The Snow White remake opened this weekend to a lethargic $43 million domestic box office. Inflated movie budgets led to the film costing about $250 million to produce, meaning it has a long way to go before it breaks even. Audiences have had an icy response as well, giving it just 2 out of 10 stars on IMDb.
The new film bet on a boastful, ultramodern vision of Snow White that downplayed her femininity in favor of vanity and hubris. Its ending perfectly encapsulates this, as — spoiler! — the princess does not learn to love Prince Charming but rather ends up with a bandit named Jonathan, a pseudo-Robin Hood with a painfully socialistic perspective.
The Snow White remake has gained a reputation for itself but perhaps not in the way Disney executives had hoped. Since the new rendition was first announced in 2016, it has been the subject of extensive ire. Perhaps this is the natural dilemma for any piece of art following in the wake of an older, beloved creation. The original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length animated film at its debut in 1937 and, when adjusted for inflation, was among the highest-grossing animated films ever. Although the story has European origins, Walt Disney and his company transformed it into a juggernaut of American culture. It was a pinnacle of Western storytelling, promoting loving relationships and affirming the value of gender roles.
Disney, much like apple pie and baseball games, was once quintessential Americana. Its stories, characters, and songs influenced generations of families, and its optimistic themes once reflected what the culture truly desired: for the fairest of them all — the kind, resourceful, and beautiful young ladies — to ride off into the sunset with Prince Charming. Disney stories always understood the centrality of marriage, allowing the worthwhile tales to be passed down from one generation to the next.
Until now, Disney’s live-action remakes have been extremely profitable for the company. The use of well-established intellectual property has ensured that crowds familiar with names like Aladdin or Cinderella would shell out a few bucks at the movie theater.
But Snow White got caught between a rock and a hard place. To stand on its own artistic merit, it needed to be different from the original while still baiting audiences with nostalgia. The film was in production throughout Donald Trump’s first presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, Covid lockdowns, the Black Lives Matter riots, #MeToo, and more political fervor than any would care to revisit. At the time, much of Hollywood’s “creative” landscape favored leftist dogmas such as faux diversity and so-called equity over traditional storytelling tropes, and Snow White became a casualty.
Since the film was released on March 21, there has been overwhelming speculation about which parts of the movie were cut or added due to mounting public pressure. Press events, such as an infamous interview in which the lead actress, Rachel Zegler, slammed the 1937 film for being “weird,” led to general bitterness. Rumors circulated that Disney changed scenes to rehabilitate Snow White’s woefully won reputation. We may never know how much was altered, but with the new adaptation cowering in the shadow of the original, there is a clear point of comparison.
Near the end of the 1937 version, Snow White sings “Someday My Prince Will Come,” a sanguine melody generations have whistled while they worked. It encapsulates the young princess’s desire for wedding bells, stolen kisses, and Prince Charming. The song endears the audience to Snow White as they bear witness to her femininity.
The Snow White remake gives us a very different version of the young girl, one who is as physically strong as the men around her and doesn’t have any desire for a charming man to help her. The new version paints Snow White in an unsympathetic light, trading her vulnerability for self-sufficiency.
Encouraging women to use their skills and intuition is a good thing that allows for growth, but pretending women’s capabilities are the same as men’s is an outright rejection of the natural order. When Hollywood refuses to recognize women’s differences, a societal chasm forms. Movies and media try desperately to fill the gaping cultural hole with the soulless narrative that love and relationships are unimportant. The focus shifts away from two people living together and joyfully building one another up and lands on an unrealistic young woman whose traits are relatively indistinguishable from a man’s. The story ends not with two lovers riding off into the sunset but with a lonely egotist.
The stories people tell are often litmus tests for the health of their society. The story of Snow White ignoring the need for a Prince Charming shows a society that is callous, narcissistic, and sick. Charming’s replacement, Jonathan, is the unfortunate reflection of a cultural fall from grace. Whereas Charming encourages young girls to dream of a noble man, Jonathan promotes rebellion. The two visions of masculinity are fundamentally opposed, for Jonathan inverts the joy and stability that are crucial to human flourishing.
The American people sat through years of movies and media that scoffed at their traditional values. The disinterest and malaise that encircle the new Snow White have determined its inevitable fate. Created in the image of wokeness, by its wokeness does it fail.
Brooke Brandtjen is a writer and journalist from Wisconsin who focuses primarily on culture, politics, and religion. She is extremely passionate about the arts and history, and is honored to write for a variety of distinguished publications.
