Yes, you want her, look at her you know you do.
Possible she wants you too, there is one way to ask her.

In the new version of The Little Mermaid, presumably out of deference to our evolving, post-MeToo sensibilities surrounding sexual consent, that line has been subtly changed. In 2023, Sebastian’s advice is: “Use your words, boy, and ask her.”

Not so romantic, but in this case, the question does seem necessary, since Ariel’s feelings are far from obvious. While 1989 Ariel makes it quite clear that she’s keen, our contemporary one, played by the pop singer Halle Bailey, has no thoughts of kissing at all — because, in a truly massive departure from the animated source material, she’s forgotten she needs to in order to win her freedom.

It’s not hard to see how the film’s writers might have talked themselves into giving their new Ariel amnesia: it’s not very feminist to have your heroine spend the bulk of her screen time voicelessly thirsting after a man, after all. But in stripping Ariel of her goal — stay human by seducing the prince — the writers have effectively gutted the character: now, she wanders vacantly through every scene with neither purpose nor agency.

I realise that this is a very adult complaint about a film that is ostensibly for children — but then, I’m not sure children are The Little Mermaid‘s intended audience. Like so many of Disney’s live-action remakes, this movie is for the now-middle aged millennial women who grew up watching (and loving) the 1989 original — only to become scandalised, as adults, by their heterocentrism, their whiteness, their phobias and isms. While Disney World is embroiled in an ongoing conflict with Florida governor Ron DeSantis — a sort of proxy war for the soul of the nation — the Disney content mill is plagued by the same anxieties as much of its adult audience.

The beloved but problematic cartoons from the bad old days remain available on the Disney+ streaming service, but come affixed with a hectoring title card that you cannot fast forward through: “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” it reads. “Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”

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Meanwhile, many of its newer offerings are meant to be part of that future, explicitly catering to progressive sensibilities — and, perhaps equally important, sparking consternation among conservatives. The Little Mermaid — with its vague handwaving in the direction of consent culture, its dutiful nods to the environmental damage wrought by humans on the undersea world, and a black actress bringing the house down in a traditionally white role — is clearly intended to be part of that “more inclusive future”. As is the 2022 movie Lightyear, which featured an, albeit chaste, lesbian kiss, and Frozen 2, which was animated by an anti-colonialist message.

In fact, that heady mix of liberal millennial guilt and Nineties-era nostalgia is an animating force behind much of today’s most controversial entertainment, from the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters to the release of new, sensitivity-edited editions of works by Roald Dahl and R.L. Stine. Kids don’t notice this stuff, but adults do, which is entirely the point: all these choices generated a backlash from the Right, which in turn generated a backlash to the backlash from the Left, which in turn generated months’ worth of frantic coverage from a media establishment that relies on rage-clicks to keep the lights on.

Unfortunately, in the quest to make The Little Mermaid inclusive, Disney seems to have forgotten that it should also be watchable, and the resulting film feels at once bloated and muted. Gone are the fish playing musical instruments, the whispering moray eels who recruit Ariel to Ursula’s lair. Bailey, a phenomenal singer, is miscast as a character who is silent during most of the story’s pivotal moments. And yet, more positive reviews, while noticeably cagey about the quality of the film itself, lavish praise on both her performance as Ariel and on the Disney corporation for selecting her. “If these films are to have any purpose beyond being nostalgia-powered cash-ins, it must be to allow all children — not just the white ones — to see themselves as Magic Kingdom denizens,” suggested the Guardian, while a Variety critic adds that, “the most important thing about remaking this particular favourite for a fresh generation is maintaining the fantasy that any of us can be Ariel”.

In other words: even if the movie is bad, it has the best intentions. It’s on the right side of history. And isn’t that what matters?

In this framework, any objection to movies such as The Little Mermaid can be understood as conservatives having a meltdown over the mere inclusion of diverse characters on screen. Perhaps this is true in some cases. But I suspect that what people really object to is a Hollywood apparatus that does not seek to entertain an audience so much as hand-hold it to the morally correct conclusions.

When Ted Lasso — a show featuring a multiracial cast, strong female characters, and an uplifting message of sportsmanship, self-betterment, and general decency — became the subject of backlash during its recent third and final season, it wasn’t because people suddenly became incensed by its diversity. It was because it started featuring scenes that could have migrated out of one of those dramatised instructional videos they show during DEI compliance training: such as the locker room lecture about looking at nude photos that followed a massive celebrity leak. If people balk at this, perhaps it’s less because they disagree with the substance of the message, and more because they resent its intrusiveness — can’t a guy just enjoy a TV show without having lessons in moral betterment foisted upon him, Sesame Street-style, by a bunch of actors dressed up as footballers?

