On Halle Bailey's Ariel and the Egyptian 25th Dynasty

Disney recently announced that Halle Bailey, an African-American singer and actress from Atlanta (represent!), has been cast as Ariel in a live-action version of the Disney animated classic The Little Mermaid. Although I haven't seen any ugly commentary on social media about it myself, I have heard some people are getting upset and I can easily imagine this being true, either due to authenticity concerns about the source material, straight-up racism, or other issues.

Firstly, although The Little Mermaid is based on a Danish story (by author Hans Christian Anderson), the mermaid civilization is not connected to my knowledge to Danish society in any significant way. If it turns out they're descended from Vikings mutated by some kind of magic let me know, but it's my understanding that's not the case. The mermaids could easily be migrants from somewhere else who settled in the vicinity of Denmark, perhaps due to the Medieval Warm Period making their original homeland in the Mediterranean or even West Africa inhospitable. Therefore, even though the landlubbers nearby are white, the mermaids could be Semitic or even black. Although I'm generally not a fan of "if it's fantasy it doesn't have to be 'realistic'" attitude, the above explanation is a plausible one for a large Middle Eastern or black (mermaid) population in an otherwise European setting. After all, the Gypies (whose actual name for themselves is Roma or Romany) are originally from India and the Hungarians are a Turkic or Finnic people originally from Russia.

Secondly, even if the mermaid population generally is of European in appearance, ruling elites don't necessarily match up with the local population. Much of northern England was ruled by Vikings for awhile, the whole of England was ruled by different French dynasties from the Norman conquest of 1066 until the Welsh Henry Tudor took power in 1485, parts of or all of China were ruled by non-Chinese steppe peoples on many different occasions, etc. More appropos would be the 25th Dynasty of Egypt--although the Egyptians were a Semitic people, the 25th Dynasty was originally from Nubia, much farther south.

So here's where it gets Game of Thrones. Triton is originally from somewhere else and is the founder of a new dynasty, either elected by other members of the mermaid elite after the previous king dies without an heir or who seizes power in some kind of civil war. As king he exiles Ursula, ostensibly for practicing witchcraft and other sorts of bad behavior but really because she's a member of the previous dynasty. However, not only is Triton foreign, but Triton is a widower with no interest in remarrying and has only daughters, no sons. This makes his regime vulnerable and Ursula plays on Ariel's interest in human culture as part of some kind of scheme to seize power.

Yes, that's needlessly complicated for a kids movie, but they did elaborate on the original Aladdin to make the new live-action version more elaborate (Jasmine seeks to become the next ruler of Agrabah in the vein of Razia Sultan, the only female ruler of the Muslim Delhi Sultanate, Jafar is a "street rat" himself who rose to become the grand vizier). If this is too much and if Disney wants to keep Triton as a white Zeus-alike, they can always depict his late wife as being black and Ariel takes after her mother rather than her father in looks.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Evil Dead II (1987)

For our podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, we decided to watch the movie Evil Dead II, the second film in the Evil Dead series for of our usual horror-themed month of October. It's been a long time since I saw this one--I think I saw it in high school, as part of a Hollywood Video double feature with the original, in the late 1990s. I remember enjoying the film then, especially in comparison to the execrable original film with its gouts of oatmeal-gore. Considering how Starz is putting out a new television series called Ash vs. the Evil Dead, this was a rather appropriate time to do the movie...

How did it hold up? Well, here's the podcast. And now for the review...

The Plot

Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his girlfriend Linda visit a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods for a romantic weekend, but it turns out a professor of ancient history was using it as a site to translate an ancient evil book bound in human skin. Ash plays a recording of the incantation and unleashes all sorts of slapstick-undead horrors just as the professor's daughter, her boyfriend, and a couple locals show up completely coincidentally. All of them must now survived the murderous (and sometimes hilarious) horrors of the Deadites...

The Good

*The movie avoids the "a bunch of friends go to the cabin in the woods to smoke weed and have sex" cliche of 1980s horror films. Instead it's Ash and his girlfriend basically breaking into someone else's cabin for the weekend and then the actual owners (or at least their relatives) show up, not knowing the craziness Ash accidentally unleashed.

