Do We Really Understand “Snow White”? How We Tell Fairy Tales in Modern Times & Why it Matters

by Ashley Griffin, Stage Directions

There’s a thought experiment called the “Ship of Theseus” that asks whether an object that has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after killing the minotaur. He then escaped on a ship (the ship of Theseus) going to Delos. Every year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage back to Delos. This event inspired a now famous question for ancient philosophers:

After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?

The same thought experiment can be used for the stories we tell.

And, right now, I’m specifically thinking about it in reference to “Snow White”.

“Snow White” is getting a lot of flak. With Disney planning a new adaptation of yet another in their long line of, to put it mildly, “leaves something to be desired” live-action remakes of their classic animated films, the frustration around this story has reached a peak. But the sentiment has been growing for some time, with lots of people angry with the original Disney animated film (and a lot of Disney princess films) because they claim that the tales glorify a passive princess waiting around for a man to save her, not to mention celebrating, especially in the case of “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty” a man “non-consensually kissing a woman.” In fact, these kinds of “issues” are what the live-action remakes claim to be “fixing” when really they’re just making things ten times worse.

And yet, “Snow White” is one of the most important stories in our collective consciousness. Especially now. There have probably been more commercial adaptations of “Snow White” in the past ten years (not to mention in the 20th century in general) than at any other point in history – with “Snow White and the Huntsman” (and its sequel), “Mirror Mirror” and the T.V. show “Once Upon a Time” notable among them. Not to mention the now infamous Britney Spears Broadway Jukebox musical “Once Upon a One More Time” that reimagines classic Disney princesses, including Snow, getting a hold of “The Feminine Mystique” and going after the real villain of the story – Prince Charming (the show announced an early closing, ending up only running on Broadway for a short time after YEARS of development…)

It's also interesting how many adaptations are musicals – “Once Upon a One More Time”, the Cannon Movie Tales “Snow White”, the upcoming Disney adaptation that expands the score of the original animated film with new material from Pasek and Paul…even the “Once Upon a Time” T.V. show got a musical episode.

I’m somewhat of an expert on this story, and fairy tales in general. I even wrote a novel that is a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” set in the Celtic world. It’s called “The Spindle” go check it out, and an off-Broadway play called “Snow” that explores the power and importance of storytelling as viewed through the lens of three separate but interweaving storylines (think “The Hours” or “Cloud Atlas”) that all center around “Snow White.” One is the historically accurate story of how the Grimm Brothers collected the tale in the first place, the second is about a Victorian theatrical family whose lives start to mirror “Snow White” and the third is about a modern-day girl living with her abusive mother.

So let’s sort through some things about this story and get to the bottom of what it actually is, why it’s important, and what has gone wrong with it over the centuries since it was first transcribed. A lot of folks are making a lot of assumptions about the tale without remembering much about it – yes, even the Disney version.

“Snow White”: A History

The Grimm Brothers

So, where did “Snow White” come from in the first place? The tale was first transcribed by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early to mid-eighteen hundreds. But the story of how and why they transcribed it (along with numerous other folk and fairy tales) is fascinating – it’s actually a big reason why I got so interested in studying history.

The Grimm brothers were German, but being German in the eighteen hundreds was nothing like it would be even fifty years later. Germany wasn’t even really a country – it was a collection of city-states, each with their own castle and their own King (so, yeah, ever wondered how there are so many different kingdoms with so many different princes and princesses in stories? Yeah, that’s how it was.) And because Germany wasn’t really unified it made them VERY easy to conquer – and that’s exactly what happened during the Napoleonic wars. Basically, all you need to know is that Napoleon, the ruler of France, got on a big kick about conquering Europe. And guess where Germany is? Dead smack in the middle of all the European countries which means you have to go through Germany to pretty much get anywhere else – certainly if you’re going between Eastern and Western Europe.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Napoleon went straight through Germany, conquering it as he went on his way to Prussia. Then Prussia would launch a counterattack, going straight through Germany, conquering it on the way towards France. This meant that for YEARS Germany was part of France one minute, and Prussia the next. And this wasn’t just a technicality. Whenever they were conquered their constitution was changed, there were sanctions put on them and, in some ways most devastating of all, all their books and art were burned. This was in the days when most books, especially ancient books of great cultural worth, only existed as a single copy – so if it was destroyed it was gone forever.

The Grimm Brothers were scholars – they worked for libraries and universities, and they watched the German culture be utterly destroyed. They saw their very language come under attack – German at the time was not considered a “high” language of import and the Grimm Brothers actually wrote the first German dictionary (the equivalent of the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary, the modern version is in fact still considered the greatest German dictionary of all time and is the official dictionary of Germany) as a way to celebrate and preserve the German language. They were devastated and terrified at what would happen to the German people and their unique culture as a result of the wars, and so they decided to go around Germany and collect all the tales that were a part of their collective oral history – the stories parents had been telling their children for generations, stories adults would tell around the fire – and these weren’t stories that someone just “made up” – they went back, through the oral tradition, for centuries and some were the last vestiges of the German religion before Christianity (fairies, elves, dwarves were all worshipped once – far from the cute Disney versions, they were mythic beings carrying great power, importance and meaning… and they were slowly being forgotten…)

They collected all the stories, the first time most were ever transcribed – often finding several stories that seemed to be slightly different versions of a singular “Ur” tale. This is similar to what Joseph Campbell found in his exploration of tales around the world – there seem to be certain stories that exist in our collective unconsciousness whether we have been externally exposed to the telling of such a story or not. Campbell found, for instance, that some version of a “Cinderella” story exists in all cultures no matter how remote or isolated they are. How could a small village that’s never had contact with the outside world possibly know a version of the story of “Cinderella”? That’s one of the beautiful, fascinating questions about the power, nature, and importance of storytelling.

The Grimm Brothers edited the tales slightly (mainly combining stories that felt too similar to include as multiple versions) and published them. It was their way of making sure the tales of the German people would never be lost. They eventually came out with new editions – though for these new editions, the Brothers began editing the tales more and more as there was an emphasis being placed on making them more accessible to children (doing so was a great source of disagreement between the Brothers who wanted to both to find success with the book and keep the tales in their purest form).

Fairy tales were not originally for children. They were not stories invented to pass on a moral (I would like to see any story written with that sole intention actually have its desired impact…) They were for everyone – especially adults (seriously, read the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales cover to cover and you will have a very different idea of what fairy tales are)

In fact, the truly earliest version of “Snow White” was SO dark that the Grimm Brothers wouldn’t publish it in its original form even in their first edition. Here’s that original story:

Snow White is seven years old when her father begins lusting after her. Her mother (not stepmother, her biological mother,) is jealous, and terrified of what will happen to her if her husband throws her over for his daughter. She sends a huntsman to kill Snow, but Snow escapes into the forest where she takes refuge with seven dwarfs. The Queen (again, Snow White’s actual mother) goes to the dwarves’ cottage three times trying to kill her, the third time with a poisoned apple. There is no prince. Instead, the King, Snow White’s father, finds her, wakes her up, kills his wife and marries his daughter.

