gatekeep it. It's especially bizarre because a lot of guys work really hard to keep women out of the space, but also want girlfriends who are into gaming. There'd be a lot more of them out there if men were less shitty.
