Disney’s Snow White isn’t radical – it’s bland ...Middle East

If, in the year of our lord 2025, you are still searching for confirmation that political correctness has in fact gone mad, you could do a lot worse than watching Disney’s new live-action remake of Snow White. CGI dwarves? A princess whose namesake is supposed to be the pure whiteness of her skin played by a Latina actress? The handsome prince replaced by a rebel fighter named Jonathan? An ethnically diverse socialist kingdom in which a king and queen bake apple pie for peasants? It’s woke nonsense, alright!

Unless, of course, you actually think about it for more than 10 seconds. Then you realise that what’s mad is not Disney’s effort to be inclusive and modern but the fact that they are relying on fairy tales – a genre that is by definition not inclusive, not diverse, and not modern – to do it. And while I’m absolutely pro such attempts to send better messages, broaden the casting pool and encourage little girls to find their voice rather than a prince, I am also happy to admit that this particular attempt to bring an old story up to date has turned into a total PR clusterf**k.

Of all of Disney’s live-action remakes, among them the entirely pointless Lion King and Jungle Book (spoiler alert: they did not manage to get a real lion to play Simba) and the similarly tetchy Little Mermaid, Snow White has been the most controversial and fraught. Last week the film held a peculiarly understated premiere, widely presumed to be because there was a risk that the online uproar around casting Rachel Zegler, who is half Colombian, as Snow White, could escalate into real-life racist rallies.

Not only that, but after Peter Dinklage suggested in 2022 that the very idea of a remake was ludicrous and offensive (“f**king backwards”, to be precise), Disney decided not to cast real people as the dwarves and instead to render them in slightly uncanny CGI (“To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community,” they said in a statement). This has proved not to be the cautious choice they clearly thought it was: actors with dwarfism are now railing against the perceived theft of casting opportunities and planning to protest outside Disney Studios.

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Plus, there’s the matter of the life-saving kiss administered by the handsome prince, over which we have already witnessed a consent-based culture war back in 2021 (more recently Zegler said she “hated” the original and that the prince “literally stalks Snow White”), so that’s hanging in the air, too. And, just in case we needed something to tip things over the edge, word on the street is that relations between Zegler and Evil Queen Gal Gadot are strained due to their conflicting views on Israel and Palestine, for which both actresses have also faced backlash from activists.

The irony is that if you’re able to put all that aside, or perhaps if you are the film’s intended audience age of circa 11 years old, Snow White is pretty anodyne. We all know the drill – perfect stepdaughter threatens evil stepmother with her beauty, gets sent to the woods to be killed, kindly huntsman takes pity on her. She finds refuge in a magical cottage and makes friends with seven dwarves, named after their personalities, before the queen finds her again and brutally murders her with an apple.

All that is still there – with some key focus points altered. The pre-queen kingdom is overtly happy clappy (the generosity of the pie thing doesn’t quite fly when you’re still living under a monarchy, but never mind), Snow White’s “fairness” is also very much a personality trait rather than just a surface-level one, and her quest has an empowerment twist: all her life she’s subjugated herself to other people, and now it’s time to lead.

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Though some of it has theatrical camp – Gadot as the Queen is dressed head to toe in sequins and stiletto nails with the energy of a divorced Kardashian at the Met Gala – it is largely cosy and quaint. The enchanted woods are undeniably beautiful and Zegler chats away to hedgehogs and deer and birds. As ever, Disney’s attempts to manipulate our feelings with sentimental anthropomorphism are frustratingly effective. It’s all quite magical to watch until they start bursting into song, which, when it’s live-action rather than a cartoon, quickly goes a bit CBeebies. Classics from the original – “Heigh Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” – are retained, while others are newly written, becoming uplifting ensemble numbers and a chance for Zegler to show off her enviable vocal talent.

Disney makes every effort, too, to get the politics right. The consent issue is covered off in the love song, between Snow White and her rebel-bandit love interest (Andrew Burnap), where she sings: “If there’s a world where you wake me / Promise to wake me with a kiss”. Phew. And it’s to their credit that the actor George Appleby, who has dwarfism, features in the cast as the outspoken bandit Quigg, with his stature totally irrelevant to either his character or the story.

Is any of it worth it? Well, yes and no. The original Snow White is famous for being frightening for children. This new version – rated PG – is certainly scary in parts, even watching at the age of 31-and-a-quarter. But it remains at the surface level of a children’s fairy tale, with the darker parts (like the original poisoned comb and too-tight corset of the Brothers Grimm story, or the “cut out her heart” command) skimmed over in favour of the justifiably more important ideas like being true to yourself and not minding about being beautiful. These are good messages to send to the new generation, sure – but is Snow White really the best way to do it?

It ends with what can only be described as a woke utopia (except the aforementioned monarchy issue), in which everyone strings flower garlands in the town square and bestows acts of kindness on their neighbours, thanks to the leadership of Snow White. But there’s only so far you can get with a dated story that we know so well. There’s no way Disney could have done it any other way, and it is undoubtedly positive for little girls everywhere to see a brilliant non-white actor playing the part of a princess – but despite the all-round outrage, there is nothing radical to see here.

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