Snow White Christmas (2018)

Again, not a movie about writing, but the streaming algorithm won’t leave me alone because I watched the Cinderella Christmas movie.

Blanca is going to inherit half of her father’s money and control of his candy business/shop when she turn 25 on Christmas. Her step mother, Victoria, and Victoria’s overly-flamboyant sidekick, Zane (I’m just saying, you’re a villain dude. Tone it down), hypnotize Blanca so will forget everything except her deceased father. They place her in a small town, knowing that if she does not claim her side of the candy business by Christmas, the money goes to Victoria. There, Blanca meets seven men and women in a Christmas band, the Holly Jollies, who are going help her spread Christmas cheer . . . or something. Honestly, the “dwarf” characters didn’t really do much, but I liked their music. The dialogue keeps trying to make it seem like she and Holly Jollies live in a seedy motel, but it’s more like a cute little inn. I mean, her room has a kitchen!

However, as this is a rip-off of a Hallmark movie, there are two male leads. The first is Lucas Prince, a wealthy and eligible designer who falls for Blanca’s beauty. They go on a couple of dates before she loses her memory, but honestly, I like it sooooooo much better when he thinks he’s coming to rescue her from the small town. On the one hand, he keeps offering to take her to a doctor, which is totally fair, but on the other hand, he keeps objectifying her and being negative about things she enjoys. Blanca continually tells him off and tries to get him to leave. The other young man is Hunter, an artist Blanca knew through a mutual friend. He’s sent by Victoria to keep an eye on Blanca as a part of her “evil scheme”.

You get it right? Victoria is the evil queen. Zane is her mirror and servant. Hunter is . . . the hunter. There are even ceramic deer and other woodland critters like in the Disney film in the motel Blanca lives in. A key prop is a compact mirror belonging to Victoria. Throw in lots of apples (candy apples, apple shaped bells, apple red dresses, etc) and you have a Snow White adaptation.

SPOILERS:

Prince continues to blow his chances with Blanca by dissing the Holly Jollies, but she’s still too polite about it. Stand up for your friends!

Hunter feels guilty that he’s been sent by Victoria and Zane to keep Prince away from Blanca. He realizes he’s done the wrong thing when the step-mother and toady do not give him instructions to bring Blanca home. That’s what tipped you off, dude! Not that she has selective amnesia and they don’t want her taken to a hospital! Hunter, you might be the hotter of the two men, but you are clearly aren’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

Anyway, he sticks around because he has feelings for her (if you had feelings for her, you’d call a doctor!) and paints her a frame for a photo of her father. The magnificence and her gratitude of the frame causes the pair to make out and Blanca remembers everything. However, there’s still twenty minutes of this thing.

Blanca tries to distant herself from Hunter thinking he was being paid by Victoria until the Holly Jollies convince her to listen to him. That’s right, their whole role besides singing is to be their relationship counselor. They all rush back to the unnamed city to save Blanca’s inheritance and punish Victoria. Oh yea, and she and Hunter make-out some more. Blah blah blah.

I was disappointed that true love’s kiss could break the hypnotism. Pick up a book, people! Snow White was saved by someone dropping the glass coffin and she coughs out the apple. Yes, I really wanted someone to just give her the Heimlich maneuver. Is that so much to ask? Also, her hair wasn’t dark enough! Dark as ebony, people! Dark as ebony.

If Snow White had been Under Quarentine

If Snow White Had been Under Quarentine

Once upon a time, an evil queen’s vanity made her so jealous of her little step-daughter that she ordered the child’s death. The child was beautiful, with hair black as ebony, lips red as blood, and skin white as snow. Luckily, the little girl was spared by the huntsman. She came across a little cottage in the woods where there were seven little chairs, seven little beds, and a place to hang seven pick-axes hung on the wall.

Snow White, as the child was called, allowed herself inside. She cleaned up the clearly bachelor owned abode and fell asleep in one of the beds.

