Starting with snow white

combination
of artful animation, new technology, 
and story which together substantiated his view of and continued folkloric impact on the 
Snow White
tale. Each “classic” resounded in the history of the 
Snow White 
tradition and 
served to critically influence subsequent cultural or generational adaptations. Yet my 
study also shows how the tale’s tradition transformed over time, to either meet new 
cultural or contextual needs. While my brief glance toward more recent versions and 
trends representing the American 
Snow White 