Have you ever seen someone try so hard to not offend anyone and yet somehow offend everyone? This is exactly what happened with Disney’s Snow White. The live-action movie has Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot alongside a slew of CGI motion-capture dwarves. And let’s just say that people have never been this hostile towards a Disney remake.
An Overview of Disney’s Snow White
Traditionally, the heroine’s name refers to her skin, with lips red as blood and hair dark as ebony; now it refers to the snowstorm that accompanied her birth (completely different from the original).
In the start, Snow White has loving parents, the King and Queen, but after her mother’s death her father becomes infatuated with a witchy new noblewoman at court; this is supposed to be the radical evil queen. Yes, while other fairy tale movies are also focusing on the villain origin story of all these “bad guys”; Disney’s snow white creators just simply opted for the typical wicked woman persona of the stepmother with no background on her. No site of revolutionary “wokeness” when it was needed.
Gadot’s lips are at all times seductively and contemptuously pursed. But later the King simply vanishes from the story and the script ties itself into a few pretzels explaining what is supposed to have happened to him and when.
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The stepmom-witch keeps Snow White in Cinderella-style serfdom below stairs where the poor child wanly sympathises with the population’s poverty. As Snow White grows up, the magic mirror breaks the bad news about a change in the prettiness ranking; Snow White is then forced to flee to the forest and stay there once the huntsman has lied to the witch about killing her. And then she meets her seven new best friends. The typical story! The only difference is that the fabled prince is gone and is replaced by a noble ruffian, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap).
What Went Wrong and What Caused the Hatred
Disney’s Snow White is being attacked from both sides of the political spectrum. The movie has been condemned for being too progressive (a Disney princess renowned for her pale skin being played by an actress with Colombian heritage) and not progressive enough (caricatured dwarfs in this day and age).
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Moreover, with the Israel- Gaza war, both the main stars in the movie have made pronouncements in support of genocide. All this combined has gotten the movie more bad publicity than one might usually expect.
Basically, Disney’s Snow White is stacked with a lot of “woke” connotations and performative activism in aspects that weren’t needed. It just looks like the producers wanted to make a typical version as well as a Karl Marx version of the movie, so they just combined all in one and that didn’t workout well. On a good note though, we got two movies in one; if that makes it any better.
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