Imagine watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a child and seeing the evil queen
snacking on Snow White’s lightly salted internal organs. On the outside, Disney princess movies
seem harmless; they inspire young children, play catchy songs, and make dreams come true.
However, there is much more under the surface. For decades, Disney has censored old stories
and folktales and turned them into their own princess movies, all while reinforcing the stereotype
that women need men.
Snow White was not always the innocent and singing young girl that the world knows. In
the original german tale, the story is morbid. Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
features Snow White, a prince, an evil stepmother, a magic mirror, and seven merry dwarfs.
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The evil queen consults her mirror every day, “Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?” The mirror cannot lie, and one day responds that Snow White is the fairest in the land. The vain queen is enraged and sends a huntsman to bring Snow White deep into the woods and return with her heart to confirm her death (“Snow White...Seven Dwarfs”). The huntsman does not have the heart to kill her, so he finds a pig in the wild and butchers the animal instead. Snow White is directed by her animal friends to a cottage owned by seven mining dwarfs: Sleepy, Happy, Grumpy, Dopey, Sneezy, Bashful, and Doc. The dwarfs allow her to stay in their house and she generously cleans and cooks while they head to the cave to mine. Snow White’s stepmother, believing her to be dead, asks the mirror again. The mirror mentions Snow White for a second time. The evil queen understands that the huntsman betrayed her and decided to take matters into her own hands. She tracks down the cottage of the seven dwarfs disguised as an old hag, and persuades Snow White to eat the poisonous apple. She drops down, dead as a doornail, and stays there until the dwarfs find her and set her to rest in a glass coffin. The prince finds her body in the woods and wakes her up with true love’s kiss. The dwarfs end up chasing the queen off of a cliff and everyone lives happily ever after (“Snow White...Seven Dwarfs”). In the Grimm Brother’s Snow White, there are some r-rated differences. First of all, the queen requests the liver and a lung of Snow White rather than herheart. When the huntsman brings faux organs, she eats them and believes that she has eaten Snow White. Instead of using true love’s kiss when the prince finds Snow in the forest, he asks the dwarfs if he can take Snow White to his castle and use her as decoration. He claims, “I cannot live without seeing Snow White. I will honor and prize her as my dearest possession." On the trip back to his castle, the carriage hits a stump and dislodges the bite of poison apple from her throat and wakes her up (“Snow White”). At the end of the story, the queen is sentenced to death by the dwarfs; she is given red-hot shoes and must dance to death at Snow White and the prince’s wedding. Between the two versions, there is a difference in language. Snow White is written with older English, and also uses harsh phrases such as “The cook had to salt them, and the wicked queen ate them, and thought she had eaten the lung and liver of Snow White,” and “Then she was forced to put on the red-hot shoes, and dance until she dropped down dead.” Although gruesome details were left out, there was a common focus in both the original and the Disney version: Snow White needed the prince. This seems to be a recurring theme in multiple of the earlier Disney princess movies. Another unsettling story turned Disney is The Little Mermaid (“Snow White”). Disney’s The Little Mermaid is similar to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, yet has some major contrasts.
Walt Disney’s version is simple: a young mermaid falls in love
with a human and trades her voice to Ursula the evil sea-witch for true love. The prince falls in
love with Ariel, even though she is mute, and marries her. She gets her voice back and they live
happily ever after (“The Little Mermaid).
Andersen’s is quite different; although Ariel trades her voice for legs, it is a painful
process that was not expressed in the Disney movie. Rather than magically removing her voice,
the sea witch physically cuts out her tongue. After receiving her legs, the little mermaid walks
painfully to the palace and has twenty four hours to make the prince fall in love. Although the
prince lets her in and befriends her, that is as far as she gets. The deal stated: she has twenty four
hours to marry the prince, and if he marries anyone else she will die and transform into sea foam.
She is stuck perpetually friendzoned to the one she loves, while the prince marries his betrothed.
