Negative The Little Mermaid film reviews accused of racism after Disney re-make
The Little Mermaid has drawn in negative IMDB reviews which has prompted accusations of a racist smear campaign
Disney
Disney's remake of The Little Mermaid has drawn in negative IMDB reviews, prompting accusations of a racist smear campaign against the film.
The film rating site has adjusted its review metrics after it found “unusual voting activity” for a remake of the film that has been criticised for casting a black actress, Halle Bailey, as Ariel.
The Internet Movie Database has made the change to its rating system after the new release became the latest target for “review bombing”.
This is a practice in which a production is flooded with negative reviews by users who wield multiple accounts or employ bots to create new ones.
In 2019 it was announced that Halle Bailey had been cast in the live-action remake
Reuters
The Disney film was released in May and has received a 7/10 rating on the IMDB website, despite 15,000 of its 39,000 user-submitted reviews having given it one star.
IMDB has placed a notice on the film’s ratings page: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.”
The “unusual activity” has prompted accusations of a racist smear campaign against the film after the casting of Halle Bailey, an American singer-songwriter and actress, as the lead character.
This message has been employed before by IMDB in the case of other atypical user score patterns.
The Little Mermaid has received a 7/10 rating on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) website, despite 15,000 user-submitted reviews having given it one star
IMDB
In 2019, it was announced that Bailey had been cast in the live-action remake.
At 19, she was already a pop star - one half of the duo Chloe x Halle with her older sister, she had been in the public eye since they became YouTube famous as younger teens.
The actress told The Guardian, “Suddenly, there are a lot more eyes on me than I ever would have thought.”
When news of her casting broke, the racially charged hashtag #NotMyAriel trended on Twitter.
After being cast for the Disney film, Bailey said: "Suddenly, there are a lot more eyes on me”
Reuters
Bailey responded to this, saying: “Yeah, we’re all human beings, so if we see anything negative about ourselves, of course it’s going to hurt or sting a little bit, especially remarks like those. I expected it, honestly.”
After news that IMDB had adjusted its rating system, one person tweeted: “If you went to see The Little Mermaid, please be sure to give it a review, your HONEST review.
"Racists are purposely giving it one-star reviews on IMDB in large numbers”.
However, critics are saying that after analysing the reviews of the film, none can be found of racist nature.
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