You’re claiming the name Snow White must apply to someone with especially pale skin, but the existence of a story where it doesn’t is irrelevant to you? Wow. Once you set up on a hill, you’re happy to die there, aren’t you?
17 Likes
Are you saying that the Bible is irrelevant because the stories are slightly different from how they were previously recorded in Gilgamesh?
13 Likes
However, the Seven Dwarfs are also involved in this real-life story – well, sort of.
“Margaretha’s father owned a series of copper mines and the majority of workers were children. Due to malnutrition and poor working conditions, the children were allegedly called “poor dwarfs””
Spanish Snow White. Italian Snow White. Blonde Snow White. Abused children instead of dwarves. Pantomime Snow White.
13 Likes
I didn’t bother reading your apologia.
Tell me you don’t know anything about folklore studies without using those words.
12 Likes
I’m going to preface this with my firm belief that adherence to original texts is a storytelling dead end, since there’s no purpose in repeating a story exactly as it was told before.
But Snow White’s name in the original story came from her having snow white skin as a baby. (Snopes researched this: Snow White: The Origins and Meaning Behind the Name | Snopes.com) So that’s a thing for people who want to hold that as an end all, be all.
Kind of means nothing, though. Like I said, any new telling doesn’t need to hold to that. It’s just a name. Or she was ghostly white as a baby but her skin tone changed over 15 years. Or anything at all that, frankly, doesn’t even need to be explained. Because, honestly, is it that important? And if it is, why?
7 Likes
Whiteness isn’t real though.
Like there is no white race. No people are actually white. Whiteness is contextual and made up. Always.
18 Likes
8 Likes
No. The Bible versions of those stories are the only ones that are generally known by the public.
Therefore Gilgamesh is irrelevant QED.
2 Likes
To most people, yes. And the same argument applies to Rose-Red, here (just to get us back on track).
I can’t believe you give that much of a fuck about the colour of a fictional character that you’d argue it against all-comers for hours, but here we are.
14 Likes
Fairy tales are malleable, There were many ways to tell them, and there might have been many more before the Grimms committed them to print. Similarly, Disney is considered bound to some of the choices it made in 1937, even though it probably shouldn’t be.
6 Likes
“Snow White was named for her skin color, we can’t change that now!”
“Not only can we change that, people were changing that back in the 1800s.”
“I hadn’t heard of that, so it’s not relevant!”
The simple fact is that Disney can cast anyone they want as Snow White, and there is only a single paragraph of the Grimm version that won’t apply, far less than other changes – like the whole kiss. There is no good reason to be married to it. There is a pretty obvious bad one though.
16 Likes
Which public? White people in the U.S.? There is a much larger world out there.
But it sounds like the goal posts have been moved to: doesn’t matter what the original story(ies) might have said, all that matters is the version I personally know.
Is that it?
13 Likes
I really don’t get why some white folks make such a big deal about skin color when most of us look like boiled, unseasoned chicken with our clothes off. 
9 Likes
8 Likes
There are a lot of versions of snow white. And her skin isn’t white in a lot of them. The Grimm’s don’t specifically say her skin is white either. That was Disney in the animated version
The red, white, and black color coding in many European versions of this story reminds me of how the Grimms believed that those were the colors of poetry. Their beautiful girl is “white as snow, red as blood, and black as the wood on this window frame.” It was Disney who changed that to “lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, and skin white as snow.” When you look at other versions of the story, you realize that, generally, the daughter’s skin color is not an issue, curiously there is a Samoan version of the tale with a girl with albinism who is an outcast. The fact that the beautiful girl in a global repertoire of stories about mothers and daughters is stereotyped as having skin white as snow because of the influence of the Grimm and Disney versions limits the global cultural resonance of the story. There’s nothing sacred about the Grimms’ version of that fairy tale or about Disney’s reimagining of it, but we tend to think of Grimm and Disney as the “originals,” and, unfortunately, they have become the “authoritative” versions. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/the-tale-of-snow-white-and-what-the-various-versions-mean-to-us/
Anyone who insists snow white must be a pale white woman needs to examine why it’s so important to them.
16 Likes
That’s a fun film. Brad Pitt must find it very hard to watch (he is satirised mercilessly. Like David Lynch in the above clip but for the entire movie).
It’s heavily influenced by Truffaut’s day for night/ la nuit Americaine.
6 Likes
BTW… here is the actor playing Snow White…
That’s who white dudes are melting down over… 
17 Likes
Thanks for the reference.
Her skin is whiter than a lot of snow I see. So, if that were to be the measure, she definitely passes muster.
But, and I cannot stress this enough, the color of her skin is not the measure of her ability to play this role.
12 Likes