After her sisters discover her fate, they make their own deal with the sea witch. They trade their
hair for an sharp dagger; if the little mermaid plunges the knife into the prince’s heart before
his wedding day she once again become a mermaid, yet if she does not she will die. Alas, the little mermaid cannot bring herself to murder her true love for selfish reasons, so she dies the moment the sun peeks above the horizon the day after his wedding. The little mermaid ascends to the sky to heaven, but every good child she flies over a day is taken off of her sentence and every naughty child she sees a day is added (Andersen). The little mermaid chose her future because of a man in both versions of the story. She sacrificed her entire life for what she thought was true love. The differences between the Disney story and Hans Christian Andersen’s are evident. Disney leaves out the gruesome detail such as ripping out Ariel’s tongue, the pain of splitting her tail, and death. Snow White and Ariel are not the only princesses with crazy backstories; Cinderella has a wild history of her own. One of the Grimm Brothers’ strangest stories is indeed Cinderella. Disney’s Cinderella focuses on a young orphan adopted by her stepmother and forced to work as the family maid. The stepsisters order her around like a slave. Cinderella befriends many animals, including mice. Eventually the prince calls for a ball with all eligible maidens, for he is searching for a wife. Cinderella is visited by her fairy godmother and is gifted a beautiful dress and glass slippers. She attends the ball and falls in love with the prince. When the clock strikes twelve the magic disappears and she runs, leaving one glass slipper behind (“Cinderella”). The prince pursues Cinderella, sending the Duke and his footman to scour the city for a match to the shoe. When they arrive at the house of Cinderella, her stepsisters force their feet into the shoe with no avail. Cinderella’s stepmother locks her upstairs so she cannot try on the shoe, but her mice friends help her escape. At the last second, she rushes down the stairs and catches the Duke and his footman before they leave. As they hurry to try on the shoe, the stepmother trips the footman and causes him to drop and break the shoe. Although the shoe was destroyed, Cinderella pulls out the other shoe and proves that it fits. The prince knows that she is his true love and takes her away to be married (“Cinderella”). In the Grimm Brothers’ Cinderella, there are a few minor differences. First of all, Cinderella’s mother dies but her father stays alive. He remarries an awful human being and chooses her over his own child; after his marriage they nicknamed his daughter “Cinderella” which literally translates to "little ashes." They transform her into a slave and treat her like dirt. She plants a twig over her mother’s grave and it grows into a tree. Rather than a fairy godmother, Cinderella has a magic tree that grants her three wishes. On the night of the ball, her stepmother scatters lentils throughout the ashes in the fireplace and condemns Cinderella to pick them out and sort them between good and bad before she can attend. Cinderella calls upon her animal friends to assist her (Grimm). She finishes with time to spare but her stepmother spreads more lentils in the ashes to preoccupy her. Cinderella once again calls on the animals to help her clean. She finishes early again but her stepmother says, “You are not coming with us, for you have no clothes, and you don't know how to dance. We would be ashamed of you.” After everyone leaves, Cinderella weeps at her mother’s grave and asks the tree for a dress. A beautiful gold and silver dress and golden shoes fall from the tree; she puts them on and quickly runs to the festival. The prince found love at first sight. The text states, “He would dance with no one else. He never let go of her hand, and whenever anyone else came and asked her to dance, he would say, "She is my dance partner."” At the end of the night, the prince asks to escort Cinderella home because he wants to see who she is. She runs and hides in the chicken coop. Afterwards she hurries home, leaves her dress behind, and sits in the ashes (Grimm). This happens three days in a row. On the third day, the prince sets a traps to catch the escaping maiden. He smeared the stairs with pitch, and her golden shoe gets stuck. She leaves it behind and gets away once more. The prince travels around the city searching for the maiden that fits the golden shoe. He arrives at the house of Cinderella and her stepsisters try on the shoe first. The first sister did not fit, and her mother directs her to cut off her big toe to make room. She obliges and almost gets away with it. The second sister could not fit her heel into the shoe, so her mother instructs her to cut off her own heel. She almost tricks the prince as well. Finally, the prince asks if there are any other maidens in the house and her father replies, “There is only a deformed little Cinderella from my first wife, but she cannot possibly be the bride.” The prince commands for Cinderella, discovers that she is his bride, and rejoices (Grimm). Each of these stories have their unique twist on the same idea. Disney censors some details, like harsh words from her father or viscously cutting off parts of their feet. Disney decided to make Cinderella’s father dead yet good, while in the original story he was a hassle. Cinderella’s story kept the common idea that she needed the prince to have a better life (Grimm). Many years ago when these stories were written, it was widely accepted that women needed men. This is emphasized in both the literature and the movie adaptions. As the world gets more progressive, the movies and literature change as well. For example, some of the newest Disney movies include Frozen and Brave, which each contain a female protagonist that does not rely on a man. In all three of these examples, Disney removed horrifying details to create family friendly movies. These movies and stories are all older, and they were created before society became very progressive and started examining gender. They reinforce gender roles and create the “damsel in distress” and the idea that women need men. Even though the stories they are based on may be r-rated, Walt Disney used his genius creative imagination to turn it into a successful dynasty.
