(Photo courtesy of TMDB)
Famed is thy beauty, culture war. But hold, an actually productive discussion I see
BY PHILLIP KIM, STAFF WRITER
Disney’s Snow White is on track to becoming one of the first box office flops in 2025. The once-powerful House of Mouse has been struggling to win back audiences for several years.
Several franchises under its ownership, namely Marvel and Star Wars, have gone from cultural icons to financial disasters and controversy magnets in that duration of time. In many instances, the casting of non-white, female, and queer actors have caused heated online backlash. Snow White was no different—only it should have been.
The musical fantasy film stars Colombian-descent actor Rachel Zegler as Snow White, a character famously named after the color of her skin. Fans of the 1937 animated classic complained that Zegler bore little resemblance to the cartoon drawing they knew and loved. Did such conversations often take a racist turn? Indeed.
However, irrational arguments developed on the other side of the spectrum as well. Too many attempted to push back against the racism and ended up resorting to the age-old “I don’t see color” rhetoric.
One thing was made abundantly clear once the film hit theaters: the filmmakers had little interest in making a reenactment. Changes were present throughout the film. The evil queen only cared about beauty for the sake of power. Prince Charming was replaced by a Robin-Hood-esque criminal. The protagonist was no longer a helpless damsel in distress but a revolutionary.
In other words, live-action Snow White belongs to a particular category of remakes commonly referred to as ‘reimaginings.’ Its primary purpose is to tell an almost entirely different story inspired by the original production.
A good comparison is Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. The 2023 Netflix animation changed the beloved Italian fairy tale’s setting from the late-1800s to mid-1900s. The sly fox is traded for an abusive circus owner named Volpe (fox in Italian), while Pinocchio is taken to a military school toward the end rather than the Pleasure Island.
It would be odd to criticize a film for failing to capture the source material’s looks when its script was never attempting to do so.
The 1937 picture contains relatively traditional ideas of femininity and limited the audience’s perspective to the castle or the forest. Director Marc Webb and fellow producers wanted to tell an alternative version of the story, exploring a more complex female mind and shining light on solidarity amongst the kingdom. Changing the ethnicity of the main character is just one of several artistic decisions made to subvert the original.
“I kept thinking about my daughter and what messages I want to send her way,” The Amazing Spider-Man helmer said in an interview. “There’s something elemental about Snow White’s kindness, but she’s also quite brave.”
A film should be judged based on what it aimed for. A comedy cannot be judged based on how scary it was. A fantasy should not be evaluated based on how scientifically realistic its events were. One can watch Snow White and discuss if its efforts at subversive storytelling were successful, which it wasn’t in all honesty.
It is also perfectly reasonable to simply wish they had made a straight remake rather than a radical reimagining. To call its casting a failure, when replicating the original movie was never the focus, might be more of a stretch in terms of criticism; just as it is to claim race can be completely overlooked in auditions.
It is concerning that some people decided what to think of the casting decision before understanding the nature of the film. Many arguments on both sides were flawed because they attacked and defended a movie that frankly did not exist—one that hired Zegler solely in the spirit of color-blindness.
All that time and energy wasted debating whether it was racist to care how an actor looked could have been spent on much more intellectually stimulating discussions. What did the changes in the remake reveal about America then and now? How can art use race and class to create meaning? The list could go on forever.
Disappointingly, that opportunity is now lost, probably for good.
