Postmodern Realities Podcast Episode 440: Review of ‘Snow White’:

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Anne Kennedy about her review article,”Reimagining ‘Snow White’: How Counterfeits Reveal the True”. (Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for the live-action film Snow White.)This is also part of Anne’s ongoing “Theological Trends Column”.   https://www.equip.org/articles/reimagining-snow-white-how-counterfeits-reveal-the-true/

Related articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 426 Leaving Church, Finding A Platform: A Look at the Content of Rev KarlaLeaving Church, Finding A Platform: A Look at the Content of Rev KarlaEpisode 419: Richard Hays Changes His Mind About Sexuality and God: A Review of ‘The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’Richard Hays Changes His Mind About Sexuality and God: A Review of ‘The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story’Episode 413: A Christian’s Response to Pastor Lawson’s Moral Failure“A Christian’s Response to Pastor Lawson’s Moral Failure”Episode 402: Blessings and Liberty: The Politics and Religion of David FrenchBlessings and Liberty: The Politics and Religion of David French

Don’t miss an episode; please subscribe to the Postmodern Realities podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Please help spread the word about Postmodern Realities by giving us a rating and review when you subscribe to the podcast. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more new listeners can discover our content.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's April twenty twenty five
and you are listening to episode four hundred and forty,

(00:40):
which is a very spoiler filled conversation about the new
Disney Live action film snow White. Today's guest is Anne Kennedy.
She has an MDV and is the author of Nailed
It three hundred and sixty five, readings for Angry or
worn Out People, and blogs about curent events and theological trends.
Her substack Demotivations with Anne. Anne has written a film

(01:05):
review for her ongoing column for the Christian Research Journal,
which is called Theological Trends, and her article is called
Reimagining snow White, How Counterfeits Reveal the True And you
can read her review for free at equipped dot org.
That's e quip dot org. And it's good having you

(01:27):
on the podcast again.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's great to be here. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Well, we're turning to Anne once again to do a
film review for us. Previously, she had reviewed Conclay for us,
and now we're talking about the film that is in
theaters now, although I don't know for how much longer.
And it's the live action remake of the classic animated
Disney film Snow White. So I don't know if some

(01:56):
of the younger kids these days knew about that old
classic film that was a favorite of so many. So
how did this particular new live action film into being,
and what was the process? Why did they decide to
make a classic film into a live action movie.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
It seems to be something that Disney is doing there.
The first one I think was years ago with Cinderella,
and so then there was I think The Lion King. Actually,
I haven't seen any of the remakes, the live action remakes,
except for Cinderella and now snow White. I'm not sure
how I managed to work that out for myself. But

(02:40):
they've been slowly working through the whole Disney cannon, and
this seems to be one of the sort of, you know, pinnacle.
I think it should be the pinnacle of this effort
because it was the first movie to make Disney into
the sort of powerhouse that it has been come. I

(03:01):
was just looking it up and it looks like they
began to talk about it in twenty sixteen, but Rachel
Zegler wasn't cast until it looks like around twenty twenty one.
So it's been kind of very slowly moving along. And
then they reshot. Of course, from twenty one until now,

(03:23):
they had a couple of major rewrites, in part because
of things that Zegler said. So it's been a slow process.
I imagine they thought that it would be, you know,
one of the sort of the culmination of all these
remake live action remakes, but it hasn't turned out that

(03:43):
way at all.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well, just in case our listeners don't know, the beloved
classic was first released in nineteen thirty seven, which basically
was almost one hundred years ago, so it's you know,
this is a big move to make a almoste hundred
year old film into a live action movie. Now you

(04:05):
might have heard and talking about Rachel Zegler, and she
was originally in West Side Story by Steven Spielberg several
years ago, which also had a huge backlash in Brew haha.
And now it seems like this film is gaining that
So who is she? You just mentioned she was cast,

(04:26):
and she's been cast as the main character snow White.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, she's quite young. She is in her twenties. It
looks like she kind of made it big with the
West Side Story. She was in a lot of musicals
in high school. Her father is Polish, which is where
her last name comes from, and her mother is Colombian,

(04:51):
so she kind of has some interesting ethnic views on
the world. But after the West Side Story, she been
in Shazam, The Fury of the Gods, which I didn't see.
She was in The Hunger Games, The Ballad of Songbirds
and Snakes, and it looks like she's been on Broadway

