Snow White and the Huntsman
I think most of this movie can probably be summed up by the frantic whispered conversation I had with Nath quite early on in the film - along the lines of "She's not seriously going to tame it with her beauty. They would be so.... aaaaugh no, she's actually doing it, she's taming it with her beauty and innocence, oh Jesus this is such a trainwreck." (By the end of the film we had given up whispering and I was shouting at the screen, heedless of the crowded cinema, which is why I can't go nice places)
Like. You guys know I have thoughts about fairytales, right? And when I saw the shorts for this version of Snow White (which has always been a super troubling tale vis a vis women and power and evil and beauty and virtue) I was all, that is a lady, and she is DOING STUFF. She is running for her life and wearing extremely functional armor and riding into battle and waving a sword around. Fairytales consistently place their heroines in situations of extreme passivity, and the Snow White story more than most, due to her being all dead and on display. So a Snow White who is being active, and has agency and power and moves around in the plot rather that being moved by the plot? Excellent. Super excellent. I liked that a lot!
I also liked the love triangle! No, seriously! It was part of the plot, but it was understated and in the background and generally pretty unresolved by the end (it ends with a coronation, not a wedding!). But the Huntsman character especially served to remind the audience that people can love more than one person. He genuinely did love his wife, and losing her shattered him. But he genuinely also loved Snow. And though Snow White never actually talks about love or picks a partner, she is extremely fond of both the Huntsman and her childhood friend William... and it's not until BOTH of them have kissed her that she awakes from her enchanted sleep. There's also no overt competition between the two men; they actually get along really well and share a whole comrades-in-arms thing, along with a yes-our-queen-is-kick-awesome understanding. I'm not gonna say "unconventional time-share relationship" but you all know I'm thinking it.
So that was stuff I liked a lot! Other stuff that was excellent included the visuals: costuming, special effects, the sets and locations. Stunning, oh yes.
And then of course there was the other stuff.
Look, a thing that has always been bad about fairytales is the fucked up way they portray connections between women, power, evil, beauty and virtue. And sadly, that fucked-up dynamic is pretty intact in this film.
So the general idea goes like this: beauty and virtue are linked, always. Also, marrying a man is something good women should do, and being a queen or princess is not bad either.
BUT. Actually actively striving to attain those things - beauty, a mate, power - rather than passively waiting for them to arrive, is something only bad women do.
So, in this film, Snow White is good (to insane, messianic levels of "She is life itself!" "She is connected to the land!" "She will save us all!") not because she is strong or smart or brave. Not because she's a good politician or a wise ruler or a strong soldier. She is good, she will save the kingdom, because she is beautiful and innocent.
But the evil queen is evil because she seeks actively strives to be beautiful and powerful, and she is powerful because she is beautiful. Like, overtly - her magic powers come from her beauty, and when they wane or she gets weaker, she gets old and loses her beauty and has to do horrific things to maintain her looks. (Which leads to a quietly horrifying sequence where Snow comes across a village of peasant women whose men have all ridden off to war. They've mutilated their faces, and their daughters' faces, so the queen won't want them.)
I mean, you can tell Ravenna is evil mostly because of all the murder and treachery and stealing people's youth and strength and the way she seems to be starving the peasantry to pay for her stunning wardrobe. But the beauty/power=evil thing is seriously disturbing thread that is straight out of the original tale, and has actually been made more explicit in the film - Snow is a threat to the queen not because she's the true heir to the throne or anything, but because she is more beautiful than the queen, which makes the Queen less powerful. And Snow White, as the only one who is more beautiful than the queen, is therefore the only one more powerful, and the only one who can kill her.
"I'm everything you're not," says Snow White to the queen, right before stabbing her in the heart, and it's true. Snow is given power and adulation like it's her right, because she's beautiful and noble, where Ravenna, a common-born girl, had to fight for every inch of respect and power she got, using every tool at her disposal. Snow's childhood and is coddled and adored, secure in the love of her parents and the knowledge that she will be queen, but in flashback we see the desperately impoverished Ravenna's mother tell her that her beauty will give her power, that she must use her beauty to protect herself, and casting a spell on Ravenna before she is dragged away screaming by soldiers. Yes, all the murder is indefensible, but Ravenna is a product of a system which privileges certain characteristics in women but punishes them for using them.
Anyway. I also had thoughts about the heavy thread of classism running through the film (are they actually using a mob of unarmoured peasants as a siege weapon?) and the weird juxtaposition of Catholicism and paganism BOTH being used to prove Snow White's virtue and goodness, and the seriously shaky wisdom of putting a war-ravaged kingdom in the hands of an uneducated teenager who has spent most of her life locked in an isolated cell with no human contact regardless of how totally pretty she is, you guys, and also what the hell was up with her rousing speech to the peasantry because I couldn't pick even one of those convoluted metaphors, but.
