Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Jack O'Brien

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Speaker 1: On the beck Doll Cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands? Do they have in individualism the patriarchy? Zef invest start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hello, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie, my name is Caitlin, and this is our podcast where we talk about how women are represented in film, and wouldn't you know women are not often represented very well? No kidding, g whiz wow. That's why we have to do this podcast to shame all these freaking idiots in Hollywood. It's weird because everyone who's in my inbox and dams are constantly so nice and respectful that I forget that people actually hate women and want them to die, right, You know, It's true. It is easy to forget. I'm often highly respected in the community hot Break, so I sometimes forget that generally don't respect women so well. Anyway. So this is the Bechtel Cast. We talk about movies and how they portray women. We use the Bactel test just sort of like a measuring stick, a yard stick. We don't only talk about whether or not a movie passes a Bectel test. It's so much more would be funny if it was though for just for no, if this is like this is called snow white, and then we'd be like no, and then that's the could just be a list. So the Bechtel test, by our standards, has to be two female characters talking. They both have to have names, they have to be talking about something other than a man for a total of two wines. Can this movie do it? Let's find out. Yeah, but first we've all kinds of stuff to do. We have to introduce our guests some sex it first and foremost. He is the head of comedy at the House Stuff Works podcast network and the co host of the Daily Zeitgeist on that network. Jack O'Brien, guys, Hi, thanks for haven't made certainly exciting. I'm a big fan. Where oh where zy Guy's heads? So Jack and I have both won Golden Globes last night. Congratulations. Yeah, I know you're saying you're highly respected, but do you have a Golden Globe? I certainly don't. Okay, well, I have to the university for Santi University. We won Best Drama and Best Comedy Music. Amazingly. Yeah, it was a real incredible barn Burner of a night Us and Gary Oldman big winners. Have you talked about Santa University on this podcast. I don't know that I have. I think briefly, I don't remember what episode was recently, it does, but Santa University does pass the back tole test. There's a whole scene decades there's a whole scene where the two characters just say, and now we passed back to it. Yeah, that's good, incredible, useful. So Jack, you have brought us snow White in the Seven Dwarfs. I have. I bring it before you because I think it's an important feminist text. No, because I feel like a lot of problems that I have with Disney and Disney culture, like this is the thesis statement for how Disney wanted to portray women, and like Disney princesses, she is the archetypal Disney princess. I just feel like it's a very influential film in terms of creating the archetype of Disney princess. And they're just some really weird things that happened in this movie that repeatedly, And you know, I also like really like Disney's artwork and stuff and I can see how it would have like blown people's minds because this was like before they had full length animated movies with color animation. This really was the Avatar of its day, and it's beautiful. It sucks that it's so fucking boring boring. There's something also extremely annoying and completely nonsensical, like it's there farce. It still get me though some parts. Well when did you forst see this film? It's one of those movies I don't remember seeing, I think, but it must have been like before I was properly storing memories, so like, okay, so from three yeah, they're abouts. Yeah. Same. I grew up with this movie. I've seen it probably a dozen times from ages five to twelve or so, and then I hadn't rewatched it as an adult until yesterday. And wow, it's quite different from what I remember as a child. It really it's weird. I couldn't even get I was like, this is just fucking bizarre in so many ways. This is the first movie I ever remember seeing which is not good. If like the first example of like, wow, this is the guy. It's like the Prince is just a guy in sweatpants who's scales biker biker pants that just like tight tight pants. He fucking hops a wall and is first words or did I scare you? And they're just like like the prime of manhood. Yeah, so I think that that explains the very choice I've ever made. Sure, well, that's what I mean. Jack. You were saying how influential it was, and the three of us grew up with this movie. You saw it a ton as children, and it shaped our worldview to some degree subconscious yeah, and made us think that, like, oh, this is how romance should be. This is what she we should strive for, either as a man lining himself to Prince Charming or a woman being like, oh I have to be all passive and annoying like snow white, like so passive to the point that she, like her big actions in the movie, like where she saves herself are all done. Well, she's asleep. They just they have to incapacitate her for her not to fund things up. And she's still not the least active Disney princess because there is the one that yeah, well Disney clearly had a like I don't know, cosby ish thing, because she was if you just saw this movie enough times you would probably be like, oh, I bet Disney has a weird thing for sleeping women. And then it's like one of his next movies was Sleeping Beauty, which I haven't seen nearly as much. Like the Disney movies that I know best are this one and then Aladdin, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast exactly. Yeah. So there's like the Cinderella and the in the Sleeping Beauties and that some of the older ones from like the fifties, sixties, seventies, I don't know as well. There wasn't that much going on then, but there's like the it's weird. The Disney Renaissance princesses started this whole new thing where it's like, oh, it's not like the princesses your mom grew up with, because these princesses have one thing about them that is the thing that they do, such as Bell who can read read and there's that weird though the whole town like burn her she's a witch because she likes books. There's the whole song where they're like, man, even though she can read, I'd still have sex with her. Whole song also the last time, Okay, and then we'll get into snow it. But the last time I saw Beautying the Beast, you know, there's like that mob at the end that they're going for the beast. The mob literally says, we fear what we don't understand. They're like the most self aware mob of all times. Like a line in their song it's like, well then hold hold on, yeah, maybe stop for a second and educate yourself on the thing that you don't understand. And he was like, you know, so if you ever find yourself saying we fear, well, we don't understand, just take a second. So, well, it's okay to get to snow. In the Seven Doors, there's a line in the Dwarf song where they're like, we don't know why we do this job? Why do we do? We don't know? They just he doesn't care about plot. No, they certainly, at least not in this movie. So speaking up plot, I'll go over it. In my Caitlin's famous recap White the Seven Dwarfs, we meet the Queen first Evil. So the first word in the movie is not good. We're like, which is what she is calling her mirror right on the wall. Yes, okay, yeah, possibly a queer icon. Possibly, let's not rule out that theor so it's uh. We first meet this evil queen who consults this magic mirror on the wall every day and says, who is the fairest of them all? Basically saying, am I the hottest? And every day does he say? Every day? Yes? Until one day the mirrors like, actually, your stepdaughter, snow White is the fairest of them all. And the evil queens like, well, I better have her killed then, because she's so