Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Are the new adaptations of the Snowwhite fairytale better than the original?


Fairytales are fictional stories that teach us a valuable lesson on the real world. When it comes to the fairytale of Snow White, many people seem to think that the moral of the story was that women should clean the house and that they should wait until prince charming saves them. Many people find this offensive because it would be a very suppressing and patriarchal view on women, but these people don’t understand what the fairytale is about.

The central figure in the fairy tale is the evil stepmom, not Snow White. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t envy those that have more, but that you should be satisfied with what you have, especially when you already have a lot. The extreme passiveness of Snow White is just to emphasize that Snow White is innocent and did in no way deserve the way her stepmom treats her.

Because so little people seem to understand what the tale of Snow White is about, people keep on adapting the fairytale, so it makes more sense to them.

Disney made Snow White the leading character and pushed the evil stepmom to the background, because Disney only makes movies with ‘good’ people as the central figure.


In the Disney movie Snow White also is a more ‘real’ character than the evil Stepmom. In the fairytale Snow White is created to answer the prayers of a woman and the evil Stepmom her ‘witchcraft’ is limited to poisoning and owning a magic mirror. In the original fairytale the evil Stepmom is a real woman with feelings and Snow White is a kind of magical creature. In the Disney version the evil Stepmom turns into an evil witch with magical powers and no feelings and Snow White becomes a beautiful, innocent human being.

The latest two adaptations of the movie are a response to the desire to make Snow White less passive and they have turned Snow White into someone that fights back. In a way this bothers me, because Snow White now is just another story that emphasizes that you should stand up for yourself and I would rather see a movie that would make people want to stand up for others.

Judging from the trailers they also have changed the role of the evil Stepmom. I have the feeling they’ve given her a sense of humor. And in both adaptations the evil Stepmoms don’t act out of envy anymore, they want to kill Snow White because she is a threat to their throne. Both adaptations move the fairytale even further away from its original value and I regret it, because the fairytale of Snow White could teach this world a lot about the difference between ambition and envy. Ambition is striving to be the best you can be. Envy is striving to be better than anyone else by taking others down, but in a world with 8 billion people it’s a battle you’ll never win. 








1 comment:

  1. this really made me think, i'd never considered it this way before!

    ReplyDelete