Love is a Worthy Goal

Another, Longer, Grumpier Defense of Snow White

You may have thought I said my piece about Snow White. I may have even thought I said my piece about Snow White. We were both wrong, apparently, because there’s been a clip of Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot making the rounds recently which I feel the need to address.

Rachel Zegler, who’s playing Snow White, has some very serious concerns about her character’s shameful lack of girlbossery. Gal Gadot, playing the evil queen, either agrees with Zegler or is method acting so hard that she’ll hate Snow for any reason at all.

That’s right, everybody! “It’s no longer 1937”, and in our enlightened modern age we’re going to make sure Snow White answers for her crimes, which are as follows:

1. Being an abused child instead of an empowered girlboss feminist icon

   1. Acting like an abused child instead of an empowered girlboss feminist icon

2. Not taking it completely in stride when she found out her stepmother was trying to kill her and her only option became fleeing into the wilderness

3. Supporting herself through housework when she obviously should have picked up a broadsword and become a mercenary, duh

4. Longing for true love

   1. Not even realizing boys have cooties

      1. Totally catching cooties (ew) rather than just staying dead

5. Being naïve enough to take an apple from a stranger, like she’s a sheltered and abused child who has somehow managed to cling to her faith in humanity or something

6. Being rescued by a man instead of performing the Heimlich maneuver on herself, coughing up the poisoned apple before it could take effect, and beating the witch to death with her own two hands

Thank goodness Hollywood is finally taking action and unpersoning the original Snow White. What girl could possibly benefit from a story that tells her to improve herself by incorporating her masculine aspect to wake from the slumber of girlhood into womanhood in order to create for herself a life redolent with love and meaning?

Yeah, I’m a bit peeved with the direction this soulless cash-grab remake is taking, even more peeved than I usually am with soulless cash-grab remakes. One might even say I’m frustrated. Vexed. Incandescent with righteous fury at the blatant and malignant warping of a beautiful, culturally significant, symbolically flawless story to satisfy the demands of ideological scolds.

In case I haven’t made it clear yet, dear reader, I’m going to be positively wretched today.

Zegler’s Snow White is “not gonna be saved by the prince”. She is “not gonna be dreaming about true love”. Instead, she’ll be dreaming about leadership, which she’ll earn through being “fearless, fair, brave, and true”.

I have an awful feeling that hideously redundant list of attributes is part of the actual dialogue of the movie. Fearless and brave, you say? Is she also courageous? Perhaps daring? Valiant, even?

But oh, dear reader, it gets worse. I had another, equally awful feeling when I heard that little list: that the use of fair is some sort of play on fairest of them all, meaning they’ve changed the meaning of the word in the story to mean just instead of beautiful.

One of the great tragedies of my life is my tendency to be right about this sort of thing.

(The relevant commentary is only in the last minute or so. Don’t torture yourself like I did and watch the whole vapid thing.)

My sincere apologies if, in the unfortunately likely event I come across another interview with anyone involved in this noxious dumpster fire, I actually lose my mind.

I don’t know what to say, despite clearly not being at anything approaching a loss for words. I just wish I knew whether these two women are more ignorant, idiotic, or malicious. I can mostly forgive two of those options, but I have my suspicions. And like I said, I have a tragic tendency to be right.

Whatever the case, they’ve presented me with such a mess that it’s nigh impossible to determine where to start. Mostly because I’d like to begin with a duel to defend Snow White’s honor against a champion appointed by Disney (I’m thinking Chernabog), but I’ve got to use my words instead. Well, fine. I’ve got lots of them.

These updates to the fairy tale are about as absurd as replacing the seven dwarves with unnamed “magical creatures” to avoid offending people with dwarfism by giving them jobs, all because some actor threw a hissy fit because he didn’t understand that the dwarves in the fairy tale are not men with dwarfism but mythical beings.

…Hold up, what happened?

Okay, never mind, we don’t have time to unpack all that. This thing is going to be long enough as is.

So. No prince. No true love. Justice instead of beauty. Lord save us from the airheaded twits running our cultural institutions.

I’ll be charitable for a moment or two, just for fun, and say the people making this movie missed the symbolism of the original fairy tale. People miss the symbolism of fairy tales all the time, though not everyone takes their brain-damaged-gerbil levels of reading comprehension as a mark of morality and pride. Let’s break it down for them, shall we?

