Crimenutely. The date is almost upon us. Come tomorrow, March 21, 2025, Disney’s latest iteration of Snow White hits US theaters. I’ve done my best, during what must be one of the most drawn-out, screwed-up, infelicitous run ups to a premiere in movie history, to keep my dear readers up to speed with developments over the years. Herewith:
Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It’s Off to Woke we Go!
This first small effort, from almost two years ago now, highlighted the first release of “stills” from the production, particularly this one,
which I described in the post, thus:
[showing] a person (perhaps of the human kind formerly known as ‘woman,’ but I’m afraid to speculate) dressed as an extra from The Handmaid’s Tale, leading a sad parade of morose and crotchety-looking characters who appear to have just escaped from the local soup kitchen through an ecologically-sound rewilding area to…God knows where…which [resulted from] Disney’s imagining, rather than seven dwarfs, seven “magical creatures” all of which you can see in the photo above. (No idea as to the identity of the androgynous frump dressed in blue, who appears to be leading them. Prince Charming, perhaps?)
I’m pretty sure you had a first reaction, when you saw that image and I told you where it came from.
I bet, “What absolutely magical creatures those are!” wasn’t it.
Read the full post to understand the “dwarf wars,” and the topsy-turvy nature of the offering.
Then–from not long after–there was:
Snow White: Young Woman From Heteronormative Nuclear Family Follows Daddy’s Advice, Makes Good
which focused on the oddity, against all expectation, of Rachel Zegler’s assertion that Snow White was just following her father’s lead in becoming a leader who was “fearless, fair, brave, and true, and so it’s just an really incredible story for young people everywhere to see themselves in…”
All well and good. I’m something of a Daddy’s Girl myself. Oddly, though, that message seems to have been buried, along with the other one, perhaps because it also ran afoul of the PC police, this time in terms of gender-diversity and ideas of what constitutes a “family.” Or, as I put it in the post:
What I do wonder about, though, is how this version of Snow White is supposed to be accessible to children with two mommies, or two daddies, or an unspecified number of gendervague “parents,” or only one parent, or no parents at all? In a world where children’s imaginations are constrained in ways that allow them to identify only with others who already mirror themselves right out of the box (why else do you think the “seven magical creatures” in the movie appear the way they do?) it seems to me that giving Snow White’s father this much credit for inspiring her success in life is a serious mistake, and–in a world where more-and-more children grow up without fathers–is bound to be dispiriting to children who don’t have such a person in their lives, and who therefore can’t identify with Snow White at all.
Lord. I gather that what’s left of the movie is an unhappy mishmash that can’t decide what it is. When you’ve lost The Grauniad as your wokest cheerleader, you’ve really failed.
Snow White is simply the latest iteration in the pantheon of retellings by a generation of the imaginatively-challenged and metaphorically illiterate, who believe that beloved tales and fantasies that have stood the test of time for decades or centuries, and which have taken millions of children to places of safety, imagination, adventure, and love, just aren’t smart or good enough for modern youth, for whom they deem no imagination is necessary, and whose every utterance must be taken seriously and–at whatever cost–be made real with no exit strategy in sight.
I think of the young me sometimes. Thank God my parents just let me be, and didn’t force me into whatever vision I had of myself when I was five, just allowing it–and all the other play-acting along the way–to work itself out out as I grew and matured.
As I said, years ago, in a post here about that childhood (which was sometimes lonely when it came to actual playmates), I had many, many friends:
My family has been bookish since time immemorial, and my life was full of stories, poetry, and song, both sacred and profane, from a very early age. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel. Peter, Jemima, Jeremy. Odysseus, Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. King Arthur, Roland, Charlemagne. Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, Beowulf. Noah, David and Goliath, John the Baptist. Christian, Edward, The Highwayman (no, not Waylon, Willie, Johnny or Kris). Natty Bumppo, Hiawatha, and even (shudder) that turncoat, Paul Revere. The companions of a sometimes lonely childhood. And, many, beloved lifelong friends.
Through my childhood and over time, I came to find lessons and truth in these tales of life, fellowship, courage, faith, loyalty, love, and betrayal. To understand that I could do my own part, even in small ways, to emulate the good in them and that I, and others, would, as part of our fallen natures, act out our fair share of the bad. I came to recognize the bad from the good, and I came to understand that redemption, salvation, and a second chance came with the territory if I could embrace, understand, and follow the necessary steps to accommodate them, for this world and for the next.
Those were the lessons I took from my escape into the faith-based, historical and fantastical worlds of my childhood. Good lessons. Healthy lessons. An understanding that what I was reading, reciting, or singing wasn’t always “real,” but that some of it might be true. That, perhaps after I thought about it, digested it, picked out the bits of wisdom in it, and then turned around and looked at my life, I could apply those lessons, and be a better and more whole, person as a result. As long as I can remember, that’s been my experience of the thousands of years that Western Civilization’s stories and legends have to offer–that they exist, and that they’ve lasted, because embracing them and assimilating their lessons enriches us, improves our lives, and makes us kinder, more courageous, and better people.
So I make no apology for, am not in the least embarrassed by, and have no fear of, acknowledging, the fact that some of the best and most long-lasting character lessons of my (64-years and counting) life, have come, and still come, from works of faith, fantasy, and fiction. Did my family model good and moral behavior when I was growing up? I think it did. Did I take lessons from, and learn something from those behaviors I observed in my family? I think I did. Was my family the only thing that formed my character as I was growing up? Absolutely not. My friends, real, fictional, and even imaginary, helped too. But always in the context of my real life.
I have learned that one of the greatest gifts my family gave me was the insight that the stories of my childhood might not have been “real,” but that they might have been “true.” And it grieves me that such a distinction seems to have been lost on the children of today, who seem to believe that they can learn only from those story characters who explicitly resemble themselves.
I learned from so many who weren’t like myself at all. I could be brave and noble, like the Knights of the Round Table. Fearless, like Odysseus. Filthy and disobedient, like some of the Strewwelpeter characters. Cruel, sometimes, like Charlemagne. Daft, sometimes, like Jemima. Kind, yet ruthless in the Eastern woodlands, like Natty Bumppo. Intrepid in the German forest, like Hansel and Gretel. Cagy like Brer Rabbit. Somewhere, along the way, in the stories about the Crusades, I learned even that Saladin was known as an generally chivalrous and fair opponent.
And somewhere between the Brothers Grimm and Disney versions, I learned what I believe to be the real lesson of Snow White, one that draws on history and has lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years:
Love life, love God, know that all human work has dignity, act with grace, and be kind, and your lot may change and your dreams will come true, if not always in the way, or as soon as you expect. Hate life, hate God, piss and moan about your work, act with jealousy and venom, and you’ll make your own hell and almost inevitably die a lonely and horrible death.
It’s the contemporary undermining of that timeless truth that wrecks even fervid efforts like this:
Sorry, honey, but someone has to hang out the laundry and scrub the floors. I learned that myself along the way, and I’m not even a Disney princess.
Still, maybe, at that point in the movie, you might have recognized that the person who might need to do the work was you.
You’d have been so much more attractive and effective as a change agent if you could have brought yourself to do it with a smile on your face instead of shouting and flinging everything around and pulling faces at us, trust me.
Ugh.
**Snow White should have paid attention to, and learned from, Sony Pictures execrable remake of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which it attempted to imbue with some sort of contemporary relevance by including a delinquent and hate-filled nephew of Mr. McGregor, and the infamous blackberry allergy scene, complete with EpiPen. I should think the dear lady is rolling in her grave.
