The Simplest of Them All

This is a response paper that I wrote for my Animated Films class. The assignment was to watch a film and write a specific response to it. I wrote mine on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and why she is portrayed as simple-minded and innocent, and for what reason.

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The Simplest of Them All

In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White is portrayed as an innocent and simple young girl. In the article, “Art, Adaptation, and Ideology,” M. Thomas Inge writes, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs accurately reflected the general public attitude toward the place of women in society and continued a long tradition in Western culture of portraying women as passive vessels of innocence and virtue” (140). At the time of when the movie was made, women were viewed this way. Disney made little to no effort to try and make Snow White psychologically complex, and that was to be expected. Snow White seems to be simple minded, when she sees a man she automatically falls in love, when she meets the dwarfs she trusts them immediately. She is not very reserved when it comes to possible dangers. When I first saw this movie when I was young, I absolutely loved it. I loved the Dwarfs, I loved the idea that a prince would come and rescue Snow White, and I loved how everything turned out happily ever after. Even the part when the Evil Queen (as an old woman) gives her the poisoned apple amazed me because it was scary, but I still knew that everything would be alright in the end. I was used to Disney Princess films and the way that they were structured. Now when I am watching it again, all I can think is: how can Snow White automatically trust everyone she meets? She was threatened with a knife by a huntsman, she got lost in the forest, and then is absolutely fine after a few seconds. Personally, I think this is because Disney wanted her to seem like a positive figure, not having many reservations and being eerily happy all the time, because how could she possibly be upset for more than one scene? Snow White is able to go into a stranger’s home, not knowing who lives there, and just expect them to let her stay, which may say more about her and how she just assumes everyone is good. When she finds out that seven men live there, she just gets excited because to her, they seem like small children. Then, towards the end of the film, Snow White was warned against strangers by the Dwarfs and she promised not to speak to anyone she did not know. But of course, a little old woman comes to the house and Snow White is so inviting that she does not even question the nature of the visit. I cannot tell if Snow White was too innocent to believe that someone would really hurt her, or too simple-minded to put two and two together. Did Disney do this on purpose to make a point about women in 1937? Or was this just to make the film more simple and easier to create?

This brings me back to Snow White’s psychological complexity. She seems to be a little naive, and that she assumes that people have her best interest at heart. She may be used to this, growing up as a princess, but having the Evil Queen as your step-mother must have some effect. I think Snow White is meant to seem this way, because it makes her easier to understand. If you are making a children’s film about a princess, why would you make her difficult to receive? By making Snow White a simple-minded person and by making her trust people very easily, it leads to an easier storyline. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has a structured storyline that does not need much background, but if Snow White were to have more of a complex personality, or if she tended to question people, Disney would have a problem on their hands. If Snow White questioned why the Evil Queen wanted to kill her, or if she thought more about going into a stranger’s home, there would be more of a need for background and explanation. By making her simple, Disney made the film simpler for the audience. Children may not have understood the story as well or may not have wanted to pay as much attention if Snow White decided to do some investigative work into the Queen or the Dwarfs.

There is also the possibility that Disney made Snow White simple-minded because that was how women were viewed at the time. Going back to the quote from “Art, Adaptation, and Ideology,” about the tradition of viewing women as passive vessels of innocence and virtue, Inge writes that, “The facts of Disney’s own life suggest that he was not always easy around women” (141). His mother was supportive of him, but everything was controlled by his father. He rarely dated and ended up marrying a woman who would become the “ideal” housewife. Disney may have just been used to seeing women this way, but women were generally viewed as housewives, especially by men, who were in control of the production of this film. Snow White’s life goal is to find a husband and get married to him because that is what she was taught. She never thinks that she can live a life on her own, mostly because there is really nothing after being a princess. This brings me back to the fact that Snow White always does what she is told, possibly because she does not think of any other option, or because women were not “supposed” to have a career or have a life of their own without a husband to have children for. Snow White is a very passive and flat character, without many layers. By making her this way, Disney is either trying to represent women of the time, or he did it to make the film more simple and easier to understand from a child’s point of view. If this film were to be released in today, instead of in 1937, the general public would not have taken well to it, and this was proven. Inge wrote, “On the re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1993, as journalist Jami Bernard put it, the film has returned ‘just in time to mess up a new generation of little girls” (141). The fact that women are no longer viewed as passive vessels of innocence and virtue shows that if this film had been released in present day, it would not have been as successful as it was when Disney originally produced it. Disney took the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and made it into a film that families would enjoy watching at that point in time, and families are still enjoying it today, but as a memory of 1937 and a classic film.