It is my sorrowful duty to inform Ben Shapiro that Disney’s casting of a young Latina actress in the role of Snow White is hardly a concern of millions of Americans parents who are, as we read, planning to take their children to see the film and will probably buy at least a billion in merch after its release is certainly the least troubling aspect of our fascination with that story.

More problematic than the skin tones of the actors employed in the production is perhaps the very premise of the ancient fairytale, which pretty much universally works in an evil mother/stepmother who plots to murder her daughter by various, and variously diabolical methods… depending upon which culture is reprising the Roman Myth.

I can only imagine Ben’s outrage at Ovid’s telling of the story:

“Scholar Graham Anderson suggested that the story of Snow White had ancient mythical roots and compared it to the Roman legend of Chione, recorded in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The name Chione means “Snow” in Greek and, in the story, she is described as the most beautiful woman in the land, so beautiful that the gods Apollo and Mercury both fell in love with her. Mercury put her to sleep with the touch of his caduceus and raped her in her sleep. Then Apollo, disguised as an old crone, approached her and raped her again. This led Chione to openly boast that she was more beautiful than the goddess Diana herself, resulting in Diana shooting her through the tongue with an arrow.”

Magic caduceus.

Better than riding the dwarf train I guess.

Ovid’s choice of naming his unfortunate character after the Greek Goddess of winter probably devolved through the ages to “skin white as snow” trope, though I think I can assure Ben that Chione was herself not exactly Caucasian:

“In Greek mythology, Chione was the daughter of Boreas, the god of the north wind, and Orithyia a daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens.

“Chione was the sister of Cleopatra (wife of Phineus, king of Thrace) and the Argonauts, Calaïs and Zetes. According to a late, though generally accepted tradition, Chione was the mother of Poseidon’s son Eumolpus whom she threw into the ocean for fear of her father’s reaction; however, Eumolpus is rescued and raised by Poseidon.”

Not a lot of Wonder Bread in that story Ben.

Perhaps the most troubling of the subsequent tellings is the that of most direct precursor of the troubling enough Brothers Grim version, Italian bard Giambattista Basile’s who provides this whopper of an explanation for Snow White’s snowiness and vaunted sexual allure:

“This fairy tale tells of a King, a noble title used to facilitate understanding for children and to make them understand that he is someone who commands, who one day sees a dead crow in the snow, and the contrast of red blood on white strikes him so much that he does not want nothing more than a white-skinned, red-cheeked bride.”

Bloody dead raven in the snow.

Snow White is troubling in more ways than your skinny racist a$$ can imagine, Ben.

But I assume Disney will edit a lot of that out.

Anyway here’s the very concerned Benster:


Fragile and uninformed…


Not unless they are dead for days under glass anyways.

Amen.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Uh, Ben? Take a look in the fooking mirror. You’re not exactly pasty, ghostly white yourself dude! Look, if you’ve got a fetish for pale white skinned gals what the hell? What consenting adults do in their bedrooms and with what kinds of looking people is their own business. Who the hell am I to judge? BUT, some things are best kept to yourself. It’s late and I’m pi$$ed that I’ll have to flush the image out of my head of your beating your meat to some milky skinned comatose to the point of looking dead white chick in some weird outfit from a fairly tale!

    10

  2. He probably believes the ancient Greeks and Romans all had pure white skin.

    Here’s some news – THEY DIDN’T. Their skin colour was the same as any race in the Mediterranean region, which is more olive and the same goes for Spanish (Hispanic) (and guess why Latinos are called that – it comes from ‘Latin’ which is what the ancient Romans spoke).

    Civilisation, as we know it, started off in what is now the Middle east, moved to the Mediterranean/Aegean area and developed there long before the paler skinned Europeans even started plundering.

    4

    • And an Irish poem ‘Mise agus Pangur Bán’ (myself and white Pangur)

      Seamus Healey’s translation:

      Pangur Bán and I at work,
      Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:
      His whole instinct is to hunt,
      Mine to free the meaning pent.

      More than loud acclaim, I love
      Books, silence, thought, my alcove.
      Happy for me, Pangur Bán
      Child-plays round some mouse’s den.

      Truth to tell, just being here,
      Housed alone, housed together,
      Adds up to its own reward:
      Concentration, stealthy art.

      Next thing an unwary mouse
      Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.
      Next thing lines that held and held
      Meaning back begin to yield.

      All the while, his round bright eye
      Fixes on the wall, while I
      Focus my less piercing gaze
      On the challenge of the page.

      With his unsheathed, perfect nails
      Pangur springs, exults and kills.
      When the longed-for, difficult
      Answers come, I too exult.

      So it goes. To each his own.
      No vying. No vexation.
      Taking pleasure, taking pains,
      Kindred spirits, veterans.

      Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,
      Pangur Bán has learned his trade.
      Day and night, my own hard work
      Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

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