The Bechdel Cast - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Jack O'Brien

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

Jamie and Caitlin invite guest Jack O'Brien to talk about Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but only because he agreed to cook and clean for them.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @jack_obrien on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @hamburgerphone  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hello, and welcome to the Bechdelcast. 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. Gee whiz. Wow. That's why we have to do this podcast. Good lord. To shame all these

freaking idiots in Hollywood. It's weird because everyone who's in my inbox and DMs are constantly so nice and respectful that I forget that people actually hate women and want them to die. Right. You know, true. It is easy to forget. I'm often highly respected in this community. A hot break. I sometimes forget that people generally don't respect women.

Well, anyway, so this is the bechdel cast we talk about movies and how they portray women we use the bechdel test just sort of as like a measuring stick a yard stick we don't only talk about whether or not a movie passes the bechdel test it's so much more that'd be funny if it was though for just for it's just called... For an hour? No, if it's just like, this was called Snow White, and then we'd be like, no! And then that's the end of the episode. Could just be a list. So the Bechdel test, by our standard, 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 lines. 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 guest yes i'm so excited first and foremost he is the head of comedy at the how stuff works podcast network and the co-host of the daily zeitgeist podcast on that network jack o'brien hey guys hi thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Certainly. This is exciting. I'm a big fan.

Oh, gee whiz. We're Zeitgeist heads. So, Jack and I both won Golden Globes last night. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah, I know you were saying you're highly respected, but do you have a Golden Globe? I certainly don't. Okay.

Well, I have two. For Santa University? For Santa University. We won Best Drama and Best Comedy or Musical. Amazing. Yeah. It was a real barn burner of a night. Us and Gary Oldman, both 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 it was. Recently. It does. Santa University does pass the Bechdel test. Oh, good.

There's a whole scene. There's a whole scene where the two characters just say, and university does pass the bechdel test oh good there's a whole scene there's a whole scene where the two characters just say and now we pass the bechdel that's good incredible useful so jack you have brought us snow white and the seven dwarfs i have why 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 there are just some really weird things feel like it's a very influential film in terms of creating the archetype of disney princess and there are just some really weird things that happen in this movie that so many weird yeah repeatedly and you know i also like really like disney's artwork and stuff and i 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, but somehow also extremely annoying and completely nonsensical. There are parts that still get me, though. There are some fun parts.

Well, when did you first see this film? It's one of those movies I don't remember seeing, but it must have been like before I was properly storing memories. So like two, three. Yeah, thereabouts. Same. Grew up with this movie. I've seen it probably a dozen times from ages 5 to 12 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 is like the prince is just a guy in sweatpants he's wearing those biker biker pants that just like tight tight pants he fucking hops a wall and his first words are did I scare you? And you're just

like, ah! The prime of manhood. Yeah, so I think that that explains every choice I've ever made. Well, that's, I mean, Jack, you were saying how influential it was and the three of us grew up with this movie, you know, saw it a ton as children

and it shaped our worldview to some degree subconscious yeah yeah and made us think that like oh this is how romance should be this is what we should strive for either as a man likening 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 while she's asleep. They have to incapacitate her

for her not to fuck things up. And she's still not the least active Disney princess because there is the one that only sleeps. Well, Disney clearly had a, like, I don't know, Cosby-ish thing. Because he 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 one of his next movies was Sleeping Beauty, all about people.

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 like the disney renaissance yeah exactly yeah so there's like the the cinderella and the in the sleeping beauties and the some of the older ones from like the 50s 60s 70s 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 a thing that they do such as bell who can read and there's that what a weirdo i that whole town is like burn her she's a witch because she likes

books there's a whole song where they're like man man, even though she can read, I'd still have sex with her. That's a whole song. That's crazy. I also, the last time, okay, and then we'll get into Snow White. But the last time I saw Beauty and the Beast, you know, there's like that mob at the end that they're going for the beast. Right.

