This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Have we discussed the live-action remake of 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs since it came out?
In an effort to drum up business my local theater is running a promotion that includes free movie tickets for spending money at local bars and restaurants. While it's not something I would've spent my own money on, I elected to use one of my free movie vouchers to see the new Snow White because I was curious, and wanted to form my own opinion of it.
I expect most readers of this thread have at least a passing familiarity with the various controversies surrounding this production and more knowledgeable people than I have already done the business and Culture-war narrative side of things to death. So I'm going to focus on the on-screen product.
As a movie Snow White is solidly "Mid". Not good, but not terrible. The writing, acting, and set-peices are all passable. The humor is bland and inoffensive, and the songs are mostly forgettable. Gal Godot may have the dramatic range of an Electric SUV on 5% charge, but "Sultry Femme Fatale" is well within that range, and she seems to be having fun vamping it up (As is often the case the "villain song" is one of the better ones). To Rachel Ziegler's credit she sings well and serves adequately in the role of "pretty princess" / "coquettish ingenue" coming across as substantially less "Girlbossey" than I had expected given her off-screen persona.
The movie wastes no time establishing it's left wing-wing politics. The opening song and dance number is essentially all about how wonderful life is when people give according to their ability and receive according to their need. The word-play between "fair" as in "light-skinned" or "pleasing to the eye" and "fair" as in "fair use" "fair trade" and a "fair contest" is a recurring leitmotif throughout the script and it gets established in this bit.
Because Disney princesses are not allowed to have a mother the good queen falls ill and dies at the end of the song which is when a wild Gal Godot appears. She is a beautiful noblewoman from a far-off land across the sea whose people, covet wealth, power, and beauty above all else, and have magical powers. The King (Snow White's dad) is naturally smitten and immediately marries Gal Godot presumably because she is wealthy, powerful, and looks like Gal Godot.
In her new position as Queen, Snow White's stepmother immediately begins to subtly corrupt the Realm and remake it in her own harder and more covetous image (think Pottersville versus Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life). In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Snow White's canonical origin story in this movie is about a virtuous and happy left-wing government being subverted and taken over from within by an evil Jewish woman through a combination of sex-appeal, blood magic, and propaganda.
We skip forward an indeterminate number of years, Snow White has been kept cloistered in the castle "because it is not safe". The evil queen Gal Godot has been sowing fear about a nebulous threat on the southern border as an excuse to get Snow White's Dad out of the picture and to crack down on dissent. (I wonder what that was intended as an allegory for?) Snow White catches a thief named Johnathan played by Handsome McStrongJaw raiding the Castle's pantry, and he informs her that life outside the castle walls is not all sunshine and adorable woodland creatures. Snow White's response is to inform the Queen. You see, if only the queen knew what was going on she would put a stop to it. Johnathan is arrested and put to death, but Snow White helps him escape the castle because this is a Disney movie and he is the designated love-interest.
Snow White is getting a bit too uppity and too "fair" for her own good so Gal Godot convinces the one black guy in the palace guard to take Snow White out to the woods and kill her by getting all up in the guard's personal space and offering him anything he wants. Black guy takes Snow White out to the woods to kill her, but he gets cold-feet and decides to tell Snow White about the whole murder plot because she was nice to him and asked him how his day was going.
Snow White flees into the enchanted wood where she meets the Seven AI-Generated Dwarves we are all familiar with from the 1937 original. After some hijinks and another musical number the Dwarves inform her that the enchanted wood is also home to Seven Bandits. A troupe of erstwhile actors who are plotting to overthrow Gal Godot and have recently been joined by our "prince of thieves" Johnathan. Snow White sets out to find them and a bunch of stuff happens without any real rhyme or reason. There is singing, there is dancing, there is peril, but none of it really effects the plot or evokes a feeling.
The proverbial "final battle" of the movie is Snow White and the Seven Bandits leading a protest march against Gal Godot that ends with the Townspeople and Palace Guards
all drinking a pepsiturning on the queen and reinstating the socialist order from the opening musical number.In conclusion, for what is otherwise a very bland and boring movie in the watching there seems to be a lot going on. And im curious to hear other people's thoughts on it.
I also find it funny that what is easily the most "woke" movie in recent memory could plausibly be interpreted as endorsing dissident right ideals, Jews Bad, hereditary monarchy good, "the people" are sheep, etc...
I just think the original story's random and uninteresting.
Queen becomes jealous of princess. Tries to murder her. Fails. Queen tricks princess into eating poison apple. Princess falls into coma. Queen is chased up cliff and then falls to death due to lightning strike (lol). Prince stumbles upon comatose princess and kisses her, awakening her from her coma. The end.
