Latest / The Lila Rose Show / Feminist vs Fairytales: The Battle Over Snow White (w/Jonathan Pageau )

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Feminist vs Fairytales: The Battle Over Snow White (w/Jonathan Pageau ) · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Lila Rose show.
0:02
Snow White is in theaters right now and it's not doing so well
0:05
compared to a lot of other live action Disney remakes of the
0:09
classic cartoons that they made in the last century in the 20th
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century. A lot of people are saying that
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Disney's live action Snow White remake actually got a lot of the
0:18
beautiful classic elements of the fairy tale wrong.
0:23
It tried to basically make it more modernized.
0:26
Instead of Snow White finding the Prince, it was about Snow
0:29
White finding Independence, Oregon, finding herself as a
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leader. We're going to discuss all of
0:34
this with Jonathan Pajo, who is actually the author of his own
0:38
rendition of Snow White. And I love this conversation
0:40
with Jonathan because we're discussing some of the
0:42
archetypes and the themes that you can find in classic fairy
0:46
tales. He also discusses why fairy
0:48
tales are important, why those original, beautiful classic
0:52
movies from Disney resonated so powerfully with many people, and
0:58
why perhaps people are upset about the current live action
1:02
remake of Snow White. I hope you enjoy this
1:05
conversation. Jonathan Padjo is joining me
1:07
now. He's an artist, a stone Carver
1:09
and author, and really an amazing host, telling the
1:12
stories of archetypes through artistic expression.
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And there's no better person to talk about fairy tales and
1:19
archetypes because he is actually the author as well as
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working with illustrators of some really beautiful works.
1:25
Reimagining. He might actually take issue
1:28
with the word reimagining because it's not changing their
1:31
original core of the fairy tale, but ultimately a retelling of
1:34
Grimm's fairy tales. So thank you so much, Jonathan,
1:37
for joining the podcast. It's great to be here.
1:40
It's good. I admire your work.
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I, I see it, you know, it's been seeing it from a distance.
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So really grateful for the opportunity to talk with you.
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I would love to hear just a little bit for our listeners who
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haven't maybe met you before, a little bit of your background.
1:54
And so I am, you could say, an artist, mostly I studied
1:59
traditional Christian art, you know, he was making art for
2:01
churches. But I also felt always felt like
2:04
the that beautiful language that was developed, you know, within
2:07
the last few thousand years that it has something more to say,
2:10
that it in some ways can be a lens through which we look at
2:13
the world. And so since then, you know,
2:15
since for the last few years, I've been trying to apply it
2:17
also to different things, to help people show how rich of a
2:20
language language it is. And so we've been retelling
2:23
these fairy tales. We did one called Snow White in
2:25
the Widow Queen. We also have done one called
2:28
Jack and the Fallen Giants. We have 8 or maybe up to 10 that
2:31
we're kind of in the process of making in some ways using the,
2:35
the power of the language, artistic language that's been
2:38
used in the past few thousand years.
2:40
Infusing that with the language of, of a narrative that has been
2:44
maintained in these powerful fairy tales and trying to
2:47
represent them in a celebratory way is the best way of
2:50
understanding it. We're not like just copy, copy,
2:53
paste from the retellings that have existed before, but we're
2:56
trying to retell them with a sense of celebration, a sense of
2:59
mystery in a sense of exploring the deeper meanings that are in
3:03
the stories rather than the kind of cynical political and
3:06
ideological take that we've seen in Movies Now for the past few
3:09
decades. Yes, and we are going to get
3:11
into that because obviously Snow White has been in theaters the
3:13
last couple weeks. Your retelling in Snow White and
3:16
the Widow Queen is absolutely gorgeous.
3:18
I mean, the art is beautiful, the retelling is very lovely.
3:21
So I'm excited to hear about that.
3:23
But I'd love to hear your take first on this idea of the fairy
3:26
tale. Many people have heard of
3:29
Grimm's fairy tales. I think they first published in
3:31
1812. And the Snow White was one of
3:35
those, you know, collect among the collection, one of the tales
3:37
that we're told. But this idea of fables, fairy
3:40
tales, it goes, you know, precedes the Brothers Grimm.
3:43
I'd love to kind of just hear a little bit of a background even
3:45
on the idea of a fairy tale and why fairy tales are so
3:50
important. Yeah, it's important to
3:53
understand that the fairy tales were collected by the Grimm
3:56
brothers and then they were edited to some extent and
3:58
published. But they are in some ways a
4:01
written version of traditions that spawned before the dawn of
4:04
time, before we have memory of them.
4:07
And so there are versions of the Snow White story, you know, all
4:10
over Europe and possibly connected to stories from all
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over the world that are bubbling up, you could say from the, the,
4:17
the, the dark path, the deep past of storytelling and a way
4:20
of understanding how powerful story telling in fairy tales is
4:24
and folk tales is to think about it almost as if there's a
4:28
competition between stories. So imagine like old ladies
4:31
telling stories and then which stories do people care for?
4:35
Which stories do people remember?
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And then which stories do people transmit?
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So you can think of a young girl hearing the story, a Snow White
4:42
version, and just being in transpired and then telling it
4:45
to her own children, maybe refining it a little bit.
