www.themarysue.com: Peter Dinklage blasted Disney’s planned remake of Snow White in a new interview on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. The Game of Thrones actor said, “There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on … Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White. But you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me.”
4 comments:
I really appreciate how honest Peter Dinklage was in his statement, and he makes a good point that Disney benefits from their perceived progressiveness while not fully considering their impact on little people. By being so straightforward he brought more attention to the issue, and he has justified concerns; while the Disney spokesperson claims that they are taking the dwarf characters in a different direction & have consulted with little people, the story has a long history of presenting harmful stereotypes, and Disney’s statement is so vague that it could mean very little is actually being changed. If they wanted to use the base story, they could have adapted it into a new piece with a completely different title and dwarves playing more active roles, giving viewers something to get excited and happy about. Hopefully they changed the story enough that it does not cause harm to little people and is a positive environment for the actors playing the dwarves.
I read about this on twitter earlier today, and found the whole situation very eye opening. In terms of diversity representation, people with dwarfism are often left out of the conversation. Nowadays, making jokes about or that play off of dwarfism is still very normalized, and this incident is a perfect example. Whether Disney knew or not, they made a mistake. And unfortunately, not a lot of people recognized this. I appreciate Peter Dinklage calling it out, as it made me more aware of this problem. Representation for little people is not something I used to consider when looking at media, but now will make the effort to. It also highlights another problem, entertainment that provides diversity in one aspect and lacks or causes harm in another. Disney can put the front up of "oh look we cast a latina actress we are so inclusive", but if they cause harm in another way to another community, their attempts to be equitable ultimately fail.
Peter Dinklage is right and it just sucks because he's such a talented actor who has such an expansive career and he's still just seen as someone who's shorter. I feel like if there's anyone who should be listened to about casting in a film about dwarves and that's just kind of messed up. While I'm really excited for Rachel Zegler and the different perspective casting a Latinx actor will bring, I don't think we really need another Snow White movie. Like with everything Peter Dinklage said, having literally the 5th adaptation of Snow White, and potentially damaging a community, does Disney really think this will sell to people? Like, the live-action Mulan should've proven to Disney that they should stop remaking our favorite childhood movies and just come up with something that doesn't hurt marginalized people. So we'll see how this goes, fingers crossed this just doesn't hurt Rachel Zegler's career.
This is a perfect example of how equity isn’t a linear path: we’re making progress in some areas but not across the board. Peter Dinklage makes a good point that it may not be a story worth telling at all. It’s disappointing to hear that Dinklage is getting flak from people. I saw in another article that Disney had announced, after Dinklage spoke out, that Snow White will be accompanied by seven monsters, not dwarfs. However, I feel that this doesn’t acknowledge the harm done by the original’s portrayal of dwarfs. It is disheartening to hear that in the movie Snow White and the Seven Huntsman the faces of average sized actors were digitally edited onto short bodies. On a separate note, I think Disney needs to stop remaking all of their “classics” into live action movies, it is okay to let some of these go and to put more energy into new stories.
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