Watching new works snow White With the trailer released last week, you might be understandably a little confused. The live-action adaptation of Disney’s 1937 cartoon still relied heavily on animation to fill out its cast. You’d be forgiven if you were confused by the reasoning.
In the trailer, we see Snow White, played by Rachel Zegler, twirling and frolicking with her seven iconic companions, all of whom are depicted in CGI. This may come as no surprise to those who have been following the production: Disney declare In early 2022, the company will take a “different approach” to seven characters “to avoid reinforcing dwarf stereotypes.”
“It makes no sense to me,” actor Peter Dinklage, who is a dwarf, said on Marc Maron’s podcast before Disney made the announcement. “You’re It’s progressive in one way” — casting a Latino as Snow White, he said — “but you’re still making that fucking regressive story about seven dwarfs living together in a cave. You’re fucking What to do, man?
His objections quickly prompted a response from Disney. The solution the company found was to replace the characters with computer-generated renderings and refuse to cast dwarf actors because they had little chance in Hollywood. I don’t think this is progress.
Not everyone is excited. “It’s unbelievable to me that the entire community is not being listened to online. [is] Listen to someone.” explain Terra Jolé, a reality TV star who has dwarfism, added that some of her family members auditioned for the film. “That’s the pull that this guy has in this society because of his popularity.”
Dinklage did achieve a rare success for someone with dwarfism, and his star turn was widely recognized game of Thrones. Unfortunately, performance opportunities are much less available for people with this rare disease. snow White is actually tailor-made to bring the spotlight to a group that has been systematically ignored in the casting process. The ultimate irony is that these dreams were dashed at the behest of someone in their own community.
Are Dinklage’s — and Disney’s — protests against the use of dwarfs justified? It’s worth asking. Snow White’s companions do not live “in a cave” as Dinklage says. They live in a picturesque cottage that looks like it was plucked straight out of a Bavarian village. But even if we accept Dinklage’s description, snow White It’s a fairy tale. This is fiction. This is not true. This is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that Snow White’s other closest confidants are animals she encounters in the forest. After watching the movie, I doubt I would have been left with the impression that I could go into the woods and befriend a deer, just like I wouldn’t have assumed that everything I saw about the dwarfs reflected the real world.
I will no longer encounter the latter, as Disney reportedly transformed Dwarves are called “magical creatures.” Perhaps that’s why this version’s title is truncated; snow white and the seven magical beasts No ring is exactly the same. Whether the story will suffer remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Sometimes, in trying to be virtuous, Disney hurts the very people they are supposed to protect.