I think that's probably enough for today.
Like. You guys know I have thoughts about fairytales, right? And when I saw the shorts for this version of Snow White (which has always been a super troubling tale vis a vis women and power and evil and beauty and virtue) I was all, that is a lady, and she is DOING STUFF. She is running for her life and wearing extremely functional armor and riding into battle and waving a sword around. Fairytales consistently place their heroines in situations of extreme passivity, and the Snow White story more than most, due to her being all dead and on display. So a Snow White who is being active, and has agency and power and moves around in the plot rather that being moved by the plot? Excellent. Super excellent. I liked that a lot!
I also liked the love triangle! No, seriously! It was part of the plot, but it was understated and in the background and generally pretty unresolved by the end (it ends with a coronation, not a wedding!). But the Huntsman character especially served to remind the audience that people can love more than one person. He genuinely did love his wife, and losing her shattered him. But he genuinely also loved Snow. And though Snow White never actually talks about love or picks a partner, she is extremely fond of both the Huntsman and her childhood friend William... and it's not until BOTH of them have kissed her that she awakes from her enchanted sleep. There's also no overt competition between the two men; they actually get along really well and share a whole comrades-in-arms thing, along with a yes-our-queen-is-kick-awesome understanding. I'm not gonna say "unconventional time-share relationship" but you all know I'm thinking it.
So that was stuff I liked a lot! Other stuff that was excellent included the visuals: costuming, special effects, the sets and locations. Stunning, oh yes.
And then of course there was the other stuff.
Look, a thing that has always been bad about fairytales is the fucked up way they portray connections between women, power, evil, beauty and virtue. And sadly, that fucked-up dynamic is pretty intact in this film.
So the general idea goes like this: beauty and virtue are linked, always. Also, marrying a man is something good women should do, and being a queen or princess is not bad either.
BUT. Actually actively striving to attain those things - beauty, a mate, power - rather than passively waiting for them to arrive, is something only bad women do.
So, in this film, Snow White is good (to insane, messianic levels of "She is life itself!" "She is connected to the land!" "She will save us all!") not because she is strong or smart or brave. Not because she's a good politician or a wise ruler or a strong soldier. She is good, she will save the kingdom, because she is beautiful and innocent.
But the evil queen is evil because she seeks actively strives to be beautiful and powerful, and she is powerful because she is beautiful. Like, overtly - her magic powers come from her beauty, and when they wane or she gets weaker, she gets old and loses her beauty and has to do horrific things to maintain her looks. (Which leads to a quietly horrifying sequence where Snow comes across a village of peasant women whose men have all ridden off to war. They've mutilated their faces, and their daughters' faces, so the queen won't want them.)
I mean, you can tell Ravenna is evil mostly because of all the murder and treachery and stealing people's youth and strength and the way she seems to be starving the peasantry to pay for her stunning wardrobe. But the beauty/power=evil thing is seriously disturbing thread that is straight out of the original tale, and has actually been made more explicit in the film - Snow is a threat to the queen not because she's the true heir to the throne or anything, but because she is more beautiful than the queen, which makes the Queen less powerful. And Snow White, as the only one who is more beautiful than the queen, is therefore the only one more powerful, and the only one who can kill her.
"I'm everything you're not," says Snow White to the queen, right before stabbing her in the heart, and it's true. Snow is given power and adulation like it's her right, because she's beautiful and noble, where Ravenna, a common-born girl, had to fight for every inch of respect and power she got, using every tool at her disposal. Snow's childhood and is coddled and adored, secure in the love of her parents and the knowledge that she will be queen, but in flashback we see the desperately impoverished Ravenna's mother tell her that her beauty will give her power, that she must use her beauty to protect herself, and casting a spell on Ravenna before she is dragged away screaming by soldiers. Yes, all the murder is indefensible, but Ravenna is a product of a system which privileges certain characteristics in women but punishes them for using them.
Anyway. I also had thoughts about the heavy thread of classism running through the film (are they actually using a mob of unarmoured peasants as a siege weapon?) and the weird juxtaposition of Catholicism and paganism BOTH being used to prove Snow White's virtue and goodness, and the seriously shaky wisdom of putting a war-ravaged kingdom in the hands of an uneducated teenager who has spent most of her life locked in an isolated cell with no human contact regardless of how totally pretty she is, you guys, and also what the hell was up with her rousing speech to the peasantry because I couldn't pick even one of those convoluted metaphors, but.
I think that's probably enough for today.