Most of the time, wokeness in Hollywood fancies itself as a necessary means to add diversity to films. In reboots, traditionally white characters are replaced with minority actors, even when doing so makes no sense. Disney’s live-action reboot of Lady And The Tramp, for example, made the couple that adopts Lady interracial. This diversity for the sake of diversity was actually jarringly offensive, portraying an interracial couple during a time and place when such unions were illegal.
The most recent Disney effort to make an offensive change in the name of wokeness and diversity is the forthcoming reboot of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. For starters, Snow White, who, in the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale was described as having “skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony,” is being played by a Latina actress.
Disney prided itself last year on casting a Latina actress for the title role, but criticism from “Game of Thrones” actor and dwarf Peter Dinklage prompted Disney to make even more changes to the classic story. “Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White,” Dinklage said. “But you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way, but then you’re still making that f****ng backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? What the f*** are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”
The self-proclaimed leader of the dwarfism community declared it offensive for Disney even to remake the story because dwarves are offensive or something. I don’t get it, but Disney listened. Now, the seven dwarves in the story are a gender and culture-diverse mix of men and women, only one of whom has dwarfism. Is this really progress? Perhaps Peter Dinklage thinks so, but now six dwarf actors lost on an acting gig because he decided to be a Karen.
“It makes me so sick to my stomach to think that there are seven roles for dwarfs that can’t get normal acting roles, or very few and far between roles, and now they are gone because of [Dinklage],” Dylan Postl, an actor with dwarfism, said last year.
Progress, right?
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Dinklage thought he wasn’t loud enough on his soapbox, but clearly he was. This week, the trailer for the Willy Wonka prequel film that nobody wanted or asked for revealed that actor Hugh Grant was portraying an Oompa-Loompa. As you’ll remember from original film, the Oompa-Loompas were portrayed by actors with dwarfism as well. It’s not entirely clear if any dwarf actors will portray Oompa-Loompas in the film, but is it really less offensive to have a nearly 6-foot-tall actor digitally altered to have a dwarfish appearance than to have a dwarf perform the role?
Congratulations, Peter Dinklage. Because of you, it is now significantly harder for the dwarfism community to get roles in Hollywood.