4:49
And then through the process of hundreds, you know, maybe
4:52
thousands of years, these stories become like precious
4:55
gems. And they are representations of
4:58
human attention. They are actual representations
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of what it is that humans care about just because, because
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they've been repeated and remembered and repeated and
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remembered and refined. And so even if we don't
5:09
understand the fairy tales, if we don't, if we can't get to the
5:12
bottom of them, we know that they are these representations
5:16
of what people find important by the simple fact of their being
5:20
remembered for so long. Well, it's, and I think it's
5:22
such an important point to consider that the, the whole
5:26
idea of a story, especially for a young person and any person
5:30
who's developing their view of themselves, the world, other
5:32
people, God, it helps them understand how to think about
5:36
those things. I mean, the story is this kind
5:37
of this sort of blueprint almost for how maybe they might live
5:41
their life or how they might encounter other people living
5:44
their lives. And so when you're telling the,
5:46
you know, good stories, true stories, beautiful stories to
5:49
children or to yourself in general, it's you're, it's like
5:53
you're forming your own mind for how to show up to God or how to
5:56
see, you know, your fellow man, your fellow human creature.
5:59
And I think that's a, that's something that maybe we don't
6:01
consider enough. And that's why it matters when
6:04
Hollywood or, you know, the kind of postmodern era takes these
6:09
classic stories and, and twists them and tries to basically
6:13
provide a different moral lesson than the maybe traditional moral
6:17
lesson. What's your kind of take on the
6:20
importance of storytelling and what it does to impact the human
6:23
psyche and human behavior? The way that I like to think
6:28
about stories is that they're in some ways a kind of tuning fork
6:32
or a kind of tuning mechanism. There are also a way for people
6:36
together to recognize something in common so that they are tuned
6:40
themselves together towards a similar images, right?
6:43
So they have the same reference points, they have the same
6:46
relationships of of characters you could say that are in the
6:50
stories and fairy tales in some ways are the you could say
6:54
they're the closest thing to scripture that aren't scripture
6:57
here. I'm not saying they're the same
6:58
as scripture. Obviously they're not at the
7:00
same level, but they are very close to scripture.
7:03
And they also because they offer often images that are somewhat
7:08
fantastical. They're less dangerous than
7:11
normal stories, right? And so they're accessible for
7:14
often to children more because let's say the, the, the
7:19
relationships in the story sometimes that are traumatic,
7:21
especially in fairy tales. There are traumatic
7:23
relationships that happen in fairy tales, but because they're
7:26
coded in princesses and princesses in magic and the kind
7:29
of, you know, incredible things, the child can, can assimilate
7:35
the, the, the structure without being traumatized themselves.
7:39
And what that does is it's like, almost like a trauma
7:41
preparation. It's not the only thing that
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fairy tales do, but one of the things that stories do is that
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they prepare the child for difficult things because they
7:48
get to think about it and ponder it before these difficult things
7:52
enter their life. And so they're extremely
7:54
important right there. They are like kind of little
7:57
trauma managing mechanism, but not just trauma, but also for
8:00
positive things as well. Like what's the purpose of your
8:03
life? You know, what it is that gives
8:04
you meaning. And these stories, they kind of
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bring it together through images.
8:08
You know, the idea of finding the loved one, finding the
8:10
Prince or finding the Princess, you know, joining together,
8:13
forming a family, These are things that make life continue.
8:17
You know, when, when people like Disney or these, these people
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twist the fairy tales away from those images, they're making
8:25
them sterile, often explicitly. The idea that it's stupid to,
8:30
for a little girl to want to find a Prince that is so insane.
8:35
That's how people are made, folks.
8:37
That's how the world continues. The idea that that's stupid and
8:40
ridiculous is, is insane. It's, it's like, no, actually,
8:44
this is one of the deepest things you can do is encounter
8:47
someone who is fair and just and, and joining yourself with
8:51
that person. Like, how could that not be the
8:53
most important, one of the most important things in your life?
8:56
And so you see when they twist it, they, like you said, in some
8:59
ways what they're doing is they're they're taking away the
9:02
strength of the fairy tale. You know, So what would you say
9:05
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9:09
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9:12
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One of the things that happens in the Snow White movie, it's
10:15
very fascinating. You know, I kind of had to see
10:18
it because, you know, I've been talking about it now for a
10:20
while. So I went to see it actually,
10:21
like on opening day, there's always snowing in the theater,
10:23
by the way, which was fascinating.
10:25
One of the things that happens in this version is that it's
10:29
actually kind of hopeful. You know, it's not a good movie.
10:31
It's a very bad movie, but it's very hopeful because you can
10:34
tell that they're trying to fix. They were trying to fix it.
10:38
So there's a story, which is a very horrible kind of political,
10:41
ideological story that is there. And then on top of it, they
10:45
tried to glue nostalgic elements from the first movie to kind of
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appease people, you know, and make them.
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And what ends up happening is that all the signifiers become
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confused and the signifiers fall flat.
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What people don't realize is that fairy tales are deeply
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coherent, even though the images are kind of silly and
11:05
ridiculous. You know, why is there a cat in
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boots? Why is there, you know, why is
11:09
there a fairy godmother? All these things, they look
11:11
ridiculous on the surface, but behind that facade is actually a
11:16
very, very deep coherence. So what happens in the Snow
11:19
White movie now that they've made, is that the images that
11:22
are part of the story, the apple, the Prince, the kiss, you
11:27
know, the dwarves, none of them mean anything anymore.
11:30
They're just nostalgia Bate. And then this weird political
11:33
story that gets inserted into it, which is a kind of story of
11:36
revolution and a Princess coming into her own and, you know,
11:39
becoming the leader that she can be.
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That's kind of tagged on top and it and none of it connects.
11:45
So it ends up being all these threads that aren't that aren't
11:48
able to be pulled together because they've ceased to
11:50
understand the deep coherence of the story.
11:53
So when when we are trying to redo it, what we're trying to do
11:56
is say, can we get actually bring the deep coherence of the
12:00
story to light in a way that connects, that will help people
12:05
see it even more than what they saw it before, right.
12:08
And that means sometimes pulling out a thread that, for example,
12:12
helps you see the relevance connected to it.