(05:12):
a few times. But it was really this getting this
role of snow White was a big deal, or it
would have been for anyone. But I think really what
she's become known for is saying things on social media
that makes Disney look really bad. That's probably her most
important biographical detail that people are talking about today.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
So you mentioned that unfortunately she's been now in two
films that have suffered from major controversies, and it seems
like there is quite a bit of controversy, mainly surrounding
a number of things, but also what you noted her
commentary on social media. So what is the backlash that
is kind of overshadowed. I think the film itself, because

(05:58):
I think more people are covering the backlash to the
film than the film.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yes, I mean when I went to see it, we
went as a group to do that horrible thing that
people say, we went on purpose to hate watch the movie,
and my daughter wanted to see it, not because she
wanted to see it, but because she thought it would
be awful, and so we were really the only people
in a very big, empty theater. But I was listening
to somebody recently who said there really isn't almost anybody

(06:24):
in the world who hasn't heard of her at this point.
I don't know if that's true or not, but she
kind of jumped over the niche Hollywood people who pay
attention to those kinds of things, and average people who
don't watch movies have heard of her and have probably
have an opinion. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

(06:47):
Some of the things that she's well, the first thing
that made her famous in terms of snow White was
in early press junkets I think, where she was being
interviewed at different events along with I think it's gall goadt.
I hope I'm saying that right. I've heard different pronunciations
of her name, and the fascinating thing.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
That and by the way, for our listeners, Gal, she
plays the wicked step mother, the evil stepmother in the movie.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
In the movie, yes, there's quite a height difference between
Zegler and good Dot, so that's interesting. And I thought,
you know, visually they both they look really great together,
and it could have been an amazing film, I think
if it had been written better. But this is where

(07:38):
I feel bad for Zegler. I think she thought when
she spoke out when she was asked what the film
was going to be like, I don't think she thought
she was saying anything controversial at all. There's clips of
her saying, you know that the old version is creepy
and scary and out of date, and so Disney wanted

(08:01):
to freshen it up and make it a little more relevant,
in particular to have snow White not be looking for
true love, but to become the leader she knows she
can be. That's the phrase that has gone around the
world many times and got a lot of pushback. People
objected to that, and I think I feel bad for

(08:23):
probably Disney and Zegler. Because clearly they didn't expect it
to be a backlash. They didn't expect controversy from saying
something like that. They I think they thought they were
saying something completely mainstream. And I think that's a fair assumption,
because we have as a cultural kind of accepted or
acquiesced to the idea of that women should be in

(08:48):
every sphere of life, that they should have all the
jobs that men can have, only have them better, and
what would you know, the vaunted diversity, equity and inclusion
talk that people we've just kind of come to live with,
and people who objected to that didn't, you know, have
a lot of cultural cachet all this time, and so

(09:12):
I think they were really taken by surprise that a
lot of people just don't want that story. So I
feel sorry for them. Honestly, the ground shifted, and they,
I don't think, have known what to do about it,
And they probably don't understand why people's minds have changed,

(09:34):
or if they I don't know if it's the people's
minds have changed so much, is that they that idea
reached saturation point and people finally felt comfortable enough to say,
we don't actually like it, So it's been fun to
watch the backlash, much more fun than to watch the
actual movie.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Well, there's another aspect of the film that was controversial,
and that had to do with the depiction of the
seven dwarves in CGI, as opposed to using real actors
who were little people. And so tell us a little
bit about that controversy, because it seems like this film

(10:15):
could not catch a break. It was one thing after another.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yes, this was very exciting too, because before anybody knew
much about it, Peter dinklid she's a very famous actor.
I think he was in Game of Thrones, That's what
I've read.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yes, he was in Thrones.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
He was a Game of Thrones. He criticized Disney for
even wanting to make the movie in the first place,
and I think they then took that to heart and
were not going to have dwarves as characters CGI or otherwise.
They had cast a band of bandits in the woods

(10:54):
that they replaced the dwarves with. Well, then a picture
of that emerged and they were roundly mocked. I saw
them called, you know, a band of seven baristas, was
what people were saying online. And so they they didn't
get rid of those characters. But they added it seems

(11:16):
from watching the movie, CGI dwarves back in with the
classic song that people are so familiar with. But the
CGI dwarf situation, I agreed with those on this point,
was creepy. I found it really very uncomfortable, kind of