The mob literally says, we fear what we don't understand. They're like the most self-aware mob of all time. That's like a line in their song. It's like, well then, hold on. Maybe stop for a second and educate yourself on the thing that you don't understand. It seems like you know. If you ever find yourself saying,

we fear what we don't understand, just take a second. Okay, to get to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 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 it? We don't know. And then they just... Disney doesn't care about plot. At least not in this movie. So speaking of plot,

I'll go over it in my Caitlin's Famous Recap on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Do we meet the queen first? Yes. The first word in the movie is slave. Not good. You're like, okay, we're off to a really bad start. 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 the mirror is a queer icon. So 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? Right.

And every day he's like, yes. Does he say every day yes? Until one day the mirror's like, actually, your stepdaughter, Snow White, is the fairest of them all. And the evil queen's 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 by how pretty you are. That's what rules the land is just prettiness. And she's like, well, now somebody's prettier.

Got to take them down. Yeah. The rules of this kingdom, it's very confusing because the queen dies and Snow White dies. 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. Just 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's skin is coveted so much to the point where her name is Snow White. It's so... And it's just fucking weird.

It's just weird that a classic movie starts with like, she's anyone whiter than me. So weird. So she basically commissions a huntsman to go out and murder Snow White. OK. 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. You're so pretty when you're scared. The Huntsman's creepy. The Huntsman is ugly. They make him ugly almost like on purpose, I would assume. He's got bangs. Why does he have bangs?

Anyway, so he goes to kill Snow White 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. Yes. And she goes up to the door and she knocks on it. No one answers. And she's like, oh, I guess no one's home.

Probably find a trespass. Better just go in. Yeah. In her defense, she's hot. Right. Exactly. 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 going to be my servant and you're just going to clean and I'm going to dress you in rags and you're not going to be a princess really at all. Right. Also, Snow White, 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 dwarves, 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 yes absolutely clearly 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 seals the deal by saying yeah i'll cook you some gooseberry pies and they're like great you're in hell cook and clean, her two superpowers. Other than being pretty well-suited.

Right. The doors are also like, ooh, she's hot. Yeah. Oh, yeah, they really like her. They're literally about to pickaxe her to death. They have their pickaxes raised in the air over her sleeping form, and then she rolls over, and they're like, whoa, she's pretty. Better let her be our mommy.

So weird. I also would like to start a petition to rename the dwarf named Bashful Horny because that's what he is every single time. He's not shy. He's just horny. That's his thing. But they're all pretty horny.

They're all horny. Adope especially is also extremely horny. They're all horny. But Dopey especially is also extremely horny. Dopey is chaotic evil. He's straight up a scary character. Because there's that part where you're like, what are they going for with Dopey? And then they're like, Snow White's like, can Dopey talk? And one of them is like, we don't know. He's never tried.

And Dopey's just like, oh, cool. We got mediocrity firing on all cylinders here. He's never tried? There's so many lines. Like, why? Completely hairless. Like, he looks very unhealthy. Like somebody who has like a drug.

Do you guys know the band The Pogues? Yeah. Like an Irish rock band. 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 dopey. 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 who's a child. I don't know. No, he's also very old, but very smooth. And when the music scene started, I forgot who 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. Grumpy is also a libertarian. Grumpy is not a feminist icon. Grumpy wants us to all own plows. He's weird. So those are two of the dwarves. The other ones are Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy. That's it. And they're all horny. Wait, did I get them all? Bashful? Yeah. Oh, I accidentally wrote

Soapy? What did I mean? Dopey. Okay. I just wrote an S. But at one point, Dopey does swallow a bar of soap and becomes soapy. Pretty soapy. Yes. I was not an S. But at one point, Dopey does swallow a bar of soap. And he becomes pretty soapy. I was not wrong. There's a seven-minute scene where they're just washing their hands. This movie is stupid. It's so stupid. I loved this movie as a kid, but now I hate it so much. 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, oh, 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 1937. It was 1937. Who 1937 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 nutso. Where they work in a mine, they seem to have a lot of money. Yeah, they're gathering 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 to then turn into capital. Well, as they state in the song, they don't know why they have that job. Right.

They don't know what they're that job right they don't know what they're doing but they're all fucking each other right oh right definitely yeah in those little baby beds yeah it's a fuck house why are they all pushed together like why would why would all the beds yeah 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 it. Sorry. Nothing happens. 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 White because she finds out that the huntsman did not, in fact, murder her like she thought.