In fact, some of the questions and “plot hole” issues people have with fairy tales come from the Grimm Brother’s editing practices. Why are all the biological mothers in fairy tales dead? They’re not. In the original versions of many stories, it IS the biological mothers who are doing such horrible things – but the brothers changed it to stepmothers so as not to offend the mothers who were reading these stories. There was also a lot more maternal death in the eighteen hundreds and the fear that a stepmother would replace you and abuse your children was very real, so it was a “win, win” substitution.

Why does Snow White’s father completely disappear out of the story with no explanation? Well, because they weren’t going to have incest in the story, so they replaced him with a prince and just never addressed where the father went (side note, I love watching “Snow White” adaptations bend over backwards to cover this plot hole – they usually throw in some line about how the King was so distraught over Snow’s disappearance they went off to the “wars” and never came back…)

One of the other important plot points to address is that of the “magical kiss” which has become so controversial in recent years but is in fact not a part of original fairy tales. (I believe the only exception is in specifically the Perrault version of “Sleeping Beauty.”) In “Snow White” the Prince orders his soldiers to carry Snow White, still in her glass coffin, back to his castle. On the way they drop the coffin, jostling Snow White and dislodging the piece of poison apple in her throat. She then wakes, willingly goes with the Prince…and then at their wedding they make her stepmother dance herself to death in hot iron shoes…) It is, in fact, Disney who is principally responsible for the “magic kiss” trop that has become so much a part of our collective understanding of the story.

There are other things that are different in the original Grimm version than what we’ve come to think of as “Snow White” – Snow is seven years old in the original story for one, and the Queen tries to kill her three times – once with a bodice, once with a comb and once with the apple. As I’ve mentioned, the Prince doesn’t kiss Snow White to wake her up, and in the end, the Queen is basically murdered in retribution for her evil deeds.

I do want to briefly address what happened to the Grimm Brothers after collecting the stories because it has an unusual and profound connection to more modern history. The brothers became two of the leading voices advocating for a unified Germany. After the Napoleonic wars happened they led a, honestly not very popular, charge to unify Germany (after all, what King or Queen is going to voluntarily give up their power and kingdom?), take pride in their culture and language, and fortify themselves against another attack. Germany did eventually unify – just in time to be totally decimated during World War I.

After the war, the country was SO hurt and angry over the devastation it had experienced for basically a hundred years, that they vowed it would never happen to them again. They swung in the completely opposite direction, claimed nationalistic (yes, including racial) pride with a vengeance, and allowed the rise of the Nazi party eventually leading to World War II.

In a deeply disturbing “full circle” moment, the Nazis burned “un-German” books in the same way German books had been burned by the French and Prussians. That nationalistic pride, created, in some ways, by the good intentions of the Grimm Brothers, led to one of the most horrible atrocities in human history. Hitler said there were three books every German household had to have – one of them was Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But the Grimm Brothers were not pure, misused saints… there is serious antisemitism in the original collected Fairy Tales. And we’re not talking subtle or subtextual…It’s a complicated aspect of German history that few are aware of, but it’s vital to understanding what happened in the twentieth century.

A Potential Historical Basis For “Snow White”?

There are historical incidents that some believe may have influenced the Snow White story, or even been part of the genesis of its creation.

Around 1553 the countess Margarete von Waldeck was supposedly poisoned at a young age when her romance with Phillip II of Spain proved inconvenient. Coincidentally, Margarete also had a terrible relationship with her stepmother. The town where Margarete grew up was also home to several copper mines – the workers of whom were young children whose growth was stunted due to malnutrition and poor working conditions. They were referred to as “dwarfs”.

There was also a historical event in Germany in which an old man was arrested for giving poisoned apples to children who he believed were stealing his fruit.

And there is the story of Maria Sophia von Erthal. After the death of her mother her father remarried a woman named Claudia Elisabeth Maria von Venningen who was said to dislike her stepchildren. There was even a real “talking mirror” in the castle – an acoustical toy that could speak and is now housed in the Spessart Museum – you can go see it. Some also claim that Claudia had a mirror (likely a different one to the toy) that she was obsessed with. It contained mercury which was known to drive people insane who were in too close proximity to it for an extended period of time.

How the Victorian Era Changed Fairy Tales

The Victorian era dramatically changed fairy tales forever.

Eventually, after the “Big Three” (the Grimm Brothers, Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen all of whom were wildly famous among adults) the fairy tale “craze” started dwindling. Adults weren’t as “into” them as they used to be. So, what did the Victorians do with books that had fallen out of fashion (regardless of their suitability for such a purpose?) They put them in the nursery for the children to have fun with.

This ultimately led to a rash of republications of the fairy tales – now deliberately rewritten to deliver easy morals to children. Fairy tales weren’t the only victims of changing stories to suit the fashions of the times…this was the era when “King Lear” was infamously performed with a new, cheery ending tacked on where Cordelia and Lear live happily ever after and all the wicked are punished. But unlike “King Lear” – which, after a time was restored to its original form out of protest, fairy tales often stayed as they were – with no one paying much attention to the giant game of “telephone” being played with them, or keeping track of which stories were altered and which were in their original published form. After all, the adults were paying attention to “Lear”. Fairy tales were now in their blind spot.

Interestingly, the later part of the Victorian era was also, as some have put it, the era that “invented childhood”. Children were no longer seen as just “mini adults” that needed to be put to work as soon as possible… instead the time when a child could just be…a child…became revered and idolized as a period of purity and joy before the trials of adulthood took over. Part of this was in relation to the first books that were written specifically to be enjoyed by children rather than just to be moral instruction manuals (remember when that had been the original goal of earlier Victorian fairy tale adaptations?) This largely begins with “Alice in Wonderland” and somewhat ends in the early 1900’s with the “Wizard of Oz” books – both of which were heavily influenced by fairy tales. But this was the first time writers were “riffing” on the collective understanding and knowledge of fairy tales in order to create new stories that somewhat commented on what had come before.  

And Then Came Disney

Most people today know fairy tales purely through their Disney adaptations. And because those adaptations became so popular, and mass media is the way it is, we tend to view the Disney versions as the final word on what certain fairy tales are while also viewing them through the lens of what we expect from movies today.

Context has not been a part of our long-term collective understanding of these versions.

But we need to understand just how revolutionary Disney was – and I’m not specifically talking about what he did with fairy tales, but rather the fact that he created animation as we know it today.