At the root of this is the notion that art is inherently political, and hence that every mainstream entertainment property must necessarily double as either a morality play, or a salvo in the ongoing culture wars. For those who subscribe to this framework, there is no opting out; if your film doesn’t announce its politics, a set of politics will be assigned to it by a critical apparatus that is increasingly incapable of understanding art in anything but crude identitarian terms. One of the more incisive reviews of The Little Mermaid, written by Wesley Morris of the New York Times, describes the film as “everything nobody should want in a movie: dutiful and defensive, yet desperate for approval”. He’s right. And yet, even as he notes that the film is something of a trainwreck — and even as he admits that obsessing over the political correctness of movies like this is “a misery” — he nevertheless insists that it, and the other Disney films like it, are “important, culturally reparative work”. And so he reinforces the idea that art described as “important” need not concern itself with being beautiful, or moving, or funny.

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Critics and creators alike are increasingly caught in the trap of the “important” movie, which substitutes political pieties for a good story and markets itself on controversy instead of hype. Long before The Little Mermaid hit cinemas, progressives understood that they were basically obligated to support it for political reasons; even now, the narrative persists that anyone who dislikes the movie must be a racist troll (that is, unless they’re denouncing it for not being woke enough). And the “important” movie is many things: explicitly moral and painstakingly diverse. Checking its privilege. Centring marginalised voices. Sparking conversations and moving toward a more inclusive future. And yet it is invariably bad in every way — including the ways in which it attempts to do better.

Consider the original Little Mermaid, a story about a young woman who yearned for independence; who made a reckless, impulsive bargain in the hopes of pursuing the life she wanted; who learns that choices like this have a ripple effect well beyond the confines of one’s own life. Now consider the politically correct version of the same story, in which Ariel is conveniently saved, by amnesia, from knowing what she’s done — and hence deprived of any opportunity to own it, to reckon with it. The former story is about a girl who does things; the latter is about a girl to whom things happen. Which of these is supposed to be a vision of female empowerment, again?

This is perhaps the worst thing about Disney’s contemporary remakes: not that they are blatant cash grabs, but that they are infantilising. The original Little Mermaid placed infinitely more trust in its intended audience of children than the new version places in those same children, now that they’re grown up. And while it still includes that moment, at the end, in which Sebastian waxes wise about autonomy — “Children got to be free to lead their own lives” — it’s hard to fathom, after two hours and fifteen minutes of Ariel stumbling like a hapless sleepwalker through her own story, that anyone really believes it.

China’s vast lucrative web novel industry, the largest in the world, brilliantly illustrates the peculiar nature of “Chinese socialism” in recent years. The combination of unfettered economic growth with often severe restrictions on free speech has transformed online authors from writers into aspiring tycoons. The result is a consumerist vacuum, where authors hoping to follow in Tang Jia San Shao’s footsteps churn out vast quantities of work with little literary value or originality.

Tang Jia San Shao is known for both for his epic xianxia (immortal hero) fantasies in which lowly “cultivators” rise up the ranks to unmatchable omnipotence, as well as his dogged work ethic: he holds the Guinness World Record for 86 months of daily serialised chapter updates on Qidian, a webnovel platform backed by Tencent, one of China’s most influential tech giants.

He may be one of the rare success stories, but he has inspired millions of xieshou (writing hands) to churn out thousands of words a day in the hope of selling their own IP. As a rule, titles with the highest number of readers within a pay-per-view system, including Ashes of Love and The Untamed and Duolou Continent, are turned into lucrative TV dramas, computer games or manga series.

Tech companies such as China Literature and Qidian have morphed into shameless “IP cultivation” empires, overseeing a somewhat psychotic, dog-eat-dog world in which popularity is the only metric that matters. “Help readers fantasise about what they lack,” instructs the testosterone-heavy platform Qidian in its writing guide. With an estimated 450 million active readers, and as many as 25 million titles to choose from, competition is merciless and exhausting. If a title doesn’t get enough eyeballs, the platform cancels the book.

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Writers, desperate to keep readers, often resort to brazen and desperate tactics — offering “red packets” (bribes) or plagiarising so they have more content to post. One trick to getting more views is to make novels insufferably long, with some online books exceeding six million words. Another is to turn each chapter into a cliff-hanger. Owing to its trashy, short-term thrills, Chinese readers dub webfiction yiyin or “YY” for short, a phrase that has evolved to mean “mental porn” or an addictive, guilty pleasure.

Writers’ grasping tactics are mirrored in the personalities of their status-obsessed and borderline sociopathic protagonists. Heroes are known for their “shamelessness” and for intentionally humiliating (“face-slapping”) their opponents. Many will stop at nothing to acquire wealth and status, smiting anyone who obstructs their path to becoming the richest tycoon in the world or the most supreme being in the universe. In short, online fiction is often a fantasy in which brute individualism pays off, written and read by self-described diaosi — “penis hairs” or “losers” — for whom reality is a communal struggle.

Last year, all this suddenly ground to a halt when beleaguered and exhausted writers downed tools following a regime change at Tencent. By temporarily making content free to read and taking over the copyright of all works until 50 years after the death of the authors, Tencent planned to both strip writers of their revenue and deny them any hope of precious IP.

