Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is Disney’s first foray into large-scale theatrical animated films, and its immediate success not only paved the way for Disney to continue their momentum, but also paved the way for animation to be a viable art form in terms of film. Developed at the height of the Great Depression, the movie was Disney’s gambit after experiencing some success on its long run of animated shorts. When it was finally released in 1938, it became the biggest hit of the year, more than quadrupling the box office profit than its closest rival.
Taking a cue from their earlier animated shorts, Snow White employs a healthy amount of memorable music and comical antics. Really, the movie was supposed to originally be entirely comedic, relying almost wholly on the wacky hijinks that the dwarfs would get into, until they decided to dial it back to about 50%, making the other half the bit loosely based on the Grimm fairytale. Actually, subtracting almost everything with the seven dwarfs, the movie actually gets pretty close to the source material. In the original, we get a bit more of the witch trying to kill Snow White, which you can either take or leave. Also, Disney opts not to include the ending where Snow White has her revenge by forcing the witch to dance in red-hot iron shoes until the witch dies (for more or less understandable reasons).
One thing that really is truly great about the movie is its ambitious and excellent art direction. The art is really incredible to watch on film, and the directing borrows a lot of elements from European directors of the same era. It’s hard to not be impressed by this when watching the film as a whole.
GRAND MISOGYNY: A PRODUCT OF ITS TIME ARGUMENT
Starting with Snow White, Disney’s core development team is known widely as the “nine old men,” as there were nine key animators and directors, all white males over the age of 30, who developed all the major Disney successes. Knowing this, it’s not too much a mystery as to why a great majority of these films have similar attitudes towards women, marriage, and family.
In the original story, Snow White’s father is still alive and in the picture. This is important, because this film starts a long-running trend of having a film in which there is either no mother, or an evil mother figure. This was true for Beauty and the Beast in part one, as well. Disney taking the father out of the picture is a curious choice, and reinforces their idea that Snow White is defenseless against this one evil mother (who is also a magical witch and a queen). And, on that note, it’s worth mentioning that the only two female characters in the movie don’t do any favors to Disney’s image of being completely misogynist all the time. One woman is an adolescent, naïve, helpless daydreamer whose only real desire in life is to have a handsome and rich man come save her. The other, of course, is an evil, vain, murderous witch (literally).
I’ve heard a great many arguments (not only limited to “Golden Age” Disney) that the portrayal of women and the ideals these movies impart are indeed wrong, but forgivable because they are a product of their time. While it’s true that Snow White was conceived and released in the ‘30s, and American family values were quite a bit different, it’s hard to argue that they were somehow better, and/or defensible. What I mean, is, it’s hard to argue that a woman’s place should be only at home, serving the men in her family; that a woman’s only goal in life should be to win a rich husband, or, for that matter, to fall in love. The “happily ever after” trope should be most easily recognizable as both a classic Disney standby, and as something that’s completely archaic and if anything, ridiculed.
Is it wrong to want to live happily ever after? Certainly not. Is it wrong to preach to little girls that the only way this is possible is to find a rich and handsome prince who will fall in love with you instantly and save you from your otherwise miserable life? Obviously.
And for that matter, this movie also starts a long tradition of setting up unreasonable roles and expectations for males. The prince’s role in this movie is pretty minimal, serving only as a tool to fall in love with and save the female lead. He does so with tremendous ease, maybe more so than any other Disney feature. So, there’s that: you will know immediately who you should fall in love with and marry simply by hearing them sing to a well (also, it’s okay to kiss dead women), but more than that, the implication is that to win the girl of your dreams, you should be both entirely handsome and wealthy. This sets up the now obvious paradigm that young girls are encouraged to be unreasonably beautiful and talented, and young boys need to unreasonably handsome and wealthy. Otherwise you’ll never find true love (which should be your only goal in life).
