The New "Snow White" Is Really a Movie About Us

What gives a myth its power?

Source: Leah Newhouse / Pexels

Disclaimer: The below contains plot spoilers.

Disney’s new Snow White movie tells a powerful story, but not the one intended. On the surface, it’s an uplifting archetypal fable that ends happily ever after. But beneath that lies a tragic and cautionary tale of a society in crisis. Unfortunately, this tale is all too real.

Snow White has been widely panned by critics and audiences alike. No one seems to be a big fan. Both the plot and the production process itself have made the movie into a lightning rod for critics across the political spectrum.

My goal here is not to rehash whether the movie is too far to the left or right, nor do I intend to justify or condemn plot aspects. Instead, I’d like to point out that Snow White and all the drama surrounding it perfectly reflect the state of our fractured society. I hope people of all political persuasions can agree that something is off with us right now.

One criticism I’ve seen repeated is that it was trying to avoid offending anyone. If that’s the case, it failed miserably. It has, in fact, managed to offend a great many people from both the left and right. So the issue must go beyond this.

Instead, I would say the movie exhibits a type of psychological paralysis. It’s so disjointed and confused that it presents these qualities symptomatically. That is, if it were a tale told by a patient to a psychiatrist, the diagnosis might note the presence of disorganized and tangential thought, anhedonia, avolition, and a host of other indications of cognitive challenges.

It's a time-honored truth that myths must change to live on. But like the Ship of Theseus, how much can a myth change before it can no longer even be called the same story? If we retitled The Terminator as Snow White, it seems like the essence of the original would be lost.

Similarly, how much should a myth reflect our actual world and its history, and how much should it embody magical fiction? If a story is so unrealistic as to be unrelatable, it holds no mythological value. But the same is true if it’s so mundane as to be irrelevant.

Just to take one example, the movie is bewildered about the role of the Dwarfs. Not only do they lack many of the important plot points from the original, such as taking revenge on the Queen, but they even imply they are not human. So what’s going on?

Early on in the production history, Peter Dinklage criticized the premise of the Dwarfs within the plot. Many in the Little People community countered that the inclusion of the Dwarfs was important for representation and career opportunities for the actors who would play them. I do not presume to know who is right.

Historically, there is, indeed, a long history of smaller persons, including little people and children, working in mines (sadly, such practices in diamond mines can still be seen today). Some people argue there was even a historical Snow White and Dwarfs on whom the fable was based. But speaking to the questions I brought up earlier, how much truth and how much fantasy should a myth embody? The question is complex.

What’s relevant for our purposes here is that, due to the addition of the forest bandits, it appears that Disney may have changed the Dwarfs to outlaws before doubling back and reintroducing the Dwarfs. This results in neither the bandits nor the Dwarfs having a consistent plotline or even a reason for being in the story. The movie’s relationship to the Dwarfs is emblematic of its overall paralysis.

Snow White is not afraid to offend. It is simply afraid. It’s afraid of self-examination. It’s afraid of its past. It’s afraid to look at uncomfortable truths and acknowledge complexities beyond good and bad. In short, it is us. I hope somehow we summon the courage to withdraw our projections on each other and confront what’s wrong within ourselves. But for now, far from being an anomaly, Snow White is a perfect reflection of our times.