Disney has a new live-action version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” hitting theaters.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t just any film they’re remaking. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the first full-length animated feature ever made, created by Walt Disney himself. Before that, animation was just a series of short amusing—little skits such as “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit,” “Silly Symphony,” and, of course, later, “Mickey Mouse”—but Walt had a bigger vision.
He saw a silent film adaptation of the classic Grimm Brothers fairy tale and thought, ‘This story about beauty, jealousy, good, and evil would be the perfect foundation for my leap into feature films.’ It was a bold, ambitious move, to say the least. So ambitious, in fact, that people actually called Walt’s idea of making Snow White into a feature film “Disney’s Folly.”
They were convinced that no one would sit through a full-length feature cartoon. But Walt Disney had the last laugh, didn’t he? “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was a global phenomenon, and it was a springboard for everything we now associate with the Disney name.
I grew up loving all things Disney, like many of my generation. I’m a baby boomer. I watched “The Mickey Mouse Club” and later the “Wonderful World of Color.” We sat glued to the screen as “Uncle Walt,” as he was sometimes called, unveiled his plans for this new amusement park that he was going to call “Disneyland.” My love for Disney animation stuck with me. So much so that I became a cartoonist myself, eventually producing my own animated shorts with my characters “Ben Born Again” and “Yellow Dog.”
In Disney’s latest attempt to remake a classic, let’s just say, “they’ve lost the point.” It didn’t help that the lead actress Rachel Zegler torched the original film in interviews before the cameras even started rolling. She dismissed the 1937 animated classic as “extremely dated when it comes to ideas of women being in roles of power and [what] a woman is fit for in the world.”
“There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird,” she added. “So we didn’t do any of that this time.”
I guess that when audiences flocked to see Snow White for the last 87 years, what they really hated about it was the love story and the triumph of good over evil! Apparently, Zegler missed the entire point of this fairy tale.
Snow White is a moral fable. It’s a story about good versus evil, written, as I mentioned earlier, by the Grimm Brothers. It’s a tale about a vain Queen so obsessed with her own beauty and status that she is willing to murder an innocent girl to remain the “fairest in the land.” Sound familiar? That’s basically the story that we read about in the Bible about Lucifer, a once high-ranking, powerful angel who wanted to take the place of God. Lucifer was in love with his own image.
How does the Snow White story end? Evil is defeated. The queen, in all of her vanity, meets her ruin, and Snow White is resurrected from her deathlike sleep, saved by the prince. And what does she sing? “Someday, My Prince Will Come.”
If we’re being honest, it is not all that different from a Christian worldview. The original Snow White carried the message: one day, the prince would come, the true prince, the one who raises the dead and defeats evil once and for all.
According to the new Snow White, this is the wrong message to be sending. Ziegler, along with the film’s producers, proudly declared that Snow White wouldn’t be waiting for true love. Instead, she would be dreaming of becoming a fearless leader. She refused to sing “Someday My Prince Will Come,” the signature song of the original film, dismissing it also as “weird.” Instead, she’s got a new song, “Waiting on a Wish.” You guessed it; the song is about female empowerment and self-sufficiency—because heaven forbid we acknowledge the timeless human desire for love, redemption, and rescue!
Disney has sunk $270 million into this movie, hoping audiences will embrace this new vision of Snow White. Time will tell how that turns out!
To say that Walt Disney was a genius and a visionary is an understatement. Disney believed in a world where good overcame evil, truth defeated lies, families were celebrated, and patriotism was honored, not mocked. He once said, “The important thing is the family. If we can keep the family together, that’s the backbone of the whole business. Catering to families, that’s what we hope to do.”
Walt Disney understood that people don’t just want entertainment; they want meaning. Once upon a time, believe it or not, Disneyland’s original plans included a church on Main Street. Think about that!
Perhaps there are small glimmers of hope that the Disney organization is starting to wake up. For the first time in 20 years, Disney has produced an openly Christian character in their new animated series “Win Or Lose” on Disney+. Her name is Laurie, and she prays, “Dear Heavenly Father, please give me strength. I have faith, but sometimes doubt creeps in.”
It’s something small, but it is something. As a lifelong Disney fan, I want to believe that Disney can find its way back to what it was meant to be. If there’s any chance of that happening, the best thing Disney today could do is return to the roots of its founder and to stories that celebrate family, virtue, and faith.
Walt Disney once said, “In these days of world tensions, when the faith of men is being tested as never before, I am personally thankful that my parents taught me at a very early age to have a strong personal belief and reliance on the power of prayer for Divine inspiration.”
If Disney wants to reclaim Walt’s “magic,” prayer is where they need to start.
