It is a fairy tale, especially the more sanitised version of the Brothers Grimm version. There are several what I guess we'd call tropes which resonate with people familiar with how such stories go: the Wicked Stepparent, for example (though some stories are also about neglectful or abusive parents - think about Hansel and Gretel and their own parents just abandon them in the woods). Even today, this is a live topic so the idea that the second wife of the king would not have been loving to the stepchild is exactly what everyone would assume.
Then there is the question of beauty, which ties in with both questions of power and maturity. After all, the queen is technically only ruling as regent until Snow White, the legitimate heiress to the throne, comes of age. Snow White becoming old enough to be esteemed beautiful as a sexual rival indicated the end of, or at least a threat to, the queen's power. Having her disappear in the forest on a hunting accident is deniable enough and also allows the story to permit Snow White to survive and grow up. Look at the Princes in the Tower for what happens to inconvenient obstacles in the way of an ambitious claimant to the throne.
Snow White, in the Grimm fairy tale version, grows up with the dwarves until the evil queen manages to catch up with her, and has three attempts at killing her. The dwarves foil the first two, but the third - the poisoned apple - works. The prince finds the crystal coffin in the woods with this beautiful maiden inside and demands to bring it back with him (this is creepier/stalker behaviour unlike the cartoon where they meet when she's alive and develop a first attempt at a relationship, so Zegler got that wrong). It's not true love's kiss that wakes her up, it's when the coffin is jolted and this knocks the poisoned piece of apple out of her throat.
The wedding is planned to go ahead, the evil queen finds out and when she arrives there discovers the bride is Snow White. She tries to kill her again, and the prince punishes her by forcing her to dance in red-hot iron slippers until she is dead. Then the happily ever after happens.
Everyone knows how the story should go: the wicked are punished, the good may suffer but they get their reward in the end. It also brings in the notion of the Golden Age (before the evil queen ruled) and a return to that, with the rightful heiress (Snow White) who knows the lot of the ordinary folk (because she lived in the forest with the dwarves as a humble person) restored to her rightful place (the bride of the prince) and now the rightful rule will be established again and Snow White will be a better queen. EDIT: Though dwarves in folklore are not the cute version of the Disney cartoon, nor are they humans of short stature. They are sort of nature spirits (which is why they live in the forest and work in the mountains in the story), and Snow White becoming aligned with them is one form of magic against the magic of the evil queen. So there is another thread there of the rightful queen (Snow White) taming the spirits of the woods and mountains and bringing them into alliance with the humans in the kingdom so they are less malign and malicious.
So yeah, there's room to update the 1937 cartoon, but changing the prince to a bandit leader misses the point: this is about monarchy, not some kind of "head of state democratically elected by the people". But in the end, it's a fairy tale about a princess and the rewards she gets for being good and suffering at the hands of the wicked, so it doesn't have to be too deep. It's for little girls, who may or may not still want to dress up as princesses and play at that today.
HereAndGone
1d ago
Oh yeah, I discount the "she's brown not white so not Snow White" stuff and she's pretty enough, but agreed: they did have to manoeuvre around "are you kidding me, Magic Mirror, who is the fairest?" to make it work. That then introduces the problem of "she's the Evil Queen, why the hell does she care about who is the 'fairest where that means most just' part or whether that applies to her?" but you can't have a Snow White story without the Magic Mirror, so, eh.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I've tried to get Violet Tribe (as the equivalent to Grey Tribe) adopted for that exact thing - grew up Red, had or adopted Blue tastes.
In fact I do have Blue Tribe preferences in (some) food and dress and (much more) entertainment. But I don't like the very progressive "we must have Representation which means Black Romans in Britain" style attitudes, so I guess I remain Red in some things (though since I'm not American, NASCAR doesn't apply to me. But plenty of liberals in my own country like to sneer at the bogtrotters, so the attitudes remain recognisable and relatable).
Is Vance, for example, Red or Blue? He seems more Violet to me, but of course the Blues very much want him to be a redneck (literally). Same with Ross Douthat and some others. That is what is meant to be the alchemy of higher education - it takes the base material of the Red young adult and refines it in the crucible so that the end product is flawlessly Blue and the dross of the old attitudes have been purged away. And if you come out the other end Blue to the core, then of course you no longer count as a Red, and hence "Reds don't care about education or learning" is propagated.
But it was my rural and working class family which always went "education is no burden". Yes, often it was because of the same push to go to college because "college educated earn more" and not for disinterested love of learning, but in general they are ambitious for their children to do better than they did, and not have to engage in hard manual labour. But if you can be a successful small businessman without going to college, or at least not for a degree in Queer Gender Glaciers, then is that "not interested in education"?
