The time span between 1812, when the Brothers Grimm wrote their famous ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ and 2025, when the remake of the Disney animation of the same title was released, could serve as a perfect measure of ideological distance, reflecting the sweeping changes brought about by our strange times. The content and morals of the latest film production are vastly different from the previous one, and, of course, from the original tale. No doubt the now-late authors, as the sole owners of the copyright, would have sued the creators of the new movie version. But, with the writers long gone, the makers of the new film are free to truncate and stylize the beloved fairy tale at their own brash discretion, fully confident that there is no one left to take them to court. That’s one of the ‘beauties’ of having a new chance to play with old literary gems without suffering any moral or material consequences.
The world is overwhelmed with radicalism, spiritual values are confused, universal ideals have shifted, and what was once taken for granted is now under relentless criticism. Isn’t it a crazy, crazy, crazy world?! Hardly anyone can claim not to know the poignant story of Snow White, but the newly released film about this iconic character portrays a fearless princess who takes refuge in the forest, at the house of seven dwarfs, to hide from her jealous, tyrannical stepmother—the evil queen. Eventually, she teams up with the seven dwarfs to liberate her kingdom from the wicked queen, assisted by a new character created for the film: Snow White’s love interest and a rebel who wants to challenge the queen’s monarchy.
Snow White is portrayed by an American actress of Latin American ethnic origin. When she was severely criticized by white fans of the traditional white Snow White—who voiced their racial discontent—the actress became enraged, declaring loudly that the old image of Snow White is no longer relevant because it is so egregiously dependent on a man. She called for women’s liberation from the old dynamics of male-female relationships, which, in her view, need to be revised. While it’s true that change and progress must be embraced, the question arises: Do we, as the new consumers of old literature, have to modify our feelings toward the characters who still reside on the withering pages of great authors? Must we necessarily distort and remake these wonderful old stories, or should we simply create our own tales, compatible with modern values, ideals, and new behavioral models?
Incidentally, I’ve already contributed to folklore by translating a few fairy tales from Georgian into English, publishing them over twenty years ago as extracurricular literature for schoolchildren. The book was a success, and no one criticized the stories’ moral values, but I am certain that today’s progressives—if they happened to come across the book—would find countless moral faults with it, and would likely try to ban it from schools based on cancel-culture principles, ostracizing this ‘unacceptable’ piece of our traditional culture.
The overly zealous use of newly invented ideological tools like progressivism, cancel culture, wokeism, virtue signaling, critical race theory, and culture wars may well be upending everything that was written before we arrived on this world, including all classic philosophy, literature, folklore, and poetry, which embody the moralistic and ethical norms of past eras. Let us not defy the necessity of heeding new spiritual demands and cultural clichés, but at the same time, let us leave alone those works of fiction that may not align with contemporary interpretations of human life and behavior but are still impactful and valuable in their own way. True, times change, and so do ethics, but the past remains, and it deserves to be analyzed wisely and preserved with care.
Op-Ed by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
