Dinklage vs. Disney: can there be such a thing as a progressive "Snow White?"

Last week, actor Peter Dinklage spoke out against an upcoming live action remake of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which goes into production next month.

Originally announced in October 2016, the movie — which is based on the Oscar-winning 1937 animated production — is to be directed by Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man), and stars Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) as the titular heroine. Though the original film holds a special place in history as the first-ever animated feature, its depiction of the other characters mentioned in its title leaves much to be desired.

Reduced to goofy, oafish types — Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy, etc. — the Seven Dwarfs, along with the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz (1939), have long embodied Hollywood’s failure to represent little people as more than comical appendages in stories of characters with more traditionally-proportioned bodies.

Dinklage, himself a little person, most famous for his eight-year stint on Game of Thrones (2011-2019), is currently promoting Cyrano, a musical adaptation of the 19th-century play about a French cadet who doubts his ability to woo the woman he loves because of his unusually large nose. (In this film, the plot device of a large nose is substituted with Dinklage’s shorter height.) In a recent interview, he criticized Disney’s decision to remake Snow White — observing that the casting of Ms. Zegler was “progressive in one way” (Zegler, who is Latina, has been targeted with some racist backlash since landing the role) but that ultimately the story in general is “fucking backwards:”

There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on… [Disney should] take a step back and look at what [they’re] doing there… Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soap box? I guess I’m not loud enough.

Dinklage has used his visibility to call attention to the experiences of little people before — most notably, albeit briefly, in his 2012 Golden Globes acceptance speech — but he’s not been known to use such direct language, nor to openly criticize specific films or companies.

Still, it’s easy to understand why this news in particular may have provoked strong feelings in him: as a world-renowned actor who has risen to massive commercial and critical heights, it must be tempting for Dinklage, and other little people in the film business, to feel like some progress has been made.

To be confronted once again with such a belabored, diminishing narrative — one that has been a fixture of American culture since before Dinklage was born — must chafe some old wounds.

For their part, Disney offered a statement on Tuesday assuring critics that the studio had been “consulting with members of the dwarfism community” in their development of this new Snow White. More significant, though, was their announcement that the Seven Dwarfs will in fact be replaced with “magical creatures.”

Magical creatures? Like what? Elves? Goblins? Ewoks? Oompa-Loompas? The trap of adapting Snow White is, even if you replace the dwarf characters with something else, you’re still working from a paradigm that favors tall, svelte bodies over beings who must literally — and, therefore, figuratively — look up to them. And who are, by default, not quite human.

To me, it is infinitely more offensive that Disney has suggested it is replacing people with “creatures” than if they’d gone ahead with casting little people in the original dwarf roles. (Who will then voice these whimsical beings, I might add? Dwayne Johnson? Scarlett Johansson?)

This squabble echoes other recent instances where Disney has politely ignored the warped politics of their old films in order to make an easy billion bucks: I read the term “Stockholm Syndrome” used in more op-eds surrounding the release of Beauty and the Beast (2017) than at any other time in my life, and The Lion King (‘19) only clarified that the mid-’90s family favorite is essentially a punny exponent of patriarchal determinism and dynastic succession.

The trouble with Disney’s habit of resuscitating old material is that many of Walt’s, and even Jeffrey Katzenberg’s narratives have deteriorated over time. What held value during the Great Depression may not still hold currency today. To my way of thinking, the question shouldn’t be: can there be such a thing as a progressive Snow White? But rather: how exactly does the ideal of being progressive square with a tendency to avoid telling any new stories?

Moments like this can be touchstones for audiences — opportunities for a cultural reset, to get our priorities straight. Maybe the movies we remember watching over and over as children are not meant to be centralized anymore. Perspective is gained over time, and our impulse to adore or defend “classics” like Snow White stems more from a vague sense of familiarity (backed up by decades of reinforcement from corporate marketing — toys, backpacks, diapers, etc.) than from any genuine personal identification.

Just because one knows a word doesn’t mean one should say it. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an excellent example of an idea that — though it’s had its place in the popular lexicon — should not be repeated.