She used mummy dust. Did you see that? Yeah. Mummy dust. 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.

Yeah. So feminist icon. Yeah, feminist icon, the queen, because she has both a murder dungeon and a science lab. She chooses to go and like secretly slip this poisoned apple to Snow White. She chooses the unassuming disguise of like a wild-eyed witch. Yeah, like a crazy

old hag. Take my fruit from me. Yeah, so she like uses magic to poison this apple that's going to induce the sleeping death, which is this curse that won't kill her, but will make it look like she's dead. So she's just hoping the little.

Oh, that's why her body doesn't rot. Right. Yeah. Got it. So she's not actually dead. But as far as the dwarfs know, 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'll make all your dreams come true. So Snow White's like, yeah, I wish for my Prince Charming to come and carry me away into his castle. And then she takes a bite of 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 most active characters in the entire story.

Yes, for sure. They go and basically tell the dwarves 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 is made abundantly clear by a shot of two vultures.

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 gruesome, horrifying deaths. But almost always by falling off a cliff. Because you can't show in a Disney movie a grisly

murder, so they have to fall. Ooh, how many? Gaston falls off a cliff. Mufasa falls off a cliff yes uh-huh doesn't a character in hunchback of frollo falls off a cliff well not a cliff off he falls off a church into a fiery pit to be fair he also sings a whole song about wanting to rape and murder the female protagonist of the movie that That movie is dark. I've only seen it once years ago. I don't remember it. It's very good, but it 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 prince, who has nothing to do, wanders. Is he 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 kiss her and then it breaks the because that was the one antidote to this curse is like true love's first kiss or whatever. Right. Guy in sweatpants. Guy in sweatpants. Makes out

with your corpse. Congrats baby. You're alive. Your royalty. There's something weird about the year that they just kind of yada yada passed where the dwarfs have her dead body just laying in a glass coffin and they're just staring at her. Yeah. Yeah. Is that all they did?

Just stared at her? They quit their mining job and just, yeah, kneeled 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 remove the glass for her. Did they open the coffin for him? They must because at one point there's a glass top to the coffin and then a dude rides up on a horse singing this crappy song

and they're like, okay, have at her. Like five bucks. That's literally like the prince I feel like is on the verge of like doing a little shaka and pulling out a vape pen for like every time he's out he's just like, hey, what's up?

He just pops up out of nowhere. Where's his kingdom? He's not busy. No. Is he Jesus? Because at the end they're like walking off and then like there's like a big castle in the sky like they're right 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 whoa i can't believe you just went back on your own Titanic logic.

No, I misspoke. She absolutely does. She is just dreaming. She dies. And she has a dream about Titanic. She passes away. No. Sad.

Yeah, and also it's made clear, or I thought it was made clear, 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 1937 this was probably true. Marriage is a prison and you will not see anyone ever again. You will not be allowed outside. He picks her up out of the coffin and just throws her on his horse like some thing he just bought. Well, her muscles have probably atrophied.

She's been dead for a year. She cannot walk. She's covered in her own filth. Snow White has less than no interest in what happened to her. She has no interest. She's not like, wait a second, what happened to her. She has no idea. No, 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 he was there. And then instantly he was there. So her wish came true. That's so fucked up.

That witch is like her hero. Also, Snow White, in theory, shouldn't she care who's in charge of the kingdom? Because she starts royal in this movie and of the kingdom she was the prince because like she starts royal in this movie and gets royal-er by the end but like she's in theory supposed to care right like but it right who's in charge there is some power structure there because

at one point she says her name and all the dwarves are like the princess like yeah they know they know she's famous so there must be like some sort of role besides just laying down and being kissed for her to fulfill but of course we do not see that in the movie no we only see her cooking and cleaning maybe the maybe the mirror is in charge he's like previously my job was saying who's hot and who's not. But now, I am your 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 right off the bat. No, a little bit. Just a smidge of woman-on-woman hatred. Just a bit. Meow.

