Snow White or Frozen, it's all the same
And we never say it enough.
Who is the best role model? Elsa from Frozen, or Snow White?
Ask Google, and you will get plenty of articles like this, that discuss at length which one, among all “Disney Princesses” is the best Role Model, and rank them accordingly.
In comparison, almost nobody seems to discuss (especially with parents and children), the more structural problem of the canon.
As far as culture, or at least this post are concerned, a canon is a set of universal, shared (or sometimes imposed) cultural values. Every now and then, someone or something comes that replaces an existing canon with a new one, producing reference narratives that express it.
Obviously, imposing a canon is a way to grab and hold power. But what do we have here, is that the owner of the the same mythopoetic (that is “myth-making”, or more clearly: propagandistic) apparatus is always and only the same. One, largely unaccountable, for-profit company. One that is too big to keep doing it, not for failing.
It matters little if children prefer, or are thaught to prefer, the “retrograde” Snow White from 1937 or the “progressive” Elsa from 2013. Not until it is always and only Disney that writes or updates the screenplay. Let’s talk more about that, please.
Image sources: screenshots of Google search for “Snow White vs Frozen”
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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