Same, and I'm especially disoriented by the representation of little people controversy. I'd probably take Peter Dinklage's opinion on the topic over most people's. But I always thought that Snow...
Same, and I'm especially disoriented by the representation of little people controversy. I'd probably take Peter Dinklage's opinion on the topic over most people's. But I always thought that Snow White's dwarves were more of a Gimli-vibe than legit humans with dwarfism exploited for comical effect.
Maybe I'm off base here, does anyone else have more context?
Agreed— I've got a ton of respect for Dinklage and his oeuvre and don't mean to dismiss his perspective, but there's a rich folkloric history of dwarves as supernatural creatures that have (as far...
Agreed— I've got a ton of respect for Dinklage and his oeuvre and don't mean to dismiss his perspective, but there's a rich folkloric history of dwarves as supernatural creatures that have (as far as I can tell) zero connection to people with the condition known as dwarfism. I guess he's most famous for his role in Game of Thrones, which features him as a "dwarf" but that character is distinct from those of Norse and Germanic myth, which Tolkien and Snow White both build on. I'd hope he would recognize the nuance here.
There’s a bit more overlap than you’re granting I think. Like “Oompa Loompas” are basically all the mistrely Dwarfism stereotypes rolled up despite them also riffing on a kind of magical Christmas...
There’s a bit more overlap than you’re granting I think. Like “Oompa Loompas” are basically all the mistrely Dwarfism stereotypes rolled up despite them also riffing on a kind of magical Christmas Elf thing. So I wouldn’t say it’s “zero” connection. It’s very easy to float in and out of those problematic tropes. Though you are right that the mythological “dwarf” is distinct from the entity of a human with dwarfism.
Can you help me discern the overlap you are gesturing to? One discarded draft of my response to CocoBean mentioned Oompa Loompas as a dichotomous alternative to "fantasy" dwarves like Gimli....
Can you help me discern the overlap you are gesturing to? One discarded draft of my response to CocoBean mentioned Oompa Loompas as a dichotomous alternative to "fantasy" dwarves like Gimli. Oompa-Loompas aren't even called dwarves, they're an alien(?) race and explicitly an inhuman other exploited for labor. Dwarves in Tolkien's world are a mix of mythical beings from Norse mythology and golems from Jewish mythology.
Edit: to close the loop, I bring up tolkien dwarves as they are more of a germanic tradition in line with the context the Brother's Grimm would have written Snow White from. ie. closely aligned with the Norse mythological "dwarves."
There’s a whole trope of sort of minstrel humor involving people with dwarfism where they are hired to act as clownish freak show figures to be gawked at. It doesn’t really relate to mythological...
There’s a whole trope of sort of minstrel humor involving people with dwarfism where they are hired to act as clownish freak show figures to be gawked at. It doesn’t really relate to mythological and fantasy concepts of a “dwarf” but lots of pop culture depictions of dwarfs (or Christmas/Keebler ‘elves’) end up leaning on those “midget” tropes either for comic relief or just because they’re hacky and well worn tropes. People with dwarfism tend not to like when pop-culture depictions of dwarfs (fantasy) tip into replicating those problematic “midget” stereotypes. The Oompa Loompas are an example of some of those stereotypes in action.
I know nothing about the movie and whether it actually did this. But the general idea is that it’s the use of little people primarily as objects to be gawked at for being “weird” that bothers people, regardless of whether they’re being dressed up as fantasy dwarves or pygmy chocolate factory serfs or whatever else.
We are on the same page there. I read your previous post and it sounded like you were talking about the overlap between the mythological concept and the ableist trope. Instead it seems you are...
We are on the same page there.
I read your previous post and it sounded like you were talking about the overlap between the mythological concept and the ableist trope. Instead it seems you are suggesting (neither you or I have seen it so I mean just that) that the live action Snow White perhaps leaned into ableist tropes and away form the dwarves we saw in the original animated version of the movie.
I don't really have context here, but I do know that in the past Peter Dinklage has spoken publicly about how few roles there are for him and for other actors with dwarfism. So from that...
I don't really have context here, but I do know that in the past Peter Dinklage has spoken publicly about how few roles there are for him and for other actors with dwarfism. So from that standpoint, I think he may be speaking about the fact that they didn't cast anyone with dwarfism to play these roles.
That said, I think there are hints that there is more to it here than just that. Specifically since I can't remember there being much controversy over the portrayal of Gimli, despite John Rhys-Davies not having dwarfism. I'm going to assume Dinklage has seen the film, which I have not, or perhaps he is speaking about the original animated move and people are trying to conflate his words as criticism for clicks.
Disney probably could have just dropped the term Dwarf and avoided any controversy. [Edit] looks like they did drop the term in all media that I can see.
Or changed the term to something that's not a medical condition.
In a behind-the-scenes for LOTR they talked about how John Rhys-Davies being very tall was invaluable to the shooting process, because it meant they could shoot him and the hobbits at the same...
In a behind-the-scenes for LOTR they talked about how John Rhys-Davies being very tall was invaluable to the shooting process, because it meant they could shoot him and the hobbits at the same time and do 2 shots total for each composite scene. If he were the same height as everyone else they would've needed 3, because Gimli was supposed to be significantly taller than the hobbits and significantly shorter than the humans and elves.