vain and so petty that she cannot live with the idea of knowing that she's not the hottest in all of her kingdom. She says, a lash for her. It's like an absolute monarchy where power is just determined and by how pretty you are, Like, that's what rules the land is just prettiness And she's like, well, now somebody's prettier. I got to take him down. Yeah, the rules of this kingdom. It's very confusing because the queen dies and snow White does, and there is a whole year that passes. We have no idea who is in charge, are there police, are there people? And we don't know, we don't know. Chaos And to give you an idea of how white this movie is part of the Queen's motivation for killing snow White is that snow White is whiter than her. Yeah, they celebrate her whiteness to an insane degree. Snow white skin is coveted so much, to the point where her name is snow White, Like it's so and it's just fucking weird. It's just weird. That classic movie starts like, she's anyone whiter than me, so weird. So she basically commissions a huntsman to go out and murder snow White, and he is about to do it, but then he looks at how beautiful she is and he's like, actually, I cannot kill you. You're too hot. The hunt's been creepy, ugly, almost like on purpose, I would I would assume he's got bangs. Why does he have bangs? Anyway, So he goes to kills no White and he's like, actually, I can't. You should run away because the queen wants you dead. So she runs off. She's terrified. She gets clawed at by some trees and then she collapses in the middle of the woods and then all these woodland critters come and they're like, hey, we'll show you where to live, and they take her to the house of the Seven Dwarfs, and she goes up to the door and she knocks on it. No one answers, and she's like, oh, I guess no one tell him find a trespass. Better just go in. And in her defense, she's hot, right exactly, so they would have they would have been fine with it because she's hot. So she goes in and she realizes that it's dirty. So she's like, I better do the only thing that I know how to do, which is to clean, because I didn't mention that the evil stepmother, the queen, even though she is like the guardian of this young woman, she's like, actually, you're gonna be my servant and you're just gonna clean, and I'm gonna dress you in rags and you're not going to be a princess really at all? Right, Snow also snow why she doesn't state any motivation or intent about anything except for like remaining alive until like an hour in the movie, and that's when she tells the Dwarfs she would like to get married. Please, Yes, you're just like Jesus Christ. So she is, I think we can all agree a feminist icon. So she cleans the Dwarf's house and then they come home and they're like who are you and she's like, I'm snow White, and they're like, oh, the princess, Okay, you can stay. Especially, she steals the deal by saying, yeah, I'll cook you some gooseberry pies and they're like, great, you're in helliot. Cook and clean her two superpowers. Being pretty wealthy, right, The doors are also like, oh she hot. Yeah, I really like her. They're literally about to pick ax her to death. They have their pick axes raised in their over her sleeping form, and then she like rolls over and they're like, whoa, she's pretty better. Let her be our mommy there. I also would like to start a petition to rename the Dwarf named Bashful Horny, because that's what he is every single time, because like, he's not shy, he's just like horny, like that's his thing. But they're all pretty horny. They're all horny, but especially is also extremely horny. Dope is chaotic evil. It's straight up a scary character because there's that part where you're like what are they going for with dope? And then they're like snow It's like can dope talk, and one of them is like, we don't know, he's never tried topy, just like I was like, oh cool, and we got mediocrity firing on all cylinders here. He's never dried so many lines like why completely hairless? Like he looks very unhealthy, like like somebody who has like a drug or do you guys know the band the Pogues Irish Run and their lead singer is like aggressively alcoholic and like to the point that like his teeth have started falling out and like his face has no color. And I was like, that's dopy. That's kind of what Dopey looks like, because the rest of the Dwarves are all old looking men with like long white beards, and then there's just like Dopey a child I don't know. He's also very old but very smooth. And when the music scene started, I forgot who like played what in the music scene, But the second it started, I was like, oh, for sure he's the drummer. Yeah, yeah, true, because Grumpy plays the organ sure, and it is also a libertarian. Grumpy is not a feminist icon. Grumpy wants us to all owned plows. He's weird, so those are two of the dwarves. The other ones are doc happy, sleepy, bashful, sneezy, and they're all horny. What did I get them all bashful? Oh? I actually wrote soapy? What do I mean? Dope? Okay, I just wrote it. But at one point Dope does swallow a bar of so and he becomes pretty soapy. I was not wrong. There's a seven minute scene where they're just washing their hands. Stupid. It's stupid because Okay, I love this movie as a kid, but now I hate it so much as I think it's such trash. I think that part of the reason this movie is fun for kids to watch is it's like you can tell that Disney was only doing these long cartoons before, because you can break this movie into like five segments where it's just like a series of visual jokes and no story. So it's like, all, I get that, Like kids want to watch animals wash stuff. I don't even know that that's true, but there, I mean, it was seven who knew what children found entertaining. They were all playing with like I need to watch Like, yeah, there's so many like extended scenes where we just see them mining diamonds or washing their faces. For the first time in their lives. Can we okay, can we talk about the face washing scene, because the dwarf logic also is nuts o where they work in a mind, they seem to have a lot of money, they're dithering a lot of wealth. Why don't they live in separate houses? Yeah, I mean you can assume that they're mining these precious jewels too then turn into capital. Well as they stay in the in the song, they don't know why they have that job, and they don't know what they're doing, but they're all fucking each other, right right, definitely? Yeah, in those little baby beds. Why are they all pushed together? They live in a one bedroom cottage and they're all seven beds are in one bedroom. Okay, so the rest of the story, I'll just get through the rest of Sorry. So they agree to let her stay, but they're like, be careful because the queen she's coming to get you. The next day, they go off to work and they're like, don't let any strangers in. So the first thing that happens after that is that a stranger comes because the queen has been concocting this plan to kill snow Why because she finds out that the huntsman did not in fact murder her like she thought she used mummy dust. Did you see that does? So she is also a witch. The Queen is a witch. She's also a woman in stem because she has her own lab. She has the queen because she has both a murder dungeon. And she chooses to go and like secretly slip this poisoned apple to snow Why she chooses the unassuming disguise of like a wild eyed witch like crazy, yeah, So she like uses magic to poison this apple that's going to induce the slee being death, which is this curse that won't kill her, but we'll make it look like she's dead. So she's just hoping the little her body doesn't rot, right, Yeah, got it. So she's not actually dead, but as far as the dwarf Snow, she is, but they just I'll get there. So she poisons the apple. She uses magic to transform her appearance into this like old hag lady. She approaches snow White and the first thing snow White does after being told don't let any strangers in the house, She's like, yeah, come in, I'm just