Since Disney announced plans to do a live-action remake of their 1937 feature “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the disabled community had questions. How would the Dwarf characters be handled in a way that wasn’t offensive? Some, like actor Peter Dinklage, even questioned whether the movie could even be remade considering current progressive attitudes about people with disabilities. I always go in with trepidation to movies that have a historically sticky attitude about the disabled, specifically the little people (LP) community. Films like the recent “Wonka” have been met with mostly shrugs from those who don’t take notice of disability representation in movies, while “Wicked” tried to do something new by authentically casting actress Marissa Bode as Nessarose, but didn’t really grapple with the fractured legacy of the Munchkins.
Where does Disney’s new “Snow White” fall? Surprisingly, it aims a bit higher than either “Wonka” or “Wicked,” though it doesn’t acknowledge the problem with the Dwarfs so much as it pivots away from it. This isn’t unexpected. The movie is titled “Snow White,” period, with billboards and other promotional materials prioritizing stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot front and center. A billboard for the movie in Los Angeles simply shows the Dwarfs’ feet along the bottom.
When the Mouse House saw criticism over the fact that the characters would be CGI, they announced that the Dwarfs weren’t actually . . . dwarfs, meaning LPs. They were “magical creatures.” When the Dwarfs first meet Snow White they say she’s a “human,” and they are not. The Dwarfs are introduced working in their mine where their touch helps them locate where diamonds are. They don’t have any other job outside of this, short of one bizarre moment where Snow White believes Doc (voiced by Jeremy Swift) is actually a doctor and tasks him with saving someone’s life, which ends up being successful. Is he really a doctor then? In the landscape of the film, labeling them as magical (but not human) plays like the script painted itself into a corner, considering the Evil Queen (Gadot) also has magic powers and is human, and the only other creatures we see are the big-eyed CGI critters that seemingly coordinate and can communicate with Snow White. The Dwarfs are othered in a landscape where the movie’s rules don’t posit what the other is. The Dwarfs, once again, are different because they’re small.
Gal Gadot as Evil Queen in Disney's live-action "Snow White" (Giles Keyte/Disney )Hollywood has had a difficult time with LPs in movies. The 1930s saw actor and little person Billy Barty spend much of his film career playing children, most famously a lecherous baby in the Busby Berkeley musical “Gold Diggers of 1933.” Since then the most famous examples of LPs have been the child and doll-like Munchkins in 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz” and the worldly-wise, prophetic Oompa Loompas in 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Since then, LP actors have been relegated to playing various types of elves and/or placed in comedic roles due to their short stature. Nowadays, with the rise of CGI, even those roles are disappearing in a desire to just “shrink” actors of typical stature down to small size.
Authentic casting is a priority if you make it one.
In the current landscape, studios engage in what I call “awareness acknowledgment.” This happens in movies where the studio/director is aware that they need to show people with disabilities, and thus place them prominently in the frame but give them zero characterization. A great example is Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” A dance sequence prominently places a wheelchair user in the front and another scene shows a woman with a limb difference. Neither of these characters has a name or any type of personality — even more frustrating considering there is a wheelchair-using Barbie named Becky. They are essentially extras with prominent placement because they are disabled. Awareness acknowledgment like this doesn’t do anything for representation as the characters aren’t characters. They are set dressing placed in the frame to avoid criticism or backlash.
“Snow White” attempts to negate the implication that the Dwarfs are representative of LPs by not only having actual LPs in the film but giving one of them a bona fide character. Snow White meets a charming bandit named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), the leader of a group of thieves who reside in the forest. One of those thieves is Quigg (George Appleby), the self-proclaimed “Master of the Crossbow” who is also an LP. Quigg doesn’t have a ton of backstory, but he is presented as just as brave and courageous as the other bandits who fight against the Evil Queen. He’s got solid comedic timing and gets the opportunity to save the day. Because he is an active participant in the story, he ends up having more characterization than the actual Dwarfs do. There are also other LP actors in the crowd sequences. These aren’t ground-breaking changes but it would have been easy for Disney to just not do them. It continues to show that authentic casting is a priority if you make it one.
(L-R) Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) and Snow White (Rachel Zegler) in Disney's live-action "Snow White" (Giles Keyte/Disney )The saddest element of this is how complacent audiences have become regarding bad disabled representation. Much of the discourse around the movie is about the “woke” casting of Latina actress Zegler in the title role, coupled with disparaging comments she’s made about the original film as well as President Trump. Gadot, an Israeli national, has also come under fire due to the current situation happening in Gaza. But it seems like people are so wrapped up in those controversies because disability is still so invisible. We’re used to seeing Hugh Grant play a little person in “Wonka,” but we’ve grown complacent to disabled erasure.
This isn’t a slam dunk. Disney still struggles to prioritize disabled characters and stories. They are still putting disabled characters in supporting roles and aren’t always casting authentically in regards to voice actors (though, in “Snow White’s” case, LP actor Martin Klebba is the voice of Grumpy). Having a character like Quigg around is a good start, but that’s all it is, a start.
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