Now, as I mentioned, this was par for the course back in ‘30s America, and if the movie were only isolated to that decade it would still be a bad lesson, but it’s not confined to that decade. Snow White is still one of Disney’s popular princesses, and kids are still watching the movie and picking up on the now 75 year old lessons. I’d like to think that someday, kids will understand that this movie is from another point in time, where things were very different and to a large degree irresponsible, but as it is, Snow White is very much alive in the line-up with every other current Disney product.
AN ODD BALANCE
It’s really hard to pin down what’s actually going on in Snow White. Really, there’s a lot of bizarre pseudo-comedy mixed in even parts with dark drama, death, and romance. If it seems like a lot of it doesn’t make sense and fit together, it’s because it doesn’t. As I mentioned earlier, the movie was originally planned to be entirely a comedy focusing on the antics of the dwarfs. When that didn’t pan out, they decided to go 100% in the opposite direction and incorporate the evil witch from the fairytale bent on killing Snow White.
What you end up, is odd musical numbers of the dwarfs mining for gems for no reason (other than that’s what dwarfs do), alongside scenes involving Snow White being murdered and the dwarfs attending a make-shift funeral for her that they and the forest animals arrange. It really becomes pretty surreal, and I think a lot of its elements can come off as too dark for young children, while also having elements that come off as too silly for adults. It’s difficult, in this sense, to really enjoy the movie as a movie, even if it’s difficult to enjoy it as anything else.
SNOW WHITE
Snow White, as a character herself, is also a bit of a pill to swallow. It’s hard to watch her in this film and imagine she’s anything older than 12 years old. Everything from her voice, to her overwhelming childish naïvety showcases that she’s essentially a child. This is all well and good contextually with her friendship with the dwarfs (except for that the dwarfs are really 7 old men), but it becomes a bit more odd when she marries the prince at the end. It totally makes sense when she meets the prince in the beginning of the movie for her to run away when he starts serenading her out of nowhere, and it even makes sense for her to fall in love with him. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for the prince to be so predatorily engaged in winning her heart. I don’t think it’s too off-base to describe this entire aspect as creepy.
All of her songs are quaintly innocent, if not unintentionally sad. Take for example:
As you sweep the room, imagine that the broom is someone that you love.
And isn’t that just the perfect line to showcase how Disney feels about women?
THE DWARFS
As I keep mentioning, the dwarf aspect is really just inherently weird. In the Grimm version, they’re highlighted as almost mythical creatures who tolerate Snow White’s presence. They let her stay with them as long as she leaves them alone and cleans up after them. In this way, Snow White is still as much the scullery maid she was when living with the queen. In the Disney version, they’re comedic relief, and more than a little perplexing. From “Heigh-ho”:
We dig up diamonds by the score, a thousand rubies, sometimes more, but we don’t know what we dig ‘em for. We dig dig dig-a dig dig.
Okay. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny, or just so weird that it becomes spectacle, but there are more than enough scenes like this in the movie, where the greater viewing audience just has to sit there and watch and wait until it’s all over.
CONCLUSION
All in all, it’d be a little ridiculous to say that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs doesn’t deserve the classic-film status it’s earned. The art and direction alone for any film of that era is impressive, let alone an animated one. The music is memorable, if not entirely weird most of the time, and it actually went a long way in promoting film soundtracks in general.
But it’s an odd and impossible mix of grim horror mixed with childish humor that’s difficult to track the entire watch through.
Snow White, as a character, sets the machine in operation that will long assist Disney in cementing itself as a producer of some of the most misogynist, archaic morals in any form of media. It strikes up the stereotype that all good women need is a handsome/wealthy man to save them, and all other women are probably witches. When you get nine old white guys in a room in the ‘30s and tell them to make a story about a young woman, maybe you shouldn’t be surprised when you get what you get. But, again, as with so many other Disney movies, maybe you shouldn’t put these films alongside the modern stock and expect that children will magically figure out what’s “a product of its time” and what isn’t.
The Glass City 