THE LIVE, WOKE, MOVIE REMAKE BREAKDOWN & SOCIAL CRITICISM
(Shot out to Brett Cooper)
Drugs are the most lucrative product in the world . Sex is the second. Power is a product, but who can afford it? Illusion and hypnosis are third.
Hypnosis? Illusion? Poppycock?
Turn off my brain with plays, television, movies, music, and stand up comedians. Magicians, weave a magic spell that will float me away to oblivion and ease the trauma of my existence! Help me forget. Get me outside the pressures of my life, and I will pay you. You can even sneak sell me something if, and only if, you can take my breath away. But not all creatives follow the “breath-taking” rules.
We allow people to take power over our consciousness to make us feel good. Sometimes feeling bad is feeling good. There’s good-bad and bad-bad. It feels good to let go and float along without having to make decisions or work too hard. Insert commercial here.
WE Are ENTERTaInED. It almost sounds like candy. Harmless. “It’s entertainment.” Like a clown.
Entertainment is not candy. It can be but that is not all it is. Fairy tales have been perverted. The original Grimmes Fairy Tales show deep insight into the human psyche. It shows us how to navigate society. These are archetypes. Movies can make you think. They can inspire bravery. Music can unite nations.
There is a fight for your attention. People are dying out here to get you to look at them or their people. Everyone knows about Vanilla Ice and Suge Knight for example. If you are paying for Drake then you are not paying for another artist. People kill for thousands. Do you think it’s a harder decision to kill for millions? This is how big the fight is.
The mind is like putty, mixed with a flash drive. Remember the girl who thought she was a dog? The goal is to first acquire it, then shape and mold it as you will. Not all commercials are thirty seconds long. Some are over an hour, like a really intense commercial. Enter Snow White; food for the mind. This is how MK Ultra works.
Snow White is a movie by committee with the soul of AI. It’s empty calories with no nutrients, or rather anti-nutrients. This movie is societal propaganda. It’s meant to hypnotize us to agree with “their” agenda. It perpetuates a lack of critical thinking while also alienating the appropriate audience. The colors look nice though.
Snow White is dangerous. Like all media, our minds digest it and make food for our dreams.
SNOW SHITE and the SEVEN BLUNDERS:
ONE: HUBRIS! PURE HUBRIS!
Be Bashful: Confident arrogance, with a dash of ignorance.
Snow White was “weak?” The prince is a “weird stalker?” Stop talking. Romance and wanting love are outdated? These are blemishes cast upon us from a patriarchal system? “I only saw the old cartoon movie once.” That’s what she said! Your “friend,” Rachel. You have been Zeglered.
It was made 85 years ago. You’re remaking an old movie. Literally. The movie is based on a Fairy Tale. Isn’t the point that it’s dated? And also maybe old things have value. If we colonize Mars, will people be saying, “the Earth is sooo 2024?”
Boomers are people too, millienials. Boomers are the reason you have the internet. Respect. And neither generation is perfect. I am generation X. We have Puff Daddy. We are the latchkey kid generation raised by television. We are the lost Mad Max generation. We eat national crisis for breakfast. You merely adopted prejudice; we were born into it. You don’t remember when Disney was magic and there were no “midi-chlorians.”
On this stalker prince: When’s the last time a real prince sang to you, below your window, after seeing only a glimpse of you? Oh, and he’s a handsome prince. And he’s got money and a sword to protect you. Okay, times up. Never! No prince has ever sung to you “One Song” for your poor broke self.
Snow White was actually wearing rags. “Rach” called that guy creepy. “She blockin Yo!” If you have a friend like that, she may have talked you out of the love of your life. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. He kissed her dead body and brought her back to life! “Some people” would police this man. Is the Illuminati trying to stop people from being romantic? What kind of Karen would want to throw this man in jail, so Snow can sleep forever? A jealous one. That’s who!
You think Ms. White should focus on her career, telling dwarves how to clean, while she accepts free room and board? “Clean your room and pay me!” she sings sweetly. “If a hag gives me a poisen apple to eat, make sure no rich, brave prince with a great voice kisses me.” she croons bossily. This film will teach children? She should rule them because, they are short?