I think there are a lot of Blues also not interested in education qua education, but more "now we can set out to decolonise geology" and such agendas.
the Magic Flute was a blasphemous production sung in German as opposed to the proper Italian
Mozart genuinely was a genius, as he made sung German tolerable to listen to 😁 For more converting people, Soave sia il vento, no matter what production design shenanigans, is ethereally beautiful.
And Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in the common Italian of his time, not in proper Latin. "High culture" often only becomes "high" after gently marinating for a couple of centuries.
Terry Pratchett in his novel Maskerade made the point that if you want to make money out of people standing around on stage singing, you write musicals. Opera is a machine for turning money into beautiful music and nothing else. That's why it will always need funding, either public, private, or a mix of both. Unhappily as with all high art, the 'you need to be Educated to Appreciate it' has taken over so, as you say, public taste diverges from what the authorities deem correct, and it falls even more out of favour and needs even more propping up by donations instead of generating revenue (I have tried, and failed, to listen to an entire opera by Harrison Birtwistle).
EDIT: An online acquaintance introduced me to this 17th century piece which sounds surprisingly modern (I can see what Birtwistle is trying to do by comparison but this is more listenable) - the Cold Song from "King Arthur".
I've been following the commentary around this movie in a desultory way for the past couple of years. So far it seems like it's doing very sluggish opening business, and because it's been delayed so long and gone through so much re-writes/add in CGI, the budget has ballooned and Disney is allegedly facing another box office bomb.
I think the main problem was Zegler shooting her mouth off. She's very young and would have been even younger when the movie originally went into production, but trash talking the original cartoon, claiming the central romance is creepy stalker and Snow White Don't Need No Man, and joking about the main male lead being written out and edited out completely, as well as "now 'who is the fairest of them all?' means 'being powerful and ruling fairly and not needing no man'" does not sell the movie to families wanting a traditional Disney movie they can bring their kids to.
Updating something from 1937 isn't impossible or a bad thing, but they should have put a muzzle on Zegler. Add in the delays and the unforced errors about replacing the Seven Dwarves with the Seven Persons Experiencing Unhousedness (who now turn out to be the merry band of thieves in the forest led by the prince who is no longer a prince but a bandit chief this time round) and then having to bring back the dwarves with poor-looking CGI, and you get a mess. EDIT: I also heard that the climactic battle is anti-climactic? Originally it was supposed to be Snow White and Evil Queen going toe-to-toe, but now she just falls off a cliff or something?
To my own eyes, Snow White's costume looked terribly cheap - for a big budget movie, where did the money go? So too late, too pulled about, and it's just a rehash of the cartoon so parents will probably wait for it to turn up on the streaming service instead of spending the money for a cinema trip which is increasingly expensive.
HereAndGone
1d ago
The problem very much isn't that we've become unwilling to call these things mental illness! I say that neither should be classified as mental illness.
You have four healthy limbs. You feel really, really sad about that and believe you should only have three. Yes, that is mental illness, every bit as much as if you believed your neighbours were breaking into your house to smear shit on the kitchen walls.
You have healthy external and internal sexual characteristics. You feel really, really sad about that and want to undergo surgery to change what can be changed to those of the opposite sex. The only difference I see is that so far we have agreed to go along with the latter and not the former, as yet, though I wonder how long that distinction will hold. Somebody is going to do "limb reassignment surgery" (and apparently already has), there will be a movement and activism, there will be "studies show that after getting the amputation suicidality goes down and self-reported happiness goes up", there will be "what harm does it do? besides, it doesn't affect you anyway" and the rest of it.
HereAndGone
2d ago
They don't want to become librarians or museum curators or anthropologists.
I did want to become a librarian. It wasn't open to me due to lack of money and other reasons. Today, I think if I did train as a librarian (and depending what country you are in), there might or might not be the push to be progressive, but I think it's very likely that the education will be on the liberal side, and to get your qualification you will have to (1) genuinely agree and be converted to The Right Side Of History (2) pretend to agree to pass and hide your real opinions (3) openly disagree and be failed by your professors.
(1) means changing to the Blue Tribe side so you are no longer counted as Red Tribe (so people like you can then go on to sneer about the ignorant Reds because look, all the educated people are Blues in thought and behaviour). (2) means always have to be 'just following orders' or else your career is over, which again hobbles the chance for expression of conservative values. And (3) of course means you never get to be a librarian or museum curator or anthropologist, which again enables the sneers about "see how dumb and arrogantly ignorant the Reds are?"