(11:37):
uncanny valley dwarf situation, and it didn't fit in to
the movie. That's one of the places where they tried
to make it feel more traditional after the you know,
the feedback they got from Zegler's media junkets, and so

(11:57):
it has this patchy feel to it in terms of messaging,
but also visually, the dwarf parts of the movie don't
feel like they fit, and then you ended up still
having the bandits. So it was a pretty interesting movie experience.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
And also to add on to that, Peter Dinklish is
himself a little person and so he's actually in the
film uncredited, and he was quite vocally against this film,
so it's very interesting. We would like to hear from you,
and as I've mentioned before and want to remind you,
we have an email address where you can send ideas

(12:37):
for the podcast and give us letters to the editor,
and it's called Response at equip dot org and please
contact us there to give us input about this podcast
and the different topics that we cover. So you have
anything that fits into the subject matter that we cover,
we definitely want to hear from you now. We'd also

(12:59):
like to hear you by having you partner with us
in a couple of ways. One is you could give
us a tip. You know, as we don't have any
subscriptions anymore, and so if you want to help us
out as we continue to produce this podcast as well
as our articles for which we do pay our writers,
we would love it if you consider giving us a tip,
something small, kind of like the equivalent of if you

(13:21):
went out for a cup of coffee, maybe five dollars
or ten dollars. You can do that equip dot org.
Go to journal, click on that, and go to post
Modern Realities. Click there, and at every single one of
our landing pages you will find a link where you
could give us a tip. The other way that you
can partner with us is just to get the word out.
Tell a friend, post your favorite episodes or recent episodes

(13:41):
on your social media accounts, and of course we always
welcome your reviews, a star review or some short sentences
about what you enjoy about this podcast to help other
people check us out, and we would be very grateful
for that if you would do that on Apple Podcasts.
So thanks for all the ways that you partner with us,
and just for listening to this podcast. We want more

(14:03):
and more people to hear about it so that Christians
can be equipped to know what they believe, why they
believe it, and how to respond to the latest challenges
that we see in our culture. So speaking of the
latest things in our culture, kind of on the mind
of the internet, we are back to our conversation with

(14:25):
Ann Kennedy about Snow White from Disney Studios. Well, we
kind of talked about just the various different controversy surrounding
the film, but I want to actually talk about the
film itself because maybe our listeners know, maybe they don't know,
that snow White is actually a fairy tale that didn't

(14:47):
start with Disney, but rather with some classic fairy tales
written by two brothers. They're called the Grimms Brothers, and
these fairy tales were written in between eighteen twelve and
eighteen fifteen, and it's a whole set of fairy tales,
probably some very famously known ones, and one of those
is snow White. And also we have talked about it

(15:10):
many decades ago in the Christian Research Journal. We've published
about fantasy and fairy tales and how those can be
a really good vehicle for Christian themes in Christian theology.
So now I want to talk a little bit about
the actual content of the film or what it was
based on, because originally, way back, you know, hundreds of

(15:33):
years ago, it was really based on Christian theology. So
there are definitely in this particular film kind of two
different competing narratives. So what are those?

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well the film? So the I do encourage people to
go read the Old fairy Tale because it's wonderfully told.
The pacing of that story literarily is just beautiful, and
it has repetition that's so important for children, and just
in terms of good storytelling. There's lots of different sevens.

(16:06):
There's three things that happened to snow White, not just
the apple, but the evil queen tries to get at
her three different times and makes a long journey and
refers to back to the mirror on the wall. And
so there's a lovely pacing, and then there's really some

(16:29):
nice Christology, the Prince, she really does seem to. She
does die, and the Prince who comes in at the
end kind of raises her from the dead. The poison
apple falls out of her mouth, and she kind of
has a resurrection rather than just sort of a waking up.
And there's a lot of beautiful imagery with the apple

(16:50):
and the snow and the blood and the wood of
the spinning wheel, and you know, dark and light and
good and evil, and then the care of the dwarves.
Some people have said that, you know, in the castle,
she's sort of in Eden, and then she goes out
into the world, and the dwarves are sort of represent

(17:12):
the Church age or in the world. And then you
know there's this the parisea, the resurrection of the dead
at the last Day. So there's just a nice arc
and shape to the original. So I think that Disney
could have probably kept a better arc, but they just didn't.

