Speaker 1: Hello everyone. I am sitting here in Florida in the
house of the legendary Degrade family of dirt Poor Robins fame.
And last night, yesterday, with the Grade family, we went
to see snow White. And we went to see snow
White so that you don't have to see it, you know,
I felt like I had to see it. Also, there
are several people that have asked me to talk about it.
You know, there's a journalist who wants to talk to
me about the movie. So I said, look, you know,
there is a relationship between this movie coming out and
the books that we tried to put out in the
sense that I knew that Disney could not tell this
story when I heard about the fact that they were
making a new version of it and so, and they
did not disappoint. They really no longer are allowed to
tell this story. And so what I'd like to do
with you is, you know, this will be full of spoilers,
so you know, obviously it's not like there's anything that
magical to spoil. But I'm going to go through the
way that they tell the story, and then we're going
to analyze it in relationship to the original Snow White,
to the original movie, and we're going to show you
know why they made certain decisions and what it is
that those decisions mean. This is Jonathan Peshel, Welcome to
the symbolic world. And so the first thing to say
is I went in there. I'm honest with you. I
went in there and I said, look, I pretty much
know I'm not gonna like this movie, but I'm going
to be I'm going to try to be as generous
as possible. I'm going to try to, you know, take
in what they're giving me and try to give it
the most generous possible interpretation. And so the first thing
to say about the way that the movie structured is
clear that they have fiddled with this movie over and
over and over. So what it feels like when you're
watching it is that there are actually two movies, at
least two movies that are smashed together in ways that
don't completely make sense. There is what looks like the
original version that they tried to retell, which is more political,
which is more revolutionary in its structure, and then they
tried to overlay or to make it fit with a
more nostalgic reinterpretation of the original Disney story. And so
because of that it feels very disjunct, disjuncted, and it's
hard to completely understand sometimes what it is that the
signs are pointing to. Like some of the images that
are used, they don't fit together. There's a sense that
it's unravels. It is not the worst movie that I've
ever seen, you know, I mean, there are worst movies
than that, but it is definitely doesn't look like a
movie that is worth the hundreds and hundreds of millions
of dollars that ultimately the budget brought about. And so
let's go into the story and compared with the original
snow White with the original Disney version and see what
it looks like. You know, the original Disney Snow White
is the very first long animated movie ever made. When
it came out, it was legendary. You know, people could
not stop raving about it. In some ways, it's what
really launched Disney to be a world class studio that
was making things that nobody had dared to make before.
And there's also an important thing to understand about the
original Snow White movie is that it was happening in
a time in the nineteen thirties where there was a
lot of tropes that were similar to the ones that
we have now. There were very cynical kind of you
wouldn't say postmodern now, but there was a kind of cynical,
deconstructive aspect to culture. You know, also I kind of
degenerate club jazz culture. You have this image of the
Flappers and this, you know, this kind of club culture,
and snow White and Disney seems to be a reaction
to that in some ways, a reaction to modernism, where
they are bringing back the old fairy tales in a
world of modern kind of deconstructive thinking. They're bringing back
also a medieval aesthetic. If you think of the fairy
Tale Book at the beginning of the movie, you know,
they're bringing in that kind of medieval gothic illumination, that
sense of the old fairy tales. And so there is
a deliberate desire in the original Snow White movie to
make the movie remind you of a time before that
is meaningful and that is beautiful, you know, in a
world where don't forget like the artists that were popular
at the time that the movie was made, you know,
where Picasso, the expressionist, the German expressionist. Even in theater
you had German expressionist theater and modern theater, where there
was this obsession with darker, you know, design, and all
of that was in the air at the time that
Snow White was made. And so what happens in the
movie is that they try to gain to capture some
of that in some of the esthetic. And so, for example,
at the beginning of the movie, there is a fairy
tale book and there is this medieval style illustration. Inside
they have a castle. They have a kind of esthetic
of the medieval world with a king and a queen
and a princess. But then what happens through the story
is that everything they do that changes it from the
original movie is going against the story. It's going against
the esthetic that they're choosing for the movie. It's going
against the world in which that is set. And so
that is already part of the disjunct. So the movie
starts with snow White, you know, obviously there's an issue
with the movie already, because of course, in the original
fairy tale they say that snow White is called snow
white because there's her skin was white as snow, you know,
her hair was black as as as coal, you know,
and her lips were red and that was the imagery
of snow white. Now, of course, because they chose a Latino,
a latina women, now they have a problem already right
at the outset with the signifiers, and so you know,
because of political correctness, you know that they couldn't do it.
