What the Critics Got Wrong on Snow White

I think I have a critic’s eye for what works and what doesn’t in a musical. I tend to be highly attuned to problematic messages that might miss showing up on the general public’s radar. So, I’m frankly floored by the dismissive public response to Snow White. I absolutely loved it; despite some plot holes, a one-dimensional villain, and some interesting choices with regards to Snow White’s aesthetic. The fact that my Youtube feed is flooded with negative reviews says less, I think, about the quality of the show than it does about the political moment we’re living in. Which is one more reason that I think we need a Summit Stages approach to musicals; one that’s looking for ways to build the Beloved Community together instead of for reasons to mistrust each other. 

Musically, the movie gets off to a fabulous start. The opening number, “Good Things Grow” paints a world that looks a lot like the Beloved Community. Snow White’s parents, the king and queen, see themselves as servant leaders; their daughter learns from their modeling that the people of the kingdom as their equals in worth, and they make, with their own hands, good things to share with their neighbors. Snow White doesn’t fully understand the dreams they have for her, but she basks in the warmth of their love and her father’s assurance that she can be fearless, fair, brave and true. 

Then everything falls apart. First the queen, then the king die, and Snow White grows up in the rigid control of a megalomaniac stepmother. But she is a child, accustomed to kindness, and unwilling to believe what her instincts tell her about the outwardly beautiful queen. The people of the kingdom sink into poverty while their ruler rolls in luxury. Snow White is forbidden to leave the palace. And she learns to walk small while trying to convince herself that the queen would do better if she actually understood the plight of her people. 

The I Want song comes after Snow White meets Jonathan, a bandit who challenges her to do something to help her people. It’s a masterpiece that conveys the anguish of being torn between an inner call to make a difference and years of careful training to walk small, to keep your head down, to cut yourself down to size. You’re longing for permission to arise. But you know you’re never going to get that permission and you just keep waiting for a miracle to find and free you. It’s resonant and powerfully stirring. And the stark self-honesty of the song winds up being the miracle that Snow White has been waiting for. By the time she’s finished singing, she’s found the courage to raise her voice and speak to her stepmother about mercy. It seems like a tiny step, but it changes everything. 

The chief precaution that the wicked queen took to ensure Snow White could never rival her was not dressing her in rags or chopping her hair to a most unflattering style. It was turning her against herself by training her to walk small. But when Snow White gives herself permission to grow and to practice mercy against the queen’s command, she recovers an inner beauty that had been stolen from her; a beauty that even the magic mirror can’t ignore. Hence, the queen orders her death and Snow White winds up fleeing into the forest where she encounters not only seven magical humanoid miners, but also seven cynical bandits, led by Jonathan. Despite digging up gems all day, the magical miners live in squabbling squalor. Despite invoking the name of the true king, the bandits have given up on their ideals; they’re just trying to stay alive. But Snow White manages to inspire both miners and bandits to work together and to believe in a better world. 

More drama ensues. A poison apple seems to kill her. True love’s kiss brings her back to life. But Snow White does not then ride off with her bandit into the sunset. She needs to save her kingdom. She does not marshal an army or outwit the manipulative queen. She just, in the moment when it appears that all is lost, remembers and speaks the name of the guard that’s assigned to kill her. She reminds him of his kindnesses from a decade ago. He remembers who he is and switches his allegiance. And the process repeats until the queen is alone. She winds up destroying herself and the bountiful and harmonious community that started the show is recovered. 

These are powerful messages, convincingly conveyed. As a mother, a grandmother, and a survivor of domestic abuse, I am delighted for both my granddaughters and my grandsons to grow up with a princess who models the courage to stand up for what’s right, even when you don’t have permission, who wins support by reflecting to others their better natures, and whose physical beauty is anchored more in her inner goodness than in her fortunate genetics. That’s a much more inspiring model than one who patiently does what she’s told while waiting for a prince to someday come along, fall for her beautiful face, and whisk her away to a better life. 

However, that is not the conversation that is dominating the reviews. The movie has been gathering enemies since it was filmed in 2022. First, critics complained that Latina Rachel Zegler’s brown skin should disqualify her from being cast as a princess whose name referenced her having skin as white as snow. (The movie offers a different rationale for her name: she was born during a blizzard). 

Then, Zegler came under fire for saying that the Snow White of 1937 was dated and the new version focused, not on the love story, but on her inner journey of finding her true self. There was backlash, including from TikToker @cosywithangie who replied, “"Not every woman is a leader, not every woman wants to be a leader, not every woman wants or craves power, and that's okay. It is not anti-feminist to want to fall in love, to want to get married, to want to stay at home, to want to be a homemaker. None of these things make you less valuable as a person or a woman.” 

I have to say that I one hundred percent agree with Angie’s argument that wanting to fall in love, get married and become a homemaker does not make you less valuable as a person or a woman. I made that choice myself and I am profoundly grateful that I had the opportunity to be a full-time mom to 6 kids. But I think that Angie misunderstood what Zegler was trying to say because Snow White does fall in love and presumably gets married. The movie shows her learning the skills of homemaking in her childhood. But the more important story is her finding the courage to become the person she longs to be, despite intense pressure to walk small, and choosing love and kindness over reprisal and recrimination. Those choices are fundamental to her finding true love. And they are what make women powerful leaders, whether that’s in the home or on a throne. 

Furthermore, Snow White’s mother is portrayed as silent, smiling and supportive. This actually bothered me a little (before I remembered the criticisms) because she seemed too peripheral to Snow White’s development. I loved how connective her father was; those moments between the king and his little girl were especially tender for me because I just recently said a final goodbye to my dad (whose belief in me was similarly powerful in my life). I just wished the mother was portrayed as mighty in her more traditional role. 

Another controversy arose about how the movie was going to portray the dwarfs. Were they going to be childishly stereotyped, like in the original, or treated with dignity? Personally, I appreciated Disney’s choice to portray Doc, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Hungry, and Grumpy as magical, non-human beings rendered with CGI, and to include an actor with dwarfism as an important member of Jonathan’s band. Others did not. They dismissed it as “performatively progressive.”

All of this, plus the fact that Zegler made anti-Trump and pro-Palestine posts on social media, while Israeli Gal Gadot (who played the evil queen) made posts in support of Israel’s army, seem to have given just about everybody a motive for hating the show. 

But couldn’t we step back and let the messages, not the labels, have sway in our hearts? Could we stop using language that divides us, like “woke” and “right-wing” and focus instead on our common longing for a world where everyone is loved and respected? Does that seem impossible in our current moment?

When Snow White first meets up with Jonathan in the forest, she’s distraught to learn that his talk of loyalty to her missing father is just talk. In a land where “famine’s on the rise with vultures circling the skies,” he’s actually just interested in self-preservation. “A man’s gotta choose, will he eat or get eaten” he sings in Princess Problems, trying to wake her up to the reality of her hopeless cause. But Snow White has remembered hope. She knows what life was like when her parents reigned, and she’s already risking everything to bring that world back. So she keeps believing, she keeps behaving like her father would because that’s what the kingdom needs, even if she’s the only one. And it isn’t long before her whole kingdom is behind her. 

That’s how we build the Beloved Community. It starts with us and then it grows. That’s the message of Snow White, and why it’s worth a good deal more than the price of a movie ticket. 

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