What man or woman could walk into anyone’s house and tell them to clean it and also feed and house her/him? CGI men-dwarves should clean? What would Cardi B do? Or Megan the stallion!? Or Beyonce?! “All my single ladies!” Offering inside : the privilege of being softly bullied by a princess.
See? The film is darker than you thought.
Two: POCAHONTAS MATTERS
Snow Snizzy
Pocahontas wanted all the colors of the wind. White is in the crayon box too. Yes, fight malicious authority, but we have to live with the colonizers. We can’t deny them identity, like revenge for all cultures of color. Cultures need their myths and legends. Identity is memory. It’s why the “African Dispora” in America get so upset about it. Cultures can disappear.
I do want my Asians Asian and my Africans African. Next to that, get a great actor and I don’t care about the color. Meryl Streep has my permission to play Black Panther if she believes she can do it. Same for Daniel Day Lewis. But if Rhianna was to play the Disney princess, would we have to call it Snow Black? Or Snow Brown or Chocolate Brown?
The powers that be are tone deaf and have been since before The Princess and the Frog. You get a chance to show black folks you love them and turn the princess into a frog. At least we got one. It’s like when you try to help something, but then end up tripping. And everyone sees you, so you become self conscious, become more clumsy, and trippy, and suddenly the studio is on fire. They were just trying to help. This is Snow White, but with millions of dollars.
Disney, you aren’t racist. We get it. Sheesh.
THREE: FEED ME SEYMOR!
“Balance the meal for the soul.”
There may be a formula for feeding the soul. Feeding the soul is money. But we are not machines. Many think we live in a mechanistic universe. We are little boxes in other boxes. Like those Russian dolls. That’s not life and that’s not something to strive for. And the “food” created is bad. No flavor or depth, sprinkled with addictive chemicals. Intangible flavorings.
Superhero movies are formulaic, but you can’t just put a cape on some random dude and make a billion dollars. You can’t make any cookie-cutter superhero movie and think people will show up. The hero’s journey is sacred, like that battle of good verses evil. Marvel was doing alright with the hero’s journey, but they got stuck on the sky beam, and the villains were vapid. The human condition is thriving to be better like all things. To strive. Believing we can be better than our mundane selves is a superhero.
It’s a shame that many won’t know the depth of the comics your children are reading (the She-Hulk comic is better than the series). Delimas you can feel, feel real, and are grounded in true human dramatic situations. Not just sky beams. These stories, before they hit the big screen, contain deep character development. They contain moral dilemmas that would make Neitchze scratch his head and Freud cry to Mama.
Do the right thing by giving people what they want and need. How did enforcing selfish behavior to kids make it all the way to production? How were they so shortsighted?
Four: A PERSON’S A PERSON…
Grumpy Uncanny valley of the dwarves
The CGI is Weird weird. Peter Dinklage, help us. W.W.P.D.? Never mind. Someone tell Peter the dwarves don’t live in a cave, they have a home. They may be asexual cuckolds but they have souls. Those “live-action cartoons” do not.
Raise your hand if your movie company makes at least billions of dollars. Okay great. You are not allowed to make movies with CGI until further notice. You are in the dog house, unless they are equal to Avatar. Somebody unfreeze Walt Disney. He may be a freemason in league with the Illuminati, but the guy knew how to tell a story.
Actors want to interact with real people, to be more connected. The nuance of performance matters and can create new, original, thoughtful experiences. They/we makes the whole film easier to relate to and easier to disappear into. But if I can tell a person is talking to a cartoon, I’m out. Except for Who Framed Roger Rabbit. or maybe Coolworld. And, “how dare you” want kids to eat this sugary garbage and teach that mediacrity when you have more ability.
FIVE: “WALK THE”LINE”—JOHNNY CASH
Sleepy Agenda And/or Delusion
Is it an agenda, if you aren’t self-aware enough to know it? Is it a mix of self-dillusional gaslighting and agreed reality-shaping?
It’s delusional destructional hypnosis to teach someone immoral or unethical ideals and actions. We don’t teach people to touch hot stoves. We shouldn’t teach people that being “beautiful” is a right to leadership. We should not teach that men and women don’t need each other.
Snow White, the animation was in a relatable real life situation. It pertains to the human condition. What would you do if someone close to you was out to kill you and you had to go out into the wild? There you see a quant house.