I don't think this adds anything of substance to the discussion but it's a cool fact that I think is really interesting
Given his statements in the past, I think his issue might be more that the role of "the dwarves" tends to be the only roles available for people with dwarfism, or other people with similar...
So from that standpoint, I think he may be speaking about the fact that they didn't cast anyone with dwarfism to play these roles.
Given his statements in the past, I think his issue might be more that the role of "the dwarves" tends to be the only roles available for people with dwarfism, or other people with similar stature. I don't think Gimli et al were "problematic" in their time, in large part because that was over 20 years ago now. Times and the conversation have changed and moved on, and I suspect there may be different opinions about the dwarves and their representation in Lord of the Rings.
Ultimately I don't think Disney was ever going to win this one, so to speak. For starters, it's Disney - de facto peak capitalism; they have few allies, and they aim for the dollar above all else. But more importantly, the story is "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". They could change the marketing however they want, but without changing other elements of the story it's still about Seven Dwarves.
If the changed the story such that it no longer involved dwarves, then the question becomes ... why make it "Snow White" at all? Why not make a unique story? The answer is self-evident - because it would be riskier, and likely less lucrative. So instead, the House of Mouse chooses to weather the criticism (which is correct to weigh here) and be content making money at the expense of a minority group.
I don't think it's just that. The Hobbit trilogy was released just over a decade ago when social justice was already a big social trend, it had the same situation with different non-dwarf actors,...
I don't think Gimli et al were "problematic" in their time, in large part because that was over 20 years ago now. Times and the conversation have changed and moved on, and I suspect there may be different opinions about the dwarves and their representation in Lord of the Rings.
I don't think it's just that. The Hobbit trilogy was released just over a decade ago when social justice was already a big social trend, it had the same situation with different non-dwarf actors, and I don't remember any controversy back then.
I think controversy like that tends to follow movies that are easy targets, usually those that are already expected to be bad due to other things. This was not the case at all with LOTR, but it was to some small degree the case with Hobbit - it wasn't super popular with LOTR fans and doing it as a trilogy was perceived as a cash grab (imo deservedly so). But for some reason the criticism did not arrive despite that, at least in the mainsteam.
With Snow White iirc the controversy only came when Disney released a couple stills and people found out it looks like Snow White and the Seven Diversity Hires (and also snow white is arguably clearly not better looking than the queen), which was a bad idea to begin with. If the film's production looked like it was as serious as LOTR, I'm sure some people would have complained anyway, but I do not believe the complaints would have received anywhere near as much attention as they received here. When it looks like it's going to be a crappy cashgrab that nobody wanted, it's a controversy magnet.
The last film in the hobbit trilogy released in 2014. The sort of “woke/cancel culture” thing was more 2016 onwards.
The Hobbit trilogy was released just over a decade ago when social justice was already a big social trend, it had the same situation with different non-dwarf actors, and I don't remember any controversy back then.
The last film in the hobbit trilogy released in 2014. The sort of “woke/cancel culture” thing was more 2016 onwards.
I don't fully agree. 2014 was definitely already peak "internet intersectional feminism" and for example articles denouncing real or imagined sexism or racism in any kinds of popular media were...
I don't fully agree. 2014 was definitely already peak "internet intersectional feminism" and for example articles denouncing real or imagined sexism or racism in any kinds of popular media were definitely a thing, but it's likely true that cancellation attempts were much less of a thing or that the online activism would not extend on issues like dwarfism yet.
I think in 2014 there were corners of the internet that were already deep into that, like tumblr. But it wasn’t as perverse as it was from 2016-2020. The example I always point to is Fancy by Iggy...
I think in 2014 there were corners of the internet that were already deep into that, like tumblr. But it wasn’t as perverse as it was from 2016-2020.
The example I always point to is Fancy by Iggy Azalea had the line “and my flow ret*****” with no consequences despite it being a chart topper. Even on an anecdotal level saying the r-word in person was still not as taboo as it ended up becoming a few years later.
This is not that important and I'm not really arguing with you, just for the record because I recently looked into that: it was not just tumblr, which was still considered the craziest, it was...
This is not that important and I'm not really arguing with you, just for the record because I recently looked into that: it was not just tumblr, which was still considered the craziest, it was very much on reddit and also on some more ideological traditional media already - recently when David Lynch died I looked through some articles about him and found several about him being a disgusting sexist and his movies being misogynistic, and reddit discussions on similar topics, much more aggressive than you would find now, and they were from around that era.
Bust mostly I just remember it because it all annoyed me when it was happening.
Yes this is what happened. It put Disney in a difficult situation. They were originally going to go with “seven magical beings” where they had them dressed as hipsters. This was discarded later,...
Given his statements in the past, I think his issue might be more that the role of "the dwarves" tends to be the only roles available for people with dwarfism, or other people with similar stature.
Yes this is what happened. It put Disney in a difficult situation. They were originally going to go with “seven magical beings” where they had them dressed as hipsters. This was discarded later, during heavy reshoots, and they replaced them with CGI recreations of the original dwarves.
Kind of a damned if you do damned if you don’t moment.
Seems to me that only one-and-a-half of them actually hold much merit, and that's if you smoosh them all together. Zegler's ethnicity is exactly the sort of non-issue bullshit that right-wingers...
Seems to me that only one-and-a-half of them actually hold much merit, and that's if you smoosh them all together.