Up until 1937 animation meant cartoons. Short, comic bits of moving drawings that didn’t last more than a couple of minutes at the most. They were silly, comic, the equivalent of a music hall physical comedy routine. They were the furthest thing from high art you could get. One of Disney’s most popular cartoon segments was called “Silly Symphonies”. That’s exactly what they were.

And then Disney did something so insane people called it “Disney’s folly” and declared it would ruin his company and him. He was practically laughed out of Hollywood.

Walt Disney wanted to make a feature-length, single-narrative animated film. Not only that, but he didn’t want this film to be just a silly comedy – he wanted it to be scary, beautiful, and moving. The idea that a cartoon could scare you or make you cry was truly inconceivable.

And then Disney made “Snow White”. And it did all those things. It scared people. It scares us to this day (remember the questionable comments Rachel Ziegler (the actress cast as Snow in the upcoming live action remake) made about how much “Snow White” scared her?) That’s some powerful animation – especially for a medium that had never even attempted to generate deep feelings in its audience before… People were crying at the end of it. “Snow White” won a freaking Academy Award for being “a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon.”

It would be like if someone decided to make a feature-length TikTok video and it was so incredible it won an Oscar.

And yet, we look at it and judge it as if it should have been made with the sensibilities of a 2023 audience in mind.

Disney’s “Snow White” is a melodrama. Plain and simple. And there’s nothing wrong with melodrama. It’s a legitimate style. And it was ALL the rage at the beginning of the 20th Century. Most of the first silent pictures were melodramas (that’s where we get the iconic image of a girl tied to the railroad tracks while an evil man twirls his mustache.) And let’s not pretend we don’t still enjoy it. “Riverdale”, “Grey’s Anatomy” every soap opera in existence – they’re all our versions of melodrama.

But let’s look at what the real heart of the tale is:

Snow White is an ingenue threatened by her villainous stepmother, and she survives because of her good, kind heart. Her innocence is abused and taken advantage of, but she still retains her kind, innocent spirit right through to the end of the story. She’s a teenager who dreams that someone will love her, as most of us do at some point in our lives, especially in our teenage years. It’s a legitimate part of the human experience. She befriends the dwarfs and takes care of them, helping them (especially Grumpy) love and protect an outsider, possibly for the first time ever. And, really, the whole thing is a metaphor for death – Snow White basically dies, and she’s awakened by a Prince who, in the Disney version takes her to a literal castle in the clouds and she says goodbye to the dwarves like she’s never going to see them again.

It’s not meant to be taken literally. No fairy tale is – and the audiences in the 1930s would have known that (it’s actually a whole other discussion for another day about why audiences have stopped viewing stories as metaphors and now basically take everything as literal…it’s problematic and a dangerous road…) No one thinks riding a horse to a castle in the actual clouds is trying to tell us a real-life, face-value story.

Let’s look at some things Disney did that actually addressed some challenges with the story in a positive way:

-      He raised the age of the protagonist (Snow White is seven in the original story) actually doing quite a lot (for the time) to make any romance in the story much more appropriate.

-      He only had the Queen come after Snow once. In the original story, the Queen disguises herself and attacks Snow first with a bodice, then a poisoned comb, then the apple. He actually did worlds of good for making Snow LESS “stupid” by only having her be tricked once.

-      He gave the dwarves unique personalities and made them specific, active characters.

-      He had Snow and the Prince meet and fall in love (albeit in melodramatic fashion) well before the Prince finds Snow in her coffin.

-      He had the Prince wake Snow with a kiss of true love (again, a melodramatic convention understood by the audience to be a metaphor) rather than have the Prince decide to carry an all but dead Snow back to his castle so he can “stare at her beauty forever and ever” and then have her wake up by accident and marry the creepy Prince who just wanted to stare at her dead body…

-      He had the Queen die being brought down by her own treachery, not in a dark revengeful set up by Snow and her prince.

We need to view the Disney film in the context of what it is and what it was trying to do at the time it was made. We have a tendency to think that whatever is going on NOW is the pinnacle of enlightenment about how things should be. Including art. We often judge art for what the standards are now. But guess what? Things we consider elevated, high art in 2023 might be cringe even a decade from now. A decade from now you might be cringing that I just used the word cringe in a sentence!

And we also tend to think that some stories that were popular “in their time” or have even remained popular, are because people are stupid. “They were moved by that because they were stupid. But we’re not. We know better.” That’s not true. Human beings have been equally as smart and stupid as they’ve always been and always will be. Nothing becomes a deep, significant part of the cultural zeitgeist because “100 years ago people were lemmings”. So let’s not dismiss them. Let’s take the stories on their own terms. Because the way we look at a story (or specific take on a story) today is not necessarily the “be all, end all” of how that story or interpretation SHOULD be looked at. And things that are “tropes” or “stereotypes” (as opposed to archetypes – we’ll get to that minute) don’t start out that way.

Disney kept fairy tales alive in a moving, powerful way. But his versions are adaptations of the story, and part of the beauty of fairy tales is that they can survive (and even crave) numerous retellings. Disney’s “Snow White” is one version of the story. There are a lot of great things about it, but is not the singular, pinnacle version of the tale, and it is not meant to be a literal story with the intention of serving as a guidebook to young people on how romance works in the real world. Ironically children often seem better able to recognize and understand that than adults.

We all need to think imaginatively and metaphorically. “Snow White” reminds us that sometimes the people who are most supposed to care for, and protect you are the most dangerous to us but that goodness and love will always win even when all seems lost. We learn through stories far more than we do through lessons. Regardless of your religious beliefs, I find it poignant that Jesus taught largely through parables (a kind of story) rather than spouting moral lessons. The story of The Prodigal Son sinks into your heart and affects you far more than someone telling you you really ought to “forgive your brother!”

But barking morals seems to be where storytelling is headed if we leave things in the hands of algorithms and think tanks… we are making the same mistakes as the Victorian era…

The Difference Between “Stereotype” and “Archetype”

There is a big difference between stereotypes and archetypes but, unfortunately, the two words seem to have become conjoined in our collective consciousness leading to both being condemned when they appear in storytelling. For clarity:

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a stereotype is a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment.

An archetype is the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies; a perfect example.

In their pure form, Snow White, the Evil Queen, everyone in fairy tales are archetypes. But they have developed into stereotypes through misanalysis and misrepresentation in mass media. Snow White the archetype is a young, innocent woman who remains good, kind, brave and innocent (in the best way) and survives, remaining open to giving and receiving love despite the trauma she’s experienced.

Snow White the stereotype is a dumb, pretty, passive girl.

We get to the stereotype through a misreading and manipulation of the archetype.