Zipes, Jack. "Breaking the Disney Spell." The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism. New York: Norton, 1999. 332-52. Print.
Anne Sexton's “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and Thylias Moss' “Lessons from a Mirorr” provide the modern reader with unique interpretations of the age old tale of Snow White. Both works utilize societal ideals of beauty and purity as they are linked to the worth of women as a way to critique this tale.
A little girl sits on the floor with her gaze fixed on the television screen in front of her, watching magical images dance before her eyes and catchy songs flow through her ears. Even though she had seen it at least twenty times before, she still loved The Little Mermaid just as much as she did the first time she watched it. As she watched it, she longed to be a beautiful mermaid with a curvy body and wonderful singing voice like Ariel. She longed to be saved by the handsome Prince Eric, and fall in love and live happily ever-after like Ariel did. In today’s society, women strive to achieve equality between the sexes. Despite the tremendous steps that have been taken towards reaching gender equality, mainstream media contradicts these accomplishments with stereotypes of women present in Walt Disney movies. These unrealistic stereotypes may be detrimental to children because they grow up with a distorted view of how men and women interact. Disney animated films assign gender roles to characters, and young children should not be exposed to inequality between genders because its effect on their view of what is right and wrong in society is harmful to their future.
One late afternoon, while Ariel is swimming to the surface she sees a ship filled with humans. Ariel became overwhelmed because she did not see so many humans before. Thus she decides to swim closer. To her surprise, she gets a close look at Prince Eric. She has not seen someone as handsome as Prince Eric, and she falls in love immediately. While Ariel is admiring Prince Eric, lightening struck the ship and creates chaos because the ship is on fire. Leading the sailors to
Having decided to produce a children’s book as part of my Degree course, I initially considered writing a contemporary version of one of the old folk or fairy tales, possibly a story by Hans Christian Andersen or a tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. I narrowed my selections and decided tentatively on a reworking of the classic folk tale ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. I immediately tried to blank all thoughts of ‘Happy’, ‘Dopey’, ‘Sneezey’, ‘Bashful’, ‘Sleepy’, ‘Grumpy’ and ‘Doc’, but this proved harder than expected. How do you go about renaming, individualising and illustrating characters that are so firmly ensconced in the memories of children all over the world? Disney’s monopolising of the fairy/folk tale genre and mass marketing of the characters as toys appeared to limit my options of adapting the ‘Snow White’ story to...
When the mirror on the wall addressed Snow White as "the fairest one in the land", The Evil Queen detached from reality entirely. As The Evil Queen's pride, jealousy, and rage rapidly increased, Snow White remained optimistic and kind. These traits influenced her to face her hardships without fear. Unlike The Evil Queen, who faced her hardships with menacing schemes. "With no negativity within her, Snow White is the physical embodiment of positivity and innocence." described Disney Wiki. The Evil Queen, however, her heart was overflowing with hate and vanity. Even though Snow White was raised by an evil step-mother, she embraced a mother-like nature. The Evil Queen's vanity consumed her mind and heart causing her to result in her own destruction, but Snow White's pure heart guided her through her misfortunes.
Princess films are centered around a female character who meets the love of her life and, like in other fairy tales, ends with their wedding (Ross 4). Initially, the Disney princesses’ have portrayed a typical female role in the film, showing the expected gender roles in American society (England Descartes Collier-Meek 563). These gender-based stereotypes are influenced by the time period they were made in, but also originating from old fairytales made centuries ago. “Society’s increasing reliance on the use of television and videos to occupy children warrants continued investigation of how exposure to media may affect children. Given that media portrayals like those in the animated movies of Walt Disney often reinforce societal stereotypes related to gender, ethnicity, and culture, parents may consider a more thoughtful approach to the use of television and videos” (Disney Movies 1).
