Singing in the deep Race, identity, and belonging in The Little Mermaid (2023)

Halle Bailey’s portrayal of Ariel in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid (2023) reimagines the beloved character within a racialized context, illuminating implications of race, identity, and belonging in fantasy narratives. Using Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s Dark Fantastic framework and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Black feminist rumination that allegorizes sea creatures to grasp social movement strategy in Undrowned, this article examines how Bailey’s vocal renditions of “Part of Your World” and “For the First Time” transforms these songs into profound meditations on Black liberation, memory, and ecological interdependence. This sonic phrasing analysis highlights how the subtext of race reshapes the songs’ meanings, addressing themes of belonging, exclusion, survival, and emancipation.