We need to separate the two and be able to look at the mythic story of “Snow White” as separate from reinterpretations of “Snow White” – some of which may be looking to examine those mythic elements, and some of which throw them completely out the window. But the myth is universal, important and resonant. We must take each interpretation as a unique entity needing its own analysis and interpretation in relation to the archetype it’s drawing on. 

Fairy tales exist in a world of metaphor, or archetype, and, as I’ve said, they’re not meant to be taken literally. J. R. R. Tolkien has a wonderful essay called “On Fairy Stories” where he talks about this and the importance of fairy tales far better than I’m going to, but part of what he talks about is that fairy stories exist in a world that, as dark as it might be, is a place where, ultimately, things are as they should be. In fairy tales, at the end of the day, internal and external beauty are one and the same. Fairy tales reflect a world with justice that our world often lacks.

When a fairy tale heroine is declared “beautiful” it’s not a literal commentary that the most conventionally pretty girls are princesses deserving of good fortune. It’s not saying only pretty girls deserve good things happening to them. Their “beauty” is metaphoric for the goodness of their heart and they remain good throughout their story despite the trauma (including physical trauma) that comes their way. One Grimm heroine, Sister in “Little Brother, Little Sister” is literally burned alive. Another, the heroine of “The Juniper Tree” is decapitated by her stepmother. That does not affect their “beauty” in the story, though certainly if one were thinking literally, it would. Conversely, evildoers always end up with their exteriors reflecting their interiors by the time the story is over. In “Beauty and the Beast” the Beast’s exterior changes throughout the story to reflect the state of his heart and soul. And it is only when his heart changes that he can be, not just “handsome”, but a literal human again. It is the state of his heart that determines his humanity.

I’ve always found it fascinating in “Snow White” that the Queen, whose central motivating desire throughout the story is said to be being the “fairest in the land” ultimately deliberately turns herself into an ugly hag in order to kill Snow White. There is clearly something deeper going on here. If the Queen’s real objective was to be the most attractive she wouldn’t jeopardize her beauty for anything – there are many other ways she could try to kill her stepdaughter. But ultimately it is her hatred, not her vanity, that overwhelms her, and she is willing to jeopardize her beauty (after all, what if something went wrong with the spell and she couldn’t turn back as just one possible problem…) in order to kill her stepdaughter. “Snow White” is not a story about two women competing to be prettier.

Another thing I find so interesting about “Snow White” is that it is the only fairy tale in which being kind to an old woman doesn’t result in good fortune. In any other fairy tale (again, take “Beauty and the Beast” as an obvious example,) if there’s a poor old woman, and you don’t treat her kindly, invite her in, and accept her gift, you’re in for a real rough time. But part of the metaphorical, and subversive brilliance on the part of the Queen is that she’s taking something that is sacrosanct in the mythic world of fairy, and using it to manipulate and abuse Snow. In any other fairy tale Snow would have helped the old woman and, in receiving the apple, gained protection or a wish (this is actually another smart tweak on Disney’s part – he had the Hag tell Snow that the apple was a magic wishing apple she is now deserving of because of her display of kindness, something that would have been true in any other story.) Here Snow’s kindness is being horrifically used against her – turning what is best about Snow into the means of her destruction. She’s not just a stupid girl.

The archetype is powerful and beautiful. But the stereotype has taken us down a problematic path.

Contemporary Retellings

“Snow White” has been retold numerous times, with a special emphasis on the story coming in the 1980’s through present day. And most of those interpretations in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s came from the creative spark of people who had fallen in love with the tale (often likely initially through the Disney version) and wanted to keep examining and exploring the various aspects of the story.

But as we moved into the 2000’s – 2020’s that “spark” seems to have been replaced with “How can we milk this IP for all it’s worth and “fix” any “issues” anyone might have with the story” – the result of which is a lot of incredibly forgettable (and expensive) productions that cause more problems than they set out to “fix” and have made no actual impact on the culture at large.

Let’s look at some of the most significant “Snow White” adaptations. This is obviously far from a fully inclusive list, but these are the ones I think are of special import to examine.

Faerie Tale Theater

Faerie Tale Theater was an American award-winning live-action fairytale anthology series that ran from 1982-1987. It was created by actress Shelley Duvall who loved fairy tales, and had been especially enchanted by specific book she had as a child with beautiful illustrations. She wanted to create live-action adaptations that visually resembled those illustrations, and classic paintings (in fact, each episode would lean on inspiration from a particular famous artist, from Norman Rockwell (“Goldilocks”) to Klimt (“Rapunzel”)), and stayed truer to the original versions of the tales. And with the exception of some added scenes for “Sleeping Beauty”, these adaptations are some of the most accurate to the source material ever made, though they refrain from going so dark that they become inappropriate for children. The series ultimately adapted twenty-five tales, from well-known classics like “Snow White” and “Cinderella” to lesser known stories like “The Boy Who Left Home To Find Out About The Shivers” and “The Princess Who Had Never Laughed.”

One of the other things that set this series apart was the caliber of cast and creative teams Duvall recruited. Episodes were directed by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Tim Burton, written by Jules Feiffer and Eric Idle and the cast featured a who’s who of the most famous artists of the times, from Robin Williams and Liza Minnelli to Tatum O’Neal and Christopher Reeve.

“Snow White” starred Elizabeth McGovern as Snow, Vanessa Redgrave as the Evil Queen and Vincent Price as the Magic Mirror. It stays very true to the original story, including the Evil Queen trying to kill Snow White three times (though it does add a brilliant ending tag with the Queen going mad when she is enchanted to never be able to see her reflection again.) Vanessa Redgrave is a revelation as the Queen , giving 110% and having a ball! She plays the character as someone who is utterly consumed with entitlement and vanity, and is just this side of sane (slipping further and further to the other side as the story progresses.) McGovern’s Snow is all the things we expect from the character, but she is also quirky (she makes her entrance joyfully running into her stepmother’s room to show her stepmother how the court jester has taught her to juggle, only to be humiliated when the Queen mocks her and throws her out,) smart, rational and a bit of a tom boy. McGovern manages to capture that perfect quality of a child becoming a woman – and all the challenges and discomfort that brings. She is pure, and good and kind but flawed – she yearns for attention and struggles with insecurity.

The most fascinating thing (for me) about this adaptation is the relationship between Snow and the Queen. Although it’s brief, this is one of the only adaptations where we get to see a bit of the dynamic between the two BEFORE the mirror declares that Snow has usurped the Queen as the fairest of them all (and, interestingly, in this version the mirror declares that the Queen is the fairest before seeing an interaction between her and Snow where Snow is searching for her stepmother’s approval and the Queen is needlessly cruel to her. The mirror deliberately changes the ranking to “take the Queen down a peg or two” for her cruelty. It has nothing to do with looks, though that’s how the Queen interprets it.)