Zegler's ethnicity is exactly the sort of non-issue bullshit that right-wingers love to kvetch about, and her comments on Palestine and Trump are about as mild as I've seen online. Gadot's pro-Israel rhetoric is troubling, I suppose, but hardly surprising given her personal history.
Peter Dinklage's objection made on WTF is probably the most germaine, but even that is a bit more nuanced than it's made out to be. Are we to take it that the titular Seven Dwarfs are a colony of humans with dwarfism? I've always assumed they were mythical creatures with no real relation to human little people. That alone doesn't make them unproblematic, but the real issue is the linguistic confusion between the fantasy creature and the real-life condition, not their presence in the story. Would it have been better if the fantasy creatures were portrayed by averagely proportioned actors via the use of forced perspective as in the Peter Jackson films? Is Dinklage's objection that the seven small bachelors living by themselves in an isolated forest mining God-knows-what for God-knows-what reason aren't humanized enough?
If blame needs assigning, then it's probably due to Disney for insisting on re-treading the same old stories over and over again and trying to hammer them to fit modern sensibilities. Half of these "controversies" would largely disappear if they just made a new story without trying to sanitize the insensitivities implicit in a nearly hundred-year-old cartoon. The culture wars folk might have to try just a little harder to find things to bitch about if they didn't have that old stand-by of "Disney wrecking their childhood" by casting someone other than a lily-white WASP in the lead (never mind the millions of lily-pale Latin people world over, because apparently they don't count as "white").
I don't even object to retellings as a general thing, like many do. My biggest objection to Disney's method is that they always go about it bass-ackward. They start with "we're going to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and then try to figure out what they want to say with it, instead of having something they want to say and then looking for a plot that can help them say it. Because it turns out that a hundred-year-old cartoon based on a centuries-old traditional fairy tale mostly only has archaic themes in it. Who knew?
I love your point about this project, and I feel like this could be generalized to sum up why so many shows and movies are simply terrible. House of Mouse isn't a monoply on this, but it seems to...
bass-ackward [...] They start with "we're going to [ make media about IP x ]" and then try to figure out what they want to say with it, instead of having something they want to say and then looking for a plot that can help them say it.
I love your point about this project, and I feel like this could be generalized to sum up why so many shows and movies are simply terrible. House of Mouse isn't a monoply on this, but it seems to have many recent examples of this kind of thing: declare x, find a name brand director, rely on "their vision".
It's top down with a dragged in message. No wonder they've been so awful, as ineffective as they were boring.
Recently, I've been watching a drama about an Oral Tradition. It's a story about people who tell stories for a living: how does their role in society change over time , how do they understand and reinterpret their own lives using stories, and how does one stay faithful to traditional tales while adaptating the art for modern expectations? Characters and setting add to the main premise and provide style and beauty to build up the central premise.
Doing it the Disney way ensures that the only thing they're trying to sell is "old, but new!" Which means folks who don't like the old aren't interested, and folks who do like the old will whine and moan about anything different.
I think it's hypocritical to say using actors with dwarfism wouldn't be true to the mythology but then brushing off using a very much not German/Norse looking actress. The far right has a point...
Zegler's ethnicity is exactly the sort of non-issue bullshit that right-wingers love to kvetch about
I think it's hypocritical to say using actors with dwarfism wouldn't be true to the mythology but then brushing off using a very much not German/Norse looking actress.
The far right has a point but isn't wording it correctly and it's used to further a more racist agenda... But I see a company like Disney caring about diversity, inclusion, caring about cultural appropriation... I guess telling stories from different cultures in a way that's authentic.
Why does all that care and authenticity disappear when telling a story from a white culture?
I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying here. Who's arguing that actors with dwarfism wouldn't be authentic? And where does authenticity even come in? I certainly didn't mention it....
I think it's hypocritical to say using actors with dwarfism wouldn't be true to the mythology but then brushing off using a very much not German/Norse looking actress.
I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying here. Who's arguing that actors with dwarfism wouldn't be authentic? And where does authenticity even come in? I certainly didn't mention it. Don't really care about it that much, to be honest.
Maybe calling you hypocritical is in bad faith and I shouldn't have said that. My point is that you make the argument that the mythology may justify the fact that dwarves aren't necessarily people...
Maybe calling you hypocritical is in bad faith and I shouldn't have said that.
My point is that you make the argument that the mythology may justify the fact that dwarves aren't necessarily people with dwarfism but you ignore the mythology when brushing off the use of a non-white actress.
Is the original story, culture, and mythology relevant to the debate over mythical dwarves vs people with dwarfism? Then IMO it's relevant to the discussion of the race/ethnicity of snow white.
I wasn't making any arguments about mythical dwarfs versus human dwarfism to brush off criticism. I specifically said that the myth doesn't make the characters unproblematic. That's why I wondered...
I wasn't making any arguments about mythical dwarfs versus human dwarfism to brush off criticism. I specifically said that the myth doesn't make the characters unproblematic. That's why I wondered about whether averagely proportioned people in forced perspective is any better, or if the issue is in characterization.
From what I know about Dinklage's criticisms about Hollywood's portrayals of little people, he's mostly pissed that no one bothers to write, or else greenlight, projects with little people in any role other than cannibal teddy bears or confectionary slaves, and good point! A fairy tale movie isn't the perfect hill to make a stand on, but keep beating that drum, Pete!