Seven little men came home that night with news of a disease that had spread from the village. They felt confident and smug as their work kept them from coming in contact with such illnesses. Then, they discovered their clean house and the girl drooling upon one of their pillows. Her lips were bright crimson and her skin was pale as death. Clearly, she was ill and had brought the disease upon them.

The seven dwarfs tripped over one another in a panic to be out of the house. They locked the door behind them and boarded up the windows and doors.

Snow White awoke as they continued to lock her in. She protested through the slats, insisting she wasn’t sick.

“That’s what sick people always say,” one of the oldest of the men declared. “Now you just stay in there under quarantine until the doctor says you can come out.”

“How long will that take?” she cried.

“The closest doctor is a three day ride from here on horseback,” a different man explained.

“Oh. Six days is not so bad. My step-mother locked in my my room for a week once.”

“Yes. But you see we don’t have a horse,” a third man said.

“But don’t worry. There is plenty of food in there for you to eat, little girl,” a fourth dwarf explained.

“We are sorry about this, but aren’t you glad we’re letting you stay in our house. Don’t think we didn’t consider burning it down,” a different dwarf stated.

The sixth dwarf grunted, “Just try not to breathe on anything until we get back.”

At which a seventh dwarf chimed in, “Unless you can do more cleaning and organizing. I mean, it would be the least you could do since we are going to get the doctor for you.”

And so they left her. Snow White started her isolated days easily. She patched up worn-out dwarf clothes and reorganized their sock drawers. When the days were particularly long, she cleaned. When the days felt shorter, she played games with the mice living in the walls.

Then the days started to blend together. Soon, she was speaking to the mice, planning out adventures with them. As this was the time before the internet, her child mind started to come up with her own answers to questions she had about the world. Her conversations with herself went like this:

“Why is a mouse’s tail not as furry as the rest of him?”

“Because, Snow White, is a bitch. That’s why.”

“Oh! Duh. Silly me.”
As the dwarfs had no books, she started using coal to draw and write stories on her walls. These were not as much fun after the mice criticized her tale of a her step-mother choking on a whole onion.

“What do you mean she wouldn’t eat a whole onion? Don’t question my art, mice!” Either way, the onion was changed to an apple.

Snow White didn’t know how many days had gone by (only that trying to cut her own hair had been a bad idea) when the dwarfs finally returned with a man a plague doctor mask. He removed the mask after the boards over one window were removed and he got a good look at her.

“This child isn’t sick. She just needs more sunlight. You seven do you know at the other symptom besides bleeding lips and pale skin is foaming from the mouth right? You’re lucky I don’t report you for child abuse, but as we don’t have laws for that, I guess there’s nothing I can do.”

The dwarfs released Snow White, she punched each of them in their seven faces, and she went back to town with the doctor. Snow White then used the plague mask and a gloves to take a comb, ribbons, and an apple from the home of a diseased family She sent them to her step-mother, waiting for the vain woman to be quarantined, and used the opportunity to take back her kingdom.

The end

Character Study - Non-Villainous Villains

When writing fantasy or adventure, one of the hardest parts is writing a believable villain. I have already addressed this subject once with Captain Nemo, but with the television program Once Upon a Time having ended, I realized that I wanted to give some more contemporary examples. Some of you probably just turned up your nose at the glorified soap-opera Once Upon a Time (which Disney did some pretty shady things in order to produce and make sure theirs was the only modern fairy tales show at the time). Here's the thing - it wrote it's villains extremely well. Every villain had a backstory and some redeeming quality. Many of them you felt sorry for or could relate to in some way. And that's the way the villain should be. You don't want to constantly write the James Bond stereotype, who does evil just to be powerful. So, here are a three modern examples of well-written fantasy villains and why.