making some pies. And the Queen in this disguise is like, here, use this apple. It's a wishing apple and it will make all your dreams come true. So snow White is like, yeah, I wish for my Prince Charming to come and carry me away into his castle. And then she takes it by the apple and instantly falls into the sleeping death. And then the dwarfs find out about this because all the woodland critters, her best friends, the story for sure. Yeah, they go and basically tell the Dwarfs what happened. So they come back. They chase the queen up a hill, she falls off of it and dies. She gets struck by lightning, falls off a cliff, A boulder falls on top of her, and then her pulverized body. It is made abundantly clear by a shot of two vultures that the two vultures are then going down to consume her remains. It's like Jesus Christ, which is another Disney trend we see later of just like gruesome, horrifying deaths of but almost always falling off yea, because you can't show in a Disney movie like a grizzly murder, so they have to fall. How many Gaston falls off a cliff fast falls off a cliff yes, huh, doesn't a character and Hunchback of Rolo falls off a cliff, Well, not a cliff off, he falls off a church into a fire pit. To be fair, he also sings a whole song about wanting to rape and murder the female protagonist of the movie. That movie, It's Dark. I've only seen it once years ago, I don't remember. It's very good, but it's very it's shouldn't be seen by children. It's very weird. Okay. So then the dwarfs mourn snow White, who they think is dead, but they're like, well, she's too beautiful to bury in the ground. Let's just build a glass coffin and put her in there. And then like a year passes and she's still just lying there, all hot and dead looking. And then the plants, who has nothing to do, wonders, it's you just like roaming around like knowing one song for a whole year, bananas. So he comes and finds snow White and her dead looking body, and he's like, well, better kisser, and then it breaks the because that was the one antidote to this curse. It is like true love's first kiss or whatever, right, guy and Sweatpants makes out with your corpse. Congrats baby, your royalty. There's something weird about the year that they just kind of yat yauta past where the dwarfs have her dead body just laying in a glass coffin and they're just staring at her. Yeah that all they did, just stared at her. They're mining job just yeah, the old in front of her for a year. And then a guy rolls up who they've never seen before, and they're like, you want to crack at her just like he did. They open the coffin for him. They must, because it's like at one point there's like a glass top to the coffin, and then a dude rides up on a horse like singing this crappy song and they're like, okay, have at her. Like that's literally like the like the Prince, I feel like it is on the verge of like doing a little shot gun and pulling out a vape pen for like every time he's just like, hey, what's up, Like he just pops up out of nowhere. Where's his kingdom? Why he's not busy? No, he's Jesus. Because at the end they're like walking off and then like there's like a big castle in the sky, like there, I forgot about that. So it's like taxi driver in the sense that it might just be in her mind and that this is her dying or or like in the end of Titanic where she dies. No, she's just asleep and she has a dream. She does not die. Well, I can't believe you just went back on your own Titanic. I know, I meant I misspoke. She's just dreaming. She didn't. She has a dream about Sad. It's yeah, there's that. And also it's made clear or I thought it was when the prince is like corpse back to life. Great news. Time to get married. But it's clear that she's never going to see the dwarves again for some reason, because she has to say goodbye to all of them. And it's like, oh, because, I mean, I guess in seven this is probably true. Marriage is a prison and you will not see anyone ever. He will not be allowed outside. He picks her up, Jesus picks her up out of the coffin and uh like just throws her on his horse like some like thing he just bought. And well, her muscles have probably atrophied. She's been dead for she cannot walk. She covered in her own filth. Snow White has less than no interest in what happened to her, and she's not like, wait a second, what happened to that old lady. From her point of view, she just ate the apple, the wishing apple wished that this guy would come, and then woke up and then instantly was her wish came true that which is like her hero. Also, snow White in theory, shouldn't she like care who's in charge of the kingdom? She was the because like she starts royal in this movie and gets royal by the end, but like she's in theory, is supposed to care, right like, but who is in charge? There is some power structure there because at one point she says her name, and all the doors are like the princess, like the famous. So there must be like some sort of roll besides just laying down and being kissed for her to fulfill. But of course we do not see that in the movie Cooking and Cleaning. Maybe the maybe the mirror is in charge. Previously my job was saying who's hot and who's not? Right now, I am her leader. God, so that's the story of snow White. I have a lot of thoughts about the movie. Where shall we start? Oh gosh, well, you can sort of just boil the story down to the narrative being a woman so petty that she has to have the hotter person than her murdered. So that doesn't send good feminist vibes a little bit, just a smidge of woman and woman hatred just a bit me. Yeah, Jamie, Actually you probably don't know this, but I have tried to have you killed because your mirror is talking to you again. But he did tell me to make some calls if that started. Yeah, I should go to my therapist. Get this checked out. That's that is so good that she's just like, well, if a piece of glass says that my teenage stepdaughter, who I'm enslaving is hot, she simply must go. She's gotta die. Sorry. Okay, So snow White's introduction in the movie is her singing about her one true love, her Prince Charming, who she has not yet met. She's just waiting around, waiting around, waiting to be found and wooed by a Prince Charming. Right then, Prince Charming does show up because he hears a pretty voice. Yeah, we can't just say. He shows up. He scales a wall and sweatpants and then frightens her and he's like, oh, did I scare you? And then she runs into a castle. But then the kind of have a song together. They're sort of singing at each other, and this is like kind of I feel like something that comes up again again into movies where it's like she's scared, but don't worry, she's also extremely horny. I'm just like, by scaring a woman, she's yours daddy out Like it's very weird because she's actively hiding from him. And I think that we're supposed to think that's partially because she doesn't have a nice dress or something like she's embarrassed that she's hiding. She straightening out her dress and stuff, or maybe she's feeling herself. She's so horny that this guy launched himself over a wall and was like, are you scared? Regardless of the message is that guys, girls want you to scale their wall and scare them when they run away, they're probably already in love with you, and then go to them while they're asleep and just pick them up and take them with you. Also, his song sucks, dude. His song is so song that Scott Watts song. Everyone in this movie it sounds like they're not high school production. It's not. It's very annoying to listen to. Snow White is so prow knowing out that her voice is. She sounds like Betty Boop. I totally forgot how like high pitched and like cartoonishly squeaky, and like kind of Mickey Mousey too, Like yeah, well that's my interesting. Shitty man all the time will use the excuse of a woman having a shrill voice as a reason not to listen to her, to take her seriously. So I don't want to sound like I'm doing that. But my god, her voice is so shrill and awful that