Disney’s Snow White landed in the middle of a raging culture war. Rachel Zegler’s early comments that Snow White would not be about a handsome prince who “stalks” Snow White and that it would be a feminist reboot of a beloved classic.
I can’t think of a scenario more likely to enrage Disney fans than that. It isn’t just that Disney has become a corporate monopoly, buying up Star Wars, Marvel, and Fox (even Fox Searchlight); it’s that Disney insists upon projecting “wokeness.”
We can use that word because it’s easier. Or, we could take more time and write more words to describe what we mean by “woke.” I see it as an appropriation of the marginalization status of the Black community. As social justice ideology swallowed up the entire Left, being marginalized meant having higher status. Being in the common majority means having no status. They believe if you have “white privilege,” “hetero privilege,” or “pretty privilege,” or whatever it is, then you should be ranked lower on the status hierarchy.
Rich white people who run Hollywood (yes, sorry, still true) need marginalized people of higher status to use as shields to protect them from the mob. That is why their shareholders voted down removing DEI and have decided to continue not advertising on non-ideologically compliant websites.
The richer and whiter you are (shareholders), the more likely you need to virtue signal your way out of having “privilege.” And so here we are.
The way they see it, whenever Disney or any franchise movie casts a person of color in the lead, the internet loses its mind. This they have deemed “racist.” Therefore, Disney and all other major studios have bought absolution. They are the good people doing good things. They’re not the problem. The problem is the fans. They hate their fans. They would prefer that their fans be freshman women from Oberlin College. Why can’t the fans applaud our efforts to make the industry less male and less white?
Arriving at this odd place is a rough patch for Hollywood. They don’t want to stop virtue signaling with casting and stories, but they’ve lost their audience. They’ve especially lost their fan base—those who paid good money faithfully year after year to see their movies. They gave them what they wanted, and they profited greatly from it. Now, they want to “fix” their audience so that they want something different: girl bosses and no masculine heroes to be found.
The problem for Snow White is less about the casting of Rachel Zegler and more about the desire to make her a feminist hero. Why not just allow the perfect original to rest in peace?
Maybe they shouldn’t be in the business of selling movies to the public at all. They should be doing something else, like making PSAs or helping impoverished parts of the country. Use your time and money to do some good for the groups you believe deserve more attention. However, movie studios that do not listen to or respect the free market seem to be destined to fail.
Make movies that make money. It’s not rocket science.
Audiences liked Snow White better than the critics, strangely enough:
It received a B+ CinemaScore, which is the worst for a live-action Disney film. Rachel Zegler is getting the best reviews of the film, as some say she can sing, which makes up for the story.
In Hollywood now and with the Oscars, movies don’t really fail anymore, especially those that exist as social justice-committed films. If the intentions are good, it doesn’t matter. Rachel Ziegler will probably get the Best Actress nomination at the Globes next year.