Oh, then you'll love the whole question of "people who want to be amputees" piggybacking off the trans movement, which in turn piggybacked off the gay rights movement. Welcome to the transableism community, and BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder).
One large reason this whole topic is a giant steaming mess is the over-reaction to "it's all personal autonomy, my body my choice, medical gatekeeping" push for absolute liberty on the part of the person seeking such radical changes. "It's not mental illness, it's my life!"
Except then that becomes the rationale for the craziness to seep in as well. If it's fine to seek radical surgery to change your body to fit with your mental model of what it should be like, why not people who feel deeply distressed by having an arm or a leg they want removed?
We need to get back to a common sense model, but unhappily nobody can agree what common sense looks like at this date. The success of having homosexuality removed as mental illness from the DSM meant that now all kinds of what can be described as 'alternate sexualities/orientations' cannot be called mental illness, and so the worst fringe cases get free rein. If we had the courage to say "no, this is insanity and not simply an unconventional lifestyle choice" we might cut the Gordian knot.
HereAndGone
2d ago
The state of children transitioners is in my not so charitable opinion a giant Munchausen by proxy from the mothers being enabled by society.
Some of them? Abso-fucking-lutely. Those mothers (and fathers, if there is a father in the mix) should be jumped on by CPS and charged with child abuse.
The problem is that there are kids with genuine problems, and parents genuinely trying to help them, and relying on medical professionals to guide them, and those professionals either being True Believers or terrified into 'if I oppose this I'll be charged with attempting conversion therapy which is illegal in this state' and going with the path of least resistance, which is to Affirm.
Some kids have mental health problems which need to be addressed. Some kids have problems with puberty (which is a confusing and often scary process) and need guidance around that. Some kids are genuinely trans, but how many and to what degree is what we are trying to figure out, as well as what is the best way to navigate that.
Unhappily it all gets thrown into the same basket, and the grifter adults take advantage of that.
I don't understand how any of those studies can be taken seriously by anyone else
Because it's not about the science (or even The Science). We've danced this dance before with Intelligent Design. It's about "we have these pre-existing conclusions on the question, now we're just digging around for 'facts' to support it and squash our opposition".
A large part of transphobia/the trans backlash/TERF or what you want to call the reactions of ordinary people is that the question has moved very quickly from "some people suffer from dysphoria and feel absolutely convinced they are born in the wrong body, should we not help them?" and the answer to that being fought over "is this a mental illness or not, meaning should we try to treat them so they stop thinking this or should we give them drugs and surgery?", which is a whole controversy on its own, to "well what is sex and gender anyway? gender roles are socially determined, gender is a binary, now sex itself is a binary, there is no such thing as 'male' or 'female', 'man' or 'woman', let's smash cisheretonormativity, you are a woman if you feel that you are a woman" which is a much wider and deeper question and does involve undermining and overthrowing long-held traditional notions of 'this is a man' and 'this is a woman' as part of the broader revolution of attitudes around sexuality.
And then you throw six year old children into the mix of that witches' brew.
One study showed that, on average, study participants reported their earliest memory of gender dysphoria between the ages of 4 and 6 years old. By the age of 7, most study participants could remember experiencing some feelings of gender dysphoria.
Or hey, Trust The Experts, if a two year old pulls the barrettes out of their hair, it is a very strong sign they are trans!
I’m director of mental health at a leading gender clinic in the US. Our clinic is a half-decade old – and in that short period the number of families coming to us with questions about their child’s gender has grown astronomically every month.
...These feelings can surface as early as the second year of life, when a girl toddler frantically pulls the fancy barrettes out of her hair or a boy toddler wraps his blanket around his head to create long, flowing hair. Or, they can show up much later. Children, like any human, are all different.
Ordinary people may be brought around to accept "adult person is now convinced he is she and wants to change their body to suit" with the approval of "here are serious and grave medical professionals who sign off on 'yes George is indeed Georgina'", but making it "here is Susie who hasn't changed one scrap of her appearance or behaviour except now she is claiming to be nonbinary 'they/them' and will fly off the handle into an absolute hysterical shrieking fit of rage if some poor passerby calls them 'she'" and "sure this may look like a guy, sound like a guy, and have raped two women violently as a guy, but now you must believe with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul that she is a real woman and should be put into a women's prison" is a step too far.