Am I right, guys? Jamie, actually, you probably don't know this, but I have tried to have you killed. Oh, no. Because you're hotter than me. Because your mirror is talking to you again? Yeah. Because you did tell me to make some calls if that started happening. Yeah, I should go to my therapist and get this checked out.

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 right 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 in sweatpants and then frightens her.

And he's like, oh, did I scare you? And then she runs into a castle. But then they 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 and again in 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-o. 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 wearing a dress. Because while she's hiding she like

straightening out her dress and stuff. Or maybe she's feeling herself. She's so horny that this guy just launched himself over a wall and was like are you scared? Yeah. Regardless the message is that guys, girls want you to scale their wall, jump in, scare them.

Yeah, violate their space. And when they run away, they're probably already in love with you. That means... And then go to them while they're asleep and just pick them up and take them with you. That's how you woo a lady. Also, his song sucks, dude. His song is so stupid. You're like, one song.

And it's got one song. That's exactly what it sounds like. Everyone in this movie, it sounds like they're in a high school production. It's not good. Oh, it's very annoying to listen to. Snow White is soprano-ing out this whole movie. Her voice is, she sounds like Betty Boop. I totally forgot how high-pitched and cartoonishly squeaky. Kind of Mickey Mouse-y, too.

Yeah. Hi! Hi! Hi! That's her singing. Shitty men all the time will use the excuse of a woman having a shrill voice as a reason not to listen to her or 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 to listen to that or 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 to listen to that all the blood vessels in my brain did burst while I was watching this movie. A lot of the early Disney princesses had those operatic voices, and then you hit Cinderella, and then it's like, all of a sudden, Cinderella has a husky little fuck voice.

It's like, oh no. Snow White, oh jeez. It's like, hello. Snow White, oh, jeez. It's bad. Not to detract from the cause, but she is hard to listen to. She is. A bit. 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's working because she's falling in love with him, even though they don't talk. They don't exchange any words except for just like being like, I'm looking for my prince charming. And he's like, one day I'll find a beautiful princess.

But like, I don't know, they're not getting 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 in she's like yeah i am in love with this one guy it's like wait really all that scene does is establish her as like just like this very delicate timid little girl and we're supposed to be rooting for her little girl yeah she is yeah girl. Yeah, she is. Yeah, I mean, isn't that like, that's why she becomes the fairest in the land

because she like 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 last night and now you are ugly. Lay ball. Open season on Snow White. I had forgotten that Snow White is like

land aquaman. She can just like control all the animals of the forest. Uh-huh. Yeah. 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 only wants to do boring stuff with it. Right. Yeah, like clean a house.

And cook. Right. 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 to this old witch let me eat this apple uh snow white does tell a bird to smile so she's not a feminist she's like hey sad bird you look prettier when you smile 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 off her ass 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 forest. But then it appears to be the next day.

Was she just thrashing around the forest all damn night? And then it turns out nothing was scary the whole time. And then she's like, hey, birds should smile. Yeah, I mean, she has a near-death experience. There's 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 me just play dead, actually. There is a third option. Hey, it's foreshadowing of what happens later. Right. But it is almost like she has the opposite of agency as a character. Totally.

When she is incapacitated, good things happen to her. But any time she acts proactively in the story, she's just fucking herself up. Yeah, she runs into the forest and runs around until she passes out. She'd run into a pile of heroin. What is she? It's so weird.

Her hallucinations? Yeah. Yeah. And what would actually happen if you passed out in a forest for a night is 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 are just like, oh, you're too pretty. Even the animals think she's too hot to eat. Right. And then also Snow White, when she comes to in the forest after her wild night,

she comes and she immediately apologizes to the animals. Yeah. She's like, sorry, I made such a fuss. She's like, i'm ashamed of the mess i've made i was like what are you talking and they're like don't worry about it but that was pretty embarrassing 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 do that he says run that way yeah she's like ah like it runs into a bunch of trees. Why would you listen to the person who was about to kill you? Like, hey, you know what you should do. Like, right. Right. So she does that. And then she, the next choice she makes is 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 figure this out. She literally is dragged there. But yeah, the animals are just like, here, here's a house. Sleep here. And then she just goes in. And then the next thing she does. Bad decision, by the way. here's a house. Sleep here. And then she just goes in. And then the next thing she does.