They couldn't have the actress, you know, have her skin
as white as snow, because of all the political illusions
that it brings. Of course, in the original fairy tale
that has nothing to do with our modern politics. It's
kind of ridiculous to put in your modern politics into
these ancient fairy tales. But because of this kind of
ideological infection, they couldn't make snow white even in her
name connected to the reason in the story of why
she of who she is, and this relationship between the
idea of being fair and being pale and being beautiful full.
You know, those connections are some that you cannot make
anymore because racism, you know which is which is too bad?
You like the idea of celebrating the beauty of fairness
and of and of this image of snow white doesn't
have to contradict also the beauty of of let's say,
the darker woman. You see that in the Bible, like
you have the image of this image of the Shulamite
and this idea of the of the darker woman as
being this beautiful woman. But you it's also okay to
celebrate the idea of the of the fairness and the
idea of of pale skin is representing light and all
of these type of symbolism. It's complicated to talk about
this in this world. But this is already a problem
that they because they're not willing to go to lean
into what the original story is right at the outset.
With her name, we have a problem because now they're
saying that the reason why she's named snow White is
because she was born during a snowstorm. But then, what
the hell does that mean? Said she survived a snowstorm.
I guess, I guess, So it's like she survived aversity.
Not really sure what the connection is. What does it
have to do with fairness, what does it have to
do with her name? You know why she named that?
None of it is completely clear, you know, so's it
feels forced right at the outset, and so in the story,
of course, her mother passes away, her father is seduced
by the evil queen, all that is completely is normal
and makes sense. The evil queen is narcissistic, you know,
she's obsessed with herself, she's obsessed with power. That portrayal
is quite good, although man Gal Gadot is just such
a bad actress in this movie. It's both of them
are not very good actors, you know, So I shouldn't
be commenting on that too much. I'd want to focus
on the symbolism of the story. And so you have
you have this the husband who is seduced by this
beautiful woman, and this beautiful woman is obsessed with riches,
is obsessed with uh, you know, the external trappings of beauty,
and it's not you know, there's a way which things
become a little confused, because the entire movie is trying
to play between the notion of fairness as beauty and
the notion of fairness in the more political way, right,
which is the idea of being fair, And so the
wordplay through the movie. That's what it is during the
whole time. But the problem is that maybe they could
have done it right, but in this case, sadly they don't.
They don't do it right. It doesn't land because it
ends up being confused and so she sends the father
away and he dies. Of course later you find out
that she had him killed so that she could take
over the kingdom, and so now she becomes the illegitimate
royal who is now taking everything from the people and
is militarizing the kingdom. There are interesting allusions to Robinhood
in the story, which I think, you know, could have
helped the story if they had been brought together properly. Sadly,
you know, because the movie is so awkward, things don't
come together. But the insight of trying to connect it
to Robinhood in order to bring in some political elements
into the story is something that is interesting, could have
been done better. But then she starts to basically militarize
the kingdom and to take from the poor, and so
they're gonna have this problem in the story because, like
I said, they're crossing the notion of beauty as fairness
and then fairness in the sense of political fairness, and
so you know right at the outset that you don't
know how it is that they're going to play off.
The final part of the movie, when the Witch goes
to snow White with the Apple and proposes at least
in the early Disney movie proposed that this is a
way that she could seduce the prince, right, you know,
by using this apple and like the young men, they
like apple pies. But in this movie, what they do
is that they have the king and the Queen bake
apple pies for the people in the kingdom and like
go out and like serve them these apple pies, and
it's an image of their fairness and the fact that
they're connected to the people, and so that's how they
kind of try to bring it together for the question
of the apple. And when the queen militarizes and starts
to take everything from the people, you know, then they
become poor. You know, they're struggling. They're starving, very much
like in the Robinhood type story, and snow White is
a slave. She's washing the castle very much like in
the original story. But then she meets her love interest
who is not a prince, who is a thief. And
I think this is really where they're trying to get
the Robinhood imagery, you know, kind of a little bit
of the King David imagery of this character who is
a thief and is trying to steal food from the castle.
The queen catches him, and then she starts to condemn him,
to put him in the dudgeon. Snow White defends the
The boy his name is Jonathan, defends Jonathan. The queen
ties him to the gate of the castle in order
to let him die there, and then snow White goes.