As for authenticity: I have my own ponderings about the line between adaptation and appropriation, but truth be told, I couldn't give any less of a shit about appropriation when it comes to traditional Northern European stories unless I tried. If the culture has decided that Northern European traditions are somehow the default from which other cultures are divergent, then those traditions can be used however someone wants, even in ways that might offend. We can have a conversation about the appropriation of Northern European culture when such a culture doesn't hold cultural hegemony over the Western world. Until then, I'll continue to ignore people in privileged positions who complain they're being oppressed because some shitty multi-billion-dollar conglomerate cast a Latina (and a remarkably fair-skinned and conventionally attractive Latina at that) in a role adapted from a Teutonic fairy tale. We'll call it turnabout for casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan or some shit.
I'd not thought about it at all until reading this, mostly because I didn't even know they were making this, but upon reflection this seems like a weird thing to make at all today. It seems to me...
I'd not thought about it at all until reading this, mostly because I didn't even know they were making this, but upon reflection this seems like a weird thing to make at all today. It seems to me like it would have to either be quite far from the original, and as such get complained about as a bad adaptation, or get a lot of complaints about the problematic aspects of the story. Like isn't the core thing people remember about this story just the sexual assault?
They did do a great job with Maleficent and in Sleeping Beauty the original story is also awful. So I think it's possible there's a good movie here, although I'd be more optimistic with a change...
Like isn't the core thing people remember about this story just the sexual assault?
They did do a great job with Maleficent and in Sleeping Beauty the original story is also awful. So I think it's possible there's a good movie here, although I'd be more optimistic with a change in POV character the way Maleficent had.
And there was the Snow White and the Huntsman movie and it's sequel that came out around that time too. They weren't bad. Doing a pretty straight remake of the 30s cartoon seems more tone deaf...
And there was the Snow White and the Huntsman movie and it's sequel that came out around that time too. They weren't bad.
Doing a pretty straight remake of the 30s cartoon seems more tone deaf than most of the other live action remakes.
I am conflicted with how the following question. How can we revive traditional tales while addressing the questionable parts of said tales ? In this case, it seems like without significant...
I am conflicted with how the following question.
How can we revive traditional tales while addressing the questionable parts of said tales ?
In this case, it seems like without significant changes, it isn’t really a good candidate to be remade as a live action. It has too many issues.
An animated remake ? Sure ? But what would be the value in that(sarcasm, sort of).
I think a diff POV from a diff character could work as well as others have suggested, if we insist on re-making this as a live action.
My personal opinion is that changing the branding is generally enough to change the expectations. If they're calling it "Disney's Snow White" then people have expectations that will either be...
My personal opinion is that changing the branding is generally enough to change the expectations. If they're calling it "Disney's Snow White" then people have expectations that will either be unmet or cause controversy. But, if they called it something else they could dodge those expectations with an "inspired by" rather than "is a modern version of".
I'm sure some people would still complain, but I think it would much more rapidly fall on deaf ears. Even people that complain that the casting choices don't fit character designs lose their opportunity when it isn't even necessarily the same character.
As just a small evidence of this, I didn't see an enormous flood of complaints about a black spiderman named Miles Morales that I would've expected if he was still named Peter Parker. Not ideal that I would've expected that flood, but the state of the Internet is what it is unfortunately. And I'm sure that the complaints were out there, but not nearly at the scale of something like The Little Mermaid.
It's not a weird thing to make when you consider that Disney has been creatively bankrupt for a while now due to being completely unwilling to take risks on anything new. They want to continue to...
It's not a weird thing to make when you consider that Disney has been creatively bankrupt for a while now due to being completely unwilling to take risks on anything new.
They want to continue to mine stories they've done before over and over, and the remaining stories that have the name recognition they're after and that they haven't already redone recently is now dwindling. Snow white is the next biggest movie they can remake, so the Disney formula demands they make it.
After this they'll move on to a live action Pocahontas, a live action Frozen, a live action Hercules, then they'll likely just circle back around and start remaking movies they've already remade yet again. Any other consideration for why maybe they shouldn't do those movies, or if there's any artistic value to just making the same movies over and over again won't be taken into account.
Hollywood has discovered over the past 10 years or so that familiarity, above basically anything else is what sells. It used to be the concept that resulted in movie stars, and now it's the concept that results in the same movie getting made every 20 years or so.
I expected this to be a lot of things. Dwarf identity politics was not one of them. Are non-Dinklage dwarfs also taken aback? Is "dwarf" okay to say? I'm trying to find out if there is a subreddit...
I expected this to be a lot of things. Dwarf identity politics was not one of them. Are non-Dinklage dwarfs also taken aback? Is "dwarf" okay to say? I'm trying to find out if there is a subreddit for them but I don't know the correct term.
I can only speak from second hand experience, My wife Is a "dwarf" but she will be much more annoyed with you if you dance around the subject trying not to offend her than if you just say "hey...
I can only speak from second hand experience, My wife Is a "dwarf" but she will be much more annoyed with you if you dance around the subject trying not to offend her than if you just say "hey midget" or something to that effect. If you ask her what you should call her she will say "my name". She doesn't care in the slightest for terminology and only notices it when idiots like Peter Dinklage shoot their mouth off. I suspect the majority probably feel this way to some degree. Most people just want to be people, not a "little person" or what ever other stupid politically correct term has been decided for them without their input or consent.
