FWIW, if you’re interested in a literary take on the question, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling compiled a superb set of anthologies to answer this question. I think my favorite was Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears.
Moderating:
Please remember that this is Cafe, not the pit. This (and at least in your reading, the post it replied to) are veering towards making it personal, which is not appropriate in Cafe.
I know it was a story decision arrived at very late in the day, but Frozen really is a riposte to this. Particularly with respect to the enamorising properties of duets - in both films the sheltered young princess meets a handsome prince, sings a song with him and promptly falls deeply in love. But in Frozen that turns out - as wiser heads tell her - to be delusional. Anna doesn’t have the first clue about what Hans is really like and believing in her love for him gets her in a lot of trouble.
I know that seems like a very modern take and it is, and that is the version they went with, but by all accounts for most of the production time, they were going to play it straight with Hans as the Good Prince Who Saves The Day With The Power Of True Love which in retrospect seems astonishing.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort. Rather, I was keeping in mind that Disney cartoon movies are largely intended for and seen by children, and so it behooves us to consider how children will understand and interpret and be influenced by them.
I don’t see anyone who has made that argument. The issue was that several people, in calling it “creepy” were misstating what actually happened in the film.
In the film, Snow White and the Prince are depicted as falling in love at first sight in song. Then Snow goes missing so the prince goes and looks for her, only finding her after she is apparently dead. He kisses her goodbye, but this revives her.
You are free to argue that this is a violation of consent, or that the kiss felt creepy. But if you argue that he just came up and kissed a pretty dead girl, then you are incorrect. If you claim that all they did was sing together, then you misunderstand the genre and the intent of that scene.
Personally, I’d argue the creepier part is that the dwarfs explicitly didn’t bury her because she was “so beautiful.”
Narrator: So beautiful, even in death, that the dwarfs could not find it in their hearts to bury her. They fashioned a coffin of glass and gold, and kept eternal vigil at her side.
Exactly right. That’s why your statement about not being able to read the minds of fictional characters feels so at-odds with the rest of what you’ve said.
You’re making it right now.
Snow White been done:
They of course make other changes to the source material to market to the target they aim for.
Wicked is another property that immediately comes to mind. Basically it’s like famous old songs having covers done. Some are faithful and some are novel new interpretations. Some are takes for preschoolers and some are for a mature crowd.
Those are all crimes.
Kissing a loved one goodbye is not a crime.
This post is hypocritical.
Exactly. Good posts.
Right. Certainly some cultures practices are dangerous, violent, and harmful. There is no excuse to FGM for example.
But if Moslem women wish to wear a burka , or Jewish men a yarmulke, or surfer dudes board shorts, or whatever- those are harmless cultural traditions. Making fun of them and calling them creepy is bigoted.
Oh,. I understand, and certainly no one should be forced to do that.
As you have been told dozens of times- he is not a stranger. They love one another.
Nor is she 14. You’re just making shit up here.
That’s not what “hypocritical” means.
That’s kind of at the crux of the conversation. You suggest that someone you’ve known for less than an hour, several months or years ago, can be “not a stranger,” and that there can be meaningful talk of love between the two. I, and others, think that’s scurrilous nonsense that is part of an ugly message to give to kids.
It was the romantic fantasy trope of the time. Eyes locked across the room. Cue the music. The one dance. Not ugly per se but very very dated.
I may love my wife and she me but sex with her comatose would be a violation. No a kiss isn’t sex but love each other is not sufficient to preclude consent.
Kissing someone without consent IS a crime. She’s not his wife, or his grandmother. She’s a girl he fell in lust love with without ever having an actual relationship with her.
The film is 83 minutes long, any relationship would be less than an hour. Clearly, not every minute of their relationship is shown.
Kissing a dead person is not. The filom makes is clear they are deeply truly in true love.
I’m sorry, you’ve said this before, and i didn’t respond, but i now feel the need to reply. It takes seconds to show a montage of snapshots of two people doing stuff together. It’s a common trope in movies/video to quickly show a lengthy relationship. There are other ways to show a lengthy relationship that don’t take much screen time. For instance, we learn that she’d been “dead” for a while (the dwarfs would normally have buried her). One doesn’t ordinarily bury bodies within 83 minutes of death, either.
If they had had a relationship beyond that one song on the movie, the movie would have made that clear. They didn’t. They saw each other, sang a bit, “fell in love” , and never saw each other again until the prince finds the body.
Is that clear, though? Like, what else is implied? Did they go to dinner together? Did they play tennis? Did they dance at balls? My impression is that that entire scene comprised their entire premortem relationship.
I mean, this is ridiculous, but I went to Disney to check, and while I was technically right, I should make a correction.
The Prince appears at 4:47, as part of her song. By 6:57, he’s gone. The movie is real-time for that segment, no montage or discontinuity of time. Snow White sees him, runs away, and then swoonily listens to him serenade her for about two minutes solid. When I said she’d known him for “less than an hour,” I shoulda said “less than three minutes.”
The next scene is the queen sending the huntsman after her; and the next time we see Snow White, she’s shooting the shit with a blue bird.
She moons around about him to the dwarfs, but she never indicates that she’s had a full 150 seconds of getting to know him. She’s got a schoolgirl’s crush. And the prince doesn’t know that. He never sees her again before kissing her.
It’s real weird that folks think that’s the basis of a loving relationship. I mean, sure, in a fairy tale it stands in for it; but we’re talking about lessons for kids to infer, and there’s nothing here to contradict the unease I and others feel at the prince’s behavior.
The idea behind the film was totally new, groundbreaking, and considered by many to be foolish. Disney chose not to show that, concentrating on songs, etc. The idea that he had to show a long developing relationship in order that a kiss on a dead true loved not be considered creepy by some people in the 21st century did not and could not occur to him. No one talking about the kiss being "non-consensual’ until quite recently.
You’re right that “love at first sight” or “instantaneous recignition of one’s True Love” is a common trope (and not just in fantasy—“Some enchanted evening you may see a stranger across a crowded room”). It’s not ugly, but it may be misleading and harmful.
I don’t think you understand the concerns of a good portion of the posters here. The discussion started around the question: is it a good idea to reimagine parts of the Snow White story for a modern audience? It doesn’t really matter if people in the 1930s were talking about the kiss being non-consensual. The question is, how does the target audience view it today, and do we think the message the audience will take from it is a good thing or bad thing?
Nonsense about “but it shows murder too!” is just that, nonsense. It’s not what is shown that matters, but how it is viewed. Is it portrayed positively? Is the audience able to contextualize what they’re seeing? Can they understand it as a product of a bygone era?
The prime target audience for Snow White is young girls. They don’t see two people “fall in true love” in 3 minutes and think, well, in real life, they should date a long time to determine if they are compatible. Instead, girls get the message that it’s normal to commit to a man because he pursues them and is handsome, without getting to know him.
Kids don’t come away with the idea that kisses actually revive dead people in real life. But they do see a man who sees something, takes what he wants with no input from the woman, and it all works out perfectly and everyone is happy. Sure, kids aren’t going to be able to express that thought if you ask them outright, but it is certainly internalized along with all the other BS that girls are subject to every day. And that has an impact.
Just look how many people in this thread somehow have the notion that true love can be found in 3 minutes, or that inability to grant consent means consent isn’t needed.