But this live action remake says, “It’s how I see the world, not how it is.” They tried to Rom-Com a fairy tale. Think Pretty Woman. Someone once said Rom-Coms are worse than horror movies or porn. And I get it. It’s a soft seduction into an unreality. Of course a street walker could end up with a millionare. In a world where half of relationships end in divorce, what chance does a “lady of the night” have?
By the way, he originally needed directions. We have Google Maps now. And you know, prenup.
Propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view: “he was charged with distributing enemy propaganda.”
Where is the line between propagandic agenda and art? Wonderwoman is art. The Marvels is propaganda. Alien and Aliens is art. The Eternals is propaganda. The new Little Mermaid is art sprinkled with propaganda to appease demographics. The Daredevil series is art. She-Hulk is propaganda. This article is propaganda. Do you see?
Telling a good story is not trying to fit every product into political and social molds. You lay the story bare in it’s truest essence. These stories stand for themselves. The journey to “Avengers Endgame” had lots of issues but they did a great job walking the line. Making a movie is near impossible. But they pulled it off with only a little agenda pushing and catering to the audience.
Six: OKAY BOOMERS
Doc: What’s the prescription for shortsightedness?
The past isn’t just old. Updates aren’t always (or even often) good. Cars from the 60’s are built to last longer. Today, so much is plastic and disposable. Respect (listening) for the past is a way to avoid pitfalls and navigate the future. We should help the future, like the past, we ignore, tried to.
Kids blame their parents. People remember the negative so easily. It keeps us alive. Life has always been a little messed up. How easily we forget then disparage the past for trying to remind us. We are better than those who came before? Today is built on the bricks of the past. Youngins have contempt for those bricks we stand on. It’s all of us. We all have this bias. Scientists have contempt for people in grass skirts living in the forest. We (the west) study them at Harvard and steal their poop.
The old Snow White does have many messages. The remake ignores the past and flips the message around. Entitlement over humility. If you are going to “remake” an old story but change it’s meaning, you are hiding the past. You are stabbing it in the back instead of facing the disagreement head on. Wanting love, community, and contributing to society are old values. The current filmmakers would make her seem humble with no gratitude, as her presence is the gift. This would be supreme propagandist brain washing.
New things are important. So are old things. New isn’t better. Old isn’t better. Mozart and Michael Jackson. Keep the babies. Get new bath water.
SEVEN: THE STRAIGHT DOPE
Happy and Dopey
Perhaps there is a range of addictive personalities. The media is good at sugarcoated brainwashing. But, we need to be a “little more dumber “before you force us to eat things like this generically aloof,’superior’, superficial factory slop. We don’t need no education! The media is emotional and mental seduction. Not weaponized drugs. Hopefully we are paying for it and not ”paying for it.”
Movies are not just things people like. People like cats. Put, cats in movie? People like jokes, so to make a billion dollars, put jokes in it? People like sex so put sex in the movie. But these are ingredients, not a meal. People like sugar, right so why don’t we just shove it into our gullets for three meals a day? It rots the brain.
Ryan Reynolds fought to keep Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel out of the Deadpool 3. He fought to keep the artistic integrity. We need fighters like this. Or you will get this, or Xmen 3, or Willow the series, or She-Hulk, or…you get it.
Superficiality for a cashgrab and/or power influence will produce crap. Stop trying to please everyone. Make a good, true story. Or if you do want to please everyone, do it for the story and not an agenda. Black Panther doesn’t need to emphasize black lives matter. Sleeping Beauty doesn’t need to become a warrior to fight the dragon, because “who needs a prince.” We need a hero.
A song without words can touch the soul. Add words, and you add another dimension of connection (positive or negative manipulation). The image is another. Imagine just eyes gazing, or hands across tall grass. Poof. And then you’re swept away, no identity except the person on screen. Suddenly you are Batman and you believe the story and you like being Batman, smart and brave. Batman makes good choices, like drinking Kool-Aid.
Which Snow White should we have? Should we change our myths and legends? Why? Our stories are how we see ourselves. They are our memory. We choose our memory. What we create is who we are and what children will become. If we are not choosing they we will choose and think for us and we will remember what they want us to remember.
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Written by Æric Adams
Telly-winning filmmaker & Top 10% Google reviewing writer with a sharp pen and a soft spot for great stories. Film, culture, life — written with wit, grit, and Southern charm.