I adore Faerie Tale Theater and this may be my favorite live action adaptation of “Snow White.” It fascinated me as a child, and in fact, it was the dynamic between Snow and the Queen that sent me back to the original story. I found it so interesting that in the original it clearly states that the King remarried a year after his first wife died, and it wasn’t until Snow was seven that the mirror declared her the fairest (also, let’s remember that the events of the story happened when Snow was SEVEN YEARS OLD.) So I always wondered – what was the relationship between the two of them like during those first seven years when the Queen was the only mother Snow had ever known, and the Queen didn’t yet have a reason to hate Snow. That was one of the things that inspired some of the choices in my play…

If I had to recommend one adaptation to check out it would be this one. It’s delicious in every way.

Cannon Movie Tales

Cannon Movie Tales is the collective name for a series of cinematic live-action fairy tale musical adaptations created in the late 1980’s produced by the Cannon Group. Filmed on a very low budget on location in Israel, they nevertheless feature major stars in the principal roles, including Helen Hunt and Aileen Quinn in “The Frog Prince”, “Amy Irving” in “Rumpelstiltskin”, Morgan Fairchild and Kenny Baker in “Sleeping Beauty”, Cloris Leachman in “Hansel and Gretel” and the phenomenal Dame Diana Rigg as the Evil Queen in “Snow White”.

This “Snow White” adaptation walks a fun line between historical fantasy and fairy tale “camp”. The performers, for the most part, are charming. Nicola Stapleton is a wonderful Young Snow White, but her “older” Snow counterpart, Sarah Patterson, leaves something to be desired with her rather bland portrayal. There is a very fine line between innocent and stupid, and whereas Elizabeth McGovern and Nicola Stapleton make it clear that those are two very different things, Patterson’s portrayal is an example of precisely the reason they are too often equated.

In this version we actually get to see Snow’s mother before her death, the remarriage of the King and the growing hatred of the Queen for her stepdaughter. This Queen is Joan Collins-esque, a kind of “Real Housewife of the Enchanted Kingdom” who is completely self-obsessed (her vanity would be comical if it weren’t Ms. Rigg in the role…) One thing this version does beautifully is how it deals with the passage of time… the Queen sends her huntsman to kill Snow while Snow is still a young child…this is basically a 9-12 year old who is about to be murdered in the woods with the huntsman clearly disturbed by his mission. She runs into the forest and finds the dwarves’ cottage not too long after and settles in with her new friends – the fact that she is able to help care for them not only speaks to her kindness, but to her humility. This is a princess who is not only happy to, but actually knows how to cook and keep house which is quite the marvel considering the environment she came from. They actually turn this into an interesting character detail… as time passes Snow has to learn to sew…routinely letting out and adding hems and cuffs to her one and only dress so that she can keep fitting into it as she grows up.

Years go by where the Queen believes Snow is dead. In the interim, Snow grows into a young woman who is painfully aware that sooner or later she will have to leave the dwarves she loves so much and make her way in the world (if nothing else she is becoming too tall to fit inside the house…) This passage of time also helps us buy that Snow is no longer constantly on the alert for danger from her stepmother… it’s been somewhere between 5-10 years that she’s not heard hide nor hair from her – though this is becomes negated by the fact that this version sticks to the original tale in regards to the Queen trying to kill Snow three times… after the second time the dwarves say:

“We told you not to let anyone in!”

And a slightly vacant eyed Snow who looks like she was given her script pages thirty seconds before the director yelled “action” (which, considering the filming conditions, she might have been…) responds:

“But…she looked nothing like the Queen…”

The songs in this version are uneven to say the least (exasperated by the wildly divergent singing abilities among the cast – the case with most of the Cannon Movie Tale adaptations (though it is a joy to hear Aileen Quinn sing in “The Frog Prince.”)) The charming “Hoppin’ On My Daddy’s Knee” bedtime song for Young Snow and the King, and the lovely, story advancing “Every Day” sung by older Snow and the dwarves (which serves to cover the large jump in time) are contrasted with the average (and lacklusterly performed) opening song “Let It Snow” and the both eminently watchable and utterly cringe “More Beautiful Than Me” as the Queen’s big solo (watchable for the wonderful Dame Diana, cringe for the truly awful lyrics…)

And, it must be noted, this adaptation features an extended sequence involving yellowface. The Queen switches up her disguise each time she tries to kill Snow (smart) but for some reason on her second visit to the cottage the Queen, with no explanation, decides to disguise herself as an Asian peddler woman in basically full Geisha make up with a bad Chinese accent. This is aggravated by the fact that the first disguise donned by the Queen is clearly meant to be a version of a, to be blunt, stereotype of what has been referred to as a “Gypsy” woman.

Just why these decisions were made I have no idea but they are there. Rigg at least tries to ground the choices as much as is humanly possible but, still, there’s no excuse or justification for them…

“Snow White: A Tale of Terror”

“Snow White: A Tale of Terror” was a 1997 horror adaptation of “Snow White”. It leans heavily into the, well, grim elements of the original tale and, until it completely and utterly jumps the shark about two thirds of the way in, is kind of brilliant.

Led by Monica Keena as Lilli (Snow White) and Sigourney Weaver giving a masterclass of a performance as Lady Claudia (the Queen) (note how they used the historical name of the real life German woman with that talking mirror? Yeah, the film did it’s homework…until it didn’t.) Set squarely in historical Europe (the exact time is never specified but this is not a “magical kingdom far away”) the story announces its intentions early, opening with Lord Frederick and his first wife traveling home by carriage, when they are accosted by wolves. In the chaos his wife goes into labor and, at her urging, Frederick reluctantly performs a caesarean section to save their unborn daughter.

Years later Frederick remarries a noblewoman named Lady Claudia. Claudia is, in fact, an incredibly kind stepmother who does her best to care for and bond with young Lilli, but Lilli is resentful towards her new stepmother and, let’s be honest, is a bit of a brat to her for YEARS.

We learn that Claudia’s mother was a practitioner of witchcraft and has given Claudia a mirror that seems to be, well, pretty shady and potentially evil.

When Lilli is a teenager, Claudia becomes pregnant. At a ball to celebrate the impending birth Lilli deliberately dresses exactly like her dead mother (accentuating her inherent resemblance) causing her father to, well, start having some incestuous inclinations towards his daughter. Claudia is humiliated and becomes so distressed that she ends up giving birth to a stillborn son, rendering Claudia unable to have children. Utterly devastated, she is soon corrupted by the power of the mirror and swears revenge on Lilli.

Claudia tries to have Lilli killed but Lilli flees into the forest, taking refuge with seven ruffians who initially do not have kind intentions towards her (the threat of sexual assault is ever present.)

