Snow White and Rose Red

Everyone is familiar with the story of Snow White. However, while reading through an old book of fairytales, I came across a Grimm’s fairytale entitled Snow White and Rose Red. The story depicts two sisters, Snow White and Rose Red who grew up with their mother in the forest surrounded by the animals. During one winter, a bear asked to warm up in their cabin. The family brought him in and they quickly grew fond of him. Every night during that winter, the bear would come to the cabin and spend the night in the warmth. On the final day of winter, the bear told the two girls and her mother that he won’t be returning. He has to protect his treasures from the evil dwarf.

           Several weeks pass and the two girls spot a dwarf trapped under a tree. They help him escape and he is extremely mean to them. He runs away carrying a bunch of gold. The two girls see the dwarf two more times in perilous situations. Each time, the kind girls help him out with no gratitude in return. Every time, he carries a bag of riches. The final time the girls encounter the dwarf again and the bear is trying to kill him. The girls watch as the bear kills the dwarf and the bear turns back into a prince. The curse was lifted, and the prince marries Snow White and Rose Red marries his brother and they live happily ever after.

      Reading this story, I could see the potential in changing some key elements of the plot to make the film an LGBT story. Using the fundamental plot as a foundation, I am going to adjust the fairy tale to become an LGBT film. Instead of Snow White and Rose Red being sisters, they will be two women living separately in the woods. Each raised by loving parents who teach them about the goodness of the world. Stemming from that fundamental change, the story will play out a little differently than the original Grimm’s fairytale.

           The two girls are traveling in the woods separately when they see a bear who needs help. The two work together to rescue the bear and they bring the bear back to Snow White’s cabin to get warm. The family helps the bear and while the bear and the family sleep, the two girls develop a friendship. The bear enjoyed sleeping in the cabin so much that after that night, he continued to come back and so did Rose Red. Subtly throughout this development, there is some flirtation between the girls. Finally when winter is over, the bear says he won’t be returning to find his treasures.

           Once the bear leaves, the two girls part ways. This separation is shortly ended when Rose Red stumbles upon the mean dwarf. After they work together to save him, their relationship rekindles. The two realize that they can’t be without the other. Snow White asks Rose Red if she’ll go on a picnic with her and she says yes. The following evening when they are on their picnic, the same dwarf needs help. They decide to rescue him again and this time, he mocks them because he notices that they are on a date. When he leaves, they didn’t realize they were on a date because they’ve never experienced one. This is when they realize they have feelings deeper than friendship.

           Several days later, the two girls are on their way back from town. They have accepted their love for each other and are holding hands as they walk through the woods. Once again, the dwarf is in trouble. This time, the bear is after him. He asks the girls for help but the bear swings and kills him, thus turning the bear back into a prince. The prince thanks the two girls for helping him during the winter and offers his hand in marriage. The girls confess their love for each other, and the prince thinks for a second. Then offers to wed them, as a gift for their kindness. The film ends with their wedding, ordained by the prince. They kiss and live happily ever after.

           The reason I chose a fairytale to turn into an LGBT narrative is that there are no fairytales with any sort of plot between two gay characters. In the documentary, The Celluloid Closet, it explained how the PCA banned LGBT depictions within film and stories that originally were written with LGBT narratives were turned into heteronormative stories. The Long Weekend is an example of this because the original through line is a writer questioning his sexuality but in the film, it’s about a writer struggling with writer’s block. The changing of narratives like this has halted the progression of gay culture coming into mainstream media. With a film such as Snow White and Rose Red, it’ll turn a heteronormative story into a homosexual one; reversing the decades-long tradition.

           While most Hollywood films depict female characters through a male gaze, I do not intend to sexualize the females depicted in the film. Instead, I want them to be depicted in a very omniscient light. My core belief is that to bring these stories into mainstream entertainment, we have to portray them as a matter of fact, we-are-here type of way. Showing a relationship between two queer individuals with the same nonchalant style as a straight romance is the most beneficial way of progressing the LGBT narrative in film. Much of the LGBT stories have been told through indie films and experimental films but creating Hollywood films with this type of narrative is often not done.

           The film I intend to make will not only pass the Bechdel Test (criteria being; the scene must have two female characters, all female conversation, and the conversation not being about men) but also the Vito Russo Test. The criteria for the Vito Russo Test are; the film has an LGBT character, the character is not defined solely by their sexuality, and the gay character must be vital to the plot. In an article by GLAAD that discusses the Vito Russo Test, they did a study of Hollywood films and found that out of all the films coming out of studios, seventeen of them had LGBT characters. Out of those seventeen films, only seven of them passed this test. That means out of every studio film released in 2013, only seven of them had those criteria. 

           Something that resonated with me was from the website of Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy about LGBT representation in film and television. They explored the history of queer characters in cinema and finished by stating that one of the most critically acclaimed LGBT films, Brokeback Mountain, was a pseudo-queer film. Their reasoning is because the two romantic leads are both straight acting and grapple with their sexuality. The characters’ repression of their sexuality makes it difficult to consider it a true LGBT film in the sense that the characters never confidently explore their sexuality.

           That is what I want to change. I want to move away from sexuality being a hurdle that characters have to overcome. Most films that deal with LGBT characters either make their sexuality something they ‘struggle’ with or the set up for a joke. With Snow White and Rose Red, they will be dealing with outside sources judging them such as the dwarf, but the central conflict is not them coming to terms with their sexuality. It just so happens they are two people falling in love and I feel like that is missing in modern cinema.

    

       While this film is a fairytale, the best way to make it as close to mainstream fairytales as possible is to make it an animated film. Since Disney has brought so many fairytales to the silver screen, showing a story of this nature as an animated film would be groundbreaking. So many times, Disney queer baits its audiences with the live-action Beauty and the Beast with Lafou, Elsa from Frozen, Captain America, and Bucky from the Avengers. So often do studios create questionably queer characters instead of committing to the community. I want to break that wheel and embrace it head-on. Society is changing enough that I feel like it makes sense for an LGBT animated film to be released and the story of Snow White and Red Rose is the perfect story to do so.

           Snow White and Red Rose would be a normalized depiction of a romance between two girls in a fairytale setting. The same way that basic plot devices are used in other fairytales, the same will be down with this one. I try to imagine what it would have been like if there was a queer animated film when I was younger. Would my parents have let me watch it? Because where I grew up, being gay was taboo and not spoken of. The thought of a film like this being actually created makes me happy and I wish someday in the near future, a film like this will exist.