I’m bored of Disney feminism

It is, I know, a bit early to be thinking about 2024, but to help with the forward planning, here’s a film to avoid next year: the Disney release of its new, non-animated, musical version of Snow White. The original animated version of 1937 was a classic if ever there were one. Stewart Steven, the late editor of the Evening Standard, remembered seeing it as a boy when it was released: ‘I was completely terrified’, he told me, speaking for a generation of children. It was a triumph of animation; the songs were terrific – the seven dwarves’ ‘Hi Ho, Hi Ho’ is immortal; and the episode where the princess, fleeing the huntsman through the trees, is tormented by clinging branches and malevolent eyes is fearful. It’s just a pity that most of us now see it on a small screen.

Skipping right through to the present day, Disney’s new version has already attracted uncharitable ridicule for its sensitive treatment of the seven members of the vertically challenged community: ‘To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community’, it announced, to barely stifled sniggers across the globe.

But the grimness – as in grim, not Grimm– doesn’t stop there. Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot’s interview on the new feminist take on Snow White makes for dispiriting viewing. Gal Gadot, who is the wicked Stepmother, insists that Snow White is ‘not going to be saved by the prince’. I think we’re meant to cheer at that point.

Snow White, i.e., Rachel Zegler, who resembles the original in being a bit vertically challenged herself, agreed. ‘She (Snow White) is not dreaming about true love; she’s dreaming about being the leader she knows she can be, the leader her late father told her she could be if is was fearless brave, fair and true. The cartoon was made 85 years ago and it’s extremely dated when it comes to the idea of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world. And when it came to the reimagining of the role, Snow White has to learn a lot of lessons about coming into her own power before she can come into power over a kingdom.’

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You know, this stuff could have been scripted by Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, who had her own version of riding off on a prince’s horse and did very nicely out of it. Does everyone in LA talk this sort of rubbish? This, from a company which makes a fortune – and I mean a fortune – by fleecing the parents of little girls with overpriced princess outfits (check out the prices at the online store and be prepared to feel a little faint). Disney provides a consumerist vista of hyper-femininity which even I think is toxic. But routinely dissing the concept of true love and a story ending in marriage is, I’d say, one reason for our present demographic crisis.

Granted, the original Disney version of the story was not true to the original Grimms’s tale, like most Disney variants. Neither, come to that, were most of the versions of the story read by English readers, who got an expurgated version served up by one Edgar Taylor – a Norfolk lawyer turned translator. No matter.

But if Disney really wanted to scare the life out of us with a raw version of Snow White, it could do worse than return to the original – and there’s a useful translation of the tales by the Grimm Brothers expert, Jack Zikes. That differs in several respects from the Disney version. The wicked stepmother has three attempts at Snow White’s life, not one. She is punished at the end of the story by being forced to dance to her death in red hot shoes – I would so love to see Gal Gadot performing that feat. And most chillingly, in at least one early variant of the story, it is not the wicked stepmother who sets out to kill Snow White out of envy of her beauty, but her own mother. Try sucking on that.

This isn’t the first cinematic travesty of the Grimm stories – Jack Zikes’ book Grimm Legacies documents a succession of rubbish film adaptations – but it’s a sad one because the original was such a delight. The mystery is why we even bother watching contemporary Disney films. The last enjoyable one, I’d say, was the remake of Beauty and the Beast with, of all people, Emma Watson. Or the animated version.

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As I say, you can save a couple of hours of your life by not watching this frightful film next year. You’re so welcome.