Of course, she frees Jonathan, and it is and the
queen sees that she's freeing Jonathan, and then she immediately
goes to the magic mirror, and she asked the magic
mirror a question that we've seen her already ask in
the movie, which is, of course, magic mirror on the wall,
who is the fairest of the mall? And what is
the answer? The answer is, there is one that's fairer
than you, and it is it's snow White. Ah, you
can and you can see that all of a sudden,
now you have an issue, like you have a problem,
because she's looking at herself in the mirror, and what
she's asking is, you know, obviously, if you look yourself
in the mirror, you're asking who's the most beautiful. And
so now the mirror is answering the fairest is snow White.
But the reason why she's the fairest isn't because she's beautiful.
It's because she's helping the poor. Is because she is
trying to be a fair ruler. But like I like
you see, it's like the hairs are getting crossed and
they're gonna get even more confused as the movie progresses.
And so this of course prompts the Queen to want
to get rid of get rid of snow White, just
like in the original movie. She has the hunter go
out brings snow White into the forest, abandoning her in
the forest, telling her to run away. You know, the
Queen is after you. All of that same The scene
in the forest is actually the most interesting. You know,
she goes into the forest and the forest is very
frightening and it is kind of monstrous. They it plays
off a little weird because in the original movie it's
all in her perception, like she's seeing the forest as
being a dangerous thing. And the way they do it
in this particular scene, you know, they kind of show
as if the force really is this monstrous thing. It's
hard to tell, but it is visually interesting. And then
for some reason that's very odd, like a trap opens
in the ground and she falls into water. And then
there's a little allusion to puberty. You know, she has
a red ribbon in her hair, and the red ribbon
falls off of her, and as she's kind of floating
through the water, you can see this red ribbon behind
her kind of floating, and so there is this illusion
to puberty and to transformation. But because the whole movie
is not really about her finding love really, or maybe
there is an aspect of the movie that's about that,
but it really is mostly about her, you know, becoming
the ruler of the kingdom. It does, like I said,
it doesn't play out very well. With all this attention
on snow White right now, we want to make sure
that we're mostly celebrating this powerful story in our culture.
So to do so, we are offering, for the very
last time, very special box set edition of our version
of snow White, Snow White and the Widow Queen. It
is set in a beautifully bejeweled box and you also
get a free bookmark and a sticker with this leather
bound edition of snow White. The whole thing is signed
by me and this is the very last time that
we are going to offer this to you, and so
please go ahead and get that while the stalks last.
We are also offering ten percent on specific snow White products.
And if you enter snow twenty five all caps at
the end and check out, you will get ten percent
on specific snow White products, that is snow twenty five
in all caps when you check out. Snow White is
a classic fairy tale and an important part of our culture.
Beautiful renditions, celebratory renditions of these stories. It's exactly what
we're trying to do with Symbolic World Press. And of
course we already have published two of these books and
several of them are coming downstream, so please continue to
pay attention. In the meantime, Yeah, it's time to celebrate
snow White together. I'll talk to you very soon. So
the first thing you need to notice is that, of course,
for the for the ending of the movie to be
able to happen in this Disney movie, for the prince
to be able to wake her up when she's sleeping,
she now snow White has to save the prince because
it can't play out in a politically correct movie unless
she saves him. And so she'll save him like three
times in the movie. She's already saved him. At the
beginning from the evil queen, and she is now going
to continue to She's going to continue She's going to
save him several times during the movie, you know, so
that it is overwhelmingly her that's saving him and only
slightly the prince that saves her at the at the
at the end, you know, which is already annoying the end.
Through the whole movie, what's playing out is basically the
idea that snow White has to become the monarch, and
that's really what the story is about. There's there's a
trope in the movie where she's basically finds out that
her father might be being held in another kingdom and
then and she's hoping that they can go save him,
that the king can return, and you know this thief,
he has a bandit thieves in the wood, and they
say that they serve the real king kind of like
Robin Hood, and they're waiting for the king to return.
But ultimately what this is about is that, yeah, you
shouldn't wait for the king to return, and you should
you should become the monarch that you can be. And
so there's a phrase in the sentence which keeps coming back,
which is something like it's no longer time to be led,
but to lead. And that is what the movie is about.
The usual trope of the female becoming the leader. It's
there all through the story, and every single change that
they make is about snow White, you know, becoming the
leader in the kingdom and making sure that she's always
kind of reaching towards that masculine role and is feminized
as little as possible. It's made feminine as little as possible.
