The culture wars are dragging ‘Snow White’ through the mud

In an old trunk where I keep things for a future grandchild is a tattered book published by the iconic Golden Press. It’s something akin to contraband these days, a 1952 edition of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” every objectionable stereotype intact — right down to the imagining of a dream child with “lips red as blood, skin white as snow, and hair black as ebony” and Love’s First Kiss foist upon a sleeping princess without her consent.

Since this is a treasure from my childhood, it seems remarkable that such books can be had for under $20 on Amazon, but vintage Snow White has fallen out of favor with a certain segment of our society, including the young woman who plays her in the upcoming Disney remake.

Rachel Zegler has said that the original story scares her. She told Variety last year, “We absolutely wrote a ‘Snow White’ that ... she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true.” Another time, Zegler called Prince Charming a stalker and said that part of the storyline is “weird.”

Predictably, these comments and others have served to add to the pile-on regarding Disney, which has been in the crosshairs of conservatives now for years, and not without reason. From leaked employee training documents about white privilege to its reimagining of classic stories and characters, the Disney brand has been the subject of boycotts, both of its creative projects and theme parks, because of the perception that the company had succumbed to “the Great Awokening.”

And there is some evidence that the backlash from conservatives could be having an effect. The company said in an SEC filing last year that “consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”

Disney’s stock remains below $100 a share (down from more than $200 a share in 2021), despite the success of the movie “Inside Out 2″ and its streaming service Disney+. During its most recent earnings call, company officials said it expected theme park attendance to slow in the coming quarter as consumers cut back on spending. The company is hiking prices at its theme parks in 2025 and cracked down on password sharing on Disney+ this year.

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has settled many of the issues he has had with the company, some stemming from political issues. So despite years of earned controversy, is it time for conservatives to call a truce with Disney, too?

Why the ‘Snow White’ remake is controversial

The tortured history of the “Snow White” remake, first announced in 2016, shows the sticky wicket that the culture wars have created, and how difficult it is for a company to extract itself.

Consider the dwarfs. It’s been years since it was acceptable to use the word “dwarf” except when referring to planets. The preferred terms is “people with dwarfism,” which is in keeping with other contemporary language changes, such as eschewing “obese” as a noun and referring instead to “people with obesity.” Most of us have no problem with this, except for the problem the changing terms present for “Snow White” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Disney seems to have struggled mightily with how to solve the dwarf problem, exacerbated when the actor Peter Dinklage, known for his roles in “Game of Thrones” and “Cyrano,” excoriated the company, saying, “Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me.”

In response, the company told Entertainment Weekly at the time, “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. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period.”

At one point, it looked like the seven dwarfs — responsible for one of the funniest scenes in the book: their horror when Snow White insisted they wash up before dinner — would be portrayed as one person with dwarfism and six others of mixed heritage and gender in the remake, according to leaked photos from the set published by a British publication.

But the official trailer for the film, now set to release in March, reveals CGI-created “magical characters” that look much like Bashful, Dopey and Grumpy in the original film and in my book. And other people who have dwarfism have taken issue with Dinklage’s comments and the influence they had over Disney because of the actor’s celebrity.

One person said that the extreme sensitivity around the “LP,” or little people, community, has resulted in fewer roles for them in Hollywood. “Five years ago, there were constant commercial auditions. Because of equality, and voices stating that they weren’t okay with things like elf roles, or dwarf roles, or leprechaun roles, they’ve been eliminated. And not only are you not seeing a lot of little people in in the acting industry anymore, but you’re not seeing productions being created to give little people an actual role, either,” Terra Jolé told IndieWire, adding that cancel culture has made people afraid to object.

David Hand, the son of one of the directors of the 1937 film, has said it is a “disgrace” for Disney to take a beloved film and so markedly change it. “It’s a whole different concept and I just totally disagree with it, and I know my dad and Walt (Disney) would also very much disagree with it,” Hand said, per The Hollywood Reporter.

He also said: “Their thoughts are just so radical now. They change the stories, they change the thought process of the character, … they’re making up new woke things and I’m just not into any of that. I find it quite frankly a bit insulting [what] they may have done with some of these classic films. … There’s no respect for what Disney did and what my dad did.”

Beloved and enduring stories

The conversation about “Snow White” is part of a wider debate that involves disclaimers on movies like “Gone With The Wind” and revisions of “problematic” parts of books after the author has died and cannot give permission. But in this case, Disney seems much like any contemporary American who finds themselves contorting themselves every which way in an effort to be kind or thoughtful or open-minded, and finding that instead of pleasing everyone, they’ve made everyone mad.

That’s certainly the case with the most recent “Snow White” controversy, which pits the leading actresses (Zegler and Gal Gadot, the “Wonder Woman” star who plays Wicked Queen) against each other because of their disparate views about the Israel-Hamas war. Some people on social media have called for a boycott of the movie because Gadot is an Israeli who served in the IDF for two years. Zegler is an ardent supporter of Palestinian rights who has posted about the movie using the hashtag #FreePalestine. Their dueling posts on social media are a marketing headache that Disney couldn’t have seen coming. In fact, we might as well call the movie “Snow White and the 7 controversies” as there are surely more that will come up before March.

All this might give even the strongest of Disney haters a moment’s pause.

While the company’s efforts to please the most progressive segments of society are galling to some of us on the other side of the ideological spectrum, such efforts are generally grounded in good intentions. The company is still turning out beautifully told family movies, like “Young Woman and the Sea.” It’s responsible for some of our culture’s most beloved and enduring stories. And even if we don’t agree with the latest representations of characters that the company employs in hopes of winning a new generation of fans, we still have the option to show and read the classic renditions to our children.

Perhaps most importantly, even Disney’s worst excesses aren’t the equivalent of turning Winnie-the-Pooh into a horror film as one company did after the character became part of the public domain. And that appalling genre is here to stay — it’s been reported that the same company is making horror films based on Pinocchio, Bambi and Peter Pan.

Amanda Ripley, the author of the book “High Conflict” and the founder of a nonprofit that works to help people resolve their differences, told Interfaith America CEO Eboo Patel that in matters of high conflict, people often wind up destroying the very thing that they want to protect, and the Disney controversy seems a prime example of that.

Many people who grew up loving Disney got upset about “woke” Disney because Disney still matters to them, and they wish the company would not take a side on issues on which the country is sharply divided. They just want Disney to be Disney, without lecturing them. It’s not a hard ask. At the same time, it’s worth asking ourselves whether prolonged acrimony toward the company is serving any higher purpose at this point, or just throwing more fuel in the anger machine.