Front Porch: Maybe mermaids can be our real heroes

Even mermaids can’t escape racism.

The naked, emboldened and violent eruption of neo-Nazi racism in Charlottesville, Virginia, less than two weeks ago has blocked out the sun; especially noteworthy this week, a week in which the sun was in fact blocked out. But there was another display of bigotry that got a bit blocked out by all that’s been flowing from the Charlottesville experience, and it showed that even mermaids aren’t safe in the crazy racist reality that is more and more finding oxygen in America.

Here’s the background. The Broadway Across America tour of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” just finished its run in Buffalo, New York, and will open next in Phoenix on its cross country tour of the United States. The tour began in Seattle last November.

One of the actresses in the show, Kristin Burch Posner, is a young friend of ours. She and her husband, Matt, and our son, Sam, do a lot of theater work together in Seattle, but she is taking time to do this national tour, playing Andrina, the second oldest sister of the mermaid Ariel, heroine of the story. Kristin is a friend on Facebook, so we’ve been enjoying her posts from cities across the country and seeing pictures of their experiences wherever they go.

But things have taken an unfortunate turn. To be sure, there is racism everywhere, but this particular story encountered accelerating ugliness when the tour opened in cities like Tampa, Memphis and Charlotte. Diana Huey, who plays the lead role of Ariel, the mermaid who longs for a life beyond the sea and sings some memorable songs along the way (“Part of Your World” for example), is Japanese-American.

She’s experienced a few comments about her race since the tour began, even in Seattle, and she’s pretty much ignored them. But in the South the number of remarks on social media increased from Disney fans who vented their outrage that a person of Asian heritage is playing a role they believe belongs to a white woman – presumably because Ariel was white in the Disney film.

As was noted in an Aug. 12 story about this in the Buffalo News: “That’s despite the fact that the character is based on an animated film featuring a mythical creature who cavorts with singing crustaceans.”

I don’t have enough adjectives or nouns to describe how ridiculous this is. But there it is anyhow.

The director of the show, Glenn Casale, was quoted in the same news story as saying he cast Huey in the role simply because she “was a good actress, she was the right age, and she sings it like nobody else.”

In her own Facebook posts Huey said that what has made all this endurable has been experiences like the one in Nashville when the white mother of an adopted Asian daughter told her that she burst into tears for her daughter’s sake when seeing her on stage. All kids need to see people like themselves in all sorts of roles in life.

Huey was quoted in the Buffalo News story: “Seeing a little Asian girl in a place where there aren’t a lot of Asians, it reminds me how important it is to say diversity matters and being open-minded matters and equality matters.”

Our friend Kristin told me by phone that “as a cast we are surrounding Diana with love. We’re telling her ‘we’ve got you.’ She is a good friend of mine and is the sweetest, kindest human being I know.”

Back in Seattle my son Sam was conducting a theater camp for kids of middle school age a few weeks ago. He showed them a clip of Huey singing “Part of Your World” and asked what they noticed. All replies had to do with how well she sang, how good she was.

Sam asked if they noticed she was Asian. They did. Did that matter? Not to them.

“We look at our world presently and see a lot of angry adults who think the country should be one way,” Sam said. “Our students, our children, are more ready for an inclusive world than we are. I looked at my diverse students who noticed, but didn’t care, about a casting choice. All they saw was Ariel.”

As for me, I think I shall look to the children for my moral heroes. And to mermaids.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by e-mail at upwindsailor@comcast.net.