Episode 18: Little Mermaid, The “Live Action” Movie Deep Dive

OUTTAKE: In finding our selfie for the episode cover photo, we gave an impromptu super-simple synopsis: Turn the volume up real loud for when Moraya introduces the episode. She speaks softly into the microphone, saying: “Today we talked about The Little Mermaid. We talked about relationships and race. And some random things about how some white people got dizzy.” Nailed it.

Brandon and Katie are titillated to have special guest expert Moraya Seeger DeGeare MA, LMFT, into the podcast studio to deep dive all through the live action remake of The Little Mermaid, staring Halle Berry. Moraya is a relationship and race specialist (she's an intersectional relationship and race therapist with BFF Therapy, a therapist and sex advice columnist for Refinery29, and the In-House Relationship Expert for Paired.com). Moraya is generationally mixed race, Brandon is Black and married to a white woman, and Katie is super white bread white.

Covered In This Episode:

• Kid Takes

  • ie Brandon's son's "beef with Flounder."

  • ie Moraya’s daughter’s reaction of “That’s ME!!!” when she sees Arial first emerge from the water and flip her hair.

  • ie Moraya’s son considering Arial’s shark attack strategy: “If only she would have the shark flip onto its back…and then it would be really calm…” Moraya responded: “This isn’t Octonauts”

• How we feel about "Live Action" Remakes.

• Relationships, Trauma, and Un-Attended To Trauma Presenting Later In Life.

• Was Ariel’s Dad a misogynist? Or a product of his life trauma and pain. Why is he so strict? Moraya asks: “What does trauma do to our bodies? Is it misogynist, or is it parenting from a trauma that has not been attended to?”

• Racism.

• Little Mermaid Deep Dive Bits are sprinkled throughout this episode.

• Sometimes we refer to the original book version of The Little Mermaid.

You will laugh out loud with and by yourself during this episode. It’s a must-listen. Travel through trauma theory, which can be comforting, and relish in a movie review. Take as long as you need.

HEADS UP: This episode is 1.5 hours because we let The Little Mermaid movie played in the background as we discussed it. Before we knew it, the movie was over, and it was 1.5 hours later. We could have split this up for you into 3 episodes, but we figured you wanted it in one episode, and could pause un-pause at your leisure.