12:15
The modern world. Like a little example in our
12:17
version that we've done is that there are two traditions about
12:19
the mirror. 1 is that the mirror is on the wall, and the other is
12:22
that the mirror is in the hand. And so we said, oh, let's put
12:26
the mirror in the hand. So you have this image of the
12:29
queen holding the mirror out in front of her like a phone.
12:32
What, looking at herself. And then the mirror is judging
12:35
her, and it's telling her who's the most beautiful.
12:37
And anybody with any sense, even if they don't think about it,
12:40
will say, like, oh, OK, like, I see what's going on, you know?
12:43
And so it's like, we're not changing the story at all.
12:45
It's actually exactly the story, but just pulling on that thread
12:48
a little to make it even more relevant so people can see what
12:52
the story was about in the first place.
12:54
The the thing you mentioned about the current Snow White
12:56
movie having this, you know, this kind of revolutionary theme
13:00
where it's like this kind of radical independence, autonomy,
13:05
you know, the ability to quote UN quote lead.
13:07
You know, she's a leader, I think is the famous, you know,
13:09
now infamous, you know, the actor Rachel Zegler saying, you
13:12
know, she's not she doesn't fall in love with the Prince.
13:14
She's a leader, you know, leaders not bad, obviously, you
13:17
know, being, you know, being helping direct people towards
13:20
what is good, true and beautiful.
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Like, you know, theoretically all that is not a bad thing.
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Can you can you help us understand how you see the
13:28
current Snow White the the movie that's in theaters right now?
13:32
Because personally, I I find it incoherent.
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I think they're like you said, it's incoherent.
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So they're kind of they're throwing in these little like
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leader autonomy doesn't need prints, but they're actually
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also not saying that even in the movie.
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And so it's just kind of this gobbledygook of ideas that
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doesn't have a clear like they did a bad job of their own
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revolutionary theme is my impression.
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But I'm I'm curious yours. No, of course they did a bad
13:56
job. Because the problem is that it's
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like forcing, you know, it's like forcing us a round peg in a
14:03
square hole. Like you can't.
14:05
Or is it the opposite? You can't fit.
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They don't fit. That's not what the story is
14:08
about, right? You could find a story about
14:12
leadership, you could find a story about, you know, becoming
14:16
the Regent like that. These these stories are possible
14:19
and and they exist in the in the story of the like in different
14:24
fairy tales. But that's not what Snow White
14:26
is about. And so when you try to make
14:29
force that into the story, you end up with signifiers that
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don't point to anything that become contradictory.
14:35
Like a good example in the Snow White movie is they tried to do
14:39
a word play on the sense of Fair.
14:42
And so in the original version, there's a kind of deep coherence
14:46
between the idea of fairness as being beautiful and that outer
14:50
beauty representing the inner beauty, right?
14:53
And so that's how they use it in the original fairy tale and in
14:56
the original Disney version as well.
14:58
Now in this version, they use the word fair to mean something
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like politically just right. That's what they're using it as.
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And so that's what? And then at the end, the mirror
15:09
says, well, Snow White is the fairest because she's fair in
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her heart. And it's like, then none of it
15:14
makes any sense. Then why did the mirror say that
15:16
the queen was the fairest? Because she's evil.
15:19
I guess today we're talking about her beauty then.
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But then when they talk about Snow White, they're talking
15:23
about her being fair because she's politically astute.
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And then what does that have to do with the mirror?
15:28
Because the mirror is about how you look.
15:29
And so all the signifiers just, they just don't point to
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anything. Like it doesn't make sense in
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terms of just the imagery that is used.
15:37
And the same thing with the apple, right?
15:39
In the original Disney version, they have a nice, they use the
15:42
apple as this idea that she should take the apple to try to
15:45
seduce the Prince. And So what the what the witch
15:48
is doing, what the queen is doing is trying to say, you
15:52
could be like me, like the queen.
15:54
You could use beauty. You could use it to seduce the
15:57
one you want. So here's this apple.
16:00
Maybe you could bake a pie for your Prince and you could seduce
16:03
him. And so that's why it's a trick.
16:05
That's why when she eats it, she dies because she's now not she,
16:09
she's no longer the fairest because she's acting like the
16:12
queen. She's weaponizing beauty.
16:14
But in this version, it's like she gives her the apple and said
16:17
your apple used to give apples to people.
16:20
And so it's like an image of fairness.
16:22
So how's it a trick? And then if she eats the apple,
16:24
why does she die? Like none of it makes sense.
16:26
It's just like I said, it's just because they, they, they've
16:28
ignored and they've, they've become blind to the deep
16:32
coherence of the original. Story, I think about this idea
16:34
of sort of the warrior Princess, right?
16:36
And there are movies, Disney movies about the warrior
16:39
Princess and there are amazing archetypes you could use of this
16:43
warrior Princess, you know, the leader Princess, the one that is
16:46
really sacrificing comfort and sort of the natural experience
16:50
of being maybe a wife and a mother because she's going out
16:52
to do something heroic on behalf of her people.
16:55
You know, I think even about like the, the, the lore in our
16:59
faith tradition, you know, I know you're Orthodox, you know,
17:01
I'm Catholic and just Christian, Christian tradition of the, the
17:04
martyrs and the Saints. There's all of these incredible
17:06
stories, you know, Saint Joan of Arc as an example, who literally
17:10
went off and left, you know, left the sort of, you know, her,
17:15
the Shire, she left the Shire. She's kind of like The Hobbit
17:17
leaving the Shire and she goes out to lead, you know, men in
17:21
war. She obviously has killed for
17:22
her, for her obedience to God, ultimately for her courage.
