Why is the perspective in the final frame taken from inside of the jail cell? Are we the viewer also in jail? Shouldn’t we be viewing it behind bars from the other side? What did we the viewing audience do? Are we culpable since just by viewing this?
What do you think happens when you sneak into the Queen’s bedroom to watch her talking to her mirror.
You’re in jail too because you agreed that Snow White is a fine piece of ass
while the queen escapes punishment for emplooying child labour?
Yes.
Well yeah, she’s rich
And white
Racist.
But not Snow White…
That’s why the mirror ended up in jail: for targeting the protected class
I choose to believe there is a lot more to the magic object than the truth or it’s own will. It’s a mirror after all, what you see depends on who stands before it. If you ask to see beauty and the reflection shows how you compare to a 14 year old, that’s on you.
Then again, when have these things ever been static. Shrek’s iteration has it’s own will.
It’s a magic mirror from a fairy tale. It doesn’t have any set rules other than what the story teller gives it.
I know, that’s what my “when have these things ever been static” was supposed to express.
Fun fact! In the original Disney film she never says ‘mirror mirror…’, she says ‘magic mirror…’
Another fun fact: in Grimms fairy tales, the original story, she says mirror mirror. Also snow white was 7 when the mirror took a liking to her.
The prince also liked her corpse so much he just wanted to carry it around in it’s glass coffin, but didn’t want to kiss it. They drop her corpse while carrying it around and make her spit out the poisoned apple, so she revives.
“Wassup?”
Wassup
Nothing much, I’ve had fun with your corpse for a while though so that was nice 😐
I told the magic mirror a thousand times, I never wanted to meet a girl in person! I just wanted a corpse. You can’t disappoint a corpse! I hate you magic mirror!
Still better of a stranger kissing a girl in a coma.
The story that Sleeping Beauty is based on, Sun, Moon, and Talia, contains blatant rape and she’s awakened by her twins sucking the poisoned crap out of her finger. The brothers Grimm already changed it to a kiss.
TFW the Grimm’s fairy tales are the sanitized ones.
Which is extra creepy when you read Neil Gaiman’s (adult) version of Snow White (Snow, Glass, Apples).
Sheesh
So many things make sense now that we know he’s a sex pervert.
And she says"who’s the fairest of them all" not the hottest.
*“Who is the fairest one of all”
🤓☝️
There’s an NPR episode of Code Switch on the subject:
I always thought it was a combination of both looks and personality. Maybe I was wrong.
While it’s been a while since I’ve seen the original anything, I thought it said the queen was beautiful (and so “fair”) visually, but she had a cold heart as she got older and more vain (and so was no longer “fair” in personality).
The original German wording is “Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand: wer ist die schönste Frau in dem ganzen Land?”. Literally translated that would be “Mirror, mirror on the wall: who is the most beautiful woman in all the land.” I would let “hottest” slide as a more contemporary translation.
“yo shiny shit, who’s the baddest hoe around? aw yeah”
Being able to rhyme wall(wand) with land sounds nice. “Beautifulist of them all” to perseve the rhyme doesn’t sound right so hottest is about the closest you’re gonna get. That or prettiest, but I prefer hottest.
Reading the comments I just realized how much I like literature nerds.
isn’t she’s
Everyone: edits text, doesn’t proofread it afterwards
Everyone Else: you left an artifact in there bro.
Yous ain’ts goins nowheres
That don’t sound like no proper grammar to me.
You shouldn’t’ve
I of course make grammar mistakes and typos when messaging/commenting from my phone, but I can’t imagine creating and posting something with a mistake like this.
10-15 years ago this would have been something to ridicule and downvote, and now most people don’t even seem to care anymore.
Full disclosure: You’ll notice an edit on my parent. I originally submitted isnt. No one is immune from the curse.
Is nis she tis fortten??
…woule
Not everyone speaks English as their first language.
And not everyone who speaks it as their 2nd or 3rd language makes that mistake
What about people who speaks it as their 4th language?
We don’t talk about them
we normalized typos as a society. And, tbh, if not for the comments, I wouldn’t have noticed. I read the comic, I understood it, I didn’t see the typo. So, no harm done, and, therefore, no reason to complain?
And then the AI made the text in the comic.
Did AI make the whole thing?
How old is the mirror?
Probably ancient if it’s a magic mirror. Also in the original story, snow white is 7 at this time, not 14.