As I’ve said before, so many times that you’re probably about as sick of it as I am of certain smug actresses, fairy tales are so ancient that all that is left of them are their structure, archetypes, and symbols, meaning no fairy tale is meant to be understood solely at a surface level.

The prince is no mere prince. He is also Snow White’s animus, her masculine side, her aggression and sexuality. The kiss, then, is the union. Her incorporation of her animus through her sexual awakening. Were this story about the prince, Snow White would play a similar role, but as the anima. His sexuality, his femininity, gentleness, etc. She would be the grace and mercy he required to be a good king. This is what happens when the prince slays the dragon and rescues the princess.

True love is almost as reviled as Snow White herself these days. It’s a strange thing to hate, don’t you think? What’s funny about this one is that I think some people hate it because they do understand what it means, but we’ll address misunderstanding first.

The thing is, true love is not simply love that is true. This is the most common problem people seem to have. It leads to “true love” between friends, siblings, and parents and their children. For those of us who know what true love actually is, those latter examples are really, really, really gross. The friend versions are moderately bearable, but the Frozen and Maleficent varieties are utterly perverse.

True love is romantic love, specifically the deep and abiding romantic love which leads to and sustains a marriage. Marriage is key here. Almost every true fairy tale ends in marriage (and frankly I’m not sure about that almost). Not, you should note, the kiss and its symbolized sexuality. It’s not about sex, even if that is part of marriage.

Friendships, siblings relationships, and parent/child relationships all have a degree of separation not found in a marital relationship. Even the best of friends live separate lives, as do siblings, as do parents and children—assuming all of these are healthy relationships. Marriage, besides embodying the animus/anima union mentioned previously, demands an almost absurd level of closeness. It means starting a whole new life with another person, shackling yourself to them till death do you part, and creating and raising entirely new human beings. That’s a unique relationship with unique expectations and responsibilities. Ask any happily married person and they’ll tell you all about it.

This, I think, is where the trouble comes from people who do understand what true love means. I think it comes from a place of deep resentment. They know what true love is, they don’t have it, and they tell themselves they don’t need it. Some really don’t want it, but they still resent the extent to which it is valued. And I get it, I’m terminally single too, but that doesn’t change the facts. True love doesn’t lose any power because you’re mad about it.

As for the matter of justice versus beauty…well, it’s going to be hard to pretend they actually missed the symbolism, but let’s do it anyway. If they can pretend that thing they made is a halfway decent movie, we can pretend this much. We can pretend they made the exact same mistake as the evil queen herself.

Fair as in beautiful, in the context of fairy tales, does not refer to physical beauty. Not really.

Yes, the girls described as beautiful are physically beautiful, but that is in part because fairy tales take place in a fundamentally just world where everyone gets what they deserve. You’ll notice that evil characters who are initially described as beautiful, such as the evil queen, often end the story in some way deformed. In the Disney version, the queen dies looking like the wicked hag she was on the inside. In the Grimm version, she is invited to Snow White’s wedding and is forced to dance herself to death wearing red-hot iron shoes, which no doubt leaves her feet horrifically mangled.

Another common fairy tale trope is a person who begins wicked yet beautiful, is magically uglified, learns to be good, and regains or even exceeds their former beauty. You’re probably thinking of Beauty and the Beast, and you’re possibly also thinking it’s something only seen in male characters. However, it’s also seen in female characters. The best example is probably Goldilocks (from the Swedish folktale Goldilocks, not Goldilocks and the Three Bears): a beautiful noble girl punished for her vanity by being made so hideous she’s mistaken for a witch and driven from her home. Through several harsh trials she learns humility, becomes great in virtue, wins the prince (who proposes to her while she’s still ugly, by the way; I stan Prince Valdemar), regains her beauty, and lives happily ever after.

(Yes, Goldilocks is the reverse Beauty and the Beast you’ve always wanted. It’s a wonderful story and would make a far better movie than yet another remake, which is why Disney will never touch it.)

Snow White, though, is beautiful through and through. She would be beautiful even if she were physically hideous. Her beauty is nothing so simple as surface-level physicality; it is radiant and unwavering virtue. She is a princess humble enough to serve and a victim brave and optimistic enough to trust. Abused yet gentle, hated yet hopeful, unloved yet loving.