(17:33):
I don't think they knew how to do that because
they wanted to their main paradigm. I think their underlying
structure was that of female empowerment, which is a theme
that is in many modern movies that the female protagonist
heroine is got to find herself. She's got to discover
something about who she is and that will be her

(17:57):
salvation arc. So she from knowing that there's something that
she is but she's not quite sure, and then she
has to find that and sometimes there's some trial that
she undergoes, but not always. Sometimes it's definitely a Mary
Sue situation where the female lead doesn't suffer in any

(18:20):
way through the narrative, So snow White in this case,
they had the female empowerment self discovery narrative as a
foundation point right away. In the beginning of the film,
she gets her name not because of the sort of
prayer of her mother for a beautiful child, but because

(18:42):
she's born in a snowstorm, and the mother doesn't figure
in much in the original. There's no mention of the
king really in the new snow White, snow White needs
to find out who she really is and who her
father knows she can be. That's a phrase that returns
a lot. The father disappears in war, so she's on

(19:05):
a quote journey of self discovery, but there's not a
lot of ways for her to do that in the film.
She just sort of easily falls into the right space
and then there's some singing, and then they mash in
the true Love's Kiss narrative, but that lacks coherence too,

(19:28):
because it doesn't really have the sort of deep Christian
feel that I think makes a lot of really good movies,
even when they don't know they're being sort of Christian adjacent.
If they have that narrative arc of fall and then
redemption in some way or other, that's what makes a

(19:48):
good movie and a good story. They don't have that
because they hadn't planned to do with that as far
as I can tell. So, yes, she's supposed to discover herself,
but she doesn't really because she doesn't suffer in any way,
even though it's all supposed to be suffering. They just

(20:10):
really don't pull it off. But those are the two
competing messages sort of female empowerment versus love falling in
love with a prince, and the two really don't go
together in ordinary life, and on the screen it's quite jarring.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
It's almost like the prince is really tangential to this
story and their new take of it, which, as you mentioned,
underwent a whole bunch of rewrites, because what they're trying
to do is or I think that they're trying to
do is frame perhaps this story in a different way.
Instead of being rescued by the prince with true love's

(20:49):
kiss when she has this crisis, she instead finds her
true calling to be the leader of her entire people,
and so she's the one who's empowered in and the leader.
But just the narrative of the original story, it just
doesn't seem to fit into what the point is. So
how is this different than the original? Is it trying

(21:13):
to be so starkly different? Like you said, it is
jarring because some of the original themes or story plotlines
don't even seem to fit into this new paradigm of
we want to make this point about females being good leaders.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, I mean the original was. I mean I thought
probably very pro woman, you know, except that there is
the prince who comes along and rescues her at the end.
But unless you think that women being rescued in any
way is anti woman, I don't you know, then I
guess you would really not enjoy that, which I think

(21:52):
this sort of women can accomplish whatever they want to
do on their own without any help is very important
part of our what has been a cultural ascession for
us over the last ten years at least, I guess,
maybe longer. So the original one, she is helped, you know,
she there's the bad queen who's jealous and wicked and

(22:18):
kind of engages in magic, but snow White is helped
by the dwarves. It's interesting. She makes a kind of
contract with them, she'll keep house for them and they'll
protect her. So it's very traditional, I guess. And the

(22:40):
queen intrudes on that and sort of dupes snow White
three times and almost kills her the final time, so
she's easily deceived, which is a sort of interesting thought,
and then deceived by an apple which caused her to die.

(23:01):
And the dwarves are powerless, but they they keep her
in a glass box. And then the prince comes along
and desires her for her beauty, and he's just just
going to take her in her coffin because she's so beautiful.

(23:24):
It's not creepy actually in the original grims Mood telling,
and also if you go watch the old snow White,
it's not creepy at all, which is one of the
things that Zegler said that the prince stalks her. Well,
that's not really at all what anybody would have thought before,

(23:45):
you know, twenty nineteen. So it's very lovely. It's a
story of love, but really a deeper story of snow
whites salvation and being raised again from the dead and
to to a glory to be a queen in her

(24:08):
own kingdom, and all the different interesting characters play a
part in that. So it's it's just it's lovely.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
And I think the old one, the Disney remake of
the original Disney one, is quite beautiful. It is a
little bit scary for children. I remember being afraid of
it as a child, but you know, that's part of
the excitement is to encounter a little bit of danger
on the screen because that's how life is and it's