all the blood vessels in my brain did burst while I was watching this movie. It's a lot of the early Disney process has had like those like operatic voices, and then you hit Cinderella and then it's like, all of a sudden, Cinderella has like a husky, little fun voice. It's like snow Ie. It's bad not to detract from the cost but she is hard to listen to. She end a bit, but So this scene where she's like falling in love with Prince Charming even though he's actively invading her space and scaring her, it was working because she's falling in love with him even though they don't talk. They don't actualge any words except for just like being like I'm looking for my Prince Charming and he was like, one day I'll find a beautiful princess, but like to know each other. So they're in love all of a sudden, but that's not clear until she tells the Dwarfs that like she found her true love, because there's nothing about the interaction that would suggest that like he had done anything to impress her. All he did was make her run away and then like an hour and she's like, yeah, I am in love with this one guy. Really, all that thing does is established HER's like just like this very delicate, timid little girl, and we're supposed to be a little girl. It's good, Yeah, I mean, isn't that like that's why she becomes the fairest in the land, because she comes of age or something like that. I think that's what we're meant to assume. The mirror is like snow White got her period less and now you are ugly. She's also season on snow I had forgotten that snow White is like land aquaman. She can just like control all the animals of the forest, like just they're all just going around her and helping her with stuff, which is a pretty cool power, and it's just totally squandered on her. She don't wants to do boring stuff with it, yeah, like clean a house and cook. But then when they're trying to like warn her away from a poison apple, she's like, God, why are you guys being such assholes today? She's like, old witch, let me eat this apple. Snow White does tell a bird to smile, so she's not a feminist. Hey, sad bird, you look prettier when you smiled. Another logic question. The huntsman who is supposed to kill snow White and then doesn't, is like, get out of here, and then she snow is offer as she's like everything is scary to me, and then we see like it's a beautiful animated sequence of her being afraid of the four but then it's like it appears to be the next day, were she just thrashing around the forest all damn night, like like and then it turns out nothing was scary the whole time, and then she's like, hey, birds should smile. Well yeah, I mean she has a near death experience. There's like this kind of surreal sequence where she's running through the woods and the trees look like they have faces and they're grabbing at her. And of course, I mean and it would make sense that she is having a reaction like this because again she was nearly just murdered. Yeah, but it does seem like she just passes out for the whole night in the woods. Yeah, her fight or flight is not good. She really couldn't make a call. She's like, let they just play dead. Actually there is a third its foreshadow of what happens later. But it is almost like she has the opposite of agency as a character. Like when she is incapacitated, good things happened to her, But anytime she acts like proactively in the story, she's just suck herself. Yeah. She runs into the forest and like runs around until she passes out, run into a pile of haro. Like what what does she It's her hallucinations? Yeah, yeah, I mean, in what would actually happen if you passed out in a forest? For a night. Is like the animals would come and eat the soft meat of your face, but because she's so pretty when she's passed out, they again or just like, oh you're too pretty to eat there, and then also snow way when she comes to in the forest after her wild night, she comes and she immediately apologizes to the animals. She's like, I made such a fush. She's like, so ashamed of the mess I've made, yea, and they're like, don't worry about it, but that was pretty embarrassed. So well, okay, So so she is the protagonist of this story, but Jack, You're right, she does almost nothing. She's so inactive. She has so little agency. In fact, the only choices I think that she really actively makes to do anything in the story to run into the woods away from that, but only because he told her to run that way, and she's like, you listen to the person who was about to kill you, of like, hey, you know what you should do it? Like right, So she does that, and then she the next tree. She makes this to go into the dwarf's house, which she doesn't even find, Like it would be one thing if she was looking around like, oh, what do I do let me like try to, but yeah, the animals are just like here, here's a house, leap here, and then she just goes in. And then the next bed decision, by the way, just find a house in the woods, just break in and be like I'm gonna pass out in their beds, like assume they'll be cool with it. Like getting pick ax to death is what you would expect. Yeah, and it almost happens, but she's too hot to Thank god, she's so hot. There she does choose to run away from the prince who she's in love with. That she says, she makes the choice to be scared by a man doing something scary. I don't even that's more of a just a reaction, right, really she did something, she did something just given her credit foray and hide her disgusting self from the love of her life because she's not made up and pretty yeah, embarrassing. And then the next choice she makes is to clean the dwarf's house. And then pretty much the next active choice she makes after that is a while later in the movie when she eats the apple that the queen gives her. It's fun. The end sequence of this movie is a wild chase to save snow White because she is literally too dumb. Like that is the whole Like the animals are like, oh no, she's dumb. She's dumb. What do we do? Get apple? And so they run to get the dwarves and then the dwarves figure it out. They're like, oh no, she's too dumb, we gotta go and and they're right, she's too dumb. It's it's very frustrating there. It's like this relay race to stop snow White from doing anything because whenever she does something, she almost kills herself. That's the explicit message of the movie is if you are active, if you make decisions for yourself, you will kill yourself. But if you just sit back and like pray for something to happen or pass out and just sleep it off, like then things will work out in your favor. So it's like brainwashing people and specifically children young women to be like as passive as possible. Well, and then on the other side of that is like the Queen is always making active choices and it's just totally demonizes a woman doing anything. It's like, well, if she's doing something, it's probably going to be fucked up and evil, like because the queen pretty much only makes active choices, and they're always destructive to this character that we're supposed to love. So it's like you're getting it from both sides, right, Because as the protagonist of any story, we're supposed to see them encountering obstacles and doing things to try to overcome those obstacles and make active choices in the story. But we see almost none of that in Snow White. And I think because she is a woman in this movie, and sure, this is you know, this is decades ago. Its seven that this movie comes out. It's a whole generations ago of an era. Like you know, it's no mo Wanna thinks have changed a lot since then, But young kids were consuming this and and still do and still do. And seeing like other movies of this same era where there's a male hero, we did see them make active choices because they were like swashbucklers and like you know, all these like adventure stories. But because this is a female protagonist in this movie, I think a deliberate choice was made. And of course it was adapted from something material. Let's make a ten minute long