Snow White and the Death of the Movies
How Rachel Zeigler Should Go To Church
My child just now:
Have you blogged about Rachel Zeigler yet?
Wow wow wow, as they say. I didn’t know that was one of the things that should have been on my to-do list.
Not to change the subject, but I confess that when I went to see Conclave (review forthcoming) I was afflicted by the trailer for Wicked. Being deeply ignorant I didn’t know that there was already a play by that name in existence, and was therefore excessively shocked by the film industry’s persistent desire to make the bad guy into the good one and everyone into a victim.
Then I saw the Critical Drinker talking about the promotional poster:
Which brings me round to my original subject—one of my favorite things about the Critical Drinker is how relentlessly he complains about Rachel Ziegler. Perhaps you missed her tweet after Mr. Trump won the recent election:
Peace, of course, is hard to come by in these latter days. That a 20-something actress enjoying immense personal fortune, who has far more money than she can know what to do with would say she wishes more than half of the people who reside in the same country she does not to know any peace is, well, kind of mean, ngl. Speaking as a much older person who has, nevertheless, never acted in any movie, it strikes me that Ms. Zeigler is not the most clever or well-read person around.
Anyway, I’m not sure what exactly my child is wishing I would say on the subject of a young lady so determined, for some reason, to destroy the Disney brand. Given that this blog isn’t usually about movies, perhaps some of you have not heard of how this has gone down. I am, by no means, an expert, but I’ll do my best.
So, a while ago Disney decided to add Snow White to the number of animated features they are redoing as “live action.” The first was Cinderella, a brilliant success, I might say, having watched it several whole times. After that, there was the Little Mermaid which I did not make any effort to see, and a bunch of other ones that people have already forgotten about because they were of no consequence. And that is not because people don’t care about and love Disney movies, it is because Disney has decided to make unwatchable stuff.
This seems like a good moment to remind us all that, if we are in some kind of organization and are feeling miserable and unhappy, it is probably because that organization has come to be run by a cabal of its worst enemies.
Anyway, the next movie on the docket was Snow White. You remember Snow White, don’t you? It is, for those who know about these things, an almost perfect work of art. It made the Disney Brand. Every single movie that came after was living in the shadow of this beloved film. At least, that is what I have heard every single person on the internet say in the last two years.
But we can’t just leave things as they are, we have to update them, just like, when I break my phone and think that I will have some kind of relief from the world as it is, my husband insists that I cannot live without a phone and orders a new one. Disney decided it was time to make a live-action version of Snow White and they cast Ms. Ziegler in the lead.
Surely you all have seen the fallout. First, she said that Snow White was being transformed into a girl boss who won’t be rescued by the handsome prince:
Then the leader she knew she could be meekly apologized:
Then everyone found out the dwarves had been cast as full-grown DEI vagabonds. Then, after trying to fix that problem Disney released a horrifying trailer wherein Ms. Ziegler commands all the CGI dwarves to clean their own house. I can’t find it. It looks like it’s been scrubbed from the internet, as it should be.
I do not know why my child thought I should blog about Rachel Ziegler. Perhaps it is that watching take-down videos of her bad behavior has become a kind of guilty pleasure for me. Also, I feel sorry for her. She needs a mother and a fashion designer who will put her in longer skirts. She needs a world free from the grinding drive of clicks and retweets. Most of all, she needs Jesus.
That’s easy to say, of course—Jesus will fix it all—but hard to fathom in a world where so few of us are able to observe that we actually do need rescuing. The world of the first Snow White—I mean the Grimm’s Fairy Tale version—was full of trouble. Dark woods and powerful magic threatened ordinary young ladies. You would work your whole life in obscurity and then die and be buried. If you were fortunate, you might have grandchildren who would sort of vaguely remember you. You couldn’t just pop open your cell phone and share your thoughts with the world. If you were a lucky young woman, perhaps you would marry a man rich enough to rescue you from the long slog of hard work. All that appears to be rather a dismal world, but, in many respects, the total absence of electricity and fame was probably better for not only the mental health of ancient Rachel Zeiglers but more importantly, their spiritual health.
In that ancient world, the prospect of a Savior was a good thing. There was so much to be rescued from and even the thought of a strong man, mighty to save, would make every human heart flutter. We have a lot of things to be rescued from too, but all ours are buried under eiderdowns of personal comfort. We are tricked into thinking that all our thoughts are clever and interesting, especially if someone will pay us a lot of money. We look at our devices and conclude that we are good and that if there is a god, he must be just like us. When anyone contradicts us, we are offended and shocked. This world, I think, is much more terrifying. The total absence of material lack cannot possibly be good for any of us. This must be why so few of us bother to go to church. If no one needs anything, what would be the point?
How disappointing, then, that at just this moment, with so much empty time and nothing to fill it with, all the movies are suddenly so terrible.
So anyway, have a nice day! My parting gift to you is Ricky G:
I love Critical Drinker and I’m glad you linked to it (his British affinity for obscenity notwithstanding)
Of course, Fairy Tales have always been reimagined in the sort of spirit of the age or a cultures particular values. Red Riding hood in 16th century France was eaten by the wolf, no huntsman arriving on the scene to save her. Le loup is the hero because he has tricked the wealthy folks with cleverness and audacity. As far as Disney is concerned, the Disneyfication of any fairy tale or fable has always been complained about, like giving The Little Mermaid a more predictable happy ending instead of the more complex one that Andersen originally wrote. But now, it seems as if their magic portion has finally soured, and perhaps it’s because the spirit of this age has no Joie de vivre but rather resembles a horrible, high toned progressive moralist. And of course, Oscar Wilde was right to say that “all art is quite useless,” or as he goes on to say in his preface to Dorian Gray, “ We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.”