(24:37):
not damaging in any way. And so yeah, that's how
it was before and now because I think our culture
is so incoherent it we don't really know what we want.
We in a corporate sense, have agreed that we all
want something, but many of us don't actually want it,

(25:01):
which is, you know, perfect equality in every situation and
women ruling the world. Those two assumptions aren't as satisfying
actually as the old version of love and redemption.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
And so.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
I just I find the whole spectacle of this so
fascinating and interesting and a cultural level to see it
kind of go down and see a shift like that
where people kind of change their minds mid course really
a fascinating thing to observe. I don't think this happens
very often.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
What I think is fascinating too, just because now we
have social media, so we can see the inner workings
of controversies in Hollywood, which we probably didn't. I mean,
they were probably there, but we could see them, you know,
forty fifty years ago or even eighty eight years ago
when this film was first done. Is that it's almost
an irony of her being cast in the film, because

(25:59):
it's I'm watching this film and her going on about
letting the goodness grow and being kind to all and
loving everyone as she sings in the new songs. They
did compose some new songs. I just thought it was
rather ironic because one of the things that she was
there was people were noting on social media is how

(26:21):
really mean spirited She had comments that had nothing to
do with the film, just her own political views that
she kept spouting on social media, so much so that
people from Disney on the producer Side had to go
fly across the country to talk to her about it,
And so it kind of was off putting in a
way because I knew about the controversy, and yet here

(26:42):
I hear her singing about letting the goodness grow.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
That and I forgot to mention that she they recast
the word fair. It's not only that they remade the
movie and the message of the movie the word fair.
Who's the fair of us? All fair used to mean beautiful,
and now fair means equitable. You know, is this fair?

(27:09):
Am I getting a fair deal here? And that's kind
of a miserable. That cuts against a love story every time.
If you're going to worry about what's fair in marriage,
for example, you're probably not going to have a very
wonderful marriage that lasts very long because you need to

(27:29):
let go of that pretty quick, or you're going to
be keeping score, which isn't very nice. Actually, it sounds
wonderful to have fairness, but at the depths of the soul,
what we really want is acceptance and love, not what's
coming to us. So I thought that was kind of

(27:52):
funny they do sing about fair fairness, and she's who's
the fairest in the Kingdom is kind of a little
bit like, obviously the evil Queen wants to be more
beautiful than snow White, but then snow White is worried
about everybody getting a fair deal. So they kind of
play with that a little bit. But it doesn't work

(28:15):
in the way I think that they expect it will,
because I think, again, intuitively, people do understand that two
people falling in love with each other isn't an economic Well,
many people get married for reasons of economy, economic reasons,
but even if they're doing that, they want it to

(28:37):
feel like it's true love, and so you don't want
to think about the bottom line and redistribution of goods
and services or capitalism or you know, socialism when you're
thinking about love. It's kind of interesting that we at
least like the illusion of romance and they didn't want

(29:02):
to have that, and so that's another sort of destructive
act against their own film, which I thought was really
fun actually and interesting that they were at sea. It
felt like in terms of messaging and what makes people
feel happy when they go to the theater.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
You were mentioning a little while ago just about some
of the very overt Christian themes, particularly in the original
fairy tale, the Grim's fairy Tale. And you know, some
of our listeners, even though they're Christians, they might still
like balk a little bit at the idea of some
of these fairy tales like snow White or Rapunzel or Cinderella.

(29:45):
They all have this prince that's there to rescue them
kind of thing. So what is a good reason, a
good why should Christians introduce these fairy tales from hundreds
of years ago to our children because what is positive
about them? I think we've let culture somehow make us
think that these are really terrible things, that they would

(30:08):
somehow in a bad way, influence our kids to some
kind of stereotypes.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yes, I mean I kind of have asked myself that question.
Why have a lot of these stories fallen out of fashion?
And I do think it's because we kind of feel
like we live in a different world now, perhaps, But
I read these stories to my children when they were
very young, these kinds of stories, not much maybe of

(30:36):
Grim itself, but a lot of books that were on
that in that same vein. And it also feels I
think sort of unpsychological books stories like this, you know,
snow White doesn't sort of have a deep, rich personality.
It's all about visuals, about types, what represents what, and

