Folk tales are inherently changeable. Look through their history and you’ll find many versions. Some of them are horrible by today’s standards. Modern writers have made startling reversals on traditional stories. In Cecilia Eng’s song “Red as Blood,” Snow White is a vampire. (Pale white skin, lips red as blood…) I’ve written previously about Warner Brothers’ “Coal Black.” The problems arise when an adaptation isn’t what it claims to be and when it’s clearly designed by committee. That’s what Disney’s new version of Snow White is shaping up to be.
The story can be traced back to Pentamerone, published in 1634, and probably has roots in older stories. It took a more familiar form in the Grimms’ story “Schneewittchen” (Snow Drop). In these stories, the heroine is seven years old when she flees the queen and is poisoned into a coma. The queen in “Schneewittchen” succeeds only on the third attempt, which says something about the seven-year-old’s continued gullibility. She is put into a glass coffin, which grows along with her until she is awakened as an adult. The Grimms’ version is more gruesome than today’s usual versions. The queen orders the huntsman to bring back Snow Drop’s lungs and liver. As in the Disney version, he doesn’t kill her and brings back an animal’s organs — which the queen proceeds to eat. At the end, the queen is forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes till she dies.
Some bits in old tales move from one story to another. In Grimm, when the dwarfs return home and notice some things changed, they ask, “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” “Who’s been eating from my dish?” and so on. This bit migrated into “The Three Bears” and isn’t usually heard in “Snow White” anymore.
Even more interesting, in Grimm the prince doesn’t awaken Snow Drop with a kiss. As his servants are carrying her coffin to him, they stumble, causing a piece of apple to dislodge from her throat, immediately reviving her. That’s not very plausible, but at least it doesn’t have the creepiness of a prince kissing an apparently long dead, though well preserved, stranger’s mouth. The kiss may have been lifted from “Sleeping Beauty.” I don’t know if any pre-Disney versions used it.
In spite of all these versions, a lot of people talk about Disney’s 1937 animated film as the “original,” the canon from which any deviation is a falsification. It was just one more version, with the most disturbing elements removed to make it more family-friendly. The upcoming live-action film is also just one more version. The problem is that, going by the trailer and the advance publicity, it can’t decide what it’s supposed to be. It’s billed as “a live-action reimagining of the classic 1937 film,” but it has major differences. It grafts on the trope of the rightful heir overthrowing the evil ruler, although it doesn’t fit the story. Instead of portraying the Seven Dwarfs as people, it turns them into literal cartoon caricatures. It’s as if one set of writers wanted to reuse the Disney live-action remake formula without breaking new ground, while another group wanted to graft on a story empowering Snow White. The result looks like a mess.
But the point shouldn’t be that the new version violates the “real” story. If someone wants to make a movie about a Latina Snow White who challenges her stepmother’s power, that’s fine. But when Disney mixes it with cute animals and cartoonish dwarfs and doesn’t have any consistent vision, they shouldn’t be surprised when it doesn’t satisfy anyone.
Postscript: I came across a popular YouTube video by Jesse Grant on the movie, which says: “And so maybe in their reshoots they changed it back to better resemble the original story, but you can’t call people toxic or bigoted for being angry that a Snow White movie isn’t going to follow the story of Snow White. Because, damn, if you hated the plot of the original movie that much, why even do a remake? Just write a new, original fairy tale, where you can make it about whatever you want it to be about. Because otherwise it just comes across as though you’re disrespecting the original story, and only using it for its name and marketing value.” The “original story” means the 1937 movie, which Grant apparently thinks was a completely original tale created by Disney’s writers. The Brothers Grimm aren’t even mentioned, and there is no hint that the story existed before 1937. I call that disrespect.
The trailer for the new movie shows many problems, but deviation from the true story isn’t one of them. If they’d retold the Grimm version faithfully, it would be rated at least PG-13 and would have been even less popular than this one is shaping up to be.