Snow what?
In what could be seen as just another race-bait move, Disney has cast Latina actress Rachel Zegler as Snow White in their upcoming live action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Casting for characters of restricted height has yet to be announced, but it's unlikely that Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Ian McShane et al. will be invited to reprise their roles from Snow White and the Huntsman, since that would be taking work from genuinely diminutive actors.
Undoubtedly any criticism over race-swapping and tokenisation will be damned as racism by progressives; although I doubt they'd exhibit the same attitude to Zac Efron being cast as Black Panther—there's a clue in the name!
But could Zegler be worse than Kristen Stewart from a performance perspective? While poor old Charlize Theron was acting her tits off and chewing up the scenery, Stewart shat all over Snow White and the Huntsman from a great height. Such a waste. (SMH)
Meanwhile, Zegler is unrepentant for taking work from equally talented and character-appropriate white actresses. It seems that, once again, keeping to lanes only applies to some artists. White ones.
It's possible that, in this updated reimagining to current sensitivities, the snow
refers to her drug habit. The seven dwarves are now her clients, for whom she turns tricks to earn the dough to pay her wicked dealer. Snow and the Seven Johns—it could work; and Zegler, being of Colombian heritage, would be perfect for the role.
Remember, kids, you read it here first.
There are various translations of the story, with the protagonist named either as Snow-white or Snow-drop, but the salient opening is broadly the same:
Once upon a time in mid winter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a beautiful queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood. As she sewed, she looked up at the snow and pricked her finger with her needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red on the white looked so beautiful, that she thought, "If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as this frame." Soon afterward she had a little daughter that was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood, and therefore they called her Little Snow-White.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Snow-White (transl. D.L. Ashliman), 1812
Other variations are less ambiguous: Not very long after she had a daughter, with a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and she was named Snow-white.
Of course, fair
can mean beautiful as well as pale-skinned. Ummm…it's still a hard sell. Accepting that beauty is in the eye of the beholder—and I'm certainly no oil painting—Zegler bears an uncanny resemblance to Karima El-Mahroug. I'm sure she scrubs up well enough though, at least on the outside…because she seems like a garbage human on the inside.