(31:00):
kind of a lot of symbolism. And so the prince
who comes in at the end, this is probably why
Zegler would think that it was creepy, doesn't have any personality.
He's a type, he's a figure. He just appears and
saves her, and you think, well, who is he? What's
his personality? But the function of the story isn't And

(31:22):
I think children understand this. They're not interested in the
psychology of the characters so much the way that an
adult would be. They're interested in the shape of the
narrative and in symbols. Children are rich live in a
world rich in symbols, and the symbols in most of

(31:43):
these stories are deeply Christian, and therefore, for me, I
would say, very useful, very good for children. So it's
not creepy for a prince to ride in at the end,
who nobody really knows who he is, because you can
sort of transfer that idea pretty easily to the return
of Christ at the end. You know, we do know

(32:05):
and love the Lord while we're here on this earth,
but we never see him face to face. He really
in some profound sense because we don't see him, we
can't touch him. We only get his personality through the
scriptures that when he comes again, many many people will
find him a stranger and will not have anticipated him

(32:27):
showing up. So the way that the Prince comes in
in many of these stories is I think very christologically,
wonderful and useful. And it's not troubling to me as
a Christian that you don't really get into personality types
or individuality. You're really teaching children through the story to

(32:53):
rest their existential selves on the images and pictures that
are so rich and wonderful. And I think, I mean,
I think fairy tales are wonderful for children, elves and fairies,
and I have written about how I love we did

(33:14):
Santo with our children. I don't think all of those
things are lying to children because you do it with
your wink in your eye, first of all, but also
because we know, again intuitively as human people, that there's
a spiritual world that we can't see, and it's governed
by the laws of good and evil, and that it

(33:35):
has rules of its own that we can't we can't
violate those there is a governor who is Christ, who
is God, and we get to we participate in that world,
but we don't see a lot of things the way
they really are. And stories like this unlock that world
and show us things that we sort of anticipate but

(33:59):
we can't we're grasping for, but we can't see fully.
So I think they're wonderful And it's sad to me
that modern children have to have, you know, stories that
completely lack any symbolism, any deeper meaning, that are all
about how they need to find their true selves as

(34:20):
little people, which is one of the most boring things
a person can do, is go looking for themselves. And
so I think it's wonderful that this kind of happened,
that people have rejected this film because I hope that
it sends some people in Hollywood on a long journey
of discovery to find out where they went wrong, how

(34:40):
could we be better, how can we do the work?

Speaker 1 (34:43):
And I hope that it helps some people who and
because as a matter of fact, at the end credits
can for all the credits, they credit the Grim's fairy Tales,
And so I hope it would cause some people to
go back and to revisit those and even see how
Hollywood's taken, you know, tales like Hansel and Gretel and

(35:03):
made them into like really weird horror films and just
the wonderful way in which I don't know. I think
it's full of imagination. It's not meant to create some
like Harry Potter World, and I think that's maybe a
misunderstanding of what these fairy tales are supposed to be.

(35:24):
But there's just so many classic ones that they wrote,
like Rumpel's Stilt Skin and even Cinderella, and I think
most people have missed the original source material for sure.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
I think I would be so great if enough people
got angry and bought all these books and read them
out loud to their children as a sort of act
of rebellion. I think that would be amazing. I mean,
we came home. I think it could happen. We came
home from watching this movie, and the first thing my
kids did was they watched the Cinderella live action remake,

(36:01):
which is actually really wonderful, and then they dug out
and read Cinderella or snow White out loud and a
bunch of other fairy tales. And I saw my daughter
babysits for someone, and she hauled a big stack of
books off our shelf and carried them over and spent
the afternoon reading them to our friend's children because she

(36:22):
was so angry. So I hope that the backlash produces
real curiosity about where these stories came from and why
they were so compelling and are so compelling.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Now there's so much material in Hollywood that is not
appropriate for kids. So a lot of times when something
like this comes out, you know, Christian families are like, oh,
snow White, I remember that tale, and let's go as
a family to see it. Your kids a little bit older,
so maybe they're not going to hate watch it or something.
But should Christians take their family and their kids to

(37:01):
see this film.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
I wouldn't recommend it at all. First of all, I
think you would feel sad that you spent the money
on something that was not that entertaining. If you really
want to find out what it was like, wait until
it comes out in some other form, because seeing it
in the theater is expensive and that should be saved
for something that's really good, I think, just personally. And

