Disney+ Marathon: Revisiting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

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 So for my blog, I’m doing a Disney+ movie marathon through all the animated feature length films I haven’t seen in 20+ years/have never seen! I’m starting off with the first animated full length cartoon feature in the United States, Snow White!

  • Setting: The original Snow White story is a 19th-century German fairy tale. It was featured in Grimms’ Fairy Tales in 1812. The time period isn’t explicitly stated anywhere that I can find, but since the Queen’s clothes are based off of a preserved Medieval statue of the German noble Uta von Ballenstedt (c. 1000 -1046), it seems to be set in medieval Germany somewhere.
    The Disney version, of course, is a very simplified version that removes a lot of the original elements of the story, namely, any sort of backstory. The fairy tale also featured the Queen trying to kill Snow White three times rather than just with the apple shown in this film.

  • Why is Snow White in a peasant outfit at the beginning? The only explanation given is in the little story book page at the beginning that says “Her vain and wicked Stepmother the Queen feared that some day Snow White’s beauty would surpass her own. So she dressed the little Princess in rags and forced her to work as a Scullery Maid.”
    What happened to Snow White’s father or original mother? No one knows; we’re certainly not told.

  • Clearly Snow White is some kind of witch who can get Woodland creatures to somehow all get along follow her and do her bidding, namely, unpaid household labor. I need her skills. Can she teach cats? Actually, she may be a vampire given the whole skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood thing.
    ALTHOUGH, the origin of her name isn’t explained whatsoever in this movie version, so perhaps that isn’t canon for Disney film? The original story has Snow White’s mother wishing for a child with “skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as night,” after pricking her finger with a needle and seeing her blood drip onto freshly fallen snow on a black windowsill.

  • Are the trees in the forest actually evil and do they have faces or are they just representations of snow white’s fears?

  • The dwarves definitely say Jiminy crickets before Pinocchio The movie came out. What on earth did it mean before then? Was it a reference to the book?
    I later looked this up and discovered that “Jiminy” is an exclamation of surprise dating back to 1803, which may be a disguised oath referring to Jesu Domine, or Jesus Lord. “Jiminy cricket” was used starting in 1848; the “JC” initials also refer to Jesus Christ. The Adventures of Pinocchio wasn’t published until 1883 and featured a character named the Talking Cricket, but he didn’t get the name Jiminy Cricket until the 1940 Disney movie came out.

  • Interesting fact: This movie’s title uses the more common at the time “Dwarfs” instead of the “Dwarves” plural form popularized by Tolkien later.

  • We never see snow white with her stepmother the queen. Do we ever see any women talking to each other? I guess the witch (the evil queen in disguise) talks to snow white. But I can’t think of anyone else. It just barely passes the Bechdel test (they talk a little bit about Snow White wanting to marry the prince, but they also talked about dreams more generally), but it’s hardly progressive.,
    For that matter, we never hear about Snow White’s father, his relationship with the Queen, or Snow White’s relationship with the Queen at all. There’s really no backstory given.

  • They kept the plot very very simple. There are no complex characters, no outside friendships, and no motivations outside basic survival? Snow White is nice to animals but that’s basically all we know about her. Except that she likes to sing and appreciate a clean house.

  • The entire dwarves sneaking into the house to figure out who’s in there segment is like a tribute to slapstick comedy.

  • What were the dwarves’ names before they were old enough to have personalities and/or noticeable health issues (sneezy- hat fever, sleepy- narcolepsy). It appears that dopey is maybe intended to have some sort of mental delay but it’s passed off as “he’s never tried to talk.” Not sure such a character would fly in today’s society.

  • “Oh good, you talk.” Jesus, Snow White, they’re short men, not mute animals.

  • I had completely forgotten about the whole Snow White having to harass them to wash their hands and faces because they haven’t done that in weeks bit. Mildly appalled. This reminds me of the cruise we went on where they played an entire video about how you definitely need to wash your hands every time you go to the bathroom.

  • It’s a total myth that people in medieval times didn’t wash or keep themselves clean, by the way; I’ll explain this more later but even if they didn’t take full baths all that often they did wash their hands and faces daily.

  • "A Pedslar's disguise" what a convenient spell she just happens to have there. Is that a commonly used spell? What does she use it for? Shopping in disguise in the kingdom?

  • It's nice that everyone in this kingdom knows everyone else. You wouldn't expect a Queen to know who the dwarfs are (it makes sense that the dwarfs know who Snow White is though).

  • "A thunder bolt to mix it well" - wait. What? Doesn't she mean lightning? There's lightning when she says that about her potion. Plus, can sound even mix a potion? It has to be lightning right? She says "look my hands, my voice" as if she's surprised by the results of the potion she just gave herself.I have a feeling that this plan wasn't totally formulated or thought through very well, as she doesn't think about the poison apple part.

  • John made a valid point when I talked to about - why are they making spells that can be broken easily? Can you just not make a spell permanent?

  • -I somehow only figured out that Snow White is set in Germany a few years ago and listening to this Silly Song tune with all the yodellling and the super German organ, I just really don't know how I hadn't ever figured that out. Did we see that organ at all when Snow White and the bewitched woodland creatures were cleaning the house? Also - what kind of organ can you play with your butt like that? Why does Grumpy have such a flexible butt? What sort of exercises do you do in order to be able to move one butt cheek at a time? Is that a thing people can do? I'm pretty sure i can't.

  • Gooseberry pie? Is that a thing? What is that? Is it German?
    Later: YES, it’s a thing. Gooseberries are berries with tart skin and sweet flesh. Gooseberry pie adds in sugar to balance out the tartness. However, it appears that their presence in this film is anachronistic; the 1879 Encyclopaedia Britannica said, “Although gooseberries are now abundant in Germany and France, it does not appear to have been much grown there in the Middle Ages, though the wild fruit was held in some esteem medicinally for the cooling properties of its acid juice in fevers.”

  • Good lord, Snow White is an idiot, isn’t she? The dwarfs specifically tell her that the queen is dangerous and a master of disguise and the animals straight up attack the witch to protect her and she lets her in and eats the damn apple anyway, the dumb girl. I know she's supposed to only be 14 in this movie but....COME ON. 

  • I’m not really going to get into costume analysis much for most of these movies, but suffice it to say that these movies generally reflected the time in which they were made. It’s not a coincidence that Snow White’s hairstyle and face look distinctly Betty Boop-ish. Many other people have done great work discussing the historical influences of the costumes; I highly suggest the great work done over at Frock Flicks!

  • Walt Disney may have been a visionary, but he was a total asshole in some ways. He held the 19-year-old actress Adriana Caselotti, who provided the voice of Snow White, to an extremely strict contract which basically kept her from singing professionally for the rest of her life (she had extremely small parts in Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life). She wasn’t credited as the voice, she was only paid $970 for her work on the film (equivalent to about $16,905 in 2018), and Disney refused to let her work on radio shows.

  • This movie is really gorgeous and I understand why so many people consider it a classic, but the characters and plot are paper thin and I don’t personally feel it holds up very well when I watch it as an adult. It’s very important for its role in movie history as the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest Disney animated feature film, but it’s not something I plan to rewatch much.
    THAT BEING SAID, I adore Snow White’s costume and aesthetic and Disneybound as her more often than any other character. :D