Strength in Softness

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has become an unlikely comfort film for me. The first time I saw it as an adult, back in 2020, I was in love with it--and thought that to be a grievous sin. A betrayal of my cartoon allegiances to all that is irreverent and madcap and twinged in just a bit of irony and perhaps even cynicism. Or, in more plain terms, I'm talking about Warner Bros. cartoons all the time; to admit my infatuation with a Disney movie is certainly a sign of going to the "other side", right? Have I lost my edge? Gotten soft? The edge that I so possess as a random 19 year old babbling about cartoons on the internet?

Thankfully, I learned pretty quickly that any preconceived notions I had about enjoying one of the most beloved and iconic animated films (much less considered to be the first one!) were flimsy and restrictive. To enjoy Disney films such as Snow White and Dumbo and Pinocchio and The Three Caballeros were not a contradictory moral failing on my behalf or abandoning my principles; it's joining the millions of people who think the same. Thus, I gave the film a rewatch in 2023, and was more moved by it than ever. A gap of three years soon became two, with another rewatch in 2025, and now that gap has wedged into less than a year.

I was inspired to revisit the film, as I've been reading about its harrowing production in Michael Barrier's Hollywood Cartoons book (a book I will shill at any moment necessary; if you have an interest in animation, of any kind, you thereby should have an interest in this book.) Likewise, it's a comfort film, as I mentioned above, and I have been needing quite a bit of that comfort lately. I'm certain this is not a unique position I hold.

Why is it a comforting film? Why have I come to love it so? What about it keeps me coming back?

These are all loaded questions that are too loaded for this post, intended as off-the-cuff thought slinging. Nevertheless, I did want to articulate and work my way through one of the biggest points, and has been a point of reverence and attraction for me throughout my many watches of this film:

Snow White's strength.

Perhaps that's an oxymoronic statement. There has been quite the analysis on the role the princesses serve in these movies. Modern critics are more quick to pan their motives as shallow--a simple means to an end, which is hooking up with the interchangeably bland prince. There have been critiques that the princess don't get to "do" much. Just look and act dainty and pretty, perhaps play second fiddle to the Dwarves or the mice or the fairies, and so forth.

That, too, is an issue too loaded--yet fascinating--to go into right now. The point is that Snow White doesn't read as a conventionally strong character. Animals love her and she's dainty and pretty and seems to engage only in womanly matters: tend house and feel lovelorn. A walking feminine touch.

Nevertheless, during my 2023 rewatch, the "With a Smile and a Song" sequence brought me to tears. Something echoed in my rewatch from last night. Snow White has every reason in the world to be miserable. She narrowly escaped murder and is stranded in the woods with no shelter nor human company. 

Yet, instead of wallowing in her miseries, she's more concerned about startling the animals around her. She continues to move with grace and gentility and forgiveness. 

There's something cruelly comforting about hearing her say "Everything's going to be alright," in utter earnest. It's such a simple line, but a line that--if you're me, at least--makes the eyes itch and your throat bob. Everything and everyone, everywhere, seems so bent on conveying the opposite. Fingers are pointed at all times. Division rampant. No listening, no nuance. Injustice. War. Famine. Totalitarianism. Treating world events like a football match with blind allegiance to one's team. A loop of despair runs rampant, because despair is easy, and despair prompts despondency, and that prompts complacency.

And so it almost becomes anarchic, in a way, to hear that simple sentiment expressed. "I really feel quite happy now. I'm sure I'll get along somehow. Everything's going to be alright."

No snarky follow-up. No ironic commentary at any perceived delusion of her statement. Snow White is soft and optimistic, and that is seen as a strength. Resilient. Not something to mock or beat down.

It takes more strength to decide to carry on and choose hope than it does to reject it. Earnest and vulnerability are seen as weakness. Maybe moreso, the vitriol towards such sentiments comes from a place of jealousy in others, who are ashamed of their own lack. 

It's such a reprieve, such a comfort, to see such things and to hear such sentiments in an age of snark and irony and division and deprecation. Where even those expressing such statements may feel the need to hide behind a follow-up or any veneer to shield their vulnerability, which they have been led to feel is weak, naive, complacent.

Especially because Snow White was similarly created in these circumstances. It was still the Depression, after all. An age of bleakness and despair and hopelessness. Snow White was as much a symbol of hope and resilience back then as she is now. Even moreso, given the circumstances--that is, we didn't have a line of Disney princesses to compare after the fact, contrasting heroism of each princess and picking apart detrimental stereotypes of femininity.

But even pontificating on all of that seems to defeat the point of this post. Which is, Snow White's softness is a symbol of strength. It is a symbol of resilience, despite the atrocities leading to her circumstances. Of hope, which is always worth preserving, no matter how irrational--it's only irrational if you make it so. 

I was never one for Disney princesses, growing up. I rejected all things feminine, deeply sensitive to the condescension and talking down to that seemed to seep into every toy line and TV show. My tomboyishness became less a preference and more a symbol of rejection and contrarianism. If it was girly, I didn't like it.

It's almost a strange feeling to "backtrack" on that and find such strength in, again, softness. Femininity and grace. I don't think that all women should be reserved matriarchs who sing to birds and are delegated to household chores. I most certainly am not. But the fact that I feel the compulsion to qualify that snarky follow-up to begin with demonstrates why Snow White's earnest is so powerful and strong and needed. My irony is a reaction out of fear. Fear of vulnerability, fear of my words being misconstrued, fear of looking "soft".

We thereby go back to the point of this post. Is it so bad to be soft? Snow White is soft. Through it, she is strong through her tenacity and hope and consideration, to perhaps almost "cartoonish" levels of selflessness. Surely no person could ever hope to be as forgiving and optimistic as her.

...but who, really, is to say? Is that just a distinction we're arbitrarily cornering ourselves into, because society has taught us we're more useful and subservient when all of our hope in the world is drained and we have no fighting spirit?

Softness has its strength. Perhaps to the point that so many wish to convey otherwise so as to dispel its effectiveness. Perhaps, rather than deeming softness as weakness, earnest as fault, we instead look into why the opposite is so readily encouraged.

There's a lot we can learn through a smile and a song.