We think that with Trump's antics we're rediscovering America, the one hidden behind the illusions of the Democratic Party and Hollywood, but perhaps we're discovering our own limits. What has shocked me most in recent months hasn't been the antics of the POTUS or his eccentric mentor, Elon Musk, but the general public's boycott of Disney's new film, Snow WhiteThe rerun no longer tells us how values have changed since 1937, but how many more changes in values we can tolerate. Because now it's not Trump who's proposing a regression: now it's the public itself. And what worries me most is that I, possibly, include myself.
Disney was the ideal thermometer of values. From here, you found out that Frozen It already dispensed with princes and focused on managing a girl's strength, and you could already claim to be up to date on the modern roles of men and women. Okay. Then you found out that they had released Maleficent and you could take note of the need for redemption, of the relativization of the concept of evil: a Rousseauian decision that concluded that women are good by nature, that they were only responding to their own childhood traumas and that, like Jessica Rabbit, they had simply drawn her that way. Agreed: Disney pointed the way to moral complexity, to not judging prematurely and to trusting people. I buy it, especially if the message is aimed at children. But with the new version of Blancaneu it has become clear that good intentions have a limit, that political correctness can become absurd and that the final effect can be disastrous in both ethical and aesthetic terms. In short: that the wokism Sometimes it doesn't make us better. And, especially, it doesn't make stories and movies better.
It's curious, because we won't see Disney, or any of its screenwriters, question Trump's childhood traumas. Or forgiving Elon Musk for his James Bond-esque villain face, playing forks and knives with a nuclear button in the other hand. Not in this case; they are absolute villains, people with diabolical plans in mind, potential murderers, undeniable fascists. The paradox is that Disney has tried to sell us in recent years that the bad guys aren't so bad, that absolute evil doesn't exist, that we must embrace the enemy, and that the seven dwarfs are actually "magical creatures." And maybe empires and cultures need enemies, antagonists, witches, good and evil, bean giants, dwarfs, and hunchbacks of Notre Dame. Maybe Snow White can't and shouldn't be black, and maybe sometimes a prince can save a girl. It's not that we have to go back to the 1930s, but we do need to respect the Brothers Grimm and present life as a space of conflict, not just inner growth. Trump voters grew tired of avoiding conflict and decided to confront it, and in the worst possible way. The Democrats didn't deal with it badly or poorly: they hid it. That's why they say absolutely nothing interesting, just like Salvador Illa or Jaume Collboni. The right is coming! It's not a bad slogan, because Trump is scary: the problem is that now the supposed "savior" prince is scarier than the bad guy in the movie.
More than America, we are discovering a New World where everyone will have to wake up and be more honest than in recent years. Europe, for starters, will have to stop being a Eurovision Song Contest and start proving whether it's still the cradle of Western culture. In fact, I still don't understand why Europe doesn't consider getting closer to Russia, even if it's to pacify Putin, as Trump is doing in the name of peace: after all, if Ukraine ends up becoming an EU state, I don't see why it shouldn't also become Russia. In Eurovision, in fact, it was already there. And yes, it should obviously be after meeting certain minimum democratic guarantees, but these minimums aren't even respected today by countries like Hungary or Spain. It's not in Russia or China where they have tried to imprison an entire democratically elected government by applying the law of the enemy.
One of Disney's best movies, The Lion King, makes Simba's father say from heaven "remember who you are". We find ourselves right here, trying to remember who we are, and deciding which part of the so-called progress It has denatured us too much. Only then does the little lion wake up from his festive rest and once again contribute something useful to his society.