That said, “hottest” is something this comic came up with, I’m pretty sure it’s not about sexually attractiveness in the original
Why can’t magic be new?
It can, it’s just a trope that it’s some ancient artifact
It’s “fairest,” right? So maybe the mirror just saw her doing stuff like meticulously cutting a cake into evenly-sized pieces instead of portioning out bigger ones for herself and her cronies. That’d be plausible for a 7 year old.
fair in this context refers to paleness basically. though, it’s often meant in the same way that someone today might say “she’s thicc” and just mean “she’s attractive” in a more general sense. fairness meant beauty to European high society at the time. aside from the obvious racial connotations, it also implies that she has spent very little time outdoors and has been free of disfiguring diseases, so high of status. it generally carries a lot of implications beyond just “white” and “clear skin”. it captures everything that a European nobleman of the time would find attractive in one word.
Love your explanation! The mirror from Shrek would definitely say thiccccc.
Leaving this here for modern contextualizing.
So fair skin doesn’t specifically mean pale, it means skin that doesn’t have defects. Bumps, pimples, scarring and other things will tarnish the complexion of skin.
In this context it’s not racial, it’s colorism as you explained it was a status thing. Something that exists in almost every culture, not just European.
i guess i just assumed paleness 😅. I’ve never looked into it properly. just read a lot of stuff in that general setting. have had a lot of context clues to build a definition around.
but yeah, it’s definitely more of a status thing. just like nails. I sometimes wish people were more aware of the history and cultural implications of the trend and fashions they follow. long nails are a status symbol because the show you don’t do manual labor. so i honestly get kind of annoyed when modern people with super long nails struggle to do their job because they’re unknowingly trying to flex that they don’t need that kind of job. but you can’t very well get that context all across when trying to train someone and they get mad that they can’t do a thing with their 3 inch nails. and you’d be a dickhead to try.
i hate fashion most of the time because it’s like 99% all just about flexing wealth and status and creating a visual representation of hierarchy. the “experts” who follow it don’t know the historical context or where these styles come from or what they actually mean until the very tippy top where it stops making sense to anyone else. those people just look at it and embrace with open arms that fashion is their way of separating themselves from the poors. the more i learn about it the more it makes me sad about the human condition.
for most cultures in most of history, sadly the common standard of beauty was largely defined by wealth. our lizard brains want a partner that can raise a child well. best advantage you can give a child is tons of money. always has been.
That’s the English text. In the German original (Wikipedia ), it says wer ist die schönste Frau (who is the most beautiful woman):
Sneewittchen aber wuchs heran, und als es sieben Jahr alt war, war es so schön, daß es selbst die Königin an Schönheit übertraf, und als diese ihren Spiegel fragte: „Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand: wer ist die schönste Frau in dem ganzen Land?“ sagte der Spiegel: „Frau Königin, Ihr seyd die schönste hier, aber Sneewittchen ist noch tausendmal schöner als Ihr!“ Wie die Königin den Spiegel so sprechen hörte, ward sie blaß vor Neid, und von Stund an haßte sie das Sneewittchen, und wenn sie es ansah, und gedacht, daß durch seine Schuld sie nicht mehr die schönste auf der Welt sey, kehrte sich ihr das Herz herum. Da ließ ihr der Neid keine Ruhe, und sie rief einen Jäger und sagte zu ihm: „führ das Sneewittchen hinaus in den Wald an einen weiten abgelegenen Ort, da stichs todt, und zum Wahrzeichen bring mir seine Lunge und seine Leber mit, die will ich mit Salz kochen und essen.“
But Snow White grew up, and when she was seven years old she was so beautiful that she surpassed even the Queen in beauty, and when she asked her mirror, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful woman in all the land?” the mirror said, “Madam Queen, you are the most beautiful here, but Snow White is a thousand times more beautiful than you!” When the Queen heard the mirror speak thus, she turned pale with envy, and from that hour she hated Snow White, and when she looked at her, and thought that through his fault she was no longer the fairest in the world, her heart turned round. Then her envy left her no peace, and she called a huntsman, and said to him, “Take the Snow White out into the forest to a far-off place, there she will be killed, and as a token bring me
his[her] lungs and liver, and I will boil them with salt and eat them.”In addition, the evil queen originally is the mother of Snow White.
The bear from “The bear and the maiden fair” disagrees.
The Queen and Snow might want to reconsider their foundation shade. Just sayin’…
Lead just gives the perfect deathly white hue