You know. She ends up with the Dwarves. The Dwarves
are in the movie. It feels like it's hard to know,
but it feels like in the original script maybe the
Dwarves were not even in the movie, but then they
add them later because they were trying to save Faith
and they were trying to make it work because there
are these two bands. There's the Dwarves and there's the
band of thieves that is related to Jonathan, that are
these thieves, this kind of multicultural you know, band of
thieves in the wood. But she does meet with the Dwarves,
and oh my goodness, the Dwarves are just nightmare fuel
like Uncanny Valley. You've seen the videos. It is really scary,
and of course every single decision. Every single trope is
there to play out the kind of revolutionary structure or
to downplay the I don't know how to say it,
like the way that the original snow White structured the
relationships and so example, in the Dwarves, Dopey is really
embarrassing for the politically correct version. You know, how do
you represent Dopey? So basically you represent Dopey as the
guy who's being teased by the other Dwarves, and you know,
and because of that, he doesn't speak, but really he
can speak, and then he learns to whistle and shows
all the other Dwarves how to whistle. And by the
end of the movie, really, by the end of the movie,
Dopey has become the leader of the Dwarves. And there's
a scene where you see him standing in front of
all the other Dwarves and all the other Dwarves are
behind them, and so they're trying to show this weird
Like I said, like this, you just basically the revolutionary
structure all through the movie. And because the movie ends
up taking up all of these political tropes, you know,
that plays itself out all through the movie. You know,
ultimately snow White identifies with the band of thieves in
the Woods joins with them, which again could have been interesting.
See it's not completely ridiculous. It could have been interesting,
you know, had they played this this Jonathan David role.
And I think they were thinking about that, you know,
because the name of the of the thief in the
Wood is Jonathan, and snow White, you know, becomes is
in a relationship with with Jonathan and their thieves and
the woods, and you know, King David was associated with
these band of thieves that were a band of debtors
and band of miscreants that were living in the woods.
So there could have been some interesting ways to play
it out. But sadly, like I said, it doesn't play
out particularly well. There were some insights that weren't that bad,
but it doesn't It doesn't play out really well. Again.
You know, when snow White comes into the Dwarf's house,
obviously in the original story and in the original movie,
she cleans the house and prepares the meal for the dwarves,
but you know, in this particular version, she tells the
dwarves how to clean, like she's teaching them how to clean,
and so she's kind of becoming the leader of the dwarves,
which is just the weirdest thing ever. You know. In
in the Disney movie, there's a beautiful scene where through
her kind of generous and influence and a little bit
of a mother roles, she gets the dwarves to become better,
to like to clean themselves and to not come to
dinner dirty. But in this one, it really is, you know,
like snow White is. She's basically like, all right, now
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm going to make you clean
your house. You know. Anyways, it goes through the entire
movie all of these types of tropes where, you know,
in some ways the culmination of all of these images
that we've seen in in Disney now for decades at
this point are kind of you can feel like in
this movie it's kind of crashing, but they're also trying
to fix it. And so that's why it looks like
two movies. And the hope is that the fact that
it looks like two movies where they're both they both
seem to have reached the top of the kind of
political revolutionary political you know, kind of political correct way
of thinking and the kind of woman replacing the male
type of thinking, but also they realize of what a
train wreck it is and are also trying to fix it,
and so everything nothing fits and the pieces don't come together.
The thing we can hope for is that in some
ways it is the sign that this is over right
and that we will see something a little more normal
come in the future. That's the hope. I don't know
if it's going to play out. But then the problem
of the fairness then becomes more and more acute, which
is snow White is called the most fair because she's
fair politically. But then when the Queen, you know, kills
snow White, then she goes to the mirror and she
asks the mirror who's the fairest of them all? And
the mirror says that it's the queen again, but the
queen is not fair. The queen has a horrible song
which he's saying, because I'm the fairest, then everything I
do is fair, and so what So she's saying something like,
its power right, because I'm beautiful, and because I have
the power, I can decide what's right and wrong, you know.
But then why does the mirror recognize that? I don't
even know, Like, why does the mirror think she's the fairest,
when the mirror will ultimately say that the reason why
he said snow White was the fairest is because in
her heart she's the fairest. But then why was the
Queen the fairest anyways, Like it doesn't make any sense.
They're completely confusing days there. They don't understand how in
the snow White story there is this sense that the beauty,
the external beauty, you know, can either be a manifestation
of inner truth and inner beauty, or it can be
a manifestation of outward beauty and inner poison, you know.
