How a White Ape Made Me Write an Adaptation of Snow White

If you think that your childhood can actually be ruined, I don’t recommend you read the original works that inspired Disney’s adaptations. With only one exception that comes to mind, Disney has thoroughly revisioned them. The originals are completely different stories to what you may hold very near and dear to your heart.

If, however, you know that nothing can actually go back in time to truly taint your childhood, and you’re fascinated by the changes that take place when people decide to disregard the integrity of the original work, or maybe even it’s original intent, then read on. I think you’ll be quite interested to know why I decided to write my own Snow-white story.

It all started with Tarzan. Which, by the way, is a word in the language of the apes that adopted him. It means ‘white ape.’ 

Yes, I did say apes. Not gorillas. That was Disney shoehorning a bit of environmental awareness in their adaptation. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. You might be getting the idea that I begrudge them for this, but I truly don’t, as you’ll be able to find out if you read on.

Tarzan is my favorite Disney movie. I watched it for the first time back when it came out, and I was eleven or twelve years old. As I kept growing, Disney kept producing movies. A lot of them adaptations of old, ancient even, stories. For most of that time, I was working on becoming a writer myself. Each movie they put out only inspired me to keep going, since I wanted to make people feel as much and intensely as some of those movies and stories made me feel. Disney is not my main influence, it’s not even a cherished one, but it is one of them.

Tarzan, however, stayed with me, and I eventually got curious as to what the original story was like. I downloaded Mr. Borough’s first book in the series (yes, there’s a series of Tarzan of books. Over 20, if i’m not mistaken) from project Gutenberg, and got to reading.

Holy father-killing apes, was I reading a completely different story than the one Disney told to me. Seriously. When I was done reading the book, I doubted the animation could even be called Tarzan. It would be like changing The Lion King’s title to Hamlet just because it shares some elements with, and is based on, Shakespeare’s story.

And Then Came The Pale, Poisoned Princess

So I decided to go to the original fairy tales and see how much Disney changed them in their animations. I went on Amazon, bought a book with all 200+ stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and started with Snow White because that was the first adaptation Disney produced.

Surprisingly, this one was pretty faithful to the original. This is, in fact, the one exception I was talking about in the very beginning of this little article. It’s so faithful, in fact, that it did nothing to answer the questions that sprang to my mind as I was reading.

Why did Snow White’s father, the king no less, never care about her daughter disappearing?

Where did the mirror come from?

Why did the evil queen do nothing when the hunter made a fool out of her?

Where did the evil queen come from?

Why did Snow-white’s mother die after giving birth?

The prince just comes out of effin’ left field! What the heck?

Also, did you know that the evil queen actually tried to kill Snow-white three times after telling the hunter to murder her? Or that, originally, the prince never kissed Snow-white? Or that in the very first version of the recorded tale, the evil queen was Snow’s very own mother?

As a writer, all those loose ends left me with the equivalent of blue balls. It is frustrating as all hell, and a cold shower is like applying a band-aid to a cut the length of your arm.

I will not say that I took matters into my own hands because it meshes too well with the blue balls analogy. What I will say is that I started working on ways to answer those questions, and tighten all those loose ends. It was an impulse, a natural drive that led me to do that, and by the time I was done, I loved what I’d produced. It was basically a treatment for what I perceived to be a pretty good story.

So Why Not Write It And Share It?

I’m not gonna say that I’m writing a better story than the original one, or even a better one than what Disney did. I know there’ll be people that will read it and think that it is the worst atrocity done to this classic.

But I’m writing it, liking it, and am convinced that there will be people out there that will enjoy it as much as me.

So here we are. If you’re interested, be sure to follow this blog. I’ll be posting more articles on the problems I run into while adapting this wonderful classic. If you enjoyed this one, you’re sure to enjoy the rest.

May the runes fall in your favor, fellow.

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