Now that the backlash over the new Snow White and the Seven CGI Nightmares has quietened, I thought now would be as good a time as any to open a little discussion and share some thoughts on the corporate whale called ‘Disney’. It suddenly struck me that the original 1937 film was created only twenty years after Strauss wrote ‘Frau Ohne Schatten’ - yeh, the one where the unborn kids sing out of a frying pan - and in the same years as he wrote ‘Daphne’. It then also struck me that there was something deeply operatic about the original Snow White - and by operatic I don’t mean singing. I mean dramatically. In short, there was a vibrant, visceral intensity to the story telling and a belief in its narrative, shown through the incredible animation in union with an earnest orchestral score. It is what we would call the Disney ‘magic’.
The era of Disney remakes has been quite fascinating to observe, because as classical musicians we live our lives primarily recreating old, previously established works. My problem with the new film is not, as it is for many, with its re-contextualisation or modernisation (let’s face it, opera directors do this all the bloody time), or the off-screen personalities of its actors. It’s that the artistic values of the last shall we say, seven years have moved in a direction that castrates much of what made the originals so ‘magical’. And I’m convinced that much of this is to do with the above - the authentic dramatic quality.
Is the original dated? Hell yes. Are the songs a bit naff by modern standards? Very much so. Does Snow sing like a bird on helium? Yep. Is it my favourite Disney movie/score? Definitely not (not compared to the 90s ones anyway). Time moves on, society changes, tastes evolve, new art is created - and that is how it should be. But if you’re going to *re-create* something from before, especially something which in itself is already so well made - you have to respect the qualities that made it great in the first place.
In many areas of culture and life we seem to have moved past the time of moral ‘grey’ between 2010 and 2017, and into the age of ‘beige’. The age of custard. Disney used to move - now, if anything is too intense, too challenging on the ears or the eyes, it’s either tuned down or cut altogether. The soundtracks for the remakes are ever more dynamically compressed, auto-tuned, and pop-ified. If you listen to any of the scores for the classic Disney films, you’ll notice that they were bursting at the seams with musical force. Re-listen to cues for the final scene with the witch in Snow, or the fire/hunters in Bambi, or the midnight strike in Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty too, but obviously that was a cheat because it was Tchaikovsky
Similarly, I’ve read a lot of late on cinematography, and the thing that many cinematographers nowadays lament is not what tools they are using (digital vs film), anymore than as musicians it’s all about the instrument or the orchestra. Rather, it’s the choices they are forced to make. It’s that much of their careful work on colour grading is discarded post-edit by - you guessed it - corporate heads, and the pressure to play safe and easy. And so, the result is a product which is entirely lacking in contrast or vibrancy. Who needs deep, rich, inky blacks and golden, brilliant whites and shades of red and pink when you have a washed-out underwear vibe. But hey, it’s easier on the eyes.
The other issue, is that by prioritising likability over good story-telling and thus trying to appease the widest stretch of people, one inevitably ends up watering down to the middle. Tame, vague, alrightness that just about passes for ‘ok’. The acting, the musical performance, the visuals - everything in this movie is so ‘meh’. It’s as though everything becomes ‘mf’ in dynamic, because you don’t want your audience to complain about it being too loud or too quiet either way. The result, then, is that there is no authenticity, and no genuine artistic decisions are being made - and what you are left with is a ruse of public appeasement wrapped up in political righteousness.
And here we get to - Snow White 2025. Gone is the queen and haunted forest that used to scare the bejeezus out of kids. Gone is the visual impressiveness of the stormy wind and rain and lightning and thunder, and the glow of the rising sun through the green forest. Gone is the care and thought into visual cues and subtleties - like the huntsman’s darkened presence in the distance as we know what he is about to do to an innocent woman. Shimmering tremolandi, thundering timpani, haunting oboe solos and sweeping horns are replaced by a… half-baked synth waltz(?) And as for the cgi dwarves well… oh boy lets not go there. And I know I lament the witch a lot, but even today that final scene in the original is utterly gripping (but yeh, I was also that kid at school who always preferred to play the witch rather than the princess, so maybe I’m biased on that front).
As a disclaimer, if you enjoyed this movie, really like custard or disagree with me - that’s totally fine. Everyone is entitled to their views, and maybe I am slightly over-protective of certain things in art and culture. But being someone who also spends a great deal of my time observing and listening - I honestly don’t think people want an easy to sell piece of consumable media with just some famous names to prop it up and an updated message.
As much as society claims it’s far too easily scared or challenged these days, I think deep down it wants to be. It doesn't want to just sit passively and consume, it wants to be invested and moved. We want to feel relief, joy, love, terror, grip our seats - and we need good writing, good contrast, and compelling performances for that to happen. Arcane Season 1 and Blue Eye Samurai are two incredible examples of this. But the general failure of Snow White is very telling I think - audiences are not as stupid as corporate heads seem to think they are. Yes, they can consume, but they can only consume so much before they crave something more substantial. And no, the answer is not just ‘they should listen to Beethoven then!’ It’s about finding a sincere belief in a creative force as a power to tell a real story, and to move an audience beyond what they know in their daily lives. Curtain up, curtain down.