story that's bad women and eighty minute long story, right, they in an adaptation, you can make choices to change the source material. But yeah, they just made this very passive female character which sends a message like, yeah, women shouldn't be doing things woodmen shouldn't have any agency, and if they're doing things, they're bad. They're making mistakes. Yeah, and it's bad. Yeah. I think they did make a lot of changes to the story from when it was a fairy tale, but like all arbitrary and none like in the intry, it was all just to simplify it. In the fairy tale, I wonder if the dwarves knew. We find out they've never taken a bath before, and then there's a ten minute sequence of them washing them. So it's hardly In the movie, it's mostly the dwarfs dock ship. So yeah, I wanted to get to that too, because there's like all the extended animated bits are either animals or dwarves. There's like the animation problem that still exists right now of like all the male characters look different and look like cartoons and have like a lot of different features, and the female characters, i mean, snow White and the Queen basically have the same face. Like there's very little difference between their faces, so that's infuriating. But the dwarves don't know what water is. They also we see them walking over a body of water on their way back from work. But snow it's like, hey, you have to wash your face or I'm not gonna give you soup, and they're like, okay, it seems reasonable, and and then one of them is like what is this and then they learn how to wash their face and grumpy the libertarian ten minutes long. It's so stupid, And yeah, they don't know how to feed them, Like what were they going to eat if she didn't make food for them? Be because they're just like so amazed that she's willing to make food for them. How do they not know what water is? But they do know how to build a glass coffin and throw a Christian funeral. It doesn't make any sense, it's just And then to your point about she and the Queen look like actual female forms, not necessarily super realistical, though more realistic than in later Disney movies like Jasmine, with like a tiny, tiny waist kind of thing in Aladdin, right proportionally better better, but not great better. She looks like a mature female form, whereas the Dwarfs all look like I mean, well, that's a whole other thing, which is like, how insensitive is this movie to little people? Probably just as insensitive as The Wizard of Oz is. Yeah, not good, right, not good? But but just speaking from like how the male and female characters are animated. We were talking about this in our Hot Roundabout plug for our Patreon bonus episode about Ghostbusters. How all the ghosts in the Ghostbusters, if they're male, they look different, and you've got a slim er in there. And but then the one female ghost you see is literally a hot woman, but you can see through her. Yeah, same thing in Casper. Not good, that's really transparent swish point for Jecko. Yeah, and I think this movie is important in the precedent. It's like Little Mermaid. Even though Ariel has, you know, her own interests and she makes active decisions, there's still weird stuff like the prince falls in love with her when she can't speak, and like, I feel like that's a holdover from this where people only fall in love with characters when they're asleep, where people like them better when they're asleep. So it's like seem not heard clean cook and you know, don't make any rash decisions. Yeah, it's like it's only possible to fall in love with the woman when it's literally physically impossible to get to know her right there, right it's physically impossible for her to resist, like because she's unconscious. Well it snow way. I want to talk about the scene where she we find out that she wants something in life for the first time, when the dwarves are like, telling us a story, please, even though they're seventy and need to relax. They're like, we're babies, creepy. But she said, okay, I'll tell you a story. And she describes the prince somehow without using the word sweatpants, which is but she she says, anyone could see he was charming, even though we've she's barely seen him. They don't know each other at all. It's the same thing where a woman and a man fall in love in these very hetero fucking love stories, where they just fall in love because they're near each other. They haven't gotten to know each other at all. They're a bang up couple. They're not cute. They're not cute. It's bad. They look like siblings. And then and then one of the dwarves interjections like did he steal a kiss? I was like, ah, man, come on, and she's like, no, bunny, we and and then she's and then she screams at them or as that's how snow it sings. She just like everyone's like, oh, that was so pretty. Sleep in our beds please. I want to talk more about the all the domestic chores that she does, because it's basically, as far as we know, the only skills she has to offer in the movie, apart from her sort of supernatural ability to communicate with and control animals. But realistically, all we really see her do is cook and clean. So that's the only thing the audience really knows about her in terms of what she's able to do. And not that there's anything wrong with domestic chores. I do them all the time. I wash some dishes earlier today, please drag. But like the thing is, when society has historically seen women as people who can only do domestic chores and should be barefoot in the kitchen, this movie just reinforces that that's what female characters only can do and should be doing. I also think that the insane set up of when the Queen comes in the disguise of an ugly old poor person, shows up at her house. Snow White is singing about how she wants a boyfriend making pots for these geriatrical creeps that she takes care of. And it's only known for her, I think a day a day. Why are they more in her for a year because she's hot. She's so hot. She's so hot. We only knew her for a day. But god damn it if she wasn't very hot. Yeah, she's taken from one place where she's like seen cleaning and is basically safe there, and then she's out in the woods like running by herself, and that scene is very dangerous. Then she arrives at this other house where she can like cook and clean and she's safe, and then like is put in a coma. But then the prince like picks her up to take her off to first really carries her. She cannot even walk her own legs, and well then the queen. What I detail of the story I forgot was when the queen does show or the whatever, the witch shows up with the little apple that she like temps snow White, not I I just remember Snowy eating the apple. I didn't remember that. She's like, it's a wishing apple. What do you want And she's like, um, well, there's this guy. And she goes on for like a while, just shut up, like we're actually ready for you to be dead. But she she's like talking about like, oh, there's this guy in sweatpants that came to my house and I just if he doesn't rob dog me, I'll die. And then she does die, right, But the fact that the queen like that same crazy thing is stated again because there's nothing else to talk about with snow White. That's the only thing we know about her is that she wants to date this guy in sweatpants she's met once, yeah, and hardly interacted with at all, Like they sang in each other a little bit or near each other, but like they don't know anything about Okay, so you can argue this is a fairy tale. There's a lot of suspension of disbelief, like this is how fairy tales play out. Well, fuck fairy tales. They're stupid and I hate them and they just reinforce these like rigid gender roles that are dictated by the patriarchy, and they are no good and I'm over fairy tales, sorry, And I don't think that all fairy tales necessarily did that. I'm trying to think of fairy tales that I heard, but this like was the first fairy tale that they brought to movies. Yeah, I really think it was like a weird thing with Disney, Like if they had had