17:26
So it's not like those stories don't exist.
17:28
This is the part that's so sort of tragic about the whole Disney
17:31
project right now is that if they want to tell, you know,
17:34
the, the, the female warrior story and, and use that sort of
17:39
approach, taking Snow White to do it, you know, it just seems
17:44
like, you know, wildly, it's just like it's irresponsible as
17:47
a business because obviously it's not doing well in the
17:49
theaters. People don't like it.
17:50
It doesn't make sense. It's mixed messages, but it just
17:53
seems like a waste too because if they want to tell that story,
17:56
they can. Is there a fairy tale where the
17:59
the, the woman is out as sort of a crusader or a warrior?
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Is there a fairy tale where the the the woman is out as sort of
19:19
a crusader or a warrior that I'm, I'm curious about that as
19:23
an architect. Definitely different.
19:25
They're definitely different kind of tropes in storytelling
19:30
and of the the woman who hides her femininity, you know, and
19:35
out of sheer necessity will be forced to become a knight, for
19:39
example. And so we'll be like a hidden
19:42
knight. So we'll pretend to be a man,
19:44
but in order usually there's some catastrophe that makes that
19:47
necessary. And you know, Joan of Arc is
19:51
also, like you said, an image of that where she is in her store.
19:56
She's seen as being completely this exceptional thing that is
20:01
so you could say that puts men to shame in some ways because
20:06
the men are not willing to defend the king of France.
20:08
And she is so faithful to the king of France and ultimately
20:12
faithful to God that she is willing to in some way sacrifice
20:16
her femininity in order to do that.
20:18
But it's it's almost seen is as a sacrifice very different.
20:22
It's very different than the idea that.
20:24
That she should be. A great distinction.
20:26
Like this weird idea that the only value in the world is
20:29
becoming like a man. I mean, how is that good for
20:32
women? It's like, so you're saying that
20:35
women should become like men and that's how you value women.
20:38
That is insane. Like that is not right.
20:40
You know, it's not like the story can't exist, but it, it
20:43
does have to be shown more as a sacrifice than as this like, all
20:46
right, I'm going to show them that I'm the one that I'm the,
20:49
you know, that I'm the, the. And you see that like even in
20:52
the stories of, of Regency or the stories of great or even of
20:55
Queen Elizabeth, right, This idea that she says, you know,
20:58
that she will remain a virgin queen because she is forced in
21:02
the situation where she has to rule, you know, and so it's seen
21:06
almost as like a monastic vow where she's going to take up
21:09
this masculine role and is sacrificing her even the idea
21:14
of, of, of marriage because of that.
21:16
And so like these are powerful possible stories, but this type
21:20
of like, you know, I'm going to be the badass, you know, like
21:25
warrior and I don't need a man and I'm going to be I'm going to
21:28
be the one. It's like that.
21:29
That's just like, it's not real and it's not interesting and
21:32
it's not like, who is it? It's not natural.
21:35
I think what you're saying is it's not natural.
21:36
Like if, God forbid, there's a situation where there's no other
21:39
man or everyone's reneged on their duties and God gives a
21:42
special grace and like a Joan of Arc, she stands up in the gap,
21:45
right? But it's she shouldn't have had
21:48
to do that, right? I think that's part, that's the
21:49
necessary part of the story. It's not like in Joan of Arc
21:51
nature to go out and fight in battle.
21:53
She did that out of love of God and obedience to God.
21:56
But she shouldn't have had to do that, right?
21:58
It was other people not doing and.
22:00
It's almost like I said presented because then that as a
22:03
sacrifice and not as a self glorification, you know, because
22:06
that's what you see in this, you know, in the in the Snow White
22:10
movie, there's this whole trope in the movie where basically,
22:14
you know, she's looking for the king and she's hoping to find
22:17
the king. And so, you know, she thinks the
22:19
king might be still alive and there's this whole hope that the
22:21
king will come back and that we need to be faithful to the king
22:24
that somewhat she realizes that no, you actually, you know, this
22:26
is nonsense. Like I have to become the
22:28
region. And then she says, you know, to
22:31
no longer be LED, but to lead or to lead and no longer be led.
22:35
And that's the phrase. And it's like one of the catch
22:37
phrases in one of the songs, although none of the songs are
22:39
very catchy, by the way, the songs are not very good.
22:42
So. And so it's like, that's a very
22:44
different thing than the idea that I am willing, because of a,
22:48
a difficult situation, to sacrifice, you know, my
22:52
femininity in order to take up, like you said, a role in the gap
22:56
and to have a kind of heroism. But the heroism is a sacrificial
22:59
heroism. It's not a look at me, I'm the
23:02
one such. A good point.
23:03
What is the storyline? I should have asked you maybe
23:05
from the from the get go for those listening.
23:08
And a lot of people are familiar, of course, but what
23:10
are the core elements of the classic Snow White story that
23:15
are essential, you know, for, I think informing the moral
23:18
imagination of, you know, the the generations of children who
23:21
have benefited from it. Yeah.
23:23
So I would say that you can do it in an extended or contracted
23:27
way. You know, the first Disney movie
23:29
did it very contracted, and I think that's a possible way.
23:32
There are ones that are a little more extensive.
23:34
So the idea, of course, is that the, the, the, the young girl is
23:38
becomes to the service of her stepmother and that the father
23:42
is no longer there. So she no longer has a kind of
23:46
male counterpart. You could say she's left alone
23:49
to drift. She becomes a servant.
23:50
She no longer has her. She doesn't look like a
23:53
Princess. You know, she, she's a slave of
23:56
this foreign power of this woman who is shouldn't be the queen.
24:02
And then when she becomes, when she hits puberty, then all of a
24:08
sudden the queen sees her as competition.