There are definitely other dwarfs that disagree with dinklage: https://movieweb.com/dwarf-actors-peter-dinklage-refute-comments/ I'm not sure how widespread each view is, since we only ever really...
I'm not sure how widespread each view is, since we only ever really hear from the like 10 celebrities with dwarfism, so there's a lot of room for sampling bias either way. (And of course it you're an actor that makes your living playing dwarfs on movies or tv, that might make you more favourable to those roles continuing to exist)
r/dwarfism exists and appears to be principally a supportive place for people with dwarfism and those in their lives. They also helpfully list some national organizations they aren't officially...
r/dwarfism exists and appears to be principally a supportive place for people with dwarfism and those in their lives. They also helpfully list some national organizations they aren't officially affiliated with in their sidebar, and googling those acronyms plus "dwarfism" will get you to those organizations' websites which have various resources and information.
As for terminology, Little People of America has the following in their FAQ:
Such terms as dwarf, little person, LP, and person of short stature are all acceptable, but most people would rather be referred to by their name than by a label.
The vibe I get is that as long as you're clearly trying to be respectful and avoid the very obvious slur "midget", you're probably okay.
Why on earth would they just not call it mini golf. It's clearly the course that is miniaturize, not the people who play. :/ the ball is even the same size.
Why on earth would they just not call it mini golf. It's clearly the course that is miniaturize, not the people who play. :/ the ball is even the same size.
Thanks. Not a lot of people on that sub but they commented on some of Dinklage's remarks about the Disney movie. The top comment agrees with him. Others have different opinions, but I think they...
Thanks. Not a lot of people on that sub but they commented on some of Dinklage's remarks about the Disney movie. The top comment agrees with him. Others have different opinions, but I think they are mostly in some sort of agreement.
Yeah, much like any group of people, there are a variety of opinions, but there are enough people in that thread who agree with Dinklage that it should at least make that perspective clear. (And...
Yeah, much like any group of people, there are a variety of opinions, but there are enough people in that thread who agree with Dinklage that it should at least make that perspective clear. (And the fact that one of the loudest dissenters in the thread is 6 feet tall is probably also relevant.)
Sorry to miss the point of the post, but I saw five seconds of a trailer of this and I thought it looked like all CG. But I guess it’s a mix of live action? Because why would they hire Gal Gadot...
Sorry to miss the point of the post, but I saw five seconds of a trailer of this and I thought it looked like all CG. But I guess it’s a mix of live action? Because why would they hire Gal Gadot as a voice actor, she’s famously not a good actor.
Actually what I saw was an allergy medicine commercial and it showed a clip of Sneezy. And everything about this looked kind of terrible especially the marketing of it.
Wow I was out of the loop and expecting one controversy, not a half dozen of them.
Same, and I'm especially disoriented by the representation of little people controversy. I'd probably take Peter Dinklage's opinion on the topic over most people's. But I always thought that Snow White's dwarves were more of a Gimli-vibe than legit humans with dwarfism exploited for comical effect.
Maybe I'm off base here, does anyone else have more context?
Agreed— I've got a ton of respect for Dinklage and his oeuvre and don't mean to dismiss his perspective, but there's a rich folkloric history of dwarves as supernatural creatures that have (as far as I can tell) zero connection to people with the condition known as dwarfism. I guess he's most famous for his role in Game of Thrones, which features him as a "dwarf" but that character is distinct from those of Norse and Germanic myth, which Tolkien and Snow White both build on. I'd hope he would recognize the nuance here.
There’s a bit more overlap than you’re granting I think. Like “Oompa Loompas” are basically all the mistrely Dwarfism stereotypes rolled up despite them also riffing on a kind of magical Christmas Elf thing. So I wouldn’t say it’s “zero” connection. It’s very easy to float in and out of those problematic tropes. Though you are right that the mythological “dwarf” is distinct from the entity of a human with dwarfism.
In the book (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) the Oompa Loompas are also a very racist stereotype which was changed a lot for the movies.
Can you help me discern the overlap you are gesturing to? One discarded draft of my response to CocoBean mentioned Oompa Loompas as a dichotomous alternative to "fantasy" dwarves like Gimli. Oompa-Loompas aren't even called dwarves, they're an alien(?) race and explicitly an inhuman other exploited for labor. Dwarves in Tolkien's world are a mix of mythical beings from Norse mythology and golems from Jewish mythology.
Edit: to close the loop, I bring up tolkien dwarves as they are more of a germanic tradition in line with the context the Brother's Grimm would have written Snow White from. ie. closely aligned with the Norse mythological "dwarves."
There’s a whole trope of sort of minstrel humor involving people with dwarfism where they are hired to act as clownish freak show figures to be gawked at. It doesn’t really relate to mythological and fantasy concepts of a “dwarf” but lots of pop culture depictions of dwarfs (or Christmas/Keebler ‘elves’) end up leaning on those “midget” tropes either for comic relief or just because they’re hacky and well worn tropes. People with dwarfism tend not to like when pop-culture depictions of dwarfs (fantasy) tip into replicating those problematic “midget” stereotypes. The Oompa Loompas are an example of some of those stereotypes in action.