somebody who was less like women should be seen, not heard and cook and make me dinner, like, I feel like maybe we wouldn't have. Like, it's just a very The Disney Princess is like very specifically one guy's idea of like what women should be, and I did a lot of damage. Sure, I mean I would say of the fairy tales that sent her around, a romantic relationship, usually between a prince and or princess, usually one of them is a royal. Usually the woman is unconscious for at least part of the story, and if she's not unconscious, she is like if she's or something. Of the ones that depict that type of story of like a romantic story, they are very very damaging. Well, it's like the whole message is like if she's unable to give consent, it's true love, baby, Like it's crazy so yeah, okay, let's talk about that scene where she is unconscious. Everyone thinks she's dead, the dwarves, as far as I know, she is dead, but they've kept her in this like coffin above ground and the Prince has heard about the woman in the coffin. He shows up and it's like, oh, yeah, this is the girl that I sang at for five minutes a year ago. He yeah. He also has not written new material pretty sing song singing his song. I have one song kind of it. So he's staying on brand. At least he has one song. And he just keeps saying he's very strong. But it's like he the print heard that if he stumbled into the woods he might find a corpse to marry, like okay, okay, and then he, for whatever reason, makes the choice to kiss that corpse. How did how did the prince? Here? Were the dwarves like, hey, we've got a corpse in the woods. You maybe if you make it sound like word like everybody was gossiping about the girl in the glass coffin. But keep in mind everybody thought she was dead, so he was going to see a dead girl, right the only coffin and kiss her the only person who would have known was the queen, and she she's dead. So yeah, there would be no reason for anyone to think that by kissing her she would come back to life. But setting aside that story logic or lack thereof, he still kisses an unconscious woman. So she cannot consent to this. But instead of it like having the consequences that it should have, which is like, oh, you kissed me and I wasn't able to consent to it, You're a fucking rapist. Get away from me, it wakes her up and it lifts the curse. He very good according to the story that he kissed her unconscious body. It's literally like an s VU episode. It's like so weird, it's just the sounds a very very dangerous message to everyone watching this that if you kiss an unconscious woman, hey, good things might happen. It might bring her back to life. So that's very irresponsible of any story that does this, which is a lot and speaking of her being unconscious. Okay, So there are a bunch of movies where in the climactic sequence, and this is especially true of like action adventure movies, the one female character of the story because there's probably only one has been captured, tied up and physically restrained in some way and unable to contribute it all to the events of the story in this climactic sequence, so she can't do anything to help the male hero defeat the villain because she's all tied up. This is true of Ghostbusters, The Mummy, Die Hard, Who Friend, Roger Rabbit, dozens and dozens of other movies. What's even crazier is when this happens in a movie with a protagonist is a woman, and it still happens like she should be the one in this movie snow White, because she's the protagonist of the story. She should be driving the story. She should have a strong desire and be actively doing things to try to achieve that. But instead she is rendered completely unconscious and cannot even contribute to the climax of her own story, to the point where she has no motivation for the majority of the movie, like she yeah, she's literally being dragged around to the next location at all, Like it's just it's then this is true for I mean, it's less often that this happens where it's a female protagonist who can't even dictate the outcome of her own story, probably because there are not as many movies with a female protagonist. But it happens in Snow White, it happens in Sleeping Beauty, it happens in the first Twilight movie, where like the female characters like, actually, um, sorry, I can't do anything. I'm not awake, and it's just like, ah, that is not how storytelling works. I'm very frustrated. It's okay overboard that movie. I guess that's not the climate. I still haven't seen that movie. I feel like I've been hearing a lot about that movies. Well be on the lookout. R Yeah, they're not. They're rebooting it, so we'll probably do an episode about it. Yeah, comes on in April kidnap and convinces her that she has amnesia and that she is his wife. That is the story of boredom. I'm so ashamed of the mess I've made. Oh, we haven't talked about Grumpy fully a libertarian, but also says a few different points like and you can you can tell that this you know seven is getting big old yucks in the audience of like women, you can't trust them, you can't like what did they say? Oh? He says, um all females is poison. Yeah, all females are poison. They full of wicked wild He's basically he's suggesting though, that she's going to use her feminine wiles to corrupt them or do whatever the fuck. The point is Grumpy hates women, hates and makes a point to remind every one of this several times throughout the story. He can't go to sleep before he's like, oh boy, do I hate women? Good night? But he's a whole archetype of like male movie character who's like acts like he hates women. But then it's like, I hope she's all right, and that supposed to like melt your heart and like, right, this man of masculinity actually does, Karen, we're supposed to he's redeemed and we're supposed to like him. Now, well, that's like the whole like grade school myth of like if someone treats you like shit, it means you. Because she immediately is like, I hope Grumpy likes me, says Grumpy. Yeah. She makes a pot over, but the bird somehow knows English and knows how to spell the bird grumpy on the pie on sanitary animals are stepping on the food do you think they did that because they didn't want to show a woman like knowing how to write, don't get don't get as wrong, so I cannot. But when the beds, it's fine for the Oh yeah, yeah, she guys. I'm sorry if this makes her less hot to you, but she can read. Gross that bird wants to see her and Grumpy get back together. It's shipping ship. And I don't care for the dwarf smooching. Why is there a five minute scene where it kills all the dwarfs before they go to work? And Dope keeps trying to trick her into kissing him again and keeps like, you're so adorable the way you keep trying to trick me into kissing. At least she never falls for it, which is saying a lot for her, because she is very dumb. Okay, so I want to talk about anything. I want to talk about how she's framed in this movie, which is just like a very And granted, she is young. I don't know if we ever know explicitly how old she's supposed to be, but I think we can assume teenager, So she is young. Therefore, it stands to reason that she might be a little naive. But why are so many movies about these young princesses who are so naive. Put a third be five year old woman in your fucking movie who has lived a little bit and seeing the world and isn't such a naive piece of ship anyway. So she's young, and she's but she's also very meek and gentle and docile and delicate and borderline can't do anything except domestic chores. She's yeah, she's like crippled by now, unable she is to do anything except take care of men. Yeah, she just does a lot of Oh, like she's like shocked by everything and like take constantly. It's like she's there are a couple of times when I heard her say something, I was like, that's how a cartoon of a dumb character would say that. Now, like it's like somehow we got from that being like here's your hero to this is how like I think when she says, maybe if I clean up, they'll let me stay, I