24:11
And then the story of Snow White is in some ways Snow White
24:14
becoming a woman and facing all the difficulties of that and
24:19
then ultimately understanding or coming into what the purpose of
24:25
that transformation is. So it is a story of puberty.
24:27
It's a story of transformation. It can be an image for any type
24:30
of transformation. It's not just for girls, but
24:32
it's very precious for girls because, you know, she, she
24:36
hits, she, she becomes, she's starting to become a woman and
24:39
then she becomes competition for the older woman.
24:42
And then also she so she's cast out, she's kind of thrust out.
24:45
She's faced with all these men that can't be her mate, that are
24:49
kind of like idiosyncratic masculinity, these like little
24:52
men that are that she can't marry.
24:54
And they're all these like, you know, they're especially the
24:57
early Disney version. It's a good idea.
24:59
It's like, you know, what's annoying about men?
25:01
It's like, you know, Grouchy Doc, you know, kind of dopey,
25:05
all of these these kind of idiosyncrasies of masculinity.
25:08
And then she has to learn to work.
25:10
So she's like cleaning, cleaning and cooking.
25:12
But who is it for? What is this for?
25:14
Like, none of it makes sense. You know, it's like this, this
25:16
being lost in the woods. You know, they were kind of.
25:19
Really. They're kind of they're kind of,
25:21
I mean, my, my kind of impression of the first Disney
25:24
make of this, which was a lovely, you know, retelling was
25:28
they were kind of like children. The the seven dwarves instead of
25:31
being proper partners, like a man who can lead her, they were
25:35
effectively men who were children, perpetually children
25:38
even in their physical size, most of them.
25:41
And so that was the. Yeah, you could think of it as
25:44
like fragments of the. Childish like.
25:46
Little. Element underdeveloped.
25:48
Underdeveloped is a good. Yeah, underdeveloped is a good
25:51
way of thinking about it. And so they're literally named
25:53
after the characteristic, and that characteristic totally
25:56
dominates them in a way that they're not a balanced human.
25:59
And it makes them kind of childish and, and fighting
26:02
between themselves and everything.
26:04
And so, you know, so that's the that's in some ways the idea.
26:07
And then there's a lot about beauty, obviously in the story
26:10
about about Snow White and what is it that Makes You Beautiful
26:14
and what is beauty for? And so in the grim version, what
26:18
happens is the queen brings her these elements to enhance her
26:21
beauty. So she brings her a corset and
26:23
then she brings her a comb and they're poisoned and, and then
26:28
she ultimately brings her an apple.
26:29
You know, and you think like, what's the relationship between
26:32
this? And it does have to do with
26:33
beauty, because Snow White is beautiful.
26:36
She is the most beautiful. She doesn't need a comb and a
26:38
corset. You know, she, she doesn't need
26:41
to augment her beauty. She doesn't need to supplement
26:44
it. And as soon as she does that, in
26:45
some ways, she might be weaponizing it in the way that
26:48
the queen does. She's basically using beauty to
26:51
attain something, right? She's she's seeing beauty as a
26:54
tool that she can use. And that's what makes her die.
26:57
You could think about it that way.
26:58
Then ultimately, you know, she becomes kind of knowledgeable of
27:01
her own beauty and that's why she falls.
27:03
That's what the apple is. It really is like Adam and Eve
27:05
in the in the garden. She's basically becoming aware
27:09
of her beauty. She's becoming self-conscious
27:11
knowledge of beauty. Think about it that way.
27:13
And that's what makes her die. But ultimately the idea is that
27:18
when the Prince comes and wakes her, it's showing her what all
27:22
of this was for, Like what are transformations for what
27:25
puberty's for what like all of this annoying aspect of all
27:28
these annoying like little undeveloped man, Like, what is
27:31
this? What are these men?
27:32
What are they for? Like, what's the point?
27:34
And ultimately what the point is to find the person that you can
27:37
join with. And then, you know, that's the
27:40
purpose of this. So it's a, it's a very powerful
27:43
story of, of transformation. And if you, if you play too much
27:48
with any of those elements, and one of the powerful elements in
27:51
the story too, is that the is that the queen sacrifices her
27:55
beauty out of spite for Snow White.
27:58
She's actually willing to destroy what she cares the most
28:00
about just to stop, she becomes an ugly old hag just to stop
28:06
Snow White from being the most beautiful, you know.
28:08
And so it's like, that's a lesson for all of us for sure.
28:11
But without those, then if you try to twist those too much,
28:15
then you end up with something that.
28:16
What about the element and the idea of the Prince saving her,
28:20
of her of rescue at the hands of a Prince or of a Prince sort of
28:24
fulfilling her? This is obviously very recurring
28:27
in most fairy tales and it and it goes both ways because I
28:30
think about other fairy tales where it's the, the, the man
28:33
searching for the bride, searching for the woman can't
28:35
find her. So one way or the other, whether
28:38
the protagonist is the male or the female, they're looking for
28:41
their their mate. Yeah.
28:45
So you could think about the story starts with her losing her
28:47
male counterpart, which is her father, right, And then growing
28:50
up and then having to find the another male counterpart to kind
28:55
of to, to, to, to make her, to make her whole.
29:00
And that is and that is completely normal.
29:03
Like it's also, you know, it has a it has a more you could say
29:08
you could apply to all kinds of other things.
29:10
You can see the male is something like the reason for
29:14
the transformation. And so you could say that a girl
29:17
that goes through puberty, like the reason for that
29:20
transformation and all the difficulty that it brings is
29:23
reproduction. Like that's what it is.
29:25
It's to find someone and to be joined with them in marriage.
29:28
Like that's actually the purpose of the change.