Suffice it to say that this is where things go off the rails with Claudia doing some pretty heinous things and hatching a plot to use a twisted magical ritual to raise her stillborn son from the dead. There is no prince (the stand in becomes a puppet and sexual plaything for Claudia and he is disposed of in the final act). The true story equivalent is one of the ruffians who Lilli falls for, and who wakes her not with a kiss, but with violent shaking to remove the piece of apple from her throat after he realizes she’s still alive…

The one bright spot in the second half of the film is the apple scene which is brilliantly done and involves an actual extended conversation between Lilli and (a disguised) Claudia. It even includes a truly horrifying monologue that Claudia delivers to Lilli’s rigor mortised body – while looking her dead in her, still very open, eyes, and joying in the fact that Lilli will be “buried alive” and have all eternity to suffer, mentally conscious, in her grave.

The end turns into something of a traditional horror film finale, with an awakened Lilli heading back to the castle to kill Claudia.

This is an adaptation that has a very clear reason for being – to explore the truly dark elements of this fairy tale (and by proxy all fairy tales.) We tend to forget how horrifying the stories really are – but things like incest, murder, and feeding children to their parents (all of which happen to greater or lesser degrees in this film) are found in just about every Grimm story. Neil Gaiman has said “Fairy Tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten”- and this film gets to the heart of just how real and terrifying those “dragons” can be. Believing that “a man will save you” is as far from the message of these stories as you can get, and this film is a great reminder of the aspects of the story we tend to not remember, or think about.

Sigourney Weaver said in an interview about the film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrVm-PPRCNM ):

“One of the reasons I wanted to play the stepmother in “Snow White” is that (in) these stories, the husband, the father of the girl always married this dreadful woman who was cruel to the child. And I remember just thinking I don’t understand why the father is always so stupid that he marries these not just unpleasant women, but they’re killers. So when “Snow White”…the feature came along what I thought I could do with it is present a woman who married someone with the best intentions to be a good mother…who truly loved her husband…I think in our story Snow White rejects the stepmother again, and again, and again, the father doesn’t really take sides, and when she (the stepmother) can’t have her own children, the aging thing, all of this, starts to come into play. But it was very interesting to go into one of these fairy tales and sort of test its truth…it was interesting to me to go in and see how this actually could have happened.”

That’s how you explore a fairy tale in a realistic setting. By starting with the archetype and working your way outwards. Not by trying to put band aids on a stereotype.

Gregory Maguire’s “Mirror Mirror”

In the early 2000’s (though I believe he started on the book earlier), Gregory Maguire (of “Wicked” fame) wrote a novel adaptation of “Snow White” set in the rural Italy of the early 16th century and featuring the historical Borgia family who were known for poisoning their enemies. The book walks a fine line between historical and supernatural, leaving it up to the reader how much of the magic is in the character’s heads (there’s a wonderful scene when Bianca (the Snow White character) finally finds refuge in a cave in the forest after running for days. Utterly exhausted and starving she begins to pass out, noting that there are seven large stones in the cave and, just as she loses consciousness, sees them turn into dwarfs.) It is also highly implied that mercury poisoning from Lucrezia (the Queen’s) mirror is largely responsible for much of the tragedy of the story.

Notice how the 80’s and 90’s had some really good adaptations? This was part of the 80’s fantasy boom where they didn’t shy away from the darkness of fantasy tales (Artax’s death anyone? Bueller?) Adaptation choices were made for artistic reasons…But in the 2000’s “Snow White” adaptations started to take a nose dive…

“Snow White: The Fairest of Them All”

This 2001 film starred Kristin Kruek as Snow and a wonderful Miranda Richardson as the Evil Queen (Elspeth). This was a pretty forgettable and epically padded out “Snow White” that attempted to give some backstory to the King and Evil Queen. Some of the choices are intriguing… (Elspeth is an ugly ogress, sister to a magical being that must grant a wish to the King (who at this point is a poor single father named John). As part of that wish he needs to give John a kingdom and, by proxy, a Queen. To please his sister the magical being uses Elspeth for this task and transforms her into a beautiful woman. Maintaining her beauty and the power it gives her is a large motivation behind her machinations against Snow White.) Some choices are… less so… including the dwarves backstory involving being trapped as garden gnomes in the Queen’s garden… There is an interesting interpretation of the apple scene in which Elspeth, trying to seduce Snow into eating the fruit, doesn’t transform into an old crone, but rather into Snow’s long deceased mother…adding several levels of creepiness…

“Sydney White”

“Sydney White” was a 2007 film starring Amanda Bynes as a modern-day Snow facing off against the mean Queen Bee of a sorority (jealous of Sydney’s meteoric rise on the schools “hottest” list) and, after making friends with the “seven dorks”, gets a malware “poisoned” Apple computer that almost ruins her chances to be class president.

Yeah, I don’t really know what to say about this one other than it was yet another attempt at the popular teen comedy formula of updating a classic story and putting it in a modern setting, but unlike “Clueless” and “10 Things I Hate About You”, this one just fell flat (Bynes’s 2006 film “She’s the Man”, an update of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, while far from a masterpiece, and not without its problems, was a more successful (and purposeful) adaptation of a classic work.)

“Mirror Mirror”

Another forgettable, and far from successful adaptation that aimed for comedy (and some kind of “Girl Power” reimagining) and came up severely short on all fronts was 2012’s “Mirror Mirror” (no relation to the Maguire novel) starring Lily Collins as Snow and Julia Roberts as the Queen. The take here is supposed to be that this story is being told from the Queen (Clementianna’s) point of view (which is then negated in the final narration which confirms that this was Snow’s story all along…WHAT A TWIST!) In this version the Queen tries to enchant and marry the Prince herself, and Snow must break into the palace and rescue him. There’s a subplot involving the heavy taxation of the commoners, the dwarves training Snow in combat, and there is no apple consumed.

Side note – I do find it hilarious that in this film Sean Bean once again plays a ruler who tragically dies too early in the story.

“Snow White and the Huntsman”

Directly competing with “Mirror Mirror”, 2012 also gave us “Snow White and the Huntsman” – which set out to make a warrior “Girl Power” “Snow White” – and here we start in earnest down the “female empowerment” adaptation trail. But there’s been a long history of mistaking “female empowerment” with traditional symbols of masculinity. Putting a weapon in someone’s hand (anyone’s hand) does not automatically make them empowered.

Colin Stokes gave a wonderful Ted Talk called “How Movies Teach Manhood” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueOqYebVhtc).

Traditional masculine force does not a leader make. Snow White is actually a great example of that. Snow is kind, empathetic, brave, she brings people together and forms community.

But apparently the way to make any woman empowered is for the men around her to chivalrously let her use their sword.

And that’s the trend that started taking over fairy tales, “Snow White” included, in the 2010’s.

