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Snow White And The Seven Dwarves Analysis

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Capitalist Imagery in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves There’s no doubt that Walt Disney has benefited from capitalism. Even post-mortem, his private company thrives and is one of the handful of large private companies that monopolizes the market for all-ages animated movies. Disney movies are associated with a sort of pure and timeless magic, any implication that they push a sort of agenda is usually overlooked. Yet there are obvious capitalist overtones in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The romanticization of physical labor and portrayal of the working class as free-spirited, lazy, and incompetent, and the positive portrayal of traditional Western gender roles only proves this. To begin, please consider the way the Seven Dwarves are introduced. The scene containing the song “Heigh-Ho” (Disney 1937) seems slightly out of place, yes it fits the fantastic, whimsical imagery, introduces and characterizes the Seven Dwarves as light-hearted and jolly, and is filled with humorous and pleasing imagery. Even then, it leads to questions that are never answered. The dwarves work in a …show more content…

To maintain the aesthetic, Snow White is not allowed to break a sweat or struggle, and happily brings a dust covered, filthy home to a shining ideal by giving the bulk of the labor to her animal friends. There is a sharp contrast between Snow White, who is treated as a hard working individual despite delegating work to others, and the Seven Dwarves, treated as lazy despite performing hard physical labor. More value is placed on Snow White’s abilities as a leader and to direct how labor is performed than is placed on the dwarves’ ability to actually perform labor. Again, we see the value of the dwarves effectually being “dwarfed” by the capitalist lens we are shown the narrative

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