‘Snow White remake propaganda betrays 1937 Disney classic’ – Fairy Tale expert

Disney’s Snow White live-action remake has been mired in controversy, releasing to mixed reviews last weekend.

Before a year-long delay, rumours abounded that Prince Charming and the seven dwarfs had been replaced by Robin Hood character Jonathan and his band of Merry diverse people. Yet, jarringly, the latter remained in the movie with the CGI little men.

Now, most of the original beats remain in the story, including the resurrection kiss, but such classic moments seemed tacked on and lacking their symbolic power in Disney’s efforts to please everybody.

Although not as woke as some may claim, this remake has betrayed its fairy tale roots and the 1937 movie classic, according to a myth and symbol expert.

Jonathan Pageau, who has rewritten Snow White and other such classic stories in all their beautiful and often gruesome glory, has watched the live-action film.

Sharing exclusively with Daily Express its four main problems, he declared Disney needs to realise “that no one is going to pay to watch propaganda”.

Snow White’s yearning for marriage has been turned into a political revolution

“Snow White, in the original Disney movie, is about a young girl becoming a woman and then entering into a marriage. But in the remake, they’re now trying to turn it into a political story of revolution and resistance to tyranny. Everything in the new movie is pointing towards changing the original story. Everything is about the phrase that Rachel Zegler’s Snow White says, ‘To no longer be led, but to lead’, like that’s what the story is about. It’s now about becoming a political leader and leading a kind of revolution with the peasants towards the Queen at the end. But they were stuck with that and then the dwarfs are just tacked on.”

Prince Charming is replaced by some guy called “Jonathan” rendering his resurrection kiss meaningless

“All of the things that they tried to add back again through nostalgia are now no longer pointing to anything meaningful in the story, because there’s a deep coherence in the original fairy tale with all its imagery. It’s hard for people to understand that these figures of princes and princesses in stories have a deeper meaning. The reason that we are attached to the notion of ‘prince’ is because the prince is the head, the leader, the principality of something. That’s why the transformation that Snow White goes through can be an image of any transformation that you go through. Like you get a new job and in this new job you have to find your way through in order to connect to the prince or principality. There’s a reason the story is structured as it is. You can’t modify it in anyway you want and think it will still have the same resonance because that deep resonance is in some ways beyond the rational. The child doesn’t think any of this through. It just makes sense at such a coherent level.

“But now, in the remake with this Jonathan character, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make sense. Ironically liking the bad boy is still as much a cliche as loving the prince. Even though you think you’re getting away from the normal kind of tropes of storytelling, you can’t help it, because loving the bad boy or loving the prince are two aspects of feminine desire that are easy to recognise.

“The only reason why I think they named him Jonathan is because he doesn’t become King. In the Old Testament story of David and Jonathan, he’s the one that could become King, but he doesn’t. Now recasting him as Robin Hood is the right figure to understand this in terms of King David and hiding in the forest with these thieves in order to resist the illegitimate power. There were things in there that could have been amazing if they had just pulled it together with reverence, instead it ends up being just a mishmash of nonsense.

“So now when Jonathan, rather the prince, gives her truth’s love kiss, it’s all superficial. It all points in directions that are completely paper thin in terms of their signifying. And I think that to me is the thing that’s the most aggravating.”

“Fairest of them all” has been changed from beauty to justice

“This is when everything becomes most muddled with the word “fair”. If you notice, the Evil Queen pops up and is being called ‘the fairest in the land’ by the mirror. And then when Snow White frees Jonathan, that’s when the mirror says that she’s the fairest. And so what they mean by fair, obviously, now is politically fair, like “just” in that sense. But if that’s the case, when the witch kills Snow White, why does the mirror tell the witch that she’s the fairest again? Does it make any sense? Like everything just falls apart. What signifying are we doing here? Like, what is it that we pointing to? And then finally, at the end, the mirror, says that Snow White is fairest, because she’s fair in her heart, right? She’s fair in the political sense. But then why was the Queen fair any time in the movie like this?

Whereas, fairest in the traditional sense is one of the most powerful tropes of the original Disney version. The Queen sacrifices her beauty out of envy for the young girl. So the thing she cares about the most, which is her beauty, she basically is willing to sacrifice it and become this old hag just to get at the young, beautiful woman.”

Snow White DOES have agency in the original story and the 1937 film.

“People don’t understand that there are different types of agency. Snow White represents innocence in the story. And what you see in the original 1937 Disney film is how she transforms people by her innocence. So the idea that she has no agency is ridiculous. Her innocence and her beauty and her wide-eyed wonder at the world is what convinces the hunter not to kill her, and then that same stance is what makes the dwarves better.

“There’s this scene in the original movie, where just out of kindness and smiling, but still kind of insisting, she gets the dwarfs to clean up before dinner and wash their hands. Now they sit, are polite and are not fighting all the time. So she makes the dwarfs better. And it is a form of agency, it’s just that we have this idea that there’s only one type of agency, and that type of agency is basically a masculine form of agency, which is like mastery and leadership, as if that is the only form of agency. But not only is that ridiculous, but it is in some ways, an anti-feminine position, right?

“There’s a sense in which the feminine has no value. Well the feminine does have value. It’s beautiful. The way that kindness and gentleness can transform. They try to bring that into this Disney movie, only at the end, when basically, Snow White is able to cause a revolution through kindness. But at this point, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make sense, because, until now, Snow White has been trying to be the leader that she can be, instead of actually going through this transformation through kindness.”

“In contrast, in Studio Ghibli movies, Hayao Miyazaki’s female characters are just the best. If anybody wants to learn how to write a female character that is both deeply feminine and also heroic, Miyazaki nails it. The character in Spirited Away is just amazing because she has to deal with her own insecurities. She has to deal with her fears and vulnerability; she has to go through this deep transformation.

“Whereas the characters in these girl boss stories are paper thin. They don’t have arcs. They’re Mary Sue characters who are better than everyone and everyone tells them how great they are constantly throughout the story. It’s not fun. Who wants to watch a movie about someone who has no transformation, that doesn’t have to deal with their own fear and insecurities? And so there’s a kind of blindness in these types of recent stories that makes them uninteresting.

“There are ways to write beautiful heroic stories with feminine characters that take into account all of the richness of feminine symbolism without betraying that and celebrating that. But it doesn’t mean that the characters have to have no agency. That’s ridiculous. We don’t see that in the best versions of those stories.”

Jonathan Pageau’s The Tale of Snow White and the Widow Queen and The Symbolism of Snow White, are out now and can be purchased here.