The dispute was eventually resolved, but it lit an old ideological fire amongst writers who are both victims, and advocates, of this mercenary genre of fiction. “This is class struggle,” said one writer. “The bourgeoisie and capitalists only pursue profits, their pores ooze dirty blood, they squeeze the proletariat for every drop of oil they can.” And they are not wrong.

This is a time of yawning differences between rich and poor in China, with the old Communist guarantee of lifetime employment — “the iron rice bowl” — a distant memory. The CCP has failed to protect gig economy workers from exploitation by big Chinese corporations. An obvious example is the country’s 300 million “floating” migrant workers, once foregrounded by the socialist revolution, who work gruelling hours and are denied basic rights in Chinese cities.

People have been trying — and failing — to remind the CCP that it is supposed to be a Left-wing party for some time. This may explain Xi Jinping’s current “Common Prosperity” drive promising to close a gaping wealth divide in Chinese society — and re-assert the primacy and socialist credentials of the Party. Actors, representative of a burgeoning idol culture and the new uber-class of celebrity, have become a soft target: they are conspicuously rich and have legions of adoring fans.

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Thirty-year-old Deng Lun, swooning star of hit TV show Ashes of Love, is just the latest celebrity to be put in the stocks in China for tax evasion, resulting in a grovelling public apology, a $16.6 million fine and the suspension of all his online social media accounts. He seems to have got off lightly: Alibaba’s Jack Ma, tennis star Peng Shuai and actress Vicki Zhao all briefly disappeared. The CCP doesn’t take kindly to any individuals, except the great leaders of course, having that kind of kudos. Popularity or influence can be as dangerous as dissidence.

Yet Xi’s crackdown extends well beyond celebrities. Chinese writers are also being reined in, with the CCP insisting that all art needs to “take patriotism as its muse” and “serve the people and socialism”. Unsurprisingly, given the popularity of online fiction and its TV spin-offs, the government has imposed “socialist ratings” upon online writing platforms, and a “rectification” process if the score is too low. Tang Jia San Shao’s latest novel about a cultural relic restorer is apparently intended to support an application for Beijing’s World Heritage Status.

Writers are now encouraged to write fantastical tales about “red heroes” to support the CCP’s re-booted socialist agenda. “Heroic figures that save the world and humanity, as created in the work of many internet writers, are in essence or spiritually the same as the heroes in red stories,” says the deputy general of the Shanghai Writers Association, Xue Shu.

What’s more, online writers and readers are incentivised to personally censor any inappropriate content they come across: suicide, effeminate men, the past, politics, sex or, in fact, anything below the neck. A moral society is seen as integral to the legitimacy of the Party, following an ancient Confucian principle that the government should uphold good behaviour. This is one of the main reasons why Chinese literature has long been co-opted as a didactic, rather than artistic, medium.

So, what is left when cultural industrialists and authoritarian governments have had so much control over content? Both have contributed to the homogenisation of mainstream Chinese culture, gutting it of distinct, individual voices and replacing it with dull, lifeless tropes. And both big business and Big Brother keep asking young writers to effectively saw off the branches they are sitting on.

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One online writer, who goes by the name of Tiaowu, tried second guessing what would prevent his webnovel from being censored: he removed any details involving fights, religion, or lesbians. But chunks of his story kept disappearing. “You can cut off the leaves, you can cut off the branches, and the tree will live,” he wrote. “But they had me f**king cut off the entire f**king trunk.”

But there is still hope. A number of Chinese artists and writers follow neither the restless opportunism of the market, nor submit to the ever shifting and growing demands of the Party. These people, according to novelist Ge Fei, “go the other way”, often using publishers in Taiwan or, until recently, Hong Kong.

There are the surrealists born in the Fifties and Sixties — Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Can Xue, Su Tong Mo Yan — who grapple with censored history and the absurdity of the present day in an innovative and bewitching mode known as May 35 (the imaginary date of the Tiananmen Square Massacre), in which they use metaphor, satire, surrealism, and fractured time frames to address difficult topics. Yan Lianke’s novel Dream of Ding Village is a haunting account of China’s hushed-up AIDs crisis in rural Henan, written as fiction to avoid censorship.

Meanwhile, lowly migrant workers sublimate their unacknowledged hardships on the production lines into beautiful verse in self-published magazines. Cheeky comic book writers foreground strangely subversive themes such as laziness and mediocrity as a way to poke fun at both online superheroes and the hard-working and tech-savvy youths that throng propaganda posters. And science fiction writers conjure up future societies that sit beyond the reach of political correctness and accountability.

It is unlikely these writers will ever build their own Disney World — let alone earn $18 million a year. But that’s not their aim. The diverse, not often read, landscape of Chinese fiction is full of free spirits, who stay under the radar to paint a truer portrait of Chinese society than economics and party politics reveal. According to an ancient Chinese proverb, which might be banned were it written now: “The twisted tree lives its life, while the straight tree ends up in planks.”