29:30
And anybody who can't see that, you know, and wants to
29:33
transform, wants to turn sex into just a playground into like
29:37
all this stuff. Like then then what's the
29:39
menstrual cycle for? Like, what's all this stuff that
29:41
women have to go through? It's like, no, it's, it actually
29:43
is pointing towards, you know, the creation of a new family, of
29:46
a new world. And so it's completely normal
29:49
that the Princess is saved by the Prince.
29:52
But like you said, there are other versions where it kind of
29:55
goes the other way. When some ways, like the story
29:56
of Beauty and the Beast, for example, where it is the woman
29:59
who now saves the man who is out of control, she tames him in
30:03
that way. Like she basically get helps him
30:05
focus his energy towards something meaningful instead of
30:08
this wild kind of out of control energy.
30:10
So it's not like the story of the Prince saving the Princess
30:13
is the only story. There are other versions, but we
30:15
why would we get rid of that? It's a beautiful story and it's
30:19
very, it's important for people to understand that like in some
30:23
ways, you know, finding the person that we're going to join
30:27
with is one of the great goals of our lives.
30:28
I think there's this argument that the sort of modern
30:31
retelling of these fairy tales, or I'll call it the postmodern,
30:35
it's not even modern anymore. It's just the postmodern
30:37
retelling of these fairy tales. I think sometimes it can be a
30:40
little bit tempting because, you know, this argument that, well,
30:43
we've gotten it wrong historically on women.
30:46
Look, we had slavery in the past.
30:47
You know, there was times when, you know, we had child labor.
30:50
The treatment of children wasn't so great.
30:52
So to be enlightened is to test and challenge, you know, most of
30:56
what came before. What I find so fascinating,
30:59
though, is the introduction of Christianity into the world.
31:02
You know, with our Lord coming into the world, the incarnation
31:04
and just how that cataclysmically impacted, of
31:07
course, you know, human history and salvation, our salvation,
31:11
but it, it, it, it impacted human history and the last 2000
31:14
years of, of the, you know, the West and how the West has
31:18
developed, how we see understand Western civilization.
31:21
So I guess what I'm trying to ask here is do you think that
31:24
our our fairy tales in their best retelling today, do you
31:28
think that they are ultimately Christianized or do they predate
31:32
the incarnation, but they still tap into, you know, eternal
31:37
truths that were even understood before the incarnation?
31:41
Or has Christianity had a special impact on our
31:44
understanding of these archetypes?
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miracles. Or has Christianity had a
32:34
special impact on our understanding of these
32:37
archetypes? For sure, Christianity has had a
32:39
huge impact on these stories and not only an impact on the
32:43
stories. If you don't like that, you
32:45
could say even more in a more simple way.
32:48
There are thousands of fairy tales and you know, in 1500
32:53
years of Christianity in Europe, let's say, or more than those
32:56
that were remembered and retold and remembered and retold
33:00
ultimately would start to refine themselves towards the image of
33:03
Christianity, right? The story of Snow White is the
33:06
story of it's the story of resurrection.
33:08
The story of Snow White is the story of the bride and the groom
33:12
meeting. It's the story of the heavenly
33:14
Jerusalem. That's why in the Disney
33:16
version, the first version, when the Prince takes Snow White
33:18
away, he doesn't bring her back to her castle.
33:21
He brings it to like the castle in the sky.
33:23
It's like the castle in the heavens.
33:25
It is and it is a even Disney clearly was trying to make it
33:28
into a a Christian virgin. But in itself the eating of the
33:33
apple and the embrace of the of the of the the the groom that
33:38
awakens the bride, you know into union.
33:40
It is an image of the Church in Christ.
33:42
And in Divine Revelation has a, you know, we had some of these
33:46
fairy tales and these archetypes certainly before the
33:49
incarnation, you know, in terms of the human timeline.
33:51
But that the, you know, the divine revelation certainly
33:56
impacted the retelling of these tales and really almost
34:01
perfected them. I mean, they're not perfect, but
34:03
made them more perfect to actually lead us towards our own
34:08
eternal destiny. I think so.
34:10
I think that that's probably right, you know, And sometimes
34:15
we don't, we have to be careful because sometimes we don't
34:17
understand it because sometimes these stories, they're not
34:21
actually as moral as we would like.
34:25
They are. There's something else going on
34:27
in them and we're afraid of them sometimes because they're not as
34:30
moral as what we would like. But usually people who say that
34:33
it's because they don't remember what Bible stories are like
34:36
because actually Bible stories are not as moral as you would
34:38
like. Bible stories are not morality
34:40
lessons and and fairy tales are not morality lessons.
34:43
They are more like, they're more like tuning forks or like world
34:46
tuning mechanisms that help you kind of see the world through
34:51
the right lens. And sometimes they, they, they
34:55
don't always portray, sometimes they portray evil too, Like
34:58
sometimes they portray the consequence of evil.
35:00
Sometimes they, they, they don't end well.
35:02
And they're not all about, you know, and, and so, and sometimes
35:05
they just portray the consequences of certain behavior
35:08
kind of in a, in a, in a tight, in a tight little story.
35:12
And so I would say, I would say we shouldn't worry too much
35:16
about it. The stories that have come down
35:19
to us, especially the ones that have been kind of really
35:22
maintained and remembered, those are, there's a reason why
35:27
they're there. And it's worth, you know, and if
35:30
you're going to tell stories to your kids, those are much better
35:33
than the ones that are published in your bookstore right now,
35:36
because the state of children's storytelling is crazy.
35:40
Like you cannot trust, you can't think that because a book is in
35:44
your kids school library that it's fine.