was like, sounded like we were supposed to think she's an idiot. And again, this is you know, nineteen thirties audiences are watching this and they're like, yeah, we've never seen a feature length cartoon before sure, I buy this as I see it. I mean, it's just like, um, because this movie is like a gigantic, enormous, like everyone saw this movie, and I think that it was like partially because of the story, because like, people wouldn't go to see it if if they didn't like the story, even though it's like you see it because it's the really long cartoon. But there must have been something that really worked for everybody, because I mean, this is a more iconic movie than a lot of other earlier Disney movies. So the fact that people are have watched it for decades is upsetting because of how poorly it dreads women and presents them in their story. Um. But so she's so just like naive and docile that it leads to her downfall that she doesn't even get to do anything to try to redeem herself for but she gets tricked into letting this old woman into her house, and she tricked into taking a bye to the apple. But the funniest part of this scene is when the old scary hag who startles snow white and she's like because ocause she does she She's like, hi, right, and she's being trailed by those two vultures, which should be seen as a bad son there that like look for dead stuff, like following her, like ubbing their hands. And the first thing that the old witch says to snow White is are you all alone, my pet? Anyone call you my pet? Do not eat their apples, and also leads with are you alone? And she's like, uhuh, She's like are you sure. She's like, well, there are some guys that live here, but no, I'm by myself, so they're far far away the okay, So she is visibly scared in this scene. It takes a while for her to trust this woman, and she doesn't even let her in until she's like, oh, my heart, invite me in and let me sit. So to snow White's credit, she doesn't let her in immediately. But I don't think this is certainly an act of comment on the fact that women are sort of conditioned to be polite. I read that one too. I thought that too, Yeah, because I mean, I don't think anyone who was making this movie was thinking this at all. But it is no question that women are conditioned tota to people. Yeah, exactly, because if we don't the consequences could be disastrous. That is a direct quote from Back to the Future. But sorry, but yeah, I mean sometimes if you say no to the wrong person, they will get very scary and violent towards you, such as do you remember earlier in the movie when that guy in sweatpants scaled a wall and also scared snow. Yeah, yeah, I'm just I'm just thinking of female characters and how like movies further on down the road would sort of rob them of agency. Like, for instance, I'm watching Pulp Fiction again for the first time in like ten years for another podcast most recent episode, and like Uma Thurman's character is like awesome, and she's that's a great performance, but her main action is to like like poison herself something, so she's like unconscious. And then and then like Bruce Willis's girlfriend is this like dizzy kind of foreign person who sucks something up when like he's like, you had one job, and I don't know, I just wonder, like back to the future, you mentioned Back to the Future to his girlfriend is knocked out the whole thing. Yeah, Like again, it's just like let's just knock her out and we can't use her in this story. Let's just make her unconscious, right, right, But I wonder if this movie set that up or if that had already that was just like, I mean, the trope of women being passive and just not well developed female characters has been a thing throughout all of the nature. But I mean, certainly movies like we have this podcast because of how influential movies are and media is to our culture and society and how they really like shapes the way other media is. It's like, well, we saw this story and that worked, so let's do a similar thing, for sure, And that's why these troopes exist and keep being perpetuated, especially movies like this, where it's like so embedded in your head that you can't even like, you know the story, but it's so vague that you don't even realize that the particulars are so fucked up and bizarre, like totally well, you know, if a woman is doing something, she's bad, uh, according to this movie. No matter what, I feel like this movie is an appropriate opening to the whole like Disney movie thing, because I feel like the one consistent theme in all Disney movies is how you look determines how good you are. So if you're like a active person, you are a good person, and then if you're evil, you'll usually either eventually turn into a crone or like b one from the start. And it is a very big theme in the Wizard of Oz. Yeah, yeah, it's all it's the whole universe is just like how you look on the outside is exactly reflective of your your personal worth and also how everyone around you treats you. Because Snow it would be dead in the first ten minutes if she were not, if that huntsman was like, oh, she's ugly, so it's fine. But it opens that universe with a kingdom that is explicitly like I'm the prettiest, I have the power, I'm the queen, and then okay, I'm no longer the prettiest. I have to kill the prettiest to maintain that. So it's almost like he's setting up he's telling us what all the main value of his movies is going to be like from now on. And and in a lot of the like you know, Disney Princess movies, it's about a female character are sort of having to passively wait around for the prince or whoever to come and kind of rescue her, and they're often very damseled and or just noise only damsels and nothing else happens. And like I wenttioned before, we've seen a shift, but it's only been very recently with movies like mo Wanna Brave Frozen, where they are like princessy characters but they have much more agency. But those have only been in the past decade or less. And I feel like it kicked off with Frozen having the two female protagonists who were like their friendship was at the center of the movie, and that was a total accident. It was supposed to also was supposed to be the evil like Ice Princess, and then they wrote that song let It Go, and they were like, well, this is too good not used. So they rewrote the movie around that song and made them friends and and like when you look at the trailers for Frozen when it first came out, they tried to avoid the fact that it was about a female relationship, like between two women, like the plague, like all the first trailer that they showed I think during the Super Bowl was like the moose and like the Snowman, and like that's just what they put front and center. And then I mean they must have been totally surprised when it was their biggest hit ever, and now I feel like, so, I feel like they've just accidentally figured out that there's money and being progressive. Yeah. Well, I remember the marketing for mo Wanna. At least a few of the trailers I saw, we're basically framing Maui is the hero of the movie rather than Mohanna, And I was like, what, why would you market a movie that way? Because it's so misleading and not at all what the movie is. I just want to congratulate Gary Oldman on his Golden Globe award. Just everything is going very well and it's going great. Have you guys talked about why Gary Oldman was problematic? But well we'll link it into description surprise is Yeah, he abusive beat his wife. Oh how about that poor pig that the Huntsman did kill and steal the heart of icon the pig? Yeah, never trust a man in sweatpants. That's perhaps the most harmful lesson of all. If if you know like the Prince for sure, like he plays the bass like he's he's a disaster, his neighbors hate him. Disney had to like redo that character the most times because he kept being like he's too fruity, he walks like a fruit. Wow. I mean Disney was also very racist and anti Semitic, right, oh yeah, I mean his anti semitism is like one of one of the