Ginsberg’s Theorem is a parody of the laws of thermodynamics applied to other human pursuits, in the current case, the hopeless race for woke virtue recognition in the Age of the Great Stupid. It begins with the fact that an entity or an individual has begun playing a game, and continues,
1. You can’t win the game.
2. You can’t break even in the game.
3. You can’t quit the game.
The Disney Corporation stumbled into Ginsberg Theorem territory when it decided to make a live action version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in the throes of the company’s self-destructive woke virtue-signaling addiction. It began by casting a Snow White “of color,” which, of course, made no sense at all, since the whole story is based on an obsession to be the “fairest one of all,” and the central character is named Snow White. Snow that is not white has many icky implications.
Having started to play the game, Disney felt it had to react appropriately when actor Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones” fame, the best known of all performing “Little People,” gratuitously attacked the project, saying, “It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way, but then you’re still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together!” That single critique from a single individual who had appointed himself as the voice of all small people everywhere was all it took for Disney to make the mind-blowing—but woke!—decision to make “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” without dwarfs. As chronicled here at the time, as soon as a picture of the seven replacements hit social media…
…the backlash and ridicule was so furious that those whatever-the-hell they were supposed to be were canned, the movie’s premiere was cancelled, and the whole film went back to the drawing board. Let’s see now: the live action version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” couldn’t have dwarfs play dwarfs because…well, because Peter Dinklage said so. They couldn’t replace Little People actors with non-dwarfs, no matter how “diverse” and “inclusive” they were, because that made no sense, though it took the social media mob to explain this to Disney’s creative team. Ah-HA! The solution was to have a live action movie with 7/8 of the title characters not played by actors, but by weird CGI things reminiscent of the original animated film’s iconic dwarfs, but neither as charming nor as convincing….
See, animated dwarfs look right at home in a movie where everything is animated, but CGI characters are downright creepy in a film where all the human characters but them are played by living, breathing people. One would think Disney, of all movie-makers, would comprehend this. After all, the studio made “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” and the concept there was that the cartoon characters interacting with the humans were from a separate and parallel locale, “Toontown.” One would think that, but one would be wrong.
Now, as the opening of the almost certainly doomed film rapidly approaches (it arrives next week), the other metaphorical shoe that was certain drop has dropped: Actors with dwarfism are going to protest at the opening “company’s $250m remake of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” because the production didn’t hire real dwarfs and used the CGI things instead.
Actress Ali Chapman, who is 3ft 8in tall, called the remake “a total travesty” and said her fellow small actors are flying in from around the world to tell Disney their casting is an outrage. Protest organizer Jeff Beacher called Disney’s decision “a disgrace” and said, “If Hollywood is about inclusion and diversity then you could have had talented little people actors in all of these roles. This is a moment in history. Equality is a movement but when it comes to little people no-one in Hollywood is listening.”
Presumably Peter Dinklage is laying low, secure in the knowledge that he has plenty of acting gigs lined up. But Disney started playing the political correctness game, and with this movie, as with the other fiascos its woke obsession has sparked, it is learning Ginsberg’s Theorem the hard way. They started playing the game with the remake of their foundational classic. They couldn’t win no matter how they decide to handle the dwarfs unless they did the unimaginable and decided, “Kids don’t care what Peter Dinklage thinks!” Once they took the cowardly CGI route, the studio couldn’t come out of the controversy unscathed: it couldn’t break even. And now Disney is going to release a film that is certain to bomb, because they have sunk 250 million into it and bailing on the project now would be even more embarrassing than letting audiences throw popcorn at the screen.
You can’t quit the game.
Ethics Alarms 
The queen’s mirror is clearly malfunctioning. A bottle of Windex may have prevented the whole mess.
Pious wokeism will always be a race to the bottom as more extreme elements shame anyone less pure in goodthink.
Insofar as the Dwarfs were happily going off to work, weren’t they abused and misled members of the oppressed proletariat being abused by their evil capitalist masters? How can treating these victims in any way other than pointing out their delusion and deplorable situation be acceptable? This should be a teaching moment!
I really enjoyed the re-make of The Jungle Book. I would even go so far as to say that it was an improvement over the original animated version.
And, there, you had, basically, the main character with all of the supporting characters being CGI. That worked very well for panthers, tiger, elephants, etc. For people, the animation looks cartoonish.