Neil Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” is far from the modern day fairy tale. It is a dark and twisted version of the classic tale, Snow White. His retelling is intriguing and unexpected, coming from the point of view of the stepmother rather than Snow White. By doing this, Gaiman changes the entire meaning of the story by switching perspectives and motivations of the characters. This sinister tale has more purpose than to frighten its readers, but to convey a deeper, hidden message. His message in “Snow, Glass, Apples” is that villains may not always be villains, but rather victims.
Roses are red, violets are blue, Snow White has changed, everything’s new. This is a different beginning than the original story of Little Snow White by the Grimm Brothers and retold by the director Rupert Sanders, in the movie Snow White and the Huntsman. The original story portrays Snow White as a beautiful, but naive, young woman, leading up to her eating a poisoned apple from the evil queen. The evil queen has been jealous of Snow White after she has grown up and become more beautiful. Although in both the story and the movie, Snow White eats a poisoned apple, Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman is portrayed as more brave and courageous, even after she wakes up from the poisoned apple. In the end, both the story and the movie show that Snow White’s triumphs out rules all, no matter what is thrown at her, but the difference is in how. While there are many common motifs across the story and the movie; Gender roles have changed over time, as shown in the
‘Now look at you. The polar opposite. If your daughter is a pure white snow, you’re muddy sludge after the thaw. All squish and decay.’” This reflection and her baring of her body to the huntsman (Rhafe), who loves her, drives her into rationalizing that Snowy must be eliminated, “’But I do think about you,’ he said, ‘even when I’m back in my life. Even if it is just a fairy story, I do care for you. Tell me what I can do, and I’ll do it, you know? Anything. Just tell me.’ […] ‘Get rid of her.’” When the queen discovers that her beloved huntsman has betrayed her, her mental fragility begins to unwind and she sets out to do the task herself causing ruin to anyone who gets in her way. “Dania was not going to be made a fool of again. She swiped her fist out in an arc. The shard of broken glass she held punched into his neck. […] The boiling rage seemed to have gone out of her, at least for a while.” Snow White is hesitant in being left with seven little men who must not be able to defend themselves but the one with the long beard tied up reassures her “And, I’m sorry to say, my
The evil stepmother is filled with envy and rage that Snow White is more beautiful than her and orders that she be executed because “she could not bear to be surpassed in beauty by anyone” Grimm. This shows that the stepmother is actually just displacing the emptiness she feels in herself onto Snow White. As previously stated, the stepmother is full of insecurity and low self-esteem which is what is causing her to project her feelings of inadequacy onto her step child. It’s less that she hates Snow White and more that she is pushing her feelings of wanting to be perfect onto the person who is taking that identity away, “the idea of absolute beauty that causes the conflict emerges from within the Queen herself” Takenaka. The entire narrative of “Little Snow White” is stemmed out of this projection of dissatisfaction onto Snow White. It causes her to try and kill her over and over and gives the reader a sense of internal
In Disney's version of , The Little Mermaid, there is a happy ever after for every character; however, in the original tale, the mermaid fails to make the prince fall in love with her because he is in love with another.. The prince had almost married her out of convenience, but found his true love and marries another woman instead. The poor mermaid was then given an ultimatum, she could either stab the prince or die, and she chooses to sacrifice her life for the one she loves. Like The Little Mermaid, Emily and Charlotte Brontë show in their novels, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, that unless there is true love between both parties in a romantic relationship, there will never be true happiness. The belief that it is better for a relationship to be based on romantic love, then of more practical considerations in shown by others Emily and Charlotte Brontë in their novels.
…“Hang on, I’m coming” schess, that princess acts like a well… like a princess… but she could consider dropping the act any day soon. After all, she will miss me if her prince ever carriers her away…he ha ha…she be so old by that time that if someone did come to rescue her from my evil fire they will take one look at her and quietly sneak out the back moat bridge like a baby dragon with his pointed little tail between his legs.
"Little Snow White" is a worldwide known fairytale written by the Grimm brothers in 1812. The story is about a beautiful young girl that has to escape from the care of her envious mother that tries to kill her. It follows Snow White through her journey until her mother isn't her worry anymore. The moral of the story would be that vanity and beauty drives people to do unexpected things, whether they be good or bad.
“In a faraway land long ago...” Thus begins Disney's film version of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty,” automatically giving its viewers a sense of a seemingly historical past. Most, if not all, people raised within Western culture are familiar with the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and the story about a young girl being cursed to prick her finger on a spindle only to be awakened again by a true love’s kiss. Imagine instead a different version of Sleeping Beauty...