big old talking points. But what an imagination. I guess. You know. He had to drag his protagonists around as if she were dead and then actually kill her. That scene where snow White spends forty five minutes kissing all the dwarfs before they go off to work. She should she could be reading a book, or learning how to play an instrument, or just learning how to do anything besides cooking and cleaning. I don't know. I mean, there's just so like in terms of plot, this movie is fifteen minutes long, like there's so much, so many large spotsive time where it's like, oh thank god, we get to see a chipmunk wash a dish, like so long, surprisingly little like that. This movie moves quickly, like it's only ninety or below ninety minutes, I think, But it moves quickly in some senses and then in other senses it's like when is this going to end? I watched it like with my one year old, who like isn't allowed to watch stuff. So him getting to see a screen and something on the screen was like the best thing that's happened to him. And we're really mean to him usually and uh and he got bored after all, Like yeah, he was just like this sucks, like walk away. At first he thought the doors were funny and then he was just like fuck it. Yea, he's not wrong. Um, let's talk about whether or not the movie passes the Bechtel test. So I think it does. I know, Okay, so this proof that it is. You know, every metric is flawed. So there's only one scene in which it has the potential to pass, which is when the queen dressed as the old woman she refers to herself later as Granny, which another major red flag. But lady named Granny shows up. Hey, pet, it's me granted Granny. You alone. Men, they're not here, So she shows up because she knows where they I guess. She literally says making pies do a good impression, and then uh snow it says, yeah, gloseberry pie, and they're like, well, there it is. But because in the next line she's like, no, it's apple pie that drives the men. While so it just has to be according to our bar for it and revision, because there's no way this movie should pass A thing that says, like if it's about pies and baking pies, that doesn't pass a domestic. A lot of the movies that we talk about that do pass the Becto tests are often talking about either food or clothes, which also they're great. There's several movies we're done where it's like the past happens at a store where she's talking, right, why can't they talk about science? Well, it's like, well, if we if we revised our en to not include domestic or like whatever, you know, Yeah, let's explore that more, right, So, yes, the movie does pass the Bechdel test for like two seconds and it's about pie. Let's write the movie on her nipple scale zero to five nipples. Based on its portrayal of women, I have to give it zero. This is a zero nipple movie for me. Cool that it's a female protagonist, cool that it's a female villain. But snow White is extremely passive and does almost nothing, makes almost no choices. Her only desire in the entire movie, which we don't even really learn or fully understand until much later into the movie is that she wants Prince Charming to come and marry her over a horse. Because she does nothing to pursue this desire of hers, she's rendered completely inactive to the point where she's unconscious for the end sequence of the movie. Between that and Grumpy and his toxic masculinity and women hating speeches that he gives every few scenes, it is a movie I used to love as a kid, and now that I've seen it through the bacto cast lens might be my least favorite movie of all time. I hate it so much now and it is garbage at the end. I'm gonna give it half a nippy because the queen does have a murder dungeon that we see that is not addressed later she turns into a witch, goes downstairs, there's a skeleton steemed to die reaching for water, and then she just left it there to r right. She makes one of the skeleton. She's like theirs that like kicks the water kin and then gets into a canoe and rows out like she has a tunnel system so she can murder, And that is an that is very active. We never revisit how long was that there for? Yeah, I mean, this movie really stinks for and I do like I even after watching it this time, I do still have a weird subconscious attachment to it. So I recognize that it deserves zero nipples, but I'm gonna give it half a nipple. And I'm going to say it's because of the Murder Dungeon, because that did not remember that loved that she mocked a skeleton. I like to think that that was the king, how he touched kids getting so, I mean, we didn't talk about this, but this is another example of a Disney princess that has either one or no parents because a lot of them have a dead mom. She has a dead dad and then a stepmother who actively wants her to pass away, right, and that happens again in Um. Yes, I give it half a nipple for the murder Dungeon and give the nipple back to whoever that skeleton was. Yeah, I think I have to go zero just for all the damage it does and has done and the I mean, that's kind of why I chose it is because it's so horrible and it creates the archetype of the Disney princess as passive. I wanted to say that. You know, if the right little girl sees it, maybe she'd identify with the queen and be happy that she's like so manipulative and machiavellian. And yeah, she has that dungeon, but the fact that all of her manipulation and murdering is done to be the prettiest is kind of shitty. Yet do we know for sure the father is out of the picture. We never see them on screen, and there's nothing to indicate that he is around. I feel like though he's got to be dead, because otherwise the Queen wouldn't be in charge. But so many details in this movie are completely glossed over. We like the world building in this movie is not very good because we don't know who lives there or who's in charge. Because the dungeon could suggest that she has committed a genocide of all women who were prettier than her, and that's how she became the prettiest and the only reason she had done it to snow White was because as her father was there to be like, please don't kill my daughter, but killing like trying to do it on the low. Take him out and take her out of the woods. Good fan theory, Yeah, that's a hot woman's skeleton. Isn't that so taxy? Now? Okay, well this was a yeah, this harmful piece of media. I mean, I'm sure people would say, well it was the time, it was the nineteen thirties. I keep on rebooting it though, see if it resonates. Sure. Yeah, I have not seen any of the snow White and the Huntsman adaptation or the Mirror Mirror starting Julia Roberts. I haven't seen any. I'm sure there's a moment and in all of those movies where snow White does one thing and then like basically looks a camera. It's like, see, I fing hate the dumb Just write a better story, right, cool? Well that is our snow White and the Seven Dwarfs episode. Jack, thank you so much for join. Yeah. Where can people follow you online? Do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah? You can follow me on Twitter at Jack under Squirrel, Brian and yes search Daily's like we tell you what's going on on a daily basis and you know, have fun. Cool. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all the other all the social media's at becktel Cast and also if you live in the Los Angeles area. We have a live show coming up at NERD malt show Room February eight thirty. We will be doing for the month of feb the Month of Love. We're going to be doing The Notebook with Caitlyn Gill. Yes, I'm so excited. I haven't seen The Notebook in a very long time. Same. Yeah, so come through, come on down to that. Check our website backtelcast dot com for ticket information. Also, hey, our Patreon, don't forget about that. It's only five dollars a month and you get stuff to bonus episode every month. This is my we did both Ghostbusters movies about Ghostbusters. Give us five dollars. Yeah, indeed, Um, some day my second master's degree will come. Dude, listen to one song. It's crazy O. Goodbye.