What Walt Taught Me: Snow White

Last updated on: July 30, 2015 at 9:17 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

What Walt Taught Me: Snow White 2015-07-30T21:17:59-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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We have all come home singing this song.

Disney insists that the first of its full length animated features is “still the fairest one of all.” And the comment is fair. By the Pixar standards of today, the film is very simple, but then it is creating the genre that Pixar has mastered. The film is still fairly good by any standard and exudes a loveliness, a sense of fairy, that is missing from later Disney films in Walt’s own era, let alone the ugliness of films such as Cinderella II. The film exudes the hard work that went into it and has a color and artistry missing in more commercial features, like any film containing “minions.” This was the best the artists could do, it made pot loads of money, they enjoyed the money, yet one feels they enjoyed making the film more than making the money.

Maybe not, but the detail and care of each scene (hand drawn!) with few flaws visible to my lay eye suggest there was more art than merchandising behind the characters. Even Eisner never dared to make Snow White II and that one decision is much to his credit . . . and Lord knows the second act of his Disney career requires some grace.

I suspect I first saw the film in a 1975 re-release. One problem with home video is that nobody much past my generation has the chance to see Walt’s creations as he intended them to be seen: on a big screen in a community of film goers. It is a different experience than watching it today by myself. The sound of children, parents, and Disney fans rooting for the characters added to the fun of the film. This movie has simple sing-a-long songs designed so that repeat viewers (and this film was a monstrous hit that spawned many multiple ticket purchases) could whistle, hum, or sing the tunes. Add sheet music for sale, fans who waited for the rerelease religiously (only memories and clips on TV in between releases) and you had a cult classic before anybody thought being in a cult was a good thing. Each release of the film was an event.

The film is scary from the first vision of the cruel Queen, quietly sarcastic, see Grumpy, and earnest. This was a movie that believes in true love and that good people would conquer bad people given time: not a bad lesson just before World War II.

What did the film teach eight year old me?

Magic was less powerful than honest human love. The film is (given later Disney marketing) surprisingly unmusical. Snow White survives by pluck, courage, innocence, and hard work. She is afraid, but still acts in her own interest in daring ways. I am not sure entering the little house and cleaning up is something I would have had the nerve to do in a dark wood. Don’t let her 1930’s trill confuse you: this woman has as much in common with the pioneer women who could have watched the first run as it does with any European princess. This Snow White is an American: hard work, pluck, and whistling away the Depression would work! And so it did.

The wicked Queen relies on magic and becomes the very thing she has feared: a hag. The witch within comes forth and she destroys the very thing she was trying to preserve in her jealousy. Her use of a tempting apple had resonance to any Christian audience, but then so did the wages she received for her sin of murderous hate and envy: death. Disney softened the Grimm story, Tolkien and Lewis despised his jolly little dwarves, but not as much as he might have. The Queen is very wicked and nothing softens the judgment on her deeds.

Lewis and Tolkien were wrong, by the way, to criticize Disney. I prefer (as a matter of taste) their own vision of Faerie, but Walt is telling tales of Victorian Fairy. Perhaps Lewis and Tolkien were too close to the Greenway fairies to appreciate them or maybe they were too “girlish” or “childish.” I like both . . . distance from the Victorians has given the juvenile world they created its own charm. There is no hint of Wagnerian seriousness in Disney, but also none of the dangerous will to power that some of the “serious” Faerie stories contain. Siegfried would be no hero in Disney’s world. Walt’s kids beat Wagner’s kids in the War that was coming, so perhaps the American nursery tale was not such a bad thing after all!

When she is in trouble, Snow White prays. That isn’t shocking to most Americans: it is what most of us do, but Hollywood doesn’t do it much. They prefer swearing in the Lord’s name to praying to the Lord. Snow White knew that against the powers of darkness there was a natural order ruled by an unseen God. The Lord might help those that helped themselves, but that did not mean (in the time of the film) that the Lord was not needed. Instead, the Snow White generation praised the Lord and passed the ammunition. They did their best, but knew that they needed God’s grace. There is a plan that undergirds the universe and so prayer is worthwhile.

Finally, there was the less-noble lesson that falling in love with someone you heard singing on the other side of a wall was an adequate basis for a relationship. This lesson I learned too well, perhaps. “Falling in love” is a good thing to juxtapose with “power”, but real love is not erotic desire and true love’s first kiss is less true than true love’s last kiss as the first ten minutes of Up reminds us.

Snow White is still a great animated picture, but when one considers when it was made, then it is worth watching as a creation point for the modern world. Whether one “whistle’s while they work” attacks the notion that “someday my prince will come,” or mocks the bluebirds of happiness in the movie . . . Snow White still matters. Christians who want to make movies as Christians should do at least as well as the only-culturally Christian Disney did in the late 1930’s, but we have not done one film this good yet.

He set the bar high. Thanks, Walt.

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