Disney should have told Dinklage to butt out. Danny Woodburn, a Seinfeld actor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Woodburn), the only dwarf performer popping into my head (apart from the late great Billy Barty, Jerve Villachez, Verne Troyer, and Warwick Davis (thankfully remembered another live one)) should have told him to butt out.
-Jut
Don’t forget the brilliant Michael Dunn, “Magalito Loveless” in “The Wild Wild West,” Broadway star, Oscar nominee for “Ship of Fools” and a nightclub singer to boot. Maybe the most talented and versatile Little Person performer of them all, though Billy Barty would be a close second.
And Alexander in the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” in which Kirk and Uhura had their famous kiss.
They did have another option besides ignoring Peter. Just not put on the movie. It wasn’t the casting he objected to, it was the story itself.
Frankly, that may have been a better option. Like war, the game of political corectness has only one winning move: not to play. I find the live action implementation of animated classics annoying regardless.
I have thought that from the start: Disney was blinded by greed. Somehow, they idea that the most iconic of all the animated films would naturally be boffo in a live-action version blinded them to the (Obvious?) fact that what made Snow White the force it became was the fact that it was a full length animated feature—and the music. The remake wouldn’t have either of those advantages—there’s no wahy the pseudo-Frozen ballads will equal the popularity of the original score, so Disney was stuck with the story, with the dwarfs being a landmine when live actors were involved. A smart exec would have said, “Nope…we’ll leave this one with Walt.” But all they saw were dollar signs.
Disney deserves this.
Phlinn: ” It wasn’t the casting he objected to, it was the story itself.”
That’s fine, but it is a stupid objection. Disney has been remaking it’s classic films and Snow White, as Jack has pointed out, is Disney’s first big triumph. And, the original source material had dwarves. It is not as if they were bastardizing the story by adding them in, unlike say Beauty and the Beast (correct me if I am wrong but I bet that fairy tale did not have talking teapots and candlesticks).
Basically, Dinklage’s problem with Snow White is the same thing we would have in his earlier post about Shakespeare: you would need an expurgated version of Snow White (tangent: my use of “expurgated” immediately brings to mind the Book Shop sketch by Monty Python). Dinklage is acting much like people who don’t think the Merchant of Venice should not be shown because Shylock is a tired stereotype; there goes Oliver Twist for the same reason. And, if we are going after Dickens, Dinklage would be sure to object to Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop if anyone ever endeavored to stage a production of THAT.
I like Dinklage, but this was just a dumb move on his part.
-Jut
I’ve been searching for a category that fits these types of scenarios, and you’ve given me one. Politics is the easiest way to see them play out, but they also play out on a personal level as well.
My brother married a guy who is an unsophisticated progressive. He latches onto trends without knowing all the facts, and he is hyperemotional. His big thing is that being “nonjudgmental” is the height of virtue (imagine AOC but without even the basic knowledge she has of poltiics). He once commented on a Facebook status I made that was just a copy and paste quote from the philosopher John Locke about the importance of critical thinking. He replied with 1 Corinthians 13 (the famous love passage). Not really relevant at all…My brother voted for Trump unapologetically in the past, so I do wonder if he is being honest with this guy.
My brother’s husband was married to a woman for almost 20 years and then left her for my brother. He also said he knew he was gay at 8 years old. At best, that tells me he has deep seated emotional issues, a very mercurial type of person. I have a hard time trusting people who do such things, especially when they don’t show any remorse.
Probably about a year ago (before I deactivated my Facebook), I posted a status about how divorce is a bad thing and some people basically like to watch the world burn so they try to sabotage other people’s relationships because of their own stupidity. It was a pretty direct meme, and it isn’t the type of thing I usually post, but it triggered him to high heaven.
He messaged me and immediately told me his ex wife is a narcissist, so divorce wasn’t always wrong. Didn’t try to start a discussion or anything; just straight came at me directly. We also don’t really have a relationship either, and I never once commented on any of the dumb stuff he posted. So, not only is he prone to exaggerated perceptions, he also is aggressive.
Anyway, the point of this story is that I was sucked into this world because of my brother. I had to play the game with this guy, and I had no choice, and I had no way to win, at least without looking like the bad guy. As of now, I don’t talk to him at all unless it is that distant type of politeness. I never would be friends with someone like him.