Bad decision, by the way. Just find a house in the woods. Just walk, break in and be like, I'm going to pass out in their beds and like assume they'll be cool with it. Like getting pickaxe to death is what you would expect. Yeah. Yeah. And it almost happens. But she's too hot.

She's too hot. You're just too hot. that. She's too hot. You're just too hot. Thank God she's so hot. 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 know if that's a choice. That's more of just a reaction. Right. Right. I believe she did something.

She did something. I'm just giving her credit for doing something. She doesn't run away and hide her disgusting self from the love of her life because she's not like made up and pretty yeah oh god embarrassing yeah 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 right 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 let's go get that 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 oh it's very frustrating 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 just totally demonizes a woman doing anything it's like well if she's doing something it's probably gonna be fucked up and evil like yeah 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 yeah 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 this is, you know, this is decades ago.

It's 1937 that this movie comes out. It's a whole generations ago of an era like, you know, it's no Moana. Things have changed a lot since then. But young kids were consuming this 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, other source material.

Let's make a 10 minute long story that's bad to women, an 80 minute long story that's bad to women. 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 women 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 intro it was all just to simplify it right in the fairy tale i wonder if the dwarves knew we find out they've never taken a bath before yeah and then there's a 10 minute sequence of them

washing themselves it's hardly in the movie it's mostly the dwarves doing shit. 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 yeah they also we see them walking over a body of water on their way back from work but snow is like hey you have to wash your face or i'm not gonna give you soup and and they're like okay it seems reasonable and and then one of them's like, hey, you have to wash your face or I'm not going to give you soup. And they're like, OK, seems reasonable. And then one of them's like, what is this?

And then they learn how to wash their face. And Grumpy's a 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? 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. Oh, and then to your point about she and the queen look like actual female forms, not necessarily super realistic, although 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 like better she looks like a mature female form whereas the dwarfs all look like i mean well that's a whole other thing where it's 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 just speaking from 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 first Ghostbusters, if they're male, they look different and you got a Slimer in there. 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 Jack O'Brien. Yeah, and I think this movie's important in the precedent it set. 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 or people like them better when they're asleep.

So it's like seen, not heard, clean, cook, and don't make any rash decisions. Yeah, it's like it's only possible to fall in love with a woman when it's literally physically impossible to get to know her. Right. Exactly. Physically impossible for her to resist right like because she's unconscious well 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 tell us a story please even though they're 70 and need to relax they're like we're babies so creepy but she's like okay i'll tell you a story and she describes

the prince somehow without using the word sweatpants which is crazy 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 interjects and is like did he steal a a kiss? I was like, oh, man, come on. And she's like, no, but I'm with you.

And then she screams at them. Or that's how Snow White sings. She's just like, ah! Everyone's like, oh, that was so pretty. Sleep in our beds, please. Please sleep in our beds. I want to talk more about the um 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 washed some dishes earlier today. Please stop bragging.

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 setup 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 pies for these

geriatric little creeps that she takes care of. And has only known for, I think, a day? A day! Why are they mourning her for a year? Because she's hot. Because she's so hot. She's so hot. We only knew her for a day, but goddammit 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 there. And she's safe again. And then, like, is put in a coma. But then the prince, like, picks her up to take her off to presumably.

Literally carries her. She cannot even walk her own legs right and well then the queen what i've a 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 tempts snow white not i i just remembered snow white 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's a wishing apple. What do you want? And she's like, well, there's this guy. And she goes on for like a while. Which is like, shut up.

Just eat it. Yeah, it's like, we're actually ready for you to be dead. But she's like talking about like, oh, there's this guy in sweatpants that came to my house once. And I just, if he doesn't raw 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 at 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 whoa sorry everybody 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 he did a lot of

damage sure i mean i would say of the fairy tales that center 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 sewing clothes 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 right 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 also has not written new material. Pretty embarrassing. Singing the same stupid song. I have one song. Singing his song, I have one song. So he's staying on brand at least.