The first example is a bit of a cheat because the whole book is from the villain's point of view and is trying to make you feel regret for an established bad guy, similar to Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Still, it was well-done and I'm using it. The Fairest of All by Serena Valentino was published by Disney, yet delves into a dark, psychological path that surprises the reader. It's the story of how Snow White's step-mother became wicked. Valentino uses many of the same childhood horrors that shape people in the real world who do bad: abuse, manipulation, low self-esteem, and loneliness, to reveal the queen's motivation for her obsession with beauty. You see a little girl who is told constantly that she is ugly and worthless, then grows up to discover she is actually gorgeous and how she latches onto that concept. It also addresses how childhood trauma follows a person into adulthood, although the book does this very literally when it turns out the slave in the mirror is the queen's mentally abusive father. Lastly, Valentino uses grief and depression to break the character and turn her into the monstrous mother we recognize from the Disney film. She paints an interesting and heartbreaking journey that is not simply jealousy, but the reasons behind the madness.

Second villains to analyze are Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel from the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman. Both are cold, intelligent, and selfish. While one is power hungry and the other is more of an academic fanatic, both lay at the precipice of being purely villainous in different ways. Without giving away too much from the books, both characters have a significant effect and interest in the hero, Lyra. She serves as a different part of a goal for both and both nearly kill her several times. But it is their underlining humanity, their connection to each other and to Lyra which reveals them to be more than simply antagonists.

The last to be given props this week (and in keeping with a YA theme) is Luke Castellan from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. Luke is one of many antagonists from the series of books, but he unique as the most conflicted of the villains. You see him from many points of view, not just as the former friend and betrayer of the main character. You find his motivations from a childhood of neglect and from his reactions to various harsh life experiences. He was a hero who was manipulated by depression and bitterness, but you have his former friends who want him to be the boy he used to be. You root for them to save him, despite every horrible way he nearly kills them.

In Defense of Snow White

Brief History: Snow White is the story most people know about the beautiful girl (who was only seven years old in the Grimm version, by the way) experiences attempted murder multiple times by the hand of family member and is rescued by miners. This story is not found as often in other cultures as Cinderella, although there are versions within Eastern European folktales. The Roman story of Chione has similarities, but is also riddled with rape and forced tongue piercings. Some say Snow White was inspired by real wealthy young women who died “mysteriously” so others could take control of their land and mines. I would also like to point out that in the earliest versions the prince does not save the young beauty with a kiss. Someone drops the glass casket and she coughs out the poisoned apple.

Analysis: As a kid, I used to wonder how Snow White could be so dumb. Her stepmother manages to trick her with different variations of the same trick three times. THREE TIMES! But at the same time, I don’t know what her life was like. Maybe she was alone every day in that dwarf house for years and was desperate for the company, even if that company might stab her scalp with a poison comb. Maybe she had lots of peddlers come by the cottage and the evil queen showing up multiple times was simply another person in a weekly routine of solicitors. I did like that her true heroes were the seven little people who probably did not know how to raise a child. So that makes them doubly heroes – once for keeping her safe and again for dealing with her through puberty. As for her marrying a man she never met just because he dropped her casket, I admit I’d do almost anything to not have to hand-wash seven pairs of underwear every day.

Blame it on the Victorians: Originally, when the Brothers Grimm wrote the story down, Snow White’s nemesis was not a jealous stepmother, but the very woman who had given birth to her. Even the Grimm boys thought that having her mom order little Snow’s lungs and liver cooked into a stew was too dark. And thus begins the myth of the evil step-mother. Victorians seemed weirdly okay with this, despite that so many children grew up with stepmoms due to the high death rate caused by childbirth. First wife dies and you don’t want to raise the kids – marry another women.  As for the Victorian’s view of little people, well… Most illustrators drew the dwarfs as ordinary men with long beards. Yet, there were a few, most notably from the Victorian era who chose to draw them more like hobgoblins or gnomes; fanciful or comical. Circuses of the day were partially to blame. It was difficult for little people to be widely accepted in Victorian society and some chose to be the stars of freak shows. P.T. Barnum’s young actor, known as General Tom Thumb, made bank allowing people to ogle him. Because, again, the Victorians were swell.

Last thoughts: An apple a day. . . is almost the set-up for the perfect crime.

*If you want know any of the places where some of my research comes from, just contact me.