Let’s look at the actual plot of “Snow White and the Huntsman”

A King battles an invading army of glass soldiers. He finds a prisoner among them – a beautiful woman named Ravenna. He’s so enchanted with her beauty he marries her. Ravenna becomes queen and stepmother to the King’s young daughter, Snow White.

Ravenna is in fact a powerful sorceress who sucks the life force out of beautiful young women to maintain her power. She murders the King and takes over his kingdom, locking Snow in a tower for years.

Ravenna learns that Snow is actually the “chosen one” – the only person who can defeat her. Snow escapes and flees into the Dark Forest. The Queen hires Eric the Huntsman to capture Snow in exchange for bringing back his dead wife. But when Eric discovers that Ravenna can’t, in fact, raise the dead, he teams up with Snow. Along their journey they meet a group of dwarfs who tell Snow she is the chosen one, a fairy sanctuary, and a tribe of women who have deliberately disfigured their faces so that they are not desirable to Ravenna.

Eventually Snow eats a poisoned apple given to her by Ravenna disguised as the Princess’s childhood friend. Eric (who, let’s remember, is significantly older and a widower) kisses this teenage girl after telling her “dead” body that she reminds him of his dead wife… and she revives, going on to rally an army against Ravenna. Snow stabs Ravenna, killing her, and becoming Queen.

Now, if you remove the apple, and the name Snow White, is there anything about that story that would lead you to believe it was connected with the fairy tale?

“Snow White and the Huntsman” suffers from what I call “Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ syndrome” in that it actually wants to be a unique fantasy story but it shoehorns in lip service to a well-known property, knowing that having “Snow White” or “Alice in Wonderland” in the title will sell more tickets than “New Fantasy Venture”.

There’s a problem with most “female empowerment chosen one” narratives, in that they actually take agency away from the very character they claim to be empowering. In “Snow White and the Huntsman” Snow escapes from her tower (when she’s forced to, she’s been up there for years and done nothing,) and then just follows a prophecy to a pre-arranged conclusion. There is nothing that makes this Snow admirable. She’s just decent at following a plot.

Plus their attempt at “fixing” the “issue” with a stranger kissing Snow and breaking the curse actually created a scene that is ten times worse than any objection folks may have with the original. In a VERY literal and non-metaphoric setting an adult man stands over the “dead” body of the teenage girl he’s attracted to, then, after saying how much she reminds him of his dead wife, he kisses her. And the single tear running down Snow’s cheek while he does it is meant to “imply” that, even unconscious, she’s totally into it…

The whole thing goes from creepy to WHAT THE HELL when you remember that while this alleged “Girl Power” movie was in theaters, the only thing people could talk about was how Kristen Stewart, the practically still a teenager star of “Snow White and the Huntsman” was a “slut” who slept with her director almost twenty years her senior. People were so disgusted at Stewart (who, let’s be clear, was barely an adult, who had received advances from a much older man in a serious position of power over her) that she was fired from the “Snow White” sequel… the sequel to “Snow White and the Huntsman” literally didn’t have Snow White in it because Kristen Stewart was a “tramp” who ruined her poor director’s life.

Something’s gone really wrong…

“Once Upon a Time”

“Once Upon a Time” was a T.V. show (produced by ABC, an affiliate of Disney) that ran from 2011 to 2018. The show was (unofficially) inspired by the graphic novel/comic book series “Fable” which followed fairy tale characters forced to live in the real world.

“Once Upon a Time” featured pretty much every fairy tale character in every book (and many characters, such as Frankenstein, can’t be characterized as fairy, or even folk tale characters at all) but centered on Snow White. The series opens with the Prince waking Snow up from her enchanted sleep, them getting married and about to step into their “happily ever after”.

But just as it looks like their story is at its end, the Evil Queen breaks in and promises to “destroy (their) happiness if it’s the last thing I do”. And she does just that – banishing all the fairy tale characters to a place “with no happy endings” (in a similar turn to Disney’s “Enchanted”) and all the fairy tale characters find themselves in the “real world” town of Storybrooke, Maine, with no memory or knowledge of who they are or where they came from. The Evil Queen is now Regina – the all-powerful mayor of the town, Snow is now Mary Margaret Blanchard – a shy, anxious elementary school teacher, and her Prince is a John Doe in a coma in the hospital. In Storybrooke, all the character’s strengths have become their weaknesses. Mary Margaret is insecure, timid, and self-depreciating with none of Snow White’s courage or fortitude. But pretty soon an outsider, Emma Swan, comes to town. It turns out Emma is the “savior” who can break the curse - but she is a “real” person, who doesn’t believe fairy tales are in any way true. She becomes the town’s sheriff and, as she goes about righting the social wrongs she sees around her, slowly certain character’s memories start to return and it seems there may be a path back to the fairy tale world. All the while Emma must learn the lessons at the heart of the darkest fairy tales and take charge of her own life and traumatic past as she sets the town to rights.

Personally, the first season of “Once Upon a Time” (barring a few episodes) is one of my favorite seasons of television of all time. It strikes a brilliant balance between honoring the stories we know and love and addressing how those stories can have weight and importance in the grey “real world” in which we live. The creators also made the fantastic choice to have character’s stories interweave and affect each other (taking more than a page out of the wonderful musical “Into The Woods.”) Rumpelstiltskin (played by the genius Robert Carlyle as an almost Commedia figure) turns out to have been Cinderella’s fairy godmother (with not entirely altruistic intentions) as well as the beast to Emilie de Ravin’s Belle. Several of the best episodes of the series were penned by Jane Espenson of “Buffy” fame and the series is at its best when putting the human condition at the center of a magical framework.

But after season one, the show jumped the shark – aided by the fact that in later seasons the show was forced to go to fewer episodes with a giant mid-season break model and shoehorn in as many Disney characters as possible. The show quickly went from a high-concept exploration of identity, myth, and the power of stories to a “villain of the month” serial-esque soap opera. They also robbed themselves of seasons worth of fantastic storytelling opportunities by, spoiler alert, ending season one with every character getting their memories back. The show quickly became a “how do we fight the new monster and get home” saga of monotonous repetition and pretty soon we didn’t even care if the characters ever went back to the fairy tale world or not because (again, spoiler alert, they go back again, and again, and again.) Oh, and fairy tales weren’t just loosely connected anymore, by the time the show went off the air the literal family tree of how characters were connected was more convoluted and incestuous than the most shocking of soap operas…

But when the show went right it found a remarkable balance, with the character of Snow White especially, between being the character we know and love, and also a complex modern-day woman. Yes, this Snow wielded a sword on occasion, but it was her kindness, eternal hope, courage, and self-sacrifice that made her a leader worthy of that moniker. Not her battle skills. In the early seasons, the show fleshed out Snow and the Queen’s backstories in a way that brought these archetypal characters into a complex, specific world. The specificity of these characters (and the art with which they were played) made these fairy tale characters real people in a way few adaptations have successfully achieved.

