Sunday, June 23, 2024

To shroud my clothes, the black of night

This overview of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* mentions one of the most memorable parts: the Queen's self-transformation into the Old Witch. It's scary and intense and even as a kid I knew it didn't actually make much sense.

The Queen, after all, is a ruler. Her word is law. Why would she turn herself into a hideous crone in order to get to Snow White, whom she could just have arrested and, if she so preferred, executed. Tudor Era queens Mary and Elizabeth both did in women and girls who got in their way. Neither one of them splashed their own faces with acid in order to do so.

I think it ultimately works because so much of the movie is based on dream logic. In a dream you can be getting chased through the woods by a bear who is also at the same time your high school algebra teacher. The character's terrifying forward impulse takes the lead, and the faces ultimately fade into the background.

2 comments:

susan said...

Yes, Snow herself was a little boring but the point was her vulnerability and weakness. The story always belonged to the Evil Queen, the one who wanted the most: the most beauty, the most power. She wanted it so badly that she’d change her shape, she’d maim, she’d kill. She understood desire, and embraced it.

In the original Brothers Grimm tale*, the Evil Queen was made to dance on hot coals at Snow White’s wedding not because she had wild desires, but because she made wild decisions. We think about desire in terms of what it makes us to do: overeat, cheat, steal, abandon, poison, kill. Yet desire itself isn't dangerous - the feeling itself isn't something to fear. We simply must do as children do and learn to distinguish between the imaginary and the real.

* I wish I still had my copy of #17 of the Five Foot Shelf of Books (Aesop, Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson - the original stories).

Ben said...

Just noticed the orphan asterisk I left next to the movie title. I think that was just to note that the title is "...and the Seven Dwarfs" although "Seven Dwarves" would have been more standard. Not sure why they made that choice.

Snow White could be called boring or generic. That may well be intentional. She's there for the kids--and the audience in general--to project their hopes and fears onto. Of course there's no need to project onto the Evil Queen. Say what you like about her, she's definitely got her own thing going on.

The punishment by dancing on hot coals feels like a relic of the time when the story first originated, long before even the Brothers Grimm had heard any version of it. At that time commoners in Europe recognized the nobility's right to hand down harsh punishments, assuming they were just. Of course you hoped said punishment wouldn't be aimed at you, and if it was that might erode your trust. Anyway, Disney villains tend to latch onto their own destruction, leaving the question of punishment moot.

The Five Foot Shelf of Books series was put together by Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard from a few years after the Civil War to a few more years into the 20th century. He seems to have been pretty discerning.