Believe it or not, this isn’t new. It was back in 2018 when a piece in “Parents” magazine did a piece on Kristen Bell — the voice of Anna in “Frozen” — reading to her daughters, then 5 and 3. “Don’t you think that it’s weird that the prince kisses Snow White without her permission?” Bell says she has asked her daughters. “Because you can not kiss someone if they’re sleeping!” What a magical storytime.
Now that problematic kiss has resurfaced, thanks to a revamped ride at Disneyland which has allegedly “sparked a backlash” over the prince kissing Snow White without her permission or consent.
Revamped ride at Disneyland sparks backlash over 'true love's kiss' scene because 'she is asleep and not able to give the Prince consent' https://t.co/LtOE3hTVj0
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) May 3, 2021
It is not the first time the Snow White kiss scene from the 1937 film has drawn concern over the message it sends to youngsters.
In 2018, Kazue Muta, a professor at Osaka University in Japan, argued the act of kissing a sleeping woman can be likened to sexual assault on an unconscious person.
The feminist academic, 61, went as far as to say that the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty “promote sexual violence.”
“When you think rationally about ‘Snow White’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ that tell of a ‘princess being woken up by the kiss of a prince,’ they are describing sexual assault on an unconscious person,” she tweeted.
Disneyland’s already reworking the Jungle Cruise ride, which promotes white colonialism, and Splash Mountain, which is based on “Song of the South.” Which sucks for Disneyland, because they just revamped the Snow White ride and left the kiss in.
Well then she’d be asleep forever, because she would never be able to give consent.
— Lighten up, Everyone. (@Money_Moose) May 3, 2021
I think we can all agree that a lifelong coma is better than being kissed by your boyfriend while you’re sleeping.
— Mike Barsetti (@MikeBarsetti) May 3, 2021
Honest question…Is mouth to mouth resuscitation ok if the unconscious person can’t give consent?
— Elliott Park (@elliottpark) May 3, 2021
I think we are all being trolled and this small group of people just keep pushing to see how far backwards people will bend over to accommodate their increasingly bizarre rants…
— Jordon Olson (@JordonOlson8) May 3, 2021
We’d guess it’s part trolling and part serious — Bell was certainly serious.
This is getting weird
— Cancel Everyone 😵😵😵 (@DancingInfinit1) May 3, 2021
🤡🤡🤡
— Steven Finley (@StevenF72210964) May 3, 2021
HAHAAA OMG …this world realy has gone crazy 🤪
— mme (@mme59158193) May 3, 2021
— Kare (@Kare44886365) May 3, 2021
She wakes up and marries him and they live happily ever after
— Coral Mckeown (@CoralMckeown) May 3, 2021
Or did they? Who knows what kind of husband he turned out to be?
I hate this world
— Debbie (@jerseylovesjett) May 3, 2021
I never gave my concent for them to think for me
— 55 (@annlilly55) May 3, 2021
— DRE ALL DAY (@ALLDAYINDAPAINT) May 3, 2021
We really have to worry, where do these people come from. Frightening.
— Peter Ord (@ord_peter) May 3, 2021
Is all this ballyhoo over one SF Gate op-ed? The bar for what constitutes "backlash" is much lower than I thought.
— Steven Cenname (@StevenCenname) May 3, 2021
Yeah, that’s why we put “backlash” in quotation marks in the headline. But seriously, Disneyland is redoing a lot of its classic rides to make them more politically correct. Katie Dowd and Julie Tremaine wrote in Sunday’s San Francisco Gate:
Haven’t we already agreed that consent in early Disney movies is a major issue? That teaching kids that kissing, when it hasn’t been established if both parties are willing to engage, is not OK? It’s hard to understand why the Disneyland of 2021 would choose to add a scene with such old fashioned ideas of what a man is allowed to do to a woman, especially given the company’s current emphasis on removing problematic scenes from rides like Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain. Why not re-imagine an ending in keeping with the spirit of the movie and Snow White’s place in the Disney canon, but that avoids this problem?
I don’t believe this. I think someone writes articles to piss everyone off.
— Jet (@jetusername) May 3, 2021
Related:
Problematic: The prince kissing Snow White without her consent examined in Parents Magazine https://t.co/dpBKgTB3zW
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 17, 2018
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