At the beginning, I had a hunch he was like this, but I played nice. I messaged my brother and told him his new boyfriend seemed like a great guy, and I even went to their wedding ceremony and took pictures with them. I never told my brother any of my concerns.
Disney sort of did the same thing. They thought they had to play nice because this woke ideology seemed to be “inevitable.” Maybe it’s not though. One thing Trump is showing is that wokeism actually isn’t inevitable at all. Disney would probably be better served if they had just casted actual performers in the role of the dwarfs.
Hyperfixating on offending no one produces results exactly like Snow White. Maybe refuse to play the game.
Disney should change the name of the movie to “Some Female Identifier and the Less-than-10 Other Who Knows Whats?” That would fix it
Who would have thought that the proverbial poster-child for the complete stupidity that is “woke” would be a century-old cartoon?!? The corner into which Disney has painted itself is astonishingly wonderful.
Hey, whoever now runs the asylum that is Disney, now do a remake in which Snow White is a guy that thinks he’s a woman, the dwarves are non-binary, and the wicked step-mother is Stacey Abrams.
There would be no reason for Stacey Abrams to be wicked, as all would agree that she is, in fact, the fairest one of all.
I have seen any number of videos discussing the Snow White remake by the Critical Drinker. He makes the same sorts of points as you, but is not nearly as polite.
And, there is a silver lining in every cloud. I understand that the new Snow White inspired the Daily Wire to make its own remake of Snow White with, I am confident, a slightly less woke version and attitude. I don’t know if that movie has come out, but I reckon it would be watchable (definitely more so than Disney’s remake).
I understand that the new Snow White inspired the Daily Wire to make its own remake of Snow White with, I am confident, a slightly less woke version and attitude.
Brett Cooper was supposed to play Snow White. After Brett Cooper’s departure from the Daily Wire the plans for a remake may have been put on hold.
As far as “Snow White” and the “fairest of them all” is concerned, I have a theory (supported by the early press interviews by Ziegler and Gadot).
Stop thinking of the word “fair” to mean “light/white” or even “beautiful.” Think of the word “fair” in terms of being balanced, unbiased, level-headed, and all the positive connotations associated with that definition.
In early interviews by Ziegler she outright stated that the romance with “Prince Charming” was heavily downplayed in favor of the story being about Snow herself becoming “the leader that she always knew she could be” — and an important trait of a good leader is being fair, right?
So “Who’s the fairest of them all?” is really about who’s the best leader, and in this context, who should be the queen. The “Evil Queen” is not concerned with beauty so much as popularity. If someone came along who was a better leader, the Queen might lose her grip on power and get deposed by someone else.
THIS is what I’m expecting Snow White 2025 actually to be about, and it’ll have so little in common with the original classic that you won’t even recognize it. I don’t expect this movie to even be fairly called a remake, but more of a new original story using the same characters and aesthetic.
My nickname for this movie is “So What?”
–Dwayne
My plan is to see it on opening day. I saw “Exorcist 2: The Heretic” and the audience reaction had me in hysterics. Then they cut the thing and its full awfulness was lost to the latecomers. I doubt that “Snow White” can be that bad, or in the “Cats” territory, but I don’t want to miss it if it really bombs big time.
Great, that means you can confirm or deny my theory.
–Dwayne
Disney just seemed determined to make one stupid mistake after another on this issue. Dinklage be damned, they obviously would have been better off to use real dwarves/little people to start with. The DEI gang would have been happy with the minority inclusion, though Disney would have been unable to use them in any scenes where they appeared ridiculous or incompetent, or otherwise mockable. They would all have to be real “docs”. not miners.
I don’t have a problem with CGI, but Disney screwed that up as well by making the dwarves unreal-looking giant-headed cartoonish things. CGI is really good now; even TV shows include realistic-looking dragons, monsters, people, etc. The Rings of Power series uses real actors for Hobbit and dwarf characters, adjusting their appearance with CGI, camera tricks, prosthetics, & etc.
Bottom line, Disney didn’t have to blow it, but they sure put a lot of time, effort, and money into doing so.
“Presumably Peter Dinklage is laying low…”
Such a ripe source of potential jokes but you wisely didn’t stoop that low.
*Ducks*