Except if you object to "yes but this is a guy, surely? isn't it dangerous to put a rapist in with women, you know?" then you are a wicked and violent transphobe who wants to ensure troubled trans kids commit suicide. Look at The Science! Trust The Science! and here those studies are pulled out to support the case.
Is it any wonder people eventually go "That makes me a transphobe? Okay, I'm a transphobe!" and the real suffering dysphoria people get thrown out with the bathwater?
We had a candidate for the Supreme Court dodging "what is a woman? well how can I possibly know, I'm not a biologist" and though I completely understand why she did it, as it was a 'gotcha' question, the fact remains: a woman can't dare to give an opinion on what is a woman. Had it been "what does it mean to be black (or Black, even)?" would she, as a black woman, have clammed up the same way? Would she be open to accusations of racism had she given an opinion on what it is to be black? See the difference there?
HereAndGone
4d ago
She seems to have tried to cross the border on an American tourist visa, got told "no you need one specifically for Canada" and was sent back, and maybe that triggered ICE as looking like "someone trying to enter US from Canada without proper paperwork".
I could then see her getting questioned about how she was supporting herself, giving an answer about working for host family/families, and then oops but you're not here on an au pair visa, you're here as a tourist, and that sets the ball rolling.
But so far we're only getting her family's side of the story, and of course they're not going to say "yeah actually she intended to overstay her visa and be there as an illegal", so who knows what the real story was? Maybe when she came as a tourist, she was also trying to scout work as a comic artist there and that's what got her in trouble also, if she was selling art or doing commissions or looking for freelance work from publishers.
Lots of things could be behind the scenes, we don't have all the information yet.
HereAndGone
4d ago
Nah. Washing dishes at the house where you're holidaying, as a guest's courtesy, is not "working".
No, it's not, which is why you don't need to extensively research before you come if "washing dishes" is tourism or working. The fact that Burke. by her own family's admission, was trying to find out the loopholes around working versus tourism makes me suspect she was working for a 'host' family and getting money in exchange, e.g. au pair or something similar. I'm guessing here, but she may have gone legitimately on a visa for au pair work back in 2023 and this time round decided she could skip all that paperwork, do some 'guest work' for a 'host family' on the side and get spending money while on her tourist visa, and if questioned then fall back on "oh I'm staying with friends/friends of friends, and I just help out round the house as a thank-you'. Except the plan didn't work out for her.
The ESTA is for tourists only. For work or study a specific visa is required. Becky did a lot of research before she went and what she had planned was classed as tourism. This was accepted when she entered the US on 7th January. It was also accepted in 2023 when she spent two weeks in San Francisco, with a host family. On the 26th February, US border officers suddenly decided staying with host families and joining in with household chores was now classed as work. Our US Immigration Lawyer said they got their definition of work wrong.
Secondly, What are these 'chores' and how is there a debate about whether it was work or not? How does ICE even know that said 'chores' even happened?
I'm going to guess she was doing au pair or nannying work. If she didn't go through an agency and wasn't approved, then that's a no-no. It could be that the host family tried to claim the wages they were paying her as expenses, or some other thing that triggered "hey this person is working on a tourist visa". Reading the family's claims, I'd bet that back in 2023 she did get in to work legally as an au pair (the host family in San Francisco) and this time round she thought she knew the ropes and could do it without going through an agency, as she wanted to work while on a tourist visa (after all, if you're just visiting as a tourist, why would you need to research about what does and doesn't count as work?):
Did she break the rules of the ESTA?
The ESTA is for tourists only. For work or study a specific visa is required. Becky did a lot of research before she went and what she had planned was classed as tourism. This was accepted when she entered the US on 7th January. It was also accepted in 2023 when she spent two weeks in San Francisco, with a host family. On the 26th February, US border officers suddenly decided staying with host families and joining in with household chores was now classed as work. Our US Immigration Lawyer said they got their definition of work wrong.
This is how most illegals from these parts end up in the USA; go on a tourist visa, find a job, deliberately over-stay and hope you won't be picked up. She was just unlucky (or dumb).
Ciara, who arrived in the U.S. before President Trump took office, said she was on a J-1 visa, which allows for educational and cultural exchange, but working illegally on the side. "There is a bit of a safety net" for Irish people in the hospitality industry, she said.
...But immigration attorneys have told CBS News that it would be naive for Irish undocumented people to believe that they may be immune to deportation.
"When Irish people come here, they come on what we call the visa waiver program, so that allows them to come to the United States without going to the consulate in Dublin, and they can come in for 90 days and stay for 90 days, and so most of them [who are undocumented] overstay," John Foley, a Boston-based immigration attorney told CBS News.
