I’m still on my Disney kick. I had to review Snow White to see if there are any messages that might be sexist. It didn’t take long because the opening scene started off with a bang.
The movie starts by telling us that the princess Snow White’s beauty was “feared” by the vain and wicked stepmother because she thought that Snow White’s beauty would surpass her own. The entire premise of this story is based on the fears of an aging woman in a society that has always praised and applauded youth and beauty. What’s worse is that she has reason to be afraid. The queen bought into the idea that she had to remain the most beautiful, at any cost, even death of her step daughter.
I stopped for a moment and thought, how many older women do I see in most magazine ads? I have heard the phrase, “looks good for her age, but I have not heard many people say that phrase when speaking of an older woman without adding the part about age. It is fascinating that ageism has always been a curse to women in a patriarchal society.
The magic mirror tells the queen of the one who is the most beautiful in all the land: her skin is snow white, lips are red, hair is like that of the raven. As an aside, could a movie about a princess named Jet Black ever make it very far? I’m not even going to analyze the racial implications of Snow White's name on ethnic children. It is just evidence of the times in which the movie was made.
This fairy tale is another old one based on one of the Brothers Grimm tales. It was made in 1937, so we have a combination of an old fairy tale remade into an animated movie during a time when in America, African Americans could not vote at all, segregation was the law of the land and women had only been voting for a whopping 17 years with the passage of the 19th Amendment. This movie is bound to be jam packed with patriarchal ideals, yet it made the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Times….in 1997. Then, in 2007, 70 years after its debut and a lifetime of “advances” for women, it achieved an even higher ranking. The message is clear to me: stay beautiful, stay young, and look for confirmation for this from an outside source.
The queen orders the princess to be taken into the forest and killed with her heart brought back in a box as assurance that the job was done. Again the theme, bring back her symbol of love- separated from her body. The queen’s minion set out to kill Snow White by stabbing her. How scary is that. Is that the kind of danger a young woman is in for being beautiful? Disney can re-release this one all they want but I don’t know if I’m going to let my future kids watch this one until they are able to convince me that they don’t believe in it.
As soon as Snow White makes it to the home of the dwarfs, the first order of business is to detail how untidy the house is and she decides to clean the house so she can stay. The audience is supposed to be okay with the idea that between six older gentlemen and one younger, older gentleman, no one thought their house should be clean? The dwarfs were happy living filthy dwarf lives until a woman showed up to clean up their acts. Please, say it isn’t so.
Grumpy says it best, “she is a female and that means she’s poison! “ He also mentioned the wiles of women and said something to the effect of, “ If you give them an inch they’ll walk all over ya.”
Snow White instantly becomes mother by making them wash for dinner that she made, packing their lunches and doing the housekeeping. These are men with long white beards we are talking about not little kids. Plus, no one thought better to protect her when everyone knew there was a murderous 40 year- old on the loose! I exaggerate about the queen’s age because she was actually neither old, nor ugly. She had to turn herself into those things to convince Snow White to eat the apple. I’m sure in Brothers Grimm days this perpetuated the notion that old women were witches- another terrible stereotype. By the way, I might be stretching it, but is that a biblical reference with the apple that brings “death” to the victim. For sure that is a topic for another day.
For me, the masterful songwriters struck again. I have to admit, a tear came up to my throat when Snow White started the, “Some Day My Prince Will Come” song. I know I have felt that, I know that I have that song inked on my heart. In Snow White, of course, he came. The prince came after searching for her and gave her love’s kiss which brought her back to life. This is rarely talked about, but it sets up that fantastical wish that I have heard expressed by grown women, that maybe if they took ill and were somehow out of commission, their beloved would appear at the hospital and awaken them from their comas. I bet there are women right now in comas waiting to be kissed. Ok, that was wrong. Wake up ladies from the coma of thinking someone is coming, that’s the coma we are in. Wake up and stop waiting. You are the one you have been waiting for.
All in all the take-aways here are not things I want to tell my future daughters. But, if I were to watch this with them, I would teach them the opposite of this movie. I’d have to say: surround yourself with older women because they are beautiful and they have been down this road; you should trust them, they will teach you things spiritually and maybe even physically that will keep you beautiful for a lifetime not just until the media starts to push anti-aging creams to people in your age bracket. We are beautiful at all ages and one should not allow the mirror to be the judge.