I imagine you’ve met someone at least a little like Snow White, someone whose good nature shines from them so brilliantly that no matter what they look like they are undeniably beautiful. I hope you have, anyway.

This is what makes Snow White “fairest of them all”. Fair in the context of fairy tales means something far greater, deeper, and further-reaching than just. You’ll notice that by changing the meaning of the word, Disney had to tack on three more (Three more which may as well be two more. Seriously, fearless and brave? How is this not a joke?). Even they, artless hacks though they are, realize just is not enough to communicate ultimate virtue. And yet they somehow still missed kindness.

“Fearless, fair, brave, and true” doesn’t tell you quite as much about the morality of a character as you might think at first glance. Those are all perfectly admirable traits, repetition aside. Traits already present in many fairy tale heroines, not that anyone working at modern-day Disney gives a fleck of pixie dust about what fairy tale heroines are actually like. As a list of requirements for a queen, though, I think it’s a bit lacking.

You can be brave without being kind. You can be loyal without being kind. You can even be just without being kind—what is fair is not necessarily the same as what is merciful, after all. Justice is a harsh thing, “reason free from passion” as we learned from Legally—um, I mean, as we learned from Aristotle.

My parents always told me the only thing that matters about a person is if they have a kind heart. I try to live by that principle (though, as my heart’s not half as kind as it should be, I don’t always succeed). Snow White has her flaws—mainly naïveté, which she overcomes—but she possesses a heart so kind it manifests in incomparable beauty. She is defined by nothing so dull as power. She is defined by her kindness, by a beauty beyond this plane of existence.

And oh, how she is hated for it.

Weak, they call her. Weak, as if they have the strength to remain kind under the burden of unspeakable cruelty and evil. Weak for dreaming, weak for gentleness, weak for kindness. Weak, most of all, for being a girl.

The nerve these people have to call the fairy tale—and fairy tales in general—sexist. You want sexism? How about reviling an abused little girl for acting like an abused little girl? Snow White is a sheltered, victimized child who over the course of the original fairy tale is subject to four assassination attempts, one of which actually sticks for a while. The only mother she’s ever known hates her, wants her dead, and actually kills her. And there’s not much Snow White can do about it.

Snow White may be a princess, but she has no real power. She is, for the umpteenth time, a child. Her stepmother has absolute power in this situation—both as her mother and as her queen. Snow White is not politically savvy (again, child) and has no allies. She is surrounded by people who are either loyal to the queen or too weak to stand against her. The huntsman had options when he took Snow White to the forest. Were he a good man, a strong man, he might have fled the kingdom with Snow White in tow and raised her in the wilderness or some little village far away from the queen’s influence. He could have saved her. All he did was not kill her, which isn’t exactly impressive. Nobody’s handing out medals for not killing little girls.

The only option is to run away, which is what Snow White does. She flees into the wilderness, where she finds the dwarves—good folk, but not a revolutionary force. And even if they were, we’re still talking about an innocent, sheltered, abused child who has not yet learned to harness her aggression. She doesn’t even have any aggression. She’s no rebel. But she is a smart, humble, gentle girl willing to get her hands dirty and help others, asking only for a place to stay.

When the queen comes for her, Snow White fails to protect herself. Because she’s naïve. Because she looks at an old crone and her heart aches for a mother. Because she’s a girl.

She’s just a girl, until the prince comes and awakens her into womanhood. She’s just a girl, and that’s why they hate her.

I have to say I’m quite disappointed in Gadot. She was delightful as Wonder Woman. I actually came away from that movie thinking she might have a basic grasp on the power of the gentle side of femininity. Looks like I was wrong (the equally tragic counterpart of my tragic tendency to be right).

I’ll give her points, though, for getting so deeply in character. Through this movie, she’ll be feeding more poison to little girls than the original evil queen could ever dream.

Zegler baffles me, frankly. There’s something uniquely awful to me about the girl actually playing Snow White actively hating the princess. I keep making snide remarks about Gadot method acting, but the truth is her role does make her position on the story and its princess a tad more bearable. But to at once want to be and to destroy a character? I’m having trouble with that one.

In the beginning of that first video, Zegler says she cried when she saw herself as Snow White. Not even seeing herself, just seeing the logo and the title and understanding what it meant, that she is Snow White. It’s actually a lovely, endearing sentiment, one I can understand. I imagine I’d react the same way in her position.

