To Go Around

The United States never lacks for teapot tempests. Although I likely shouldn't call them that, or one of the other terms I like to use for them. Because, while they strike me as trivial, at best, for a lot of people, these sorts of disagreements and controversies speak to important factors in their lives.

Consider the reactions to the new Disney production of Snow White. One Rachel Zegler (whom, being old and out of touch with what's hip and with it, I'd never heard of prior to this) has been cast in the title role. Her complexion, given that she's a mix of Eastern European and South American, is decidedly not "snow white." She's also not down with the dynamic of the original animated movie, which is now more than 85 years old. (It hadn't occurred to me before that the original Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs predates the Second World War.) Being one of today's young people (she's named after a character from Friends, after all), she's in favor of a more modern take on the characters and the story.

Cue the outrage. Because there's always "outrage." (It's a pretty low bar to meet these days.)

And while left-leaning media outlets might chalk it up to racism/White supremacy and/or a desire to maintain the "patriarchy," I think that something more is in the mix, and that it may be worth understanding; or at least looking into.

In my own understanding of the world, many Americans are keenly aware of the rejections of others. They feel the sting sharply, and, as a result, are constantly on the lookout for signs that they are being relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy. For people who understand the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as being "for them," as it were, a version of the story that espouses different (and competing) values and is perceived as being a replacement of that story, is also seen as a desire to replace them.

One of the complaints about these sorts of updates is, according to Franchesca Ramsey (by way of NPR): "Why not just make a new story, why did they have to change it?" Now, to be sure, I think that part of the answer to this is: It's faster. Creating characters and stories that will come to be seen as iconic isn't a quick-and-dirty process that can be fired off on command. It's very hit or miss, and can take a long time. Snow White is an old story, with many revisions (and sanitations) over the centuries it's been around. But the question reminded me of The Wiz, the adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While modern "outrage culture" didn't exist in 1974 (although I suspect that as a five-year-old for most of that year, I wouldn't have been aware of it), I think that the idea of The Wiz as being somehow fundamentally different from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, rather than an updated, modernized telling of it, headed off the sort of reactions that The Little Mermaid saw, and Snow White is now seeing. The Wiz was a Black version of the story, for Black people, and as such, it didn't constitute a rejection of the earlier tellings, the values of the audience for those tellings or the audience themselves.

But it's worth noting that it's not only nostalgia that can lead to people feeling rejected. For many people in today's world, simply remaking old stories with the same all-White casting and century (or more) old values, is a rejection of them, and their values. They perceive not only that the media is not "for them," but that it actively conveys a message that they are of lesser worth.

This, of course, creates a situation where one piece of media cannot simultaneously validate both (or maybe "all" is a better word here) sides. Which is a problem in a society in which people often expect to be validated; and, perhaps strangely, seem to believe that what is validating to them is validating to others (although not necessarily everyone).

The United States' habit of validating certain people at the direct expense of others has become deeply ingrained in the public psyche, to the point where it's now an expectation; those who revere their understanding of what the United States once was see changes in the media landscape as being driven by bitterness and vengeful anger for misguided or unintentional wrongs perpetrated by the long-dead, while those who focus on what they believe the United States should strive to be, see resistance as rooted in deliberate efforts to hold on the fruits of past injustice. And both see nothing but bad faith in the rhetoric and the actions of the other. And underlying the whole is a belief in an enduring scarcity that dictates that there can never be enough to satisfy everyone. Someone will go without, but it shouldn't be them.

This may also explain why The Wiz wasn't seen as a threat to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the same way that Snow White is seen as threatening Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Wiz was for Black people, mainly because it was made specifically for them. And perhaps this perceived act of creation, a bringing of something new in the world, didn't trigger the same feeling that the pie was the same size, but that the pieces were being cut differently. In this sense "Why not just make a new story, why did they have to change it?" is really asking "Why not just make something for yourselves, why do we have to share (or lose) what is ours?" To the degree that the threat of rejection is also the threat of impoverishment, there are broader, and long-standing, questions of security and safety in play.