He has one song and he just keeps singing it. His brand is very strong. But it's like the prince heard that if he stumbled into the woods, he might find a corpse to marry. Like, okay. Right. Okay. And then he, for whatever reason, makes the choice to kiss that corpse. How did the prince hear? Were the dwarves like, hey, we've got a corpse in the woods.

Right. If you, maybe if you maybe if you make it sound like word what 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 died right so yeah there would be no reason for anyone to think that by kissing her she would come back to life right 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. She's like, oh, good. Very good. I got what I wanted.

According to the story that he kissed her unconscious body. It's literally like an SVU episode. It's like so weird it's just sends 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 at 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 Framed Roger Rabbit, dozens and dozens of other movies. What's even crazier is when this happens in a movie where the protagonist is a woman and it still happens. 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 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 and 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 Snow White, it happens in Sleeping Beauty, it happens in the first Twilight movie, where the female character's like, actually, 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 Goldie Hawn movie? Oh, does that happen? 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 movie recently.

Well, be on the lookout. Yeah, they're rebooting it. We'll probably do an episode about it. Are they really? Yeah. Wow. Comes out in April or something. He just kidnaps a passed out woman and convinces her.

And convinces her that she has amnesia and that she is his wife. That is the story of Overbored. Great, great, great, great, great. Oh, I'm so ashamed of the mess I've made. Oh, we haven't talked about Grumpy. Oh. Fully a libertarian. But also says a few different points.

And you can tell that this, you know, in 1937 is getting big old yucks in the audience of like, women, you can't trust them. You can't like, what do they say? Oh, he says, all females is poison. Yeah, all females are poison. They full of wick and wiles. He's basically 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 them.

And makes a point to remind everyone 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 is like, I hope she's all right. And that's supposed to like melt your heart and be like, oh. Right. Oh, this man who's full of toxic masculinity actually does care.

And we're supposed to, he's redeemed. And we're supposed to like him now. Well, that's the whole grade school myth of if someone treats you like shit, it probably means they love you. Because she immediately is like, I hope Grumpy likes me. And then like, Bateson McC, I hope Grumpy likes me. And then like Bateson McCaigley just says Grumpy on it. Yeah, she makes a pot. Oh, yeah.

Trying to win him over. But the bird somehow knows English and knows how to spell. He knows. And the bird writes Grumpy on the pie. Unsanitary. Animals are stepping on the food. Do you think they did that because they didn't want to show a woman knowing how to write? Don't get us wrong.

Snow White cannot read. She's illiterate. She reads the beds. The bird is fine for the... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Guys, I'm sorry if this makes her less hot to you, but she can read. Gross. But that bird wants to see her

and Grumpy get back together. It's shipping them. That bird is shipping. I don't care for the dwarf smooching. Why is there a five minute scene where he kisses all the dwarfs before they go to work? And Dopey keeps trying to trick her into kissing him again. That's why he's so horny on the face. And she keeps being like, you're so adorable the way you keep trying to trick me into kissing you. 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 that.

She'll eat 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 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 right 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 35 year old woman in your fucking movie who has lived a little bit and seen the world and isn't such a naive piece of shit. Anyway, so she's young, but she's also very meek and gentle and docile and delicate and borderline can't do anything except domestic chores.

Yeah, she's crippled by how unable she is to do anything except take care of men. Yeah. She just does a lot of, oh, oh. She's shocked by everything. There are a couple times when I heard her say something and I was like, that's how a cartoon of a dumb character would say that now.

It's like somehow we got from that being like, here's your hero to this is how. I think when she says, maybe if I clean up, they'll let me stay. I was like, that sounded like we were supposed to think she's an idiot. The way she said that. And again, this is, you know, 1930s audiences are watching this. 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, because this movie was 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 they didn't like the story. Even though it's like you see it because it's the really long cartoon uh but there must have been something that really worked for everybody right because i mean this is a more iconic movie than a lot of other earlier disney movies right so the fact that people are have watched it for decades is upsetting because of how poorly it treats women and presents them in their story. 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 gets tricked into taking a bite of the apple.