Unfortunately, Rachel, if by some hilariously slim chance you’re reading this, I have some bad news. You’re not Snow White.

Oh, it’s not your race or skin color. I know everyone keeps bringing that up, but that’s not the real issue here. Yes, you’re playing a character literally named for being pale, but for one thing you don’t have to be white to be pale, and for another the story of Snow White is defined more by its structure than the specific description of the princess. Your looks are only a surface level matter, and heaven knows you’re pretty enough for the role. What stops you from being Snow White is something deeper.

You, Rachel, are not Snow White because you don’t have the foggiest idea who Snow White is. You see her as a frail, useless girl who’s very existence contradicts your ideology, and you loathe her. Openly. So virulently and so publicly that you celebrate gutting her and her story and reworking them in your own image, with your values and goals. You are not Snow White because the girl you’re playing is nothing like the one the world knows and loves. Instead of a girl struggling to survive armed only with a bleeding and humble heart, you are portraying the same Strong Independent Woman™ Hollywood has been stuffing down our throats for years.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be this harsh towards these actresses, especially in regards to Miss Zegler. She’s only playing the part she’s been given, only the vessel of this new Snow White and her “modern values”. She’s only the figurehead. But that’s the trouble. She is the face of the story and of the chronological snobbery at work, and so in my anger at those things I find myself angry with her.

But Disney, darling, I hope you don’t think I’ve forgotten you. I hope you don’t think that just because I recognized the poisoned fruit I have ignored the rotten tree from which it grew. Those insufferable interviews, that malicious warping of the fairy tale, only exist because of you, you self-cannibalizing conglomerate of fools.

You call yourself feminist, and raze femininity. You hate little girls so much that you shame them for acting like little girls. They’ve got to be rebellious Amazons with the personality of every male action hero ever. You cast their softness as weakness and ridicule their gentleness. I’m surprised you didn’t switch out Snow White’s dress for trousers and a sword—then again, there’s a fair chance that’s what actually happens in the movie.

(Is this the time to talk about how unbelievably fugly the costumes look? The one thing they chose not to “update” was Snow’s dress—and let’s be honest with ourselves, no matter how much we may love her, that dress was always one of the worst of the whole Disney Princess lineup. Not to mention the hobo-wear of the seven…the one guy with dwarfism and six people taking roles away from other actors with dwarfism. Is there a quicker way to say that?)

Your ridiculous changes to Snow White are a mockery not only of the story and character but of the countless women and girls who love her. You are blatantly and enthusiastically shaming them for loving Snow White, for seeing themselves or what they could be in her. They’re not allowed to love anything but what you say they should. They’re not allowed to dream about anything but what you say they should. They’re not allowed to think anything but what you say they should.

You pay lip service to diversity and use it as a shield, but you don’t actually care about it. If you did, you wouldn’t just be remaking your old movies. You’d be telling stories from different cultures, or at least reimagining your old stories by retelling them in different cultures. Imagine how interesting it could have been had you taken the Snow White story structure and placed it in a Latin American-based setting. But that would have taken thought and effort. It would have required consulting with experts on Latin American cultures and mythologies to see how they would influence the original German story. And who cares about their cultures, right, Disney? The only culture that matters is the one that conforms to your ideology, you amorphous blob of virtue signaling.

The hypocrisy, the ignorance, the malice at play in this movie and its ilk are absolutely staggering. Disney these days conveys contempt not only for the stories and people of the past but for those of today, all while presenting itself as some sort of cultural savior.

There was a time when Disney made art. Real art. Moving tales, gorgeous images, wickedly clever music. Sure, they sanitized the old stories, but for the most part they stayed true to their structures and conveyed their meanings. That was back when they only felt the need to make things family-friendly, not when they decided to update stories for modern audiences.

Fun fact about people from a hundred years ago, and about people from a thousand years ago, and about people from ten thousand years ago: they were people. Sure, they didn’t know or believe a lot of the things we do, but they were people. They thought. They loved. They perceived transcendent beauty and passed it down through stories. They were people, and you and I are not better than them simply for being alive today.

The reason we have stories like Snow White and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and all the rest is because they have been preserved for centuries upon centuries, changing here and there with time and teller. They are, as I keep saying, old. And despite the universal truths they carry, they are still products of their times. Yes, Miss Zegler, they are dated. They’re supposed to be.

