To kick off the first entry for our Disney project I thought I would start out with some pure old school Disney. Just as a little background for anyone who didn’t know, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was Disney’s first full length animated film, which is about as old school as Disney gets. The film, based on a story by The Brothers Grimm, came out in 1937 and has remained an animated classic over the generations.
Even though the movie came out about 56 years before I was born I still watched it when I was about 5 or 6. At the risk of committing some sort of Disney blasphemy I have to say that I really didn’t like Snow White when I was little, and after watching it again at 17 I can clearly understand why. The movie must have bored me. Considering my short attention span and the fact that Snow White really does nothing throughout the entire movie but cook and clean for the seven dwarfs and ingest a poisonous apple it is a miracle that I even sat through the entire movie. Even though I would like to believe that my attention span has improved somewhat since I was five, I still found the movie a tad bit boring. There is no denying that Snow White and the myriad of furry woodland animals that follow her around throughout the movie are adorable, but that doesn’t conceal the fact that they don’t really do much.
Unlike when I was five, my revitalized disliking of the movie is due to more than simple boredom; while watching the movie I found myself deeply annoyed at its misogynistic themes. As soon as Snow White sees the unkempt house that the seven dwarfs live in she kicks into ultimate cliche mothering overdrive. She cleans their entire house, cooks them food, and even forces them to take baths before they eat by threatening to withhold their supper from them. Snow White is also completely devoid of ambition and is content to live out the rest of her young life as a live in maid for the dwarfs. The only thing she wants out of life is for a prince to come and sweep her off her feet. She fondly sings of her undying love for the handsome prince of a nearby kingdom despite the fact that the two had only spoken for a grand total of two seconds in the movie. I doubt she even knew his name. Yes I know this is a fairytale children’s movie but I at least expected the two love birds to have an actual conversation before Snow White falls so deeply in love with him that she willingly rides off into the sunset with him at the end of the movie without so much as a second thought. The only thing this guy had to do was sing her a song at the beginning of the movie and show up at her funeral with a horse.
Since this movie was made in in the 1930s I guess I should have expected this. In the 1930s women were not expected to go out on their own adventures or solve their own problems, they were expected to cook, clean, and wait for their prince to come and sweep them off their feet.
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