But the funniest part of the scene is when the old scary hag who startles Snow White and she's like, ah, ah! Because she does, she's like, hi! Eat my food! Right. And she's being trailed by those two vultures the whole time, which should be seen as a bad sign.

Yeah, that is an omen for sure. Things that look for dead stuff are following her, rubbing their hands together. And the first thing that the old witch says to Snow White is, are you all alone, my pet?

If anyone calls you my pet, do not eat their apples. And also leads with, are you alone? And she's like, uh-huh. And she's like, are you sure? And she's like, well, there are some guys that live here, but no, I'm by myself. But they're far, far away. 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 active comment on the fact that women are sort of conditioned to be polite. I wrote that down, too. I thought that, too. Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone who is making this movie was thinking this at all. But it is no question that women are conditioned to sort of cater 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 toward you. Such as, do you remember earlier in the movie when that guy in sweatpants scaled a wall? And also scared Snow White. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just thinking of female characters and how 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, 10 years for another podcast.

That was our most recent episode. Oh, really? Oh, wow. And, like, Uma Thurman's character is, like, awesome and she's, it's a great performance, but her main action is to, like, poison herself. Accidentally overdose on the heroin. So she's, like, unconscious.

And then, like, Bruce Willis' girlfriend is this dizzy kind of foreign person who fucks something up. 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 2, his girlfriend

is knocked out the whole thing. Again, it's just like let's just knock her out and not deal with it. Yeah, they're like, we can't use her in this story. Let's just make her unconscious for most of it. 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 literature. But, I mean, certainly movie, like, we have this podcast because of how influential developed female characters has been a thing throughout all of literature but i mean certainly movie like we have this podcast because of how influential movies are and media is to our culture and society and how they it really like shapes the way other media is and it's like well we saw this story and that worked so let's do a similar thing for sure sure. And that's why these tropes exist and keep being perpetuated. Especially movies like this

where it's 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. Totally.

Well, you know, if a woman's doing something, she's bad. Right. 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 an attractive person, you are a good person. And then if you're evil,

you'll usually either eventually turn into a crone or be one from the start. This is a very big theme in The Wizard of Oz as well. Yeah. The whole universe is just like how you look on the outside is exactly reflective of your personal worth. And also how everyone around you treats you.

Because Snow White would be dead in the first 10 minutes if she were not hot. Yeah, if that huntsman was like, oh, she's ugly. So it's fine for me to kill her. 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, 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 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 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. Or in Snow White's case, only damseled. Yeah. And nothing else happens. And like I mentioned before, we've seen a shift, but it's only been very recently with movies like Moana, 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. Right. 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. Elsa was supposed to be

the evil ice princess and then they wrote that song Let It Go and they were like well this is too good to not use. So they rewrote the movie around that song and made them friends. When you look at the trailers for Frozen when it first came out wrote the movie around that song really like made them friends i didn't know that 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 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 moana at least a few of the trailers i saw were basically framing maui as the hero of the movie rather than moana. 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. Everything is going very well. Everything's going great. Have you guys talked about why Gary Oldman is problematic on the show? No, not yet. But we'll link it in the description. Gary Oldman, surprise, is, yeah, he abused his wife. Beat his wife. Oh, how about that poor pig that the huntsman did kill and steal the heart of? Feminist icon.

That pig. The pig? Yeah. Never trust a man in sweatpants. That's perhaps the most harmful lesson of all. The prince for sure, he plays the bass. He sucks. He's a disaster. His neighbors hate him.

Disney had to redo that character the most times because he kept being like, he's too fruity. He walks like a fruit. Oh, really? Wow. I mean, Disney was also very racist and anti-Semitic, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, his anti-Semitism is one of the big old talking points.

Well, what an imagination, I guess. Am I right? You know how he had to drag his protagonist around as if she were dead and then actually kill her that scene where snow white spends 45 minutes kissing all the dwarfs before they go off to work so long 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, in terms of plot,

this movie is 15 minutes long. Totally. There's so many large swaths of time where it's like, oh, thank God we get to see a chipmunk wash a dish. It's so long. Surprisingly little.