(37:25):
then even then I don't see any reason to show
it to a young child because it's confusing. It doesn't
it's not it doesn't have narrative coherence, and I think
a lack of you know, Okay, so there's no profanity,
and no it's not too scary. That's not a good

(37:46):
enough reason to show a child something just because it's
unobjectionable on those points. I think your child's mind and
soul are precious, and so go watch the original one,
or watch the Cinderella movie again with I think it
was made by Kenneth Branna, I hope I have his

(38:07):
name right, or really any old movie would be fine,
or just don't watch a movie. I don't think it
will ruin. If you loved the original one and have
nostalgic feelings about it, this will make you angry and sad,
and so unless you like to feel that way, you
might want to just spare yourself the trouble.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Well, I definitely don't think, as you said, that it's
worth the money. And even if you take your family
to the matinee, unfortunately Matinee's the discounted price is like
fifteen dollars a ticket, so it's not that inexpensive even
if you're only taking I say a family of four
to see this film, So there's other ways that you

(38:51):
can spend your time, or like you said, stream the
old stuff. And also just a caution. I mean, I
just feel like Disney in particular, they are trying to
redo their classics but also make them, you know, politically correct,
as we'd say, maybe that phrase just more palatable maybe
for the modern age, and in doing so, they really

(39:12):
are gutting the meaning out of the original source material,
which is unfortunate.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
They are. I hope that they feel the financial pain
of this and reconsider what they're doing. I don't know
anything about Disney, so I don't know if that's something
that could ever happen, but I mean I do think
that companies exist like this in order to make money,
and so they shouldn't get money for it. I mean,

(39:40):
a few of us went to see what it was like,
but I don't think people are seeing it, and I
think that's good. I don't think it's worth I'm sad
for theaters that really suffered the day it came out
because people really didn't go. And I think normally that
would be a really big day for a theater to
have an Disney movie come out, but I think that

(40:02):
that's a good and valuable lesson that I hope they learn.
But who knows.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yes, it's doing terrible at the box office. And as
you noted when you went and when I went, I
walked in and I was the only person there, and
I was seeing it for this podcast, So I don't
know that they were definitely hitting their target audience, especially
if they were hoping a whole bunch of families would come.
And it was at a time where family should have come,
because I went to a matinee in an afternoon showing

(40:31):
rather you know, so it would have been a good
time for little kids, but no one was there. Well,
now onto a fun question for Anne after our in
depth thoughts about feminism or new female empowerment, Disney and
snow White. It's all summer, Anne, would you say that
when it comes to kind of like a summer getaway,

(40:53):
would you rather go to the ocean and be at
the beach or are you a lake person? You'd rather
swim in a lake than the ocean.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I love the ocean. I would go to the ocean
every year if I could. I that would be my dream,
But I live. I have to choose my years. To go.
So this year will probably be a lake year, which
will be lovely. I live in a gorgeous part of
New York, so it's not a real trial to go
to the lake, but I do love the years we

(41:22):
get all the way to the ocean.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Well, thanks and for being a guest again on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Thank you so much. This was fun.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
You've been listening to episode four hundred and forty of
the Postmodern Realities podcast. Today's guest was Anne Kennedy and
we have been talking about the new Disney Live action
film snow White. You can read Ann's film review for
the Christian Research Journal and her article is called Reimagining
snow White, How Counterfeits Reveal the True And you can

(41:55):
read this for free with no paywall at equipped dot org.
That's e q ip dot org. You won't want to
miss out on subscribing to the other podcasts from the
Christian Research Institute. We have the Bible answer Man podcast,
which is published Monday through Friday, with the best of

(42:16):
the week on Saturday. It's hosted by CRI president Hank
Handagraph and is available wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
In addition, Hank has a podcast called Hank Unplugged. Hank
takes you out of the studio and into his study
to engage in free flowing, essential Christian conversations on critical
issues with some of the most interesting, informative and inspirational

(42:40):
people on the planet, and you won't want to miss
out on the brand new podcast from the Christian Research Journal.
Christian Research Journal Reads presents audio versions of Christian Research
Journal articles. It was a print incarnation of almost forty
five years. It's now on the web as you know,
with new articles every single week, so you won't want

(43:03):
to miss these audio articles of some of our most
popular and most accessed articles on our website equip dot org.