And they undid all that great work starting in season two…

Films with a “Snow White” Influence

Now there are lots of works of art that aren’t direct “Snow White” adaptations, but the thread of that story runs through them whether intentionally or not. Joseph Campbell talked about “universal stories”  - and, indeed, every story ever told can be traced back to one or more of the “Ur” stories in our collective consciousness (or unconsciousness). Take any story – you can find a myth, fairy tale, etc. that it mirrors, because the heart of all stories are mythic. And there are only so many “Ur” stories.

I think a beautiful example of this is the 2013 film “Gimme Shelter”. Based on a true story (important when you think about the true connection and applicability fairy tales and myths have in our real lives), “Gimme Shelter” follows Apple (Vanessa Hudgens) – a teenage girl who has been in and out of foster care for years as her mother is an abusive drug addict who only wants Apple for the welfare money she provides. Finding herself pregnant, Apple runs away in search of her absent father, who she discovers is now a wealthy Wall Street broker with a family. He offers to take her in, then rescinds when he discovers she wants to keep her baby.

When a pimp forces her into his car, Apple grabs the wheel in an attempt to escape, and ends up crashing the car. She wakes up in a hospital where she connects with a Priest who offers her a place in a home for pregnant teenage girls run by a formerly homeless woman. But Apple’s mother finds her there and violently tries to force her to leave.

Apple bonds with the other girls at the shelter, gives birth to her baby and begins to reconcile with her father. She ultimately decides to stay at the shelter feeling like she finally has a home.

After all, at the end of the day, what is “Snow White” if not the story of a homeless teenager trying to escape her abusive mother?

So, What Does This All Mean?

Now at the beginning of this article, I referenced the “Ship of Theseus” problem. But that was a bit of a misnomer. It’s an interesting thought experiment when looking at adaptations that are invested in examining a well-known story and how much of a root thread is needed to keep it connected to the source material. But it becomes a different matter when a reinterpretation isn’t really interested in examining the story, but rather in using the trappings of it for “branding”. Then it becomes less a valid intellectual exercise, and more like, well, a scam. The less analyzing an ancient ship that has had each of its pieces carefully remade according to guides and necessity and more like walking up to a harbor and seeing a sleek modern super yacht with “Theseus” written on the side.

“What do you mean this isn’t the Ship of Theseus? It’s a ship, and it says “Theseus”, so it’s the Ship of Theseus. Give me your money and you can ride on it!”

And then you go onboard and there’s nothing of note, nothing historic and you’re mad that you threw away your money, and then the guy who sold you the ticket goes back to his think tank where they decide the real problem was they didn’t make it a seaplane instead of a super yacht.

That’s kind of exactly what Disney has been doing with its live-action remakes, and it seems their upcoming “Snow White” stands to be the worst of the lot. It’s like they wrote a generic “female power” fantasy story and then slapped on the iconic dress, and the name Snow White, and got mad when you questioned if it was the real thing. It’s like we’re the vapid damsel in distress who can’t stop eating poisoned apples from the same strange woman wandering in the woods who we keep wanting to believe is going to be good and honest THIS time. And then we just keep thinking “Drats! Foiled again!”

And people criticize Snow for being “stupid”.

Here are some of the things they’ve allegedly done with Disney’s “Snow White” live-action remake (this is based on test screenings and may be (PLEASE!) changed before the official release: )

-      The poisoned apple doesn’t make Snow “appear dead”, instead it makes her no longer care about being a leader.

-      From the opening shot Snow is principally focused on being a warrior and doing battle training. She is apparently a warrior prodigy, able to take down her teacher after just beginning lessons.

-      The Evil Queen and her huntsman banished the Seven Magical Creatures (no longer the Seven Dwarfs) to beyond the forest because they were too powerful.

-      There’s no prince.

-      In the opening sequence Snow sings to the moon about wanting power, to be a leader, and hating romance.

It sounds like they’re taking the WORST things from previous adaptations and putting them all in one movie.

“Snow White”, and fairy tales in general are important – but not as superficial cash grabs, but rather as a means to explore the human condition and how to move through our lives. Fairy tales are a bit of a Rorschach test, and we can always find new and surprising things in them – often just what we need at that moment in our lives.

But in the past twenty years mass media has simply been creating superficial “made by committee” generic fantasy stories with a well-known (and loved) title (like “Snow White”) slapped on for brand recognition. If that is the primary, if not only, way the next generation learns these stories that “brand” will lose any value, because no one will have any reason to think that these stories are important or anything more than superficial. And the irony is that the more “relevant” these committees claim they’re making the story, the less relevant they become.

If you want to make a story about how women shouldn’t rely on romance to solve their problems, great! Tell a story about that. But it has nothing to do with “Snow White” and it never has (likewise “Snow White” is not about how you should rely on romance to solve your problems, but I don’t think that’s a message anyone’s hankering to focus an adaptation on...) If you want to tell a story about how women can be leaders and warriors, awesome!

But, again, that’s not what “Snow White” is about. And on, and on. Trying to shoehorn those ideas or “morals” onto a story you think you know and take umbrage with is no different than the Victorians slapping their own morals on well-known and loved tales. “King Lear” with a happy ending is many things, but it’s not “King Lear.” “Snow White” remade by a focus group committee and trying to put a generic “Girl Power” spin on the story is not “Snow White”. And the more you try to disguise some artificial story as a meaningful, well-loved, and widely recognized entity the more you are going to dilute and render mute that original entity in the collective consciousness.

Disney was once a revolutionary studio creating classic works that have long been meaningful in the cultural zeitgeist. Now they are a production company that eats and regurgitates its young. Eventually, Disney is going to have nothing original left.

When we don’t get new stories or intelligent, purposeful retellings of existing stories what will we be left with?

In twenty years will we be on Disney’s fifth “Snow White” live-action remake?

“Snow White and the Seven A.I. Who Deserve Human Rights and Shouldn’t Be Treated as Property?”

“Snow White and the Rise of Sixth Wave Feminism?”

“Generic Winter Princess and The Reason Real Stepmothers Aren’t Abusive According to Statistics?”

We need to go back to the heart of our stories and view them with a discerning eye. And we need to stop supporting (and making) projects that are doing way more harm than good in a plethora of ways.

What stories are meaningful to you? How have they had an effect on your life?

I bet not a single one of you thought of the live-action “Lion King” remake.

I’d like to see a story that moves me, affects me, makes me think.

I’m not interested in having focus group B.S. shoved down my throat at the movies, on T.V., or on Broadway.

What about you?