Disney's big, bold Snow White live-action remake hits theaters tomorrow and it appears the film will be even worse than the wokified botch-job critics have anticipated. Lead actress Rachel Zegler has been complaining about the source materials for years and that controversy, as well casting concerns when the traditional "seven dwarves" were made into "seven magical creatures," caused the studio to ditch the red carpet premiere festivities. The wokeness infused into the new Snow White is about the installation of woke values and identity politics into a moral tale about inner beauty and kindness versus vanity and jealousy.
And it comes from the actress herself, as well as the media, insisting that the significance of her portrayal is that she's the Latina Snow White. "Never in a million years did I imagine that this would be a possibility for me. You don't normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent," Zelgler said.
"At the end of the day, I have a job to do that I'm really excited to do," she said in an interview, "I get to be a Latina princess." She also said "You're not taking on this role to fit the mold of the critics. You're doing this for every little Colombian girl who has yet to see themselves in a role like a Disney princess."
The original animated classic based on the German folk tale premiered in 1937 with the tagline "lips red as the rose, hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow," but Disney chose to embrace a non-traditional casting choice in Zegler, an American who is outspoken about her Colombian heritage. Though she's also got Polish ancestry, that's not what she's been leaning into for the role. In her comments about the film—where she eschewed the love story in favor of a heroine's quest for power narrative—she spoke about Snow White being played as a Latina princess. Why do she and media feel that her race so essential to the role?
These are stories for everyone, and everyone can see themselves in the lead role and understand the moral message that comes from the Brothers' Grimm tales. But removing traditional elements from these stories, while gatekeeping fables from other cultures worldwide, indicates that all is not equal in woke Hollywood.
It's hard not to see this as a suggestion by the major studios that some identities are more equal than others. What is peculiar about this is that the ethos we have been sold by the studios, by the Left, and by the cultural gatekeepers is that indigenous stories are superior to stories of "colonizers," that so-called "cultural appropriation" is racist and that those who hail from specific lands have dibs on the stories and history of those lands.
So, gatekeepers of culture, is it cultural appropriation to remake a European story with a Latina princess at the center? Or is it only culturally appropriative to do so when white creators embrace stories from cultures that are not historically theirs? Writing in The Federalist back in 2015, David Marcus noted that "in America there is one culture that anyone and everyone is free to appropriate. White culture, be it classical music, the novel, or the business suit, is never the subject of claims of appropriation."
Back then we all just saw this as obvious hypocrisy, but now that we have seen the deference paid to migrants and their culture, from Sharia courts in the UK to Canadian ads showing white children practicing Ramadan at Burger Factory, to cross-racial casting of literally Anne Boleyn, it starts to feel part of a piece. The point is not to bring new people into the dominant culture, but to replace the dominant, European culture of these nations with non-European ideals.
After backlash, the studio made some changes. Despite diminutive actor Peter Dinklage complaining that other actors of minor physical stature would be in the cast of dwarves alongside himself—he thought it was stereotyping to cast people with dwarfism as dwarves and that he should be the only one in the cast—Disney reshot scenes to hew more closely to the original telling.
The reviews so far have not been great, with critics saying that the Latina princess Zegler and her Wicked Queen counterpart, played by Gal Godot, are bland and uninteresting. If that's true, it's likely because the project was inspired by a desire to make Snow Woke and after backlash they had to settle for a film that did not capture their original vision.