35:47
It is not fine. It could be, but not
35:49
necessarily. So we so I think that kind of
35:52
reawakening these ancient stories and finding ways to tell
35:55
them beautifully, you know, and with a kind of reverence and
35:58
respect, you know, I think that it's a it's it is a way forward
36:02
for culture because. Yeah, I think it's it's
36:04
heavy-handed moralization. It's and they're trying to run
36:08
away from you could say maybe a morality they did.
36:11
But what they're doing, I mean, what this new Snow White is
36:14
doing, it's like this in your face moralization.
36:16
I mean, it's political, it's a politicization, but it's a
36:18
moral, it's moralizing. It's a very overt moralizing.
36:21
And that's what I see too in a lot of kids books today that I,
36:25
you know, we go to the library, we're very careful about what we
36:27
pick up. But even like some
36:28
well-intentioned books, it's like over the, you know, like
36:31
knock you over the head with this, like not a Bible.
36:34
You know, usually it's like this modern retelling of something
36:38
like this, you know, how you're supposed to treat people.
36:40
It's so overt and aggressive. And then you have all this
36:43
politicalization that gets pumped into it too.
36:45
And it it just makes the books so ugly.
36:48
I think like a lot of kids, books today are ugly.
36:51
Yeah. And there is, you know, and it's
36:55
like Christians have been part of that, by the way.
36:57
Like, you know, there is a weird Puritan moment in fairy tales
37:00
where the fairy tales people try to like clean them up, you know,
37:04
and try to make them completely, you know, fine and give a nice
37:08
moral at the end. But it's like those they're
37:11
they're those are not the most interesting because the world is
37:14
far more widely. The world has a has edges and is
37:17
a little, you know, the threads are not loosely as as tightly
37:20
tit as tightly woven as you as you think.
37:24
And so, for example, like a lot of the Puritans, you know, we're
37:27
basically tried to say that these fairy tales have nothing
37:30
to do with sex. And it's like, so then the the
37:33
moderns are like it's all sex. It's all about sex.
37:35
Everything in the story, you know, brutal Bettelheim writing
37:38
this book about everything is Oedipal conflicts.
37:40
And just like anything in the world, it's like it is to some
37:45
extent about sex, but it's not only about that.
37:47
It's about all kinds of other things.
37:49
And so we don't have to be crazy about it.
37:51
Just tell the story like there you don't, you don't have to,
37:55
you don't have to like cut out the parts.
37:57
You don't have to. All of it is imagistic.
37:59
You can tell the story and usually the kids, the kids will
38:02
be will be fine. And to the extent that it is
38:05
about sexuality, like in Snow White, there is an aspect of
38:07
Snow White that is about, you know, like here's one of the
38:11
things that's, you know, you're going to go through change
38:13
things. You're going to go through this
38:14
weird time that's going to be difficult and you feel lost and
38:16
you're not going to be sure what's going on and that, but
38:19
that's aiming towards something like it's aiming towards
38:21
something that you will, you know, find someone and that you
38:24
will be able to found something new and it's great.
38:28
It's and and that's fine, but you you don't need to be over
38:32
the end. Of the Grimm's fairy tale, the
38:34
Snow White fairy tale is I think she's the the mother and this
38:37
was not in the the Disney version as I recall.
38:40
Either of them, obviously, but the step the evil stepmother is
38:43
forced to wear red hot shoes and and dance until she dies.
38:48
Dance. By the Prince, like the, the the
38:51
Prince, you know, makes his his, you know, wife, his now wife, I
38:56
guess you know, her evil stepmother who tried to hurt
38:58
her. He hurts her in this really
38:59
torturous way. And then she danced.
39:02
She has to dance and dies. How did you handle that in your
39:04
book, Jonathan And I'm. Yeah.
39:09
Yeah. So this is, this is actually, I
39:11
mean, I think that this is a place where we can, we can kind
39:15
of hedge in some of the story and that's OK too.
39:19
You know, that we have to be aware of how children are and
39:22
aware about what in the world we live in.
39:24
We, we don't live in a world like that anymore.
39:27
You know, we, we don't live in a world of massive corporal
39:29
punishment. Like there's no point in, in
39:32
some ways, Christianity has also affected us.
39:35
It continues to affect us. And so the way that I actually
39:39
end the Snow White story in my version, what I, what I've done
39:43
is that the, I, I really lean into the fact that the queen
39:46
sacrifices everything to basically to, to destroy her,
39:50
her stepdaughter. And so she turns herself into a
39:53
hag. And when she comes back to the
39:55
castle, the no one recognizes her.
39:58
And so they, they, and she's saying I'm the queen, I'm the
40:01
queen. And they're like, there's this
40:02
crazy old lady. So they put her in a dungeon
40:04
because she's destroyed herself and nobody even knows would have
40:08
a way to recognize she's the queen.
40:10
And then ultimately I have Snow White finding out she's in the
40:13
dungeon and then. Basically forgiving her and
40:17
letting her go. Like that's how I finished the
40:18
story. So some people might say I'm
40:20
being. A You're a Christian, you can't
40:22
help. It I feel like, I feel like this
40:23
is yeah, I saw, I actually, you know, this is Disney, though,
40:28
that did this like Disney did a in their live action Cinderella.
40:33
They have a beautiful moment at the end of Cinderella where
40:36
Cinderella forgives her stepmother and then leaves with
40:40
the Prince. Basically, it's like, I forgive
40:41
you, but I'm off, right. And I thought it was very
40:45
powerful because it was also there was a dignity to basically
40:48
her moving into a new life, but also she didn't want to hold the
40:51
grudge and and you know, kind of and so I thought that was a
40:55
beautiful. It was a beautiful, a beautiful
40:57
moment. And then what what's going to
40:58
happen in my version is that the queen, the evil queen is
41:02
actually going to continue. And so she will appear in the
41:05
other books and she'll have her own kind of Arc.
