Example Of Essay On American Snow White
Type of paper: Essay
Topic: Disney, Snow, White, Depression, America, Great Depression, Deal, United States
Pages: 1
Words: 275
Published: 2020/12/05
In Tracey Mollet’s article “With a smile and a song’ Walt Disney and the Birth of the American Fairy Tale,” the author uses literary and scholarly criticism of Disney animated films in order to establish their nature as newly important works of pop culture that establish “prevailing national myths about America, the nature of its people and their character” (112). He specifically takes a look at 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which is clearly linked to the Great Depression and its ability to offer an ideal story with a happy ending that many people needed at the time. Snow White is said to be the passive character who accepts her situation, like many in the Depression had to do at the time. The selfishness of the queen shows the selfishness of big business that stands in the way of “collective action”, which is shown in Snow White’s friendship with the Seven Dwarfs, which are said to stand for the common man.
Among the other links between Snow White and the Great Depression include the retreat from the city to rural settings, such as Snow White’s retreat to the dwarfs’ cottage. This matches the love for the agriculture industry that was found in the New Deal . All of these things lead to the conclusion, as written by Mollet, that Snow White was Walt Disney’s attempt to mark the setting and values of the Great Depression and the New Deal as one of the new American myths. In this way, Disney films are established as one of the newest and most powerful ways Americans explore their culture and deal with their history and values.
Works Cited
Mollet, Travey. “With a smile and a song’ Walt Disney and the Birth of the American Fairy
Tale.” Marvels & Tales, Volume 27, Number 1, 2013, pp. 109-124 (Article)
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