I know nothing about the movie and whether it actually did this. But the general idea is that it’s the use of little people primarily as objects to be gawked at for being “weird” that bothers people, regardless of whether they’re being dressed up as fantasy dwarves or pygmy chocolate factory serfs or whatever else.
We are on the same page there.
I read your previous post and it sounded like you were talking about the overlap between the mythological concept and the ableist trope. Instead it seems you are suggesting (neither you or I have seen it so I mean just that) that the live action Snow White perhaps leaned into ableist tropes and away form the dwarves we saw in the original animated version of the movie.
I don't really have context here, but I do know that in the past Peter Dinklage has spoken publicly about how few roles there are for him and for other actors with dwarfism. So from that standpoint, I think he may be speaking about the fact that they didn't cast anyone with dwarfism to play these roles.
That said, I think there are hints that there is more to it here than just that. Specifically since I can't remember there being much controversy over the portrayal of Gimli, despite John Rhys-Davies not having dwarfism. I'm going to assume Dinklage has seen the film, which I have not, or perhaps he is speaking about the original animated move and people are trying to conflate his words as criticism for clicks.
Disney probably could have just dropped the term Dwarf and avoided any controversy. [Edit] looks like they did drop the term in all media that I can see.
Or changed the term to something that's not a medical condition.
In a behind-the-scenes for LOTR they talked about how John Rhys-Davies being very tall was invaluable to the shooting process, because it meant they could shoot him and the hobbits at the same time and do 2 shots total for each composite scene. If he were the same height as everyone else they would've needed 3, because Gimli was supposed to be significantly taller than the hobbits and significantly shorter than the humans and elves.
I don't think this adds anything of substance to the discussion but it's a cool fact that I think is really interesting
Given his statements in the past, I think his issue might be more that the role of "the dwarves" tends to be the only roles available for people with dwarfism, or other people with similar stature. I don't think Gimli et al were "problematic" in their time, in large part because that was over 20 years ago now. Times and the conversation have changed and moved on, and I suspect there may be different opinions about the dwarves and their representation in Lord of the Rings.
Ultimately I don't think Disney was ever going to win this one, so to speak. For starters, it's Disney - de facto peak capitalism; they have few allies, and they aim for the dollar above all else. But more importantly, the story is "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". They could change the marketing however they want, but without changing other elements of the story it's still about Seven Dwarves.
If the changed the story such that it no longer involved dwarves, then the question becomes ... why make it "Snow White" at all? Why not make a unique story? The answer is self-evident - because it would be riskier, and likely less lucrative. So instead, the House of Mouse chooses to weather the criticism (which is correct to weigh here) and be content making money at the expense of a minority group.
I don't think it's just that. The Hobbit trilogy was released just over a decade ago when social justice was already a big social trend, it had the same situation with different non-dwarf actors, and I don't remember any controversy back then.
I think controversy like that tends to follow movies that are easy targets, usually those that are already expected to be bad due to other things. This was not the case at all with LOTR, but it was to some small degree the case with Hobbit - it wasn't super popular with LOTR fans and doing it as a trilogy was perceived as a cash grab (imo deservedly so). But for some reason the criticism did not arrive despite that, at least in the mainsteam.
With Snow White iirc the controversy only came when Disney released a couple stills and people found out it looks like Snow White and the Seven Diversity Hires (and also snow white is arguably clearly not better looking than the queen), which was a bad idea to begin with. If the film's production looked like it was as serious as LOTR, I'm sure some people would have complained anyway, but I do not believe the complaints would have received anywhere near as much attention as they received here. When it looks like it's going to be a crappy cashgrab that nobody wanted, it's a controversy magnet.
The last film in the hobbit trilogy released in 2014. The sort of “woke/cancel culture” thing was more 2016 onwards.
I don't fully agree. 2014 was definitely already peak "internet intersectional feminism" and for example articles denouncing real or imagined sexism or racism in any kinds of popular media were definitely a thing, but it's likely true that cancellation attempts were much less of a thing or that the online activism would not extend on issues like dwarfism yet.
I think in 2014 there were corners of the internet that were already deep into that, like tumblr. But it wasn’t as perverse as it was from 2016-2020.
The example I always point to is Fancy by Iggy Azalea had the line “and my flow ret*****” with no consequences despite it being a chart topper. Even on an anecdotal level saying the r-word in person was still not as taboo as it ended up becoming a few years later.
This is not that important and I'm not really arguing with you, just for the record because I recently looked into that: it was not just tumblr, which was still considered the craziest, it was very much on reddit and also on some more ideological traditional media already - recently when David Lynch died I looked through some articles about him and found several about him being a disgusting sexist and his movies being misogynistic, and reddit discussions on similar topics, much more aggressive than you would find now, and they were from around that era.
Bust mostly I just remember it because it all annoyed me when it was happening.
Yes this is what happened. It put Disney in a difficult situation. They were originally going to go with “seven magical beings” where they had them dressed as hipsters. This was discarded later, during heavy reshoots, and they replaced them with CGI recreations of the original dwarves.
Kind of a damned if you do damned if you don’t moment.
Seems to me that only one-and-a-half of them actually hold much merit, and that's if you smoosh them all together.