I'm surprised no-one has pointed out that if ICE are going after white European illegals, then the Trump directive can't be called racist 😁
HereAndGone
8d ago
"The Wizard of Oz was banned by public libraries in 1928 because the book was deemed ungodly for “depicting women in strong leadership roles.”"
I can't believe this is what dragged me back, but damn it, you're talking about books and this is important. After this, I will sink back into my bog and decent obscurity.
So the tl;dr here is "that's a myth".
The longer version? What I'm always banging on about: go to the primary sources! Where did you get this factoid? Apparently from a site named Canterbury Books. Okay, where did they get it? Well, there's a couple of possible sources, since this gets quoted around the place.
An aside: "The Wizard of Oz" was not banned by all public libraries in 1928 but only by the Chicago Public Library and the reason isn't readily available. The Oz books have been banned at various times, for reasons ranging from (yes) concerns about witchcraft and occultism to Communism! since Oz doesn't have money or an economic system, to "it's outdated, irrelevant to modern children, it's fantasy and they should be reading about the real world, kids today want to read about submarines and missiles". That one comes from a lady library professional in Florida in 1959 and she was tweaked about it by an article in Life:
Dr. Dorothy Dodd, state librarian, has urged all public libraries in Florida to withdraw from circulation the following books: Uncle Wiggly, Tom Swift, Tarzan, the Bobbsey Twins, the Wizard of Oz, Horatio Alger, the Campfire Girls, the Hardy Boys, and others of that ilk. Dr. Dodd says these books are “poorly written, untrue to life, sensational, foolishly sentimental and consequently unwholesome for the children in your community.”
Nothing there about Stronk Female Wammen being Leaderines. So where did this come out of? Seemingly from an essay by some lassie writing a thesis:
Do many Americans still have a problem with accepting women as leaders? I personally don’t think there’s much of an argument there, and people who see the question as redundant marvel at how long archaic attitudes about women in power have persisted. At least these days we can openly have the—often highly inflamed—conversation about sexism in business, entertainment, and government. And we can support a cultural industry thriving on strong female characters in fiction, film, and television. Not so much in 1928, when the Chicago Public Library banned The Wizard of Oz, writes Kristina Rosenthal at the University of Tulsa Department of Special Collections, “arguing that the story was ungodly for ‘depicting women in strong leadership roles.’”
Okay, so what did Ms. Rosenthal say? Well, that's hard to find because the link keeps timing out, but it looks like she might be relying on what some other guy said:
Back in March 2013, R. Wolf Baldassarro posted a blog essay about objections to the book. Baldassarro isn’t a librarian, educator, or scholar. He’s a “seasoned paranormal investigator” who happens to feel strongly about book banning.
I found several faults with that essay, including falling for a 2004 Deadbrain hoax about Jerry Falwell and misquoting sources.
Baldassarro’s essay also said about the book:
Nevertheless, it has come under attack several times. Ministers and educators challenged it for its “ungodly” influence and for depicting women in strong leadership roles. They opposed not only children reading it, but adults as well, lest it undermine longstanding gender roles.
In 1928, the city of Chicago banned it from all public libraries.
Note that the words “depicting women in strong leadership roles” were Baldassarro’s own. While ascribing that thought to “Ministers and educators,” he didn’t cite any source, person, place, or date for that complaint.
Despite (or because of) how it overstated the evidence, Baldassarro’s essay got quoted on Buzzfeed and other sites.
Then this February Kristina Rosenthal at the University of Tulsa’s McFarlane Library posted her own essay on the book’s troubles with librarians and censors, which said:
In 1928 all public libraries banned the book arguing that the story was ungodly for “depicting women in strong leadership roles”. This argument remained the common defense against the novels from ministers and educators through the 1950s and 60s.
Baldassarro’s statement about a supposed policy in Chicago thus became a statement about “all public libraries,” and his phrase “depicting women in strong leadership roles” appeared as if it were a direct quotation from those 1928 book banners. That’s shoddy scholarship.
So to sum it up: the Oz book(s) were banned at various times for various reasons, but not a blanket ban in 1928 and, so far as I can tell, not for having Strong Independent Lead Female Characters Who Don't Need No Man.
As ever, when engaging in historical discourse, GO. BACK. TO. THE. PRIMARY. SOURCES.
Now I submerge back into the mud and darkness. Glub, glub.
It sounds like nobody in the writers' room was thinking about the story as it got pulled here and there by reactions to reactions, hence all the revamping and reshooting and rewriting.
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