Disney has spent the last year developing and refining its destructive habit of producing films infected by woke themes — and it’s become surprisingly good at it. The result, of course, has been disastrous for the mega-entertainment company; almost every...
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Disney has spent the last year developing and refining its destructive habit of producing films infected by woke themes — and it’s become surprisingly good at it. The result, of course, has been disastrous for the mega-entertainment company; almost every film Disney sent to theaters this year flopped at the box office.
It didn’t seem to matter that most of Disney’s new releases were nostalgic replays or add-ons to beloved series with loyal fans. It turns out that audiences, loyal or not, are not interested in watching Indiana Jones’ female sidekick take shots at capitalism, nor do they appreciate the #MeToo-inspired changes made to The Little Mermaid (the CGI was also disappointingly distasteful, which certainly didn’t help). (RELATED from Aubrey Gulick: Can Conservative Entertainment Not Be Cringe?)
It’s taken far too long, but maybe Disney is finally getting the hint.
The latest controversy at Walt Disney’s old stomping grounds has been the studio’s remake of its classic 1937 cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The studio selected Rachel Zegler to fill the titular role — even though Zegler, who is Latina, is a far cry from the demure fairytale princess with “skin as white snow” — and she quickly made it clear that she had no intention of being anything like the dreamy Snow White of the cartoon.
“People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is — because it needed that,” she told Variety Fair a few months ago. In a 2022 Entertainment Weekly interview, Zegler made it clear that she thinks the classic is “extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world.” She promised that “[w]hen we came to reimagining the actual role of Snow White, it became about ‘the fairest of them all’ meaning who is most just, and who can become a fantastic leader.” (READ MORE: Disney Lives in a Small World, After All)
While Zegler was busy complaining about the original cartoon’s lack of 20th-century wokeisms, Peter Dinklage was griping about the role dwarfs played in the film, so Disney promptly got rid of them, apparently opting to replace the traditional characters with “magical creatures” of varying heights.
What Disney quickly discovered, however, was that audiences aren’t interested in a story about a power-hungry young woman; they want the classic, romantic fairytale they grew up with — complete with its cast of lovable dwarfs.
The film received backlash from all sides. The son of the director of the original cartoon, 91-year-old David Hand, told the Telegraph, “It’s a whole different concept and I just totally disagree with it, and I know my dad and Walt would also very much disagree with it.” He added: “[Disney’s] thoughts are just so radical now. They change the stories, they change the thought process of the characters … they’re making up new woke things and I’m just not into any of that.”
Meanwhile, some conservatives decided that Disney’s impending disaster of a film was the perfect opportunity to score a point in the war for good entertainment. The Daily Wire announced in October that it would be releasing its own version of Snow White on its new kids’ entertainment platform, Bentkey, in 2024, the same year Disney’s live-action was scheduled to be released.
Announcing Bentkey's first live-action feature film: Snow White and the Evil Queen starring @imbrettcooper pic.twitter.com/HpYoskemAG
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 16, 2023
Disney apparently realized how embarrassing it would be if its film were to perform worse than the conservative alternative, and, within weeks, it announced that Snow White would be delayed by a year (now scheduled for March 21, 2025). Ostensibly, the delay was caused by the SAG-AFTRA strikes that halted Hollywood business for months, but, according to the Daily Wire, it had more to do with fears of financial failure. (RELATED from Aubrey Gulick: Hollywood Shut Down for Five Months. Here’s What We’ve Learned.)
The conservative entertainment company was quick to take credit for Disney’s about-face. “Disney’s rapid change of course is encouraging because it shows the kind of impact we can have when we apply the right kind of pressure. Our only hope for taking back the culture from the Left is to build alternatives that force these institutions to have to compete for conservatives’ business again,” a spokesperson for the Daily Wire told The American Spectator. “Though the fight is far from over, these wins should serve as encouragement to all conservatives that victory in the greatest cultural battles of our time is possible if we stay the course.”
Meanwhile, Disney has opted to make other substantial changes to the film. In a recent still photo released by the studio, Zegler appears in the iconic yellow and blue dress flanked by seven dwarves — a de-wokifying miracle worked by CGI.
NEW: Disney's Snow White has been pushed from March 22, 2024 to March 21, 2025. Disney also shared a first look at Snow White (Rachel Zegler) and (alphabetically) Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy. pic.twitter.com/7jgxGtb1Ri
— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) October 27, 2023
The language around the film has also changed dramatically. In a recent interview with Variety, Zegler seems to have had a remarkable change in attitude. During a conversation with actress Halle Bailey — who starred as Ariel in the live-action The Little Mermaid — she praised the original story for being “an iconic thing that people really care about — I don’t want to mess this up for anybody.” Zegler added:
It was the first feature-length cartoon movie. It won honorary Oscars. And all these amazing things that happened for that film are the reason that you [Bailey] and I get to sit here today, because it made Disney what it is…. [T]here’s a very dedicated group of people who love Disney cartoons. I’m one of them. I love everything that the Disney Co. has put out in the past 100 years.
Those statements are, of course, a far cry from Zegler’s original demeaning comments about the story. The Daily Wire’s remake of Snow White, based on the trailer, is likely to be quite good — but even if it isn’t, Disney’s about-face on the woke direction in which it was originally taking this film is already a small culture victory.
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