*Ash's first encounter with the undead is a mildly-effective "Jump Scare." Given how inured I am to most horror films, it's probably a lot scarier for most people.

*At times Ash is remarkably genre-savvy. He knows sticking around a haunted cabin where a scientist recited incantations from a book bound in human skin is a really bad idea and at first chance he gets the hell out of there. Or let me rephrase that--he tries.

*There's a fair bit of good slapstick humor in this one, including a lengthy sequence involving Ash's hand getting possessed. Who's laughing now indeed? :)

*Who knew the book A Farewell to Arms could be so amusing? You'll laugh when you see the context.

*I never really thought about what might happen if you soak a room's sole light source in blood...

*There's a nice bit of Reality Ensues when Ash starts blasting around with the shotgun. Sometimes you don't know where the shells will end up.

The Bad

*The first twenty or thirty minutes of the film really aren't that entertaining. To be blunt, a lot of the film just isn't entertaining, although there are certainly some good moments.

*Ash's first killing of a possessed character could be played for either horror (it's a brutal necessity that traumatizes him) or comedy (slapstick violence, hammy overreaction to the deed). It doesn't really work as either.

*The film's sense of time is wonky. It doesn't take long for Ash and Linda to get to the cabin from the Scary Ominous Bridge (TM), but Ash leaves the cabin the morning after they arrive and arrives there just in time for the sun to set?

*In the scene where Ash sees a character reanimated after having been possessed and killed, they've only been dead a day or two, if not just a few hours. It would have been better (and likely much cheaper) to have the original actor wearing zombie makeup reviving and misbehaving rather than having a mediocre claymation monster.

*For someone who starts out showing some intelligence, Ash displays some fairly stupid behavior at times, especially later in the film.

The Verdict

Not as funny as I remember and it hasn't aged very well. I wonder if the remake is more technically adept, although a friend of mine tells me it's really, really gory. Unless you really like 1980s horror, 1980s comedies, or combinations thereof, don't bother with this one. 5.0 out of 10.

Sicilian Empire? Venetian Constantinople? Super Bulgaria? Check out "Basilicus Sicilia"

Here's another alternate-historical treat for you, my loyal readers. It's called "Basilicus Sicilia."

In our history, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II was one of the most fascinating characters. He was born and grew up in Sicily, the cosmopolitan heart of the Mediterranean. He spoke six languages and was a major patron of the arts and sciences. He became Holy Roman Emperor and ruled over Germany and much of Italy and was often at loggerheads with the Papacy, which excommunicated him repeatedly and at one point even claimed he was the Antichrist. He had a reputation as a religious skeptic (the truth of that is rather dubious given how the people writing about him were churchmen who had a political beef with him), but waged Crusades all the same.

In this timeline, Frederick's attempt to become Holy Roman Emperor is defeated by Otto IV, but he remains in power in Sicily and southern Italy. Still the genius he was in our history, he renounces his bid to be Emperor in exchange for Sicilian independence and large ransoms for the prisoners he's taken and instead begins a campaign of conquest in North Africa. A Catholic empire ruling over a large Muslim population is a tricky thing, but Frederick's upbringing in very diverse Sicily proves very helpful here. He takes direct control of parts of the Holy Land while Crusading and forces his nobles into submission, establishing himself as Europe's first absolute monarch. His successors continue his work, establishing a very interesting Mediterranean empire.

"Butterflies" from this event include:

*Bulgaria becomes a powerful Balkan state, causing the collapse of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The Venetians end up with possession of the city itself, creating the position of "Junior Doge" to govern it.

*The Byzantine successor state of Trebizond reconciles with the Nestorian heresy common among the Christian Mongols and becomes a friend of the Ilkhanate. As a result, they are the first Christian state to use cannon.

*The Angevin Empire (England, much of Ireland, and much of France) remains intact rather than the infamous King John losing most of its continental possessions to the King of France. We still have something resembling the Magna Carta in this timeline, fortunately.

So if you're interested in another medieval Mediterranean might-have-been, check this out.