Throw a magic mirror and seven dwarfs in there because why not.
I simply don't care. The general audience probably doesn't either. Not sure why the remake was greenlit.
It is a fairy tale, especially the more sanitised version of the Brothers Grimm version. There are several what I guess we'd call tropes which resonate with people familiar with how such stories go: the Wicked Stepparent, for example (though some stories are also about neglectful or abusive parents - think about Hansel and Gretel and their own parents just abandon them in the woods). Even today, this is a live topic so the idea that the second wife of the king would not have been loving to the stepchild is exactly what everyone would assume.
Then there is the question of beauty, which ties in with both questions of power and maturity. After all, the queen is technically only ruling as regent until Snow White, the legitimate heiress to the throne, comes of age. Snow White becoming old enough to be esteemed beautiful as a sexual rival indicated the end of, or at least a threat to, the queen's power. Having her disappear in the forest on a hunting accident is deniable enough and also allows the story to permit Snow White to survive and grow up. Look at the Princes in the Tower for what happens to inconvenient obstacles in the way of an ambitious claimant to the throne.
Snow White, in the Grimm fairy tale version, grows up with the dwarves until the evil queen manages to catch up with her, and has three attempts at killing her. The dwarves foil the first two, but the third - the poisoned apple - works. The prince finds the crystal coffin in the woods with this beautiful maiden inside and demands to bring it back with him (this is creepier/stalker behaviour unlike the cartoon where they meet when she's alive and develop a first attempt at a relationship, so Zegler got that wrong). It's not true love's kiss that wakes her up, it's when the coffin is jolted and this knocks the poisoned piece of apple out of her throat.
The wedding is planned to go ahead, the evil queen finds out and when she arrives there discovers the bride is Snow White. She tries to kill her again, and the prince punishes her by forcing her to dance in red-hot iron slippers until she is dead. Then the happily ever after happens.
Everyone knows how the story should go: the wicked are punished, the good may suffer but they get their reward in the end. It also brings in the notion of the Golden Age (before the evil queen ruled) and a return to that, with the rightful heiress (Snow White) who knows the lot of the ordinary folk (because she lived in the forest with the dwarves as a humble person) restored to her rightful place (the bride of the prince) and now the rightful rule will be established again and Snow White will be a better queen. EDIT: Though dwarves in folklore are not the cute version of the Disney cartoon, nor are they humans of short stature. They are sort of nature spirits (which is why they live in the forest and work in the mountains in the story), and Snow White becoming aligned with them is one form of magic against the magic of the evil queen. So there is another thread there of the rightful queen (Snow White) taming the spirits of the woods and mountains and bringing them into alliance with the humans in the kingdom so they are less malign and malicious.
So yeah, there's room to update the 1937 cartoon, but changing the prince to a bandit leader misses the point: this is about monarchy, not some kind of "head of state democratically elected by the people". But in the end, it's a fairy tale about a princess and the rewards she gets for being good and suffering at the hands of the wicked, so it doesn't have to be too deep. It's for little girls, who may or may not still want to dress up as princesses and play at that today.
Isn't there also a version where it takes the prince literally raping her to wake her up? Or am I confusing it with Sleeping Beauty?
That one I think is Sleeping Beauty; she gets pregnant with twins and the child (or children) suckling at her finger so the splinter that caused her to fall asleep is sucked out is what rouses her out of the slumber. Rapunzel also gets pregnant by her prince, but that was more consensual. After the witch causes him to fall off the tower into a patch of briars which poke his eyes out, he eventually meets Rapunzel wandering in the wilderness with her twin children and her tears restore his sight.
Folktales were never shy about the grim parts of life. That's why Zegler saying the prince is a creepy stalker might apply to the original stories, but since she's talking about the cartoon where the Disney story made sure to have them meet while Snow White was still alive, that's not applicable.
I know Neil Gaiman is now Problematic, but he wrote a version of the story where the queen stepmother is the heroine and Snow White the villainess, and it works too; the idea of a girl with skin white as snow and lips red as blood can be creepy and horrific as well as unearthly beauty: Snow, Glass, Apples.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Modern retellings make it a wicked step mother who abandons Hansel and Gretel in the woods.
Actually that was a revision by the Grimm brothers. It enhances the story, because children back then (and now) were often put under the care of people who weren't their parents and it is good to learn early that just because someone calls themself your parent doesn't mean they love you like your parents are supposed to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link