Zegler's ethnicity is exactly the sort of non-issue bullshit that right-wingers love to kvetch about, and her comments on Palestine and Trump are about as mild as I've seen online. Gadot's pro-Israel rhetoric is troubling, I suppose, but hardly surprising given her personal history.
Peter Dinklage's objection made on WTF is probably the most germaine, but even that is a bit more nuanced than it's made out to be. Are we to take it that the titular Seven Dwarfs are a colony of humans with dwarfism? I've always assumed they were mythical creatures with no real relation to human little people. That alone doesn't make them unproblematic, but the real issue is the linguistic confusion between the fantasy creature and the real-life condition, not their presence in the story. Would it have been better if the fantasy creatures were portrayed by averagely proportioned actors via the use of forced perspective as in the Peter Jackson films? Is Dinklage's objection that the seven small bachelors living by themselves in an isolated forest mining God-knows-what for God-knows-what reason aren't humanized enough?
If blame needs assigning, then it's probably due to Disney for insisting on re-treading the same old stories over and over again and trying to hammer them to fit modern sensibilities. Half of these "controversies" would largely disappear if they just made a new story without trying to sanitize the insensitivities implicit in a nearly hundred-year-old cartoon. The culture wars folk might have to try just a little harder to find things to bitch about if they didn't have that old stand-by of "Disney wrecking their childhood" by casting someone other than a lily-white WASP in the lead (never mind the millions of lily-pale Latin people world over, because apparently they don't count as "white").
I don't even object to retellings as a general thing, like many do. My biggest objection to Disney's method is that they always go about it bass-ackward. They start with "we're going to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and then try to figure out what they want to say with it, instead of having something they want to say and then looking for a plot that can help them say it. Because it turns out that a hundred-year-old cartoon based on a centuries-old traditional fairy tale mostly only has archaic themes in it. Who knew?
It's too late now, but you know what have been awesome? David Lynch's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
I think it would be safe to say that nothing about that production would be stereotypical, at least.
I love your point about this project, and I feel like this could be generalized to sum up why so many shows and movies are simply terrible. House of Mouse isn't a monoply on this, but it seems to have many recent examples of this kind of thing: declare x, find a name brand director, rely on "their vision".
It's top down with a dragged in message. No wonder they've been so awful, as ineffective as they were boring.
Recently, I've been watching a drama about an Oral Tradition. It's a story about people who tell stories for a living: how does their role in society change over time , how do they understand and reinterpret their own lives using stories, and how does one stay faithful to traditional tales while adaptating the art for modern expectations? Characters and setting add to the main premise and provide style and beauty to build up the central premise.
Doing it the Disney way ensures that the only thing they're trying to sell is "old, but new!" Which means folks who don't like the old aren't interested, and folks who do like the old will whine and moan about anything different.
I think it's hypocritical to say using actors with dwarfism wouldn't be true to the mythology but then brushing off using a very much not German/Norse looking actress.
The far right has a point but isn't wording it correctly and it's used to further a more racist agenda... But I see a company like Disney caring about diversity, inclusion, caring about cultural appropriation... I guess telling stories from different cultures in a way that's authentic.
Why does all that care and authenticity disappear when telling a story from a white culture?
I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what you're saying here. Who's arguing that actors with dwarfism wouldn't be authentic? And where does authenticity even come in? I certainly didn't mention it. Don't really care about it that much, to be honest.
Maybe calling you hypocritical is in bad faith and I shouldn't have said that.
My point is that you make the argument that the mythology may justify the fact that dwarves aren't necessarily people with dwarfism but you ignore the mythology when brushing off the use of a non-white actress.
Is the original story, culture, and mythology relevant to the debate over mythical dwarves vs people with dwarfism? Then IMO it's relevant to the discussion of the race/ethnicity of snow white.
I wasn't making any arguments about mythical dwarfs versus human dwarfism to brush off criticism. I specifically said that the myth doesn't make the characters unproblematic. That's why I wondered about whether averagely proportioned people in forced perspective is any better, or if the issue is in characterization.
From what I know about Dinklage's criticisms about Hollywood's portrayals of little people, he's mostly pissed that no one bothers to write, or else greenlight, projects with little people in any role other than cannibal teddy bears or confectionary slaves, and good point! A fairy tale movie isn't the perfect hill to make a stand on, but keep beating that drum, Pete!
As for authenticity: I have my own ponderings about the line between adaptation and appropriation, but truth be told, I couldn't give any less of a shit about appropriation when it comes to traditional Northern European stories unless I tried. If the culture has decided that Northern European traditions are somehow the default from which other cultures are divergent, then those traditions can be used however someone wants, even in ways that might offend. We can have a conversation about the appropriation of Northern European culture when such a culture doesn't hold cultural hegemony over the Western world. Until then, I'll continue to ignore people in privileged positions who complain they're being oppressed because some shitty multi-billion-dollar conglomerate cast a Latina (and a remarkably fair-skinned and conventionally attractive Latina at that) in a role adapted from a Teutonic fairy tale. We'll call it turnabout for casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan or some shit.
I'd not thought about it at all until reading this, mostly because I didn't even know they were making this, but upon reflection this seems like a weird thing to make at all today. It seems to me like it would have to either be quite far from the original, and as such get complained about as a bad adaptation, or get a lot of complaints about the problematic aspects of the story. Like isn't the core thing people remember about this story just the sexual assault?