41:08
And so she becomes the she becomes the witch in Rapunzel.
41:11
And then slowly. Yeah, yeah.
41:13
So I tried to find stories that actually could, could become
41:16
symphonic. And so it's like I'm I'm the
41:19
stories will be will Alltel the actual story, but they'll be
41:22
calling back to the older ones. And so as you move forward,
41:25
you'll be like, OK, so what's the relationship between
41:27
Sleeping Beauty falling asleep and Snow White?
41:30
And then it'll be like a memory of the first fairy tale.
41:32
So I'm trying to do this thing where I'm trying to help people
41:35
see why these tropes are in the story.
41:37
That's for the adults. The kids will just read it and
41:39
like it. There's no, it's, it's not like
41:41
I'm explaining anything. Don't worry.
41:43
It's a fairy tale. It is less than 5000 words.
41:45
It's like it's written really for kids, but I'm trying to also
41:48
give, you know how in the recent fairy tale movies like that, say
41:52
Shrek and all of these types of stories, they have a, they have
41:56
these kids reading and then an adult reading, but the adult
42:00
reading is mostly just dirty jokes and it's kind of, it's
42:03
really lame. So I thought, why can't we do
42:05
kids reading? And the adult reading is
42:07
actually giving you insight about the story, how it connects
42:10
to scripture, how it connects to other stories, right.
42:13
So that's, that's what I that's what I'm hoping to do.
42:16
I love that beautiful. Are you hopeful that Disney,
42:21
especially when they get, I think publicly embarrassed by
42:25
the way they pulled off Snow White this round and, you know,
42:28
they're hurting in the box office from what I understand,
42:30
compared to other films. Do you think that they're going
42:33
to, you know, I think they have done some decent things in the
42:35
past. It's not like the, you know,
42:36
they Walt Disney obviously was brilliant.
42:39
Do you think they're going to find their way eventually?
42:41
Well, either they do or they die at this point, you know?
42:45
And in some ways, I think this movie, it gives me hope because
42:49
it feels like the nadir. It feels like they realize
42:52
midway while they were making the movie that they were heading
42:56
for a massive disaster and they spent an entire year trying to
43:00
fix it. And another like whatever, $50
43:02
million. And so that's why the movie is
43:04
so disjointed. It's so disjointed because he
43:06
actually tried to fix it. It would have been much worse if
43:09
the original version that they were filmed came out.
43:11
Like I think they would not have been the a kiss.
43:13
They wouldn't have been dwarves. Like there wouldn't like none of
43:16
the stuff that was in the original would have been there
43:18
almost. It would just not would have
43:20
been Snow White. And so it's hopeful because it's
43:22
showing that although they failed, they were scrambling to
43:25
fix it. And So what I hope is that now
43:28
there'll be a new kind of age of storytelling.
43:30
But I think it's, I think it's kind of happening.
43:32
You know, there's these, there's like a rumor mill going around
43:35
the Hollywood that everybody's looking for, like Bible
43:38
adaptations, Like that's what everybody wants to make, you
43:41
know? Joan of Arc, where I will
43:43
actually, Martin Scorsese is doing Joan of Arc.
43:46
He's have you seen that? The Saints, he's doing a, he's
43:49
directing. It he's he's not as.
43:51
He's not as as postmodern as the others like I think.
43:55
It's not as postmodern exactly. You could maybe.
43:57
Do it. Yeah.
43:58
It's hard to do because even when you see those often they're
44:01
so bad, like, because they're they're the take is so cynical.
44:05
But. But we might see something
44:07
different coming. I don't know if you've seen this
44:09
series, this prime series called House of David about disturbing
44:13
David, you know, and it's like it's kind of on the nose.
44:15
It's not amazing production. It's trying to get there, yeah,
44:17
but it's. Trying to get there, you know,
44:19
and it's kind of you can see things are moving in the right
44:21
direction, so. Well, you look at just the
44:23
history of Christendom and the incredible stories, you know,
44:27
this worldwide spread of Christianity to fight all the
44:31
odds and despite all the odds. And you know, the incredible
44:33
people, the martyrs, the Saints, the virgin, I mean the virgin
44:36
martyrs, you could do a ton of crazy, you know, retellings of
44:39
their stories. If you want to do like the
44:41
female empowerment vibe. Like what about the the female
44:44
empowerment woman who goes up and says like, I will not, you
44:47
know, sleep with the emperor. Like I've given my life to Jesus
44:50
Christ alone, like torture me to death.
44:51
Come at me like that's, you know, those stories would be
44:55
incredible, but we'll see. We'll see where you know where
44:58
it goes. But I'm so grateful for you,
44:59
Jonathan. I'm so grateful for your work.
45:01
You, you you're doing really I, I hope Hollywood producers look
45:06
at what you're doing and find inspiration.
45:09
I'm sure if they're smart, they will.
45:11
How can people find your work and buy your book Snow White and
45:14
the Evil Queen? So people can go to
45:16
thesymbolicworld.com. So the symbolic world and you
45:20
just go on the store, you can find the book or you can look it
45:22
up just through Google my name, Jonathan, Pedro and Snow White
45:26
and the Widow Queen. And you'll also see the other
45:28
books that we're doing, the other fairy tales that are come,
45:31
that have already been published and that are also coming.
45:33
Amazing. Next time you're out in
45:35
California, you've got to come visit and we'll we'll do this in
45:37
person. Oh definitely.
45:39
Thank you for having me on. It's great.
45:40
Thank you, Jonathan. Great to talk with you.
45:42
All right, bye, bye.