Like, this movie moves quickly. Like, it's only 90, or below 90 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 uh we're really mean to him usually and uh and he got bored after a while

like yeah he was just like this sucks like walked away at first he thought the doors were funny and then he was just like fuck it yeah that's the right i mean not wrong all right um let's talk about whether or not the movie passes the bechdel test so i think it does i know so I... Just proof that it is, you know, every metric is flawed. So there's only one scene in which it has the potential to pass. Right. Which is when the queen dressed as the old woman... She refers to herself later as Granny, which another major red flag.

But a lady named Granny shows up. Hey, pet. It's me, Granny. It's me, Granny. You alone? They're little men. They're not here. So she shows up because she knows where they live.

I guess the mirror. Don't mind my vultures. She literally says, making pies. You do a good impression. And then Snow White says, yeah, gooseberry pie.berry 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 wild so it just has to be one exchange i mean according to our bar for it maybe we'll have to do a hot 2018 revision because there's no way this movie should pass. No. They just add a thing that says like if it's about pies and baking pies, it doesn't pass.

Right. Well, if it's about domestic tax, that's true. A lot of the movies that we talk about that do pass the Bechdel test are often talking about either food or clothes, which also not great. There's several movies we've done where it's like the pass happens at a store where she's taught. Right. Like, why can't they talk about science well it's like well if we if we revised our version to not include domestic or like whatever you know yeah let's explore that more all right so yes the movie does pass the bechdel test for like two seconds and it's about pie Let's rate the movie on a 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. Sling her over a horse. But right. Trot into the sky. 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 Bechtelcast lens might be my least favorite movie of all time. I hate it so much now. And it is garbage. The end. I'm going to 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 that seemed to die reaching for water and then she just left it there to rot right she makes fun of the skeleton she's like thirsty and like kicks the water can and then gets into a canoe and rose 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 i do like i even after watching it this time i do still have a weird subconscious attachment to it so it i recognize that it deserves zero nipples, but I'm going to give it a half a nipple.

And I'm going to say it's because of the murder dungeon because I did not remember that. Loved that she mocked a skeleton. I like to think that that was the king. And that's how he died. And there's Steve. Just kidding. 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. Right. 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 Cinderella. Yes. I'll give it half a nipple for the murder dungeon and I'll 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. I mean, that's kind of why I chose it because it's so horrible and it creates the archetype of the Disney princess as passive. I wanted to say that 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. Do we know for sure the father is out of the picture? We never see him on screen. 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. The world building in this movie is not very good because we know almost nothing. 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 are prettier than her and that's how she became the prettiest.

And the only reason she hadn't done it to Snow White was because her father was there to be like, please don't kill my daughter. Now she's like trying to do it on the low. Like take her out into the woods. Good fan theory. Yeah. That's a hot woman's skeleton.

Not so sexy now. Kick. But yeah, zero nipples. Man, well this was a harmful piece of media. I mean, I'm sure people would say, well, it was the time. It was the 1930s. Hey, keep on rebooting it, though. See if it resonates.

Sure. Yeah, I've not seen any of the Snow White and the Huntsman adaptation or the Mirror Mirror starring Julia Roberts. I haven't seen any of those. I'm sure there's a moment in all of those movies where Snow White does one thing and then like basically looks to camera and is like, see? Yeah. I fucking hate that.

Oh, 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 joining us. Thank you for having us. This was a lot of fun.

Yay. Where can people follow you online? Do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. And yeah, search Daily Zeitgeist. 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 medias at Bechtel cast. And also, if you live in the Los Angeles area, we have a live show coming up at Nerd Melt showroom, February 12th, 830. We will be doing for the month of Feb, the month of love. We're going to be doing The Notebook with Caitlin Gill. Yes.

I'm so excited. I haven't seen The Notebook with Caitlin 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, Bechtelcast.com, for ticket information. Also, hey, our Patreon.

Don't forget about that. Oh, yeah. It's only $5 a month and you get two bonus episodes every month. This month we did both Ghostbusters movies. Wow. Remember about Ghostbusters? Give us $5. Yeah. Indeed.

Someday my second master's degree will come. Listen to one song. It's crazy. Okay, bye. Okay, bye. song it's crazy okay bye Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one woman wikileaks she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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