Just days before its release, some critics have been swirling around that Disney’s Snow White isn’t as bad as audiences may suspect after the film's star Rachel Zegler suggested we’d be in for a woke makeover of the original picture that she hinted was out of date with modern times. Following the PR disaster, Disney has delayed the film, and undergone reshoots to try and salvage what they predicted would be a box office catastrophe. But no matter how much Disney has tried to morph their work into something that may warm back audiences by reintroducing dwarfs, albeit computer generated, the original intention behind this makeover is still laid bare on the table for all to see. It reveals itself to be everything that is wrong with art in this woeful era we find ourselves stuck in.
As soon as our tale kicks off, it almost instantly leaves a bad taste in the mouth. We’re presented with a backstory that reverses the purpose behind the name of our well-known princess. No, her skin isn’t as white as snow; rather, she was named after being born during a snowstorm. But the change in skin tone isn’t the issue here. There are much deeper problems to be concerned about, such as the loss of elegant music. There are no equivalents to the divine examples of “I’m Wishing” or “Some Day My Prince Will Come”. Instead, these new tunes reek of composition that disregards the opportunity for mastery.
The visuals are too theatrical, leaning on the edge of over-stylisation as black smoke whirls around the queen as she speaks to the mirror. One of the most crucial elements that make the classic Disney animations evoke beauty is their minimalist approach to visual storytelling. However, the artists behind this work reveal that beauty is the least of their interests. You evaluate fairly quickly that the motivation behind Disney’s Snow White isn’t to enrich our youth with art but rather to instruct them.
Throughout the tale, Snow White tries to encourage a vision of a world that functions on the foundations of kindness and fairness. She’s met with opposition from the evil queen who Snow White insists has poisoned the minds of the people into thinking everyone is out for themselves. Ironically this is the attitude of the charming male she falls for, but inevitably she manages to influence him to her way of thinking. The dwarfs are also aligned with this ideal as they reference the queen's “greedy economic policies”. When language such as the latter is introduced, it would be dishonest to suggest that the creators weren’t aware of the theme of activism at play.
Snow White insists that to change the world we need to have more faith in each other. However, this attitude leads her to take a bite of an apple from a stranger without much persuasion, causing her to fall into a sleeping death. It’s at this point this reimagining of the original 1937 work takes a stark change of direction as the evil queen doesn’t fall to her death after being chased by dwarfs but rather retreats to her palace. It’s also not over once Snow White is awakened by true love’s first kiss, a scene which some doubted would happen judging by Zegler’s disgust at the attitudes of the 1930s. The final act is dedicated to somewhat of a social uprising in which a society of kindness and fairness triumphs over one held by greed and power. While the political intentions are stark, it's the only moment in the film in which the emotions feel authentic to the characters. This along with a new character arc for Dopey, are the only elements of this work that are worth giving credit to.
Disney’s Snow White may symbolise the final nail in the coffin of taking classic tales and reworking them into vehicles of political activism for audiences that would rather indulge in escapism. Perhaps the upcoming live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch will present a different pathway for Disney in which they return to delivering visual storytelling that enriches audiences' lives and their relationship to the art form. Currently, it's not so easy to predict which film will present itself as the start of the turn of the tide and whether that will come as soon as a matter of months. However, when it does come, everyone who went along with this ideological decay of storytelling, will of course pretend that they never fell for the insanity.
Out in UK cinemas now
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