They did do a great job with Maleficent and in Sleeping Beauty the original story is also awful. So I think it's possible there's a good movie here, although I'd be more optimistic with a change in POV character the way Maleficent had.
Yeah, Maleficent changing perspectives and not calling itself Sleeping Beauty were good moves to avoid this issue.
And there was the Snow White and the Huntsman movie and it's sequel that came out around that time too. They weren't bad.
Doing a pretty straight remake of the 30s cartoon seems more tone deaf than most of the other live action remakes.
Those weren't Disney tbc. They were different adaptions of the same mythology, thoigh they undoubtedly relied on audiences being drawn in by the name.
I am conflicted with how the following question.
How can we revive traditional tales while addressing the questionable parts of said tales ?
In this case, it seems like without significant changes, it isn’t really a good candidate to be remade as a live action. It has too many issues.
An animated remake ? Sure ? But what would be the value in that(sarcasm, sort of).
I think a diff POV from a diff character could work as well as others have suggested, if we insist on re-making this as a live action.
My personal opinion is that changing the branding is generally enough to change the expectations. If they're calling it "Disney's Snow White" then people have expectations that will either be unmet or cause controversy. But, if they called it something else they could dodge those expectations with an "inspired by" rather than "is a modern version of".
I'm sure some people would still complain, but I think it would much more rapidly fall on deaf ears. Even people that complain that the casting choices don't fit character designs lose their opportunity when it isn't even necessarily the same character.
As just a small evidence of this, I didn't see an enormous flood of complaints about a black spiderman named Miles Morales that I would've expected if he was still named Peter Parker. Not ideal that I would've expected that flood, but the state of the Internet is what it is unfortunately. And I'm sure that the complaints were out there, but not nearly at the scale of something like The Little Mermaid.
It's not a weird thing to make when you consider that Disney has been creatively bankrupt for a while now due to being completely unwilling to take risks on anything new.
They want to continue to mine stories they've done before over and over, and the remaining stories that have the name recognition they're after and that they haven't already redone recently is now dwindling. Snow white is the next biggest movie they can remake, so the Disney formula demands they make it.
After this they'll move on to a live action Pocahontas, a live action Frozen, a live action Hercules, then they'll likely just circle back around and start remaking movies they've already remade yet again. Any other consideration for why maybe they shouldn't do those movies, or if there's any artistic value to just making the same movies over and over again won't be taken into account.
Hollywood has discovered over the past 10 years or so that familiarity, above basically anything else is what sells. It used to be the concept that resulted in movie stars, and now it's the concept that results in the same movie getting made every 20 years or so.
I expected this to be a lot of things. Dwarf identity politics was not one of them. Are non-Dinklage dwarfs also taken aback? Is "dwarf" okay to say? I'm trying to find out if there is a subreddit for them but I don't know the correct term.
I can only speak from second hand experience, My wife Is a "dwarf" but she will be much more annoyed with you if you dance around the subject trying not to offend her than if you just say "hey midget" or something to that effect. If you ask her what you should call her she will say "my name". She doesn't care in the slightest for terminology and only notices it when idiots like Peter Dinklage shoot their mouth off. I suspect the majority probably feel this way to some degree. Most people just want to be people, not a "little person" or what ever other stupid politically correct term has been decided for them without their input or consent.
There are definitely other dwarfs that disagree with dinklage: https://movieweb.com/dwarf-actors-peter-dinklage-refute-comments/
I'm not sure how widespread each view is, since we only ever really hear from the like 10 celebrities with dwarfism, so there's a lot of room for sampling bias either way. (And of course it you're an actor that makes your living playing dwarfs on movies or tv, that might make you more favourable to those roles continuing to exist)
r/dwarfism exists and appears to be principally a supportive place for people with dwarfism and those in their lives. They also helpfully list some national organizations they aren't officially affiliated with in their sidebar, and googling those acronyms plus "dwarfism" will get you to those organizations' websites which have various resources and information.
As for terminology, Little People of America has the following in their FAQ:
The vibe I get is that as long as you're clearly trying to be respectful and avoid the very obvious slur "midget", you're probably okay.
Fun fact, in the Netherlands the term used for "miniature golf" is "midget golf".
Some awkward conversations were had during the company outing....
Why on earth would they just not call it mini golf. It's clearly the course that is miniaturize, not the people who play. :/ the ball is even the same size.
Thanks. Not a lot of people on that sub but they commented on some of Dinklage's remarks about the Disney movie. The top comment agrees with him. Others have different opinions, but I think they are mostly in some sort of agreement.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dwarfism/comments/13460fc/the_peter_dinklage_dilemma/
Yeah, much like any group of people, there are a variety of opinions, but there are enough people in that thread who agree with Dinklage that it should at least make that perspective clear. (And the fact that one of the loudest dissenters in the thread is 6 feet tall is probably also relevant.)
Oh boy they're all over that thread too. Jeez
Sorry to miss the point of the post, but I saw five seconds of a trailer of this and I thought it looked like all CG. But I guess it’s a mix of live action? Because why would they hire Gal Gadot as a voice actor, she’s famously not a good actor.
Actually what I saw was an allergy medicine commercial and it showed a clip of Sneezy. And everything about this looked kind of terrible especially the marketing of it.