But the mirror only sees the outside. That's what a
mirror is. And so the queen is making a mistake,
you know, in the original story by only judging what
the mirror is telling her, you know. But now in
this it's all muddled and it's all confused, and it
doesn't make sense at all in the story, you know
how it is that they get there and then finally,
you know, the movie ends with a kind of political
retaking of the kingdom. And because they do it that
way again, they miss It's the entire point in the
Rearly Disney movie of when the Queen transforms into the
Old Hag. You know, the whole idea of the story
is that she's sacrificing. She's willing to even destroy her
own beauty out of her animosity and jealousy of the
snow White who's more beautiful than her. And so she's
so obsessed and so possessed by beauty that she's willing
to sacrifice the things she wants just to prevent the
other woman from having it. I mean, it's a powerful
reflection of human psychology. But now in this version, she
becomes the old Hag, and then she becomes the beautiful
queen again, and so all of that is lost, Like,
why does she even become the old Hag? It doesn't
make sense. Then she goes and she gives her the apple.
But the apple is what Now the apple is an
image of the fairness of the kingdom that her father had,
and so what is the trick and also what is
the purpose of the trick. She gives her the apple
and she reminds her about how she remembers that her
father was fair and that, you know, he was giving
apples to people, and then snow White eats the apple
and then she dies. But in the original story, there's
a sense in which it is her temptation, like she's
tempted to beauty. In the Disney version, she's tempted to act,
you know, in order to seduce the prince, which is
what the queen wants. Also is that she on purpose
does these gestures to seduce the prince, and not just
in the way that the prince is attracted to her
at the outset because of her innocence and her beauty.
That is the trick, and that's why she's poisoned and dies.
Now in this version, what does it even mean. It
doesn't mean anything, And that is really the best way
to understand the problem with the entire movie is that
because they are trying to put et ideology in the movie,
because they're trying to push it in, the signs don't connect.
You know, Symbolism is not arbitrary. There is an organic
reality to symbolic relations, and if you try to force
something in there, what happens at some points you end
up with empty signs. And so the apple, the dwarfs,
the kiss, waking her up, all of these now in
this version become empty signifiers that are there only as
nostalgia for the early Disney movie and are there and
are there to basically like just be in the way
for this new version that they're trying to tell of
this queen that has to become a leader and has
to you know, to not be led and to lead others.
And so none of it works and it ends up
being a hodgepodge of ideas that do not fit together.
And but it I, like I said, I think this
is the good sign. And why do I think it's
a good sign. Think it's a good sign because movies
like Mohana, you know, some of the other versions of
the Disney stories that have been told over the last
few decades have been extremely deliberately and coherently pushing in
one direction, and all the symbolism aligned in a very
coherent way in that direction. And so what happened is
when you're watching it, you feel a kind of deep
coherence to the worldview that it's trying to promote. But
I think in pushing that so far that it became
completely absurd and ridiculous. Right in pushing pushing the girl
boss ideal and a kind of extreme vision of how
you know, the feminine rises up and takes over the masculine.
At some point it becomes so absurd. And when they
did it with the very first Disney movie, when they
tried to go back to their own beginning and to
infect Disney's own beginning with those tropes, it's beautifully symbolic
to see that that is where it fails miserably, and
that is where they start to scramble to fix their
own mistakes, and they start to scramble to reintegrate tropes
from the early movie and to reintegrate signs that they
can't make fit. But they're still trying to reintegrate them
into the story. And so the best thing I can
say about the Disney snow White movie is that it
is possibly an image of hope for us that the
true stories are coming back, you know, and it's happening
in this weird alchemical way in this movie. But then
in the future, what we're going to see are pure
seeds being planted in the world. And do not forget that.
Really doing that is what motivates me the most. That
is why that I have started to write these new
versions of the fairy tales. That's why we've already have
a version of snow White called snow White, and with
a Queen. We have a version of Jack and the Beanstock,
and our version of Rapunzel is coming very soon, where
we're trying to go back into these stories to celebrate them,
to tell them as much beauty and you know, in
a kind of reverence to the original story, while still
trying to insert some symbolic insights for those who have
the eyes to see. So I hope you enjoyed this video.
You do not have to go watch a snow white movie. Seriously,
I did it so you don't have to, and so
so please enjoy the rest of your day and thanks
for your attention. Bye bye,