“Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony.” Disney will bring these iconic lines to the screen with live-action in 2025.
Recently, Disney has been remaking their classic Disney princess movies in live-action, the most recent of which is the classic Snow White.
This movie sparked controversy from the second the casting came out. Disney announced Rachel Zegler, a Latina actress, would play Snow White in June of 2021. People were appalled a non-white actress was portraying a character named for her white skin.
But what relevance does that have to the plot? “You could argue that that’s maybe why she was considered the most beautiful, but in that case, that’s just literally racism,” said junior Caleb Williams, referring to Snow White being dubbed ‘the fairest of them all.’
The Brothers Grimm wrote the original story of Snow White in 1812. The plot was notoriously sexist, making Snow White valued only for her beauty as she dreamt of a “handsome prince” saving her.
While Disney has addressed this, claiming to have removed the sexist stereotypes and turned the story into a “feminist-tale,” they have left important issues untouched.
Everyone remembers the coal mining dwarfs with red cheeks and big eyes from the 1937 animated film. Disney chose to keep these characters the same in the new film. However, Disney refers to them as ‘Magical Creatures’ rather than actual people, something derogatory towards people with dwarfism.
Disney has also chosen to use Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) to create the dwarves on screen. They have animated actors’ faces onto the CGI bodies; however, these actors do not have dwarfism.
“I think they should have just used real actors and actresses with dwarfism because there’s so many people out there and if a child [with dwarfism] saw them on a screen, I feel like they’d have someone to look up to,” junior Jenna Kamm said.
Many people in the dwarfism community have spoken out against the making of this film. Actor Peter Dinklage said in an interview with Marc Marron, “You’re still making that f—ing backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? What the f— are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soap box? I guess I’m not loud enough.”
Disney is quite literally stuck in the past, not only with their offensive stereotypes, but through their focus on making as much money as possible from old stories. Of eight movies expected to come out in 2025, only one is not a remake or sequel.
“I think it’s getting really excessive, and they’re just trying to find ways to keep on going when they’re not making as good quality of videos and real film presentations,” said freshman Madison Cirino.
Disney’s originality is decreasing, and they could benefit from focusing less on money-making and more on making high-quality stories and films.
The Snow White story is outdated and offensive and would have been better left in the past. A story from the 19th century has no place in the 21st.
“At the end of the day, Disney is a company, they want money,” said Williams. “So I think they’re trying to appeal to [a more liberal audience], and then they’re also trying to appeal to more conservatives who want to see the older stories, those that depict more usual gender stereotypes.”