ANOTHER CASE ON MISREADING OF SYMBOLS IN MYTHS

The main point of the classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is never about her victory in fighting the Evil Queen, nor is it about determining who is the fairest of them all. It is a telling of several deep psychic archetypes in the form of a myth. The fairness and beauty of Snow White and the menace of the Evil Queen are two opposites that draw us to empathize with her struggle as the main plot.

Snow White further follows Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey arc by venturing into the forest in her second stage of the character arc, facing the ordeal, and meeting the Seven Dwarfs. They symbolize incomplete masculinity. They mine the earth for diamonds to become better men, yet it is actually within themselves that they should seek improvement.

Paraphrasing Russell Brand’s recent comment on the subject, both Snow White and the Evil Queen represent incomplete feminine archetypes. Yet, the poison that consumes Snow White ultimately leads her back into consciousness in the presence of another incomplete masculine archetype—the Prince. The ending of the original myth is the merging of the two incomplete feminine and masculine archetypes to create a complete union, akin to a love affair and marriage. The rest of the characters and events serve as catalysts and are complementary toward the ending.

Adding to the mix is the parallel symbolism of the usage of the apple in Snow White and also in the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve. The apple was the reason of their banishment out of heaven. Apple is also the reason why Snow White was cursed into the ‘Sleeping Death’ (Sleeping Beauty). But it is also the reason behind the start of life on Earth and the union between Snow White and the Prince.

Furthermore, in the original 1937 animated feature ending, it displays the castle that Snow White and the Prince heading to is glowing in the shades of gold up in the skies. The real meaning might just be more than a redemption arc for a ‘Damsel in distress’ (Snow White had a ‘Cinderella’ starting arc too) fairy tale archetype.

The recent remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (along with other Disney reboots and remakes) is yet another attempt, by what Russell Brand call 'Rampant Capitalist' and their endeavors, to cancel the real meaning of these classic myths. It’s similar to the scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where the hopeful return of Luke Skywalker, carrying decades of faith in the lore, is undermined when he takes the lightsaber from Rey and quickly tosses it aside.

This is an attempt fragmentalized and make vulnerable the audience, to create a void and a clean slate in this meta-modernist culture, allowing the owners of the media to give birth to a new narrative—a new ‘god’ that tells you what and who to believe and what to buy, projected from the same screen (our version of a narcissistic “magic mirror”), where the normalization of what The New Yorker recently called the “New Literalism” takes place.

This term describes a filmmaking style in which directors explicitly convey the themes and messages of their films, leaving little space for audience interpretation. While it strives for clarity, this approach often diminishes the subtlety and complexity that make storytelling more enriching.

In other words, it is didactic, overtly direct, or preachy. The ending of the new Snow White is a good example of this, and another example is the ending of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), where viewers are literally given a lecture on how things should be done. By clearly outlining their intentions, these films forgo the subtle engagement that allows viewers to draw their own interpretations.

TOWARDS THE ZOMBIFICATION OF HUMANITY

This is where we are now as a civilization—trapped in a vicious cycle of Kitsch and failed Pastiche. Toy-collector daddies are still stuck with Luke’s lightsabers and TIE fighters, as well as Jules Leotard’s superheroes with underwear on the outside, when we should already be reading connotations instead of denotations and moving forward, growing as a civilization—not just in spectacle, but also in substance.

It has nothing to do with Gal Gadot supporting the Israeli forces or Rachel Zegler’s personal views on the topic (or her looks, skin color, and social media posts). It’s about the basics of writing and filmmaking. It’s about looking at things objectively instead of subjectively. Sure, Disney owns the franchise, but unfortunately, they are trying to place a new narrative into a classic that has a strong base with the middle-aged generation. Perhaps it will work on the next one. We are living in a time where the seams between media are quickly diminishing. The culture of online streaming of ‘tv shows’ and ‘cinemas’ projecting out of the same screen has unconsciously normalized mediocrity. And a small team of graphic artist with free software managed to copy the visuals of a blockbuster sci-fi epic. Also the pride today's studio take upon sharing the 'making-of' and behind the scenes on how things are made, without realizing they are eliminated the magical elements of cinema. Gone are the days when we inserted a video cassette into a player and were taken to a different world of what was only within the frame.

In the 1968 sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, one thing that was envisioned by the great Phillip K Dick, which has manifested itself in our live is the ‘Empathy Box’. It is a device that allows its user to experience the collective emotions and pain of others, yet ends up as the reason why authentic human interactions became rare. As a result, humans gradually becomes isolated, emotionally numb in an increasingly artificial and mechanized world. We have a parallel. The mobile phone. What is crawling out of it recently (Ghibli-style image generation) is a sign of human surrendering towards the the stoicism and being apathetic. The tech that is supposed to bring us towards utopia is driving us deeper into the illusion of it. In this Snow White case, being lost in the poetry and taking the fantasy fairy tale literally. God save us all.