There’s a lot of magic in fairy tales. Part of it is in their more accessible facets: the exciting adventures, the strange occurrences, the inspiring messages. But part of it is in their age, in reaching back through time, in hearing the same stories told around a fire thousands of years before. They offer us a glimpse into the past and its people.

Yes, sometimes the past and its people were a bit problematic. You’re a little problematic, too, you know. I can basically guarantee that a hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely horrified by the beliefs of your culture. But yes, there are some bad things in fairy tales. Not nearly as many as Disney would like you to think, but as someone who’s actually read a great deal of them (unlike most people at Disney) I can confirm that once in a while there are things in fairy tales which would offend modern sensibilities.

What Disney and its self-important hive mind don’t seem to realize is there’s more to life than modern sensibilities. They certainly don’t realize—and bear with me here, I’m about to say something terribly shocking—we can learn from the past. Not simply how not to live our lives, either. I’m saying the past can actually teach and inspire us to better live our lives.

I’m not saying never update anything in a retelling, certainly not if it’s for kids. If all the villains are Jewish (one of the more common issues I’ve encountered), go ahead and change that. Please. It’s perfectly reasonable to recontextualize an old story so the audience can better understand it, that’s a huge part of what a retelling is for. And retellings are important. They keep stories alive. Not everyone grew up a used-bookstore-scavenging gremlin collecting dusty old fairy tale books, seeking the oldest she could find no matter how offensive and macabre (or, rather, seeking the most macabre she could find no matter how offensive). We can’t all be cool.

But if you’re going to update a story, you need to understand what you’re updating and what actually needs an update. You need to understand the story, especially when that story already conveys the message you want to send.

New, Updated, Girlboss Snow White’s character arc is about becoming a “fantastic leader” and “coming into her own power”, which I’m sure will be conveyed in a masterfully subtle manner and won’t club the audience over the head so hard it leaves lumps the size of the boulder that crushed Disney’s original evil queen.

Now, as gag-worthy as the phrasing may be, Zegler, Gadot, and Disney are all missing something rather important: That’s already Snow White’s character arc. If this new movie wasn’t being run by simplistic literalist twits, they would already know that.

What, exactly, do you think happens when the prince brings Snow White back to life? Two things, in particular. One, she marries a prince, who is never specified to have any siblings. Two, her stepmother dies, leaving Snow White the heir to her kingdom. Which means Snow White ends the story as the queen of her old kingdom and quite possibly a whole new one as well, ruling far more than her wicked stepmother could have ever dreamed.

She becomes queen, and not just any queen. Snow White is fairest of them all, awoken into womanhood, master of all dimensions of self. The story is already about a girl who must take on the mantle of queenship.

There’s one last thing I need to address, and that’s the matter of true love.

I know, I know, I already talked about true love. But I have more to say about it. I always have more to say about true love.

According to Zegler, the new Snow White won’t be “dreaming about true love”. This is supposed to be empowering. Empowered girls, you see, don’t dream of true love. Empowered girls are all they need, absolute individualists who feel no desire to create a life with someone else or grow a family. Empowered girls just want power.

I, apparently, am not an empowered girl. Maybe I could be if I took out my heart and placed it in an egg, in a duck, in a well, in a castle, on an island, on a lake, a thousand miles away. Maybe then I wouldn’t be burdened with such unacceptable dreams. Maybe the emptiness would be better than the ache.

Maybe. But I’d rather have my heart and my dreams and my ache. Perhaps you, dear reader, feel the same way.

I’m dreaming of true love. I dream of it every day. I’m dreaming of a love that takes my focus away from myself and gives it to another person, of a love that forces me to grow together with another through the trials of life, of a love so powerful it creates an altogether new love. I am damn well dreaming of true love, and I am sick of watching my dream be mocked and hated by people who don’t even know what it is.

Love is a worthy goal. Love is, perhaps, the only worthy goal. True love—romantic love, marital love—is not some lesser variety. It is not childish. It is not simplistic. It does not diminish the lover. No love diminishes anything but selfishness and vice. Love makes the lover greater, though the lover does not notice, their focus directed outward from the self towards something they deem more important.

Snow White may be naïve, but if there is anything in her that signals a seed of wisdom, it is her dream of true love.

When the world tells you not to dream of love, don’t be surprised. Love belongs to something greater than the world. The world will tell you to dream of power, of status, of glory. Dream of something better. Dream of love.