Parents are posting TikToks of their kids reacting to 'The Little Mermaid' trailer in response to ra

• Disney released the first trailer for "The Little Mermaid" on September 9.
• Actor Halle Bailey, who is playing the titular character, has received racist backlash for her role.
• Parents are now posting TikToks of their kids reacting to the trailer to combat those attitudes.

Parents are posting TikTok videos of their children reacting to the trailer for Disney's "The Little Mermaid" after actor Halle Bailey has faced racist backlash for her casting.

Videos showing kids, especially young Black girls, seeing Bailey as the titular character for the first time and singing "Part of Your World" have gotten millions of views.

One video posted by TikTok user @thedfwdad showed a dad playing the trailer for his two Black daughters. When they saw Bailey, one of the girls said, "She's Black? Yay!" The video received 1.3 million views. In the caption, the creator thanked Disney for making his kids "feel seen."

Another video by TikToker @preciousavery showed her daughter sitting up when she saw Bailey appear on screen with text on-screen stating, "When your favorite Disney princess looks like you." In the video, Emery said, "I think she's brown! Brown Ariel is so cute." The video received 5.3 million views.

Another viral video posted by TikTok user @jendayis682 showed a young girl asking whether Ariel is "actually Black" and the person recording the video responded, "In this 'Little Mermaid' she will be." 

The user wrote in the caption, "Say what you want and complain all you want I hear nothing over the joy and excitement that this little girl has over seeing a person that represent her."

Since the trailer was released on September 10, it has received over 13 million views on YouTube and the hashtag #thelittlemermaidtrailer has over 4.9 million views on TikTok, with the majority of the videos showing both adults and children reacting to the trailer.

Many of the TikTok videos were reposted in a Twitter thread that has over 80,000 retweets and nearly 500,000 likes. 

Bailey was announced as the lead in the live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid" in July 2019, and many were excited about the prospect of a Black woman playing an iconic Disney princess.

However, there was criticism of casting Bailey as Ariel as the character is portrayed as white with red hair in the traditional Hans Christian Andersen fairytale and in the 1989 animated version also released by Disney.

The hashtag #NotMyAriel trended on Twitter in the aftermath of her casting, prompting the movie's director to defend the casting in an interview with Variety. Freeform, a network owned by Disney which produces "Grown-ish," the show in which Bailey plays Sky Foster, also publicly supported Bailey.

The backlash reignited online after the release of the trailer, which received 1.5 million dislikes before the counter was disabled, according to Newsweek.

A widely-circulated tweet posted on September 12 by a now-suspended account appeared to change the trailer featuring Bailey to a white mermaid. The tweet, which was seen by Insider and later re-posted by other Twitter users, read, "He fixed The Little Mermaid and turned the woke actor into a ginger white girl," and, "It's over for wokecels."

In a recent interview with Variety, Bailey addressed the backlash and said, "I want the little girl in me and the little girls just like me who are watching to know that they're special and that they should be a princess in every single way."

She added that it would have been extremely impactful to see Ariel as a person of color when she was younger. 

Bailey is not the only Black actor to have faced racism after being cast in a fictional role. John Boyega and Moses Ingram have both suffered racial abuse for their roles in "Star Wars" franchises, while 12-year-old Leah Jeffries recently received backlash after she was announced as Annabeth in the upcoming Disney+ series "Percy Jackson and the Olympians."

"The Little Mermaid" is slated for release in May 2023, with Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Awkwafina, and Daveed Diggs joining Bailey in the film.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.

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