The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at the Federalist discusses the now unsurprising news Disney's new live action remake 1989's Little Mermaid cartoon will see changes to at least 2 song lyrics for reasons that must suggest they're scared the original only amounts to "toxic masculinity":

In a Vanity Fair interview last week, composer Alan Menken, who helped write the songs and score for the animated 1989 film and is now working on some new songs with Lin-Manuel Miranda for the remake, revealed the new “Little Mermaid” will feature not just new songs — but changes to the classics.

Unsurprisingly, one of these tracks is “Kiss the Girl,” lambasted by the same types of scolds who can’t abide “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The song explicitly sets the mood for the beloved boat-ride scene that teases a lip lock between the protagonists but tragically doesn’t deliver when the pair is capsized by some evil eels. The other is “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” the ominous tune sea witch Ursula belts out as she successfully lures mermaid Ariel into a bad deal. [...]

Bottom line: A song urging a wayward teen to maybe shut up a little is the least of our 21st-century problems.

“Kiss the Girl” won’t escape unscathed either because Disney apparently needs to clarify that Prince Eric would never “in any way, force himself” on Ariel.

With Ariel’s closest sea friends doing everything in their power to nudge the prince to lean in for the kiss, is it really unclear to the viewer that this isn’t a date-rape situation? Did the songwriter really forget that the whole point of Ariel being on land for three days is to get this one particular man to make out with her? At one point at the beginning of the original scene, Ariel herself puckers up while Eric chickens out — making it really difficult to discern whether the prince is, in some way, trying to “force himself” on the lady…

This ignores the fact that the whole plot depends on Eric kissing the girl to literally save her life from the demonic octopus-drag queen hybrid that preys on a minor and manipulates her into destroying her voice and carving up her bottom half. (Huh, maybe there’s a culturally relevant message for Hollywood here, after all.)

No doubt, that has something to do with this PC rendition, which, based on what they believe truly requires clarification, is bound to be very unromantic. In that case, what's the point of making this movie, other than to suggest they have a low opinion of the animated medium this story was originally adapted as? Going live action with these products is supremely silly at this point.

And since we're on yet another Disney-related issue, the new sequel to the Spider-verse movie, based on products they own through Marvel, is now injecting identity politics stealthily into its backgrounds, as revealed by Breitbart:

The latest trailer for Sony’s animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is promoting gender transitions for children by sneaking in a transgender flag with the words “Protect Trans Kids.”

[...] The transgender flag, which was spotted by the @EndWokeness Twitter account, appears just after the 2:00 minute mark.

Marvel, which is producing the movie along with Sony, has aggressively pushed transgenderism on its fan base by introducing trans and gender “non-binary” characters.

Well at least this proves Sony's just as willing to go through with these atrocities as Disney themselves, and at this point, we shouldn't be shocked if any additional live action sequel to the Spidey movies proper made under their auspices will go the full woke route. Then, there really will be No Way Home. So here, we have an example of how, going back to animation itself, that medium too has long been tarnished by partisan politics.

Anyway, it sure looks like the multiplex is not a good place to go anymore. It's now full of indoctrinating propaganda, at the expense of the original products.

Labels: animation, censorship issues, golden calf of LGBT, history, marvel comics, moonbat writers, Spider-Man