"Snow White" and America's niche-culture wars

Your Rational Sheep scribe returns to his desk, after a wild month of travel

The math is bright red: The “Snow White” reboot was a box-office bomb in week one and things went straight downhill in week two.

It’s possible that, if Disney gets honest about the production and promotion costs, this movie could be the biggest and most painful elite Hollywood bust of all time. This Forbes piece may have been the most optimistic take out there: “How Much Does Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Need To Gross To Break Even?”

I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, I’d like to thank Rational Sheep readers for hanging in there with me during a month of really wild travel — the long journey down under (yes, including Hobbiton), followed by a quick turnaround for a Houston trip to speak at Saint Constantine College and the University of St. Thomas. This 70something scribe is still tired, but I’m over the worst of the jet lag.

The website didn’t shut down, of course, and I was able to write three posts a week instead of four. I sent all of these posts to the whole Substack list (free- and paid-option readers). We gained more readers than we lost (even two new paid-option supporters).

Anyway, I’m back home and will return to my usual schedule, with posts on Monday and Wednesday, the “Crossroads” podcast-post on Friday and a weekend “think piece.” Again, a “thank you” to patient readers. Keep those comments and post ideas coming.

Now, instead of unpacking what worked and what flopped in the “Snow White,” let’s look at the bigger popular-culture picture — which is why an expensive “Snow White” for “modern audiences” was destined to be a bust.

I’ll start with a quotation from "Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation,” which is the David French book that many people need to read (even those who believe they have nothing to learn from David French). Here is a relevant part of an “On Religion” column about that book:

The book's first lines are sobering. …

"It's time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed," wrote French. Right now, "there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart."

Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture. America remains the developing world's most religious nation, yet its increasingly secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most traditional religious believers live in another. In politics, more and more Democrats are Democrats simply because they hate Republicans, and vice versa.

What is the link to “Snow White”?

The classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the beloved cornerstone of the Walt Disney family-market empire. To state the obvious, that was a long, long time ago, in an age when the word “family” was not a controversial political football.

Take it away Rachel “Snow White” Zegler: “I just mean that it’s no longer 1937. … We absolutely wrote a ‘Snow White’ that ... she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true.”

The original, she added, featured a “weird” love story with “a guy who literally stalks her.” The Disney team “didn’t do that this time.”

Reading the reviews, it appears that new “Snow White” centers on, well, economics and politics — kind of a Robin Hood remix, with its girl-boss heroine taking power from the rich to serve the poor. Prince Charming has evolved into a beggar-man thief who is rescued by Snow White several times, before the lukewarm “kiss” scene (which is not the movie’s turning point).

As you would expect, it was easy to find a political message in this historic flop. If that angle interests you, check out this Anthony D'Alessandro feature at the Deadline website: “‘Snow White’ — How Controversial Disney Princess Fared In Blue & Red County Cinemas.”

However, I though the most interesting take was at The Free Press, as the lead element in what will be an ongoing Suzy Weiss column on entertainment. The first installment focuses on how the “Snow White” debacle fits into the numbing reality of niche entertainment culture in America.

That’s why I shared the David French quote.

Let’s look at a few quotes from Weiss. Here is the overture:

Whenever I talk to my parents or older colleagues — or when I’m at dinner with my younger cousins, or catching up with friends who don’t spend much time online — we’ve never seen the same things. We’re not following the careers of the same actors, and we’re not excited for the same TV shows. Instead, we spend half our time explaining to each other what exactly we’re consuming.

So — why is Gwyneth Paltrow kissing Timothée Chalamet? (And who is he again?) Why is David Blaine kissing a snake? Wait, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son is an actor? And he’s kissing his on-screen brother? The other day I discussed Fergie with an older friend for five minutes before we realized that he was referring to the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson, while I thought we were talking about Fergie the ex-Black Eyed Pea. There is so much culture — some of it is great, some is weird, most is horrible, but little of it seems to overlap.

Once upon a time, “all Americans would sit down at the same time and watch Jay Leno, or David Letterman.”

Wait, what happened to “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson”? (All together now: OK, Boomer.)

Back to Weiss:

… (I)t’s the mid-2020s, and we’re lucky if we get one or two collective cultural moments a year between streaming platforms, newsletters, magazines, and various different social media apps.

The New York Times’ bestseller list speaks to one tribe, while the Amazon bestseller list speaks to another. Film critics speak for an elite while Rotten Tomatoes speak for the masses. What’s left of what we used to call the mainstream, like Late Night, or the Super Bowl halftime show or whatever’s on PBS, feels washed out — either because it’s become overly corporate or hopelessly politicized.

The posh way of saying this is: There is no monoculture left.

So how are you supposed to know what’s happening in the world — or at least, what’s worth paying attention to?

This is obviously relevant to my original goal with this Substack project, which was to discuss “signals” from mass-media culture that are worthy of attention from pastors, parents, teachers and counselors (click here for the Rational Sheep overture).

But what if there is no common, shared, mainstream popular culture?

Please connect the dots in these two Rational Sheep posts:

Disney Wars: $Billions at stake, as well as ...

The future of entertainment franchises that ordinary Americans offer to their children

And then, just the other day:

Age of the crashing Hollywood empires

Snow White, Disney woes, Star Wars fears, Indiana Jones and other pop-culture Marvels

Nevertheless, Weiss argues that what happens in some cultural niches can end up influencing the whole. Not all niches are created equal. Her goal?

I want to show you that culture is serious. That what begins as a niche ideology on Tumblr or an alarming trend in the hallways of a high school has a way of snaking up — and profoundly reshaping the country. In other words: If politics is downstream of culture, then there are some rapids upstream, and I’d like to take you rafting.

I am interested in both sides of the evolving world of popular culture, as in (a) the economic and technical models that entrepreneurs will use to produce niche media and (b) the “signals” in the few niche products that attract larger audiences (especially among young people) and, thus, influence our culture as a whole.

An example of a “signal” that cannot be ignored? Obviously, I believe that public debates about the smartphone crisis are at the top of the list. But I also remain interested in what’s ahead for Disney and the other beleaguered giants of mainstream media.

Is there a “safe” strategy in the current pop-culture scene, a surefire way to produce products that will sell in the digital-niche marketplace?

I believe that the answer is a hard “No.”

Let me return to the “Snow White” question that I asked at the end of the recent “Age of the crashing Hollywood empires” post. I really want to know what readers think. I believe these four options are relevant, in terms of what’s ahead in the world of screens culture.

Thus:

… If you wanted to reboot “Snow White” (I know, I know) and make a film that turned a profit, did justice to the Disney classic and, hey, maybe even the original story, what would you do? What are your options?

* What Disney did. Attempt a “modern audiences” reboot, then freak out and throw millions of dollars at the screen attempting to fix it.

* Do the “modern audiences” reboot on a lower budget and then OWN IT. Defend your creative team, please the mainstream entertainment press and, in the end, make a tiny bite of money or suffer a much less expensive flop. Plus, you are sure to get Academy Award nominations!

* Do something like “West Side Story,” which took Romeo and Juliet and put the framework of the story in a new cultural context in which the creative changes MADE SENSE. A Latinx “Snow White”? That might work in Spanish Harlem or some other cultural context, like postmodern Los Angeles.

* Dive even deeper into the cultural depths of the “Snow White” tale, offering something like the “Snow White and the Widow Queen” graphic novel from Jonathan Pageau and his “Symbolic World” team. Stress the story, using digital tech to create a movie or series that looks traditional and modern at the same time.

The compromise cop out didn’t work. What’s next?

Please let me know what you think.