It's time Snow White learnt stranger-danger

We need respite from stereotypes of good and evil—and protagonists waiting to be rescued

- Avantika Bhuyan

Last weekend, I chaperoned my daughter and her friends to see Snow White. You can judge me later, but just bear with me for the next few hundred words.

A scene soon after the interval elicited loud guffaws from my group. Sadly it had nothing to do with the script but all to do with a certain member of the audience. Just as Snow White accepted a poisoned apple from the evil queen in her old hag avatar, a child, around 5 or 6 exclaimed to her parents, "But, didn't her Mumma-Papa not tell her not to accept things from strangers!" Here was a little child spouting words of wisdom, while a young adult in this stale-beyond-years fairytale failed to exhibit basic common sense and continued to do what she had been doing in umpteen retellings of this story.

I waited and waited for some reimagination, some empowering moment when Snow White would break from tradition—a twist in the tale, if you will—but to no avail. Once again, we had a comatose belle waiting for a true love's kiss. If I had a drinking game for the number of times fairytales have somehow featured this magical kiss of love to make everything better, I would be seriously drunk by now.

The sole deviation in this film was Snow White marching into town, brimming with the magic of a good heart, and transforming hardened soldiers into vessels of regained humanity with mere mentions of their strawberry farms and generous feasts of the past.