Snow White and Cultural Illiteracy
As most people who follow political cultural trends, you have probably heard about the marketing debacle of the latest Disney cinema film that came out a few weeks ago (as of this writing.) The film was a live action remake of the classic Snow White. Long story short, the major actress playing Snow White has been very wokey blokey in public appearances about how they were remaking Snow White to appeal to some weird, twisted Feminist tastes. She's largely been doing this for over a year, doubling down on the stupid numerous times, which gave conservatives plenty of time and ammo to howl over the film and Disney for well over a year before the film was even released.
Disney's official response to all this has been very interesting. While they haven't publicly thrown their title actress for the film under the bus, they have been quietly walking back some of her more outlandish political comments. They apparently toned down the official public release party. I would characterize their public relations disaster containment protocol as a "we won't turn the ship around but let's try not to rock the boat any further" movement.
Had the film actually otherwise been a mediocre to good film in terms of production, viewability, and story telling, that may have been enough to salvage the film in terms of at least breaking even at the box office, or at least in the all important media reviews on places like Rotten Tomatoes, etc. At the very least even with a net financial loss, Disney could have patted themselves on the back, declared victory, and gone home, under the guise of some great films simply are 'ahead of their time' or 'don't do well at the box office but win Oscars' or whatever claptrap they choose to spin it as. A good comparison card to play is always to invoke The Shawshank Redemption, which is one of the greatest films ever made, but never won a single award and barely broke even at the box office after mixed reviews when it came out.
But, as it interestingly has turned out and all politics aside, the new Snow White is simply a stinker of a film. Even the liberal Hollywood movie reviewer crowd has largely panned it. The plot is asinine. The acting is mediocre and wooden. Instead of hiring real actors to play the dwarves, most of whom generally need all the work they can get, all of the seven dwarves are totally AI/Computer generated and, frankly, kind of creepy looking.
You can use computer generation to have a character to some great effect. Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films comes to mind, though that does appear a bit dated now in terms of technology. Gollum still works though in a classic 1950s man in a rubber suit Godzilla kind of campy way, oddly enough. You can even do crossover animated characters in live action films like the classic Bed Knobs and Broomsticks back in the day to the original 1990's Space Jam or even the bizarrely charming Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Christopher Lloyd's character in that film is truly horrifying.) The new Snow White doesn't pull off any of that, however. It is just a bad film that should have died on the cutting room floor. (I guess movie studios don't really do cutting floors anymore with digital filming not using real film splices, but it's still a good cliche.)
Snow White as a cultural phenomenon is in general more interesting for two reasons. One of the reasons is of course the classic animated Disney film that came out back in 1937. That film is a cultural powerhouse in its own right. It came out very nearly to the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Most people peg 1939 as the year Hollywood peeked, as 1939 produced quite possibly the greatest slate of films ever from Gone with the Wind to Mr. Smith goes to Washington to The Wizard of Oz. The list from 1939 goes on and on.
Often unsung from 1939 is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which truly is one of the greatest films ever made in terms of acting and sets, which in any other year would have swept the Oscars. Charles Laughton's Quasimodo is one of the finest acting jobs ever filmed. And Mutual Studios went for broke in the film, building an entire medieval French town as an actual set. Sadly, Mutual Studios went out of business shortly thereafter because they spent so much money on the film and saw little return, going up against the other movie behemoths that came out that year like Gone with the Wind. The Hunchback of Notre Dame got all of 2 Oscar nominations for music score and sound, and didn't win a single one. The really sad tragedy of the film was that it was a victim of its own bad marketing. Had they waited three days to release the film (it came out on 29 December 1939), It would have not had to go up against the 1939 slate of films and probably would have won several Oscars for the 1940 films, having only to beat out The Grapes of Wrath, which I don't think is all that great a film, truth be told. But I digress...
What is interesting about the animated Disney classic Snow White is that it was the first full length animated feature film. No one was sure if anyone would want to see a full length animated film. Cartoons were those fun little things they ran between showings of the main feature while the film guy changed reels in the projector room in preparation for the main feature at the movie theater, as animated films could run on a smaller projector. But, so the logic went, who would want to pay money to see a long feature length cartoon? This was the Great Depression, after all, and paying money to see a film was a bit of a luxury to many. There were many naysayers in the industry that were sure that Walt Disney was going to lose his shirt funding this film. In fact, he had to fund a good deal of it out of his own pocket because the big movie studios were not keen on funding the whole thing, thinking it was going to tank at the box office.
But, as usual, Walt Disney was a good read of the proverbial room. He'd been told for years his animation ideas would never make money. He again proved the naysayers wrong on numerous levels. Adjusted for inflation, Snow White is one of the top-ten performers at the North American box office and is still the highest-grossing animated film with an adjusted gross income of $2,297,000,000. I think that would boggle even Walt Disney's mind if he was alive today. Disney is still making money off the classic film to this day. Go into any Disney shop, and you will find Snow White Christmas ornaments and Dopey the Dwarf dolls, etc. This off a film that is almost 90 years old.
Aside from the money aspect, Snow White is still the prototype for animated films in terms of cinematography and story boarding. So many of the angles and shots and animation techniques that Disney pioneered in that film are still the industry standard to this day. Sadly, the hand drawn animation and artwork is not, but the way they film and block the stories in animated films still ape Snow White. Think back to any animated or Pixar film you have seen in the last 25 years. Compare it in terms of angles and storyboarding to Snow White and you will see Walt Disney's story telling methods and cinematography all over it. Long after the current live action Snow White is consigned to the dust bin of movie history, which may well be next month, the classic Snow White is still the shadow under which all other animated films (or live action derivatives thereof) will cower for decades to come.
That brings me finally to the actual classic tale of Snow White. For years, there has been a debate that the classic story of Snow White as both the folk tale and the Disney animated version was too "rapey" or "paternalistic" or pick your favorite Feminist pejorative term. I always have to laugh when I hear people going on about that because it's clear they just don't get the deeps Christian roots of Snow White.
Could Snow White be any more of an in your face Christ allegory? I mean, think about it. What is the basic plot of Snow White in its classic form? Eve (Snow White) eating the Poisoned Apple in the Forest (The fruit in the Garden of Eden) which was given to her by the evil Queen (Satan). We know the Queen is the Satan character because what is the famous line the Queen says in front of the Magic Mirror that everyone probably knows by heart? "Mirror, mirror, one the wall...who's the fairest of them all?"
What does the name Lucifer actually mean? Literally, the "Light bringer" or "Morning Star." Whether one believes the classic Christian story about Satan, the story goes that Lucifer was once the brightest and most beautiful of all the angels in heaven. Believing himself to be even more beautiful that God, he rebels and is expelled from heaven. Take, for instance, the classic passage from the 14th hapter of the Book of Isaiah:
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart, "I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my
throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of
assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the
Most High." But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the
depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your
fate: "Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble,
the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and
would not let his captives go home?"
So, to follow the allegory of Snow White, Snow White eats of the poisoned fruit and died and/or goes to sleep, having to be awoken from death by the Prince, who loves her so much, he climbs into the glass coffin to kiss her, and then marries her. This is clearly the allegory of Christ the Bridegroom. This is to the level of Aslan on the Stone Table in terms of allegory really. How obviously can it be. The mind boggles at how culturally illiterate and petty these people who can only see the story as some sort of rapey, paternalistic folktale that tells young women that they can only be saved by a man.
I guess on one level, they are right about that, despite their own ignorance. People (men or women) can only be saved by one man, and that is Jesus Christ because Christ loved us so much that he gave himself for us, as a sacrifice and offering to God.
So, I leave you with this image. There are several variations of it in Eastern iconography, but the basic concept is always the same. The love of Christ is so strong that with the reckless abandon of a young child reaches for his mother. It's a marvelous image. A love so strong that he would climb anywhere to embrace His mother. It's the same love He has for us. He would climb into any grave and draw us out from death, just as Prince Charming does in Snow White. It is a love so great and so exuberant that the human mind cannot fathom it. It's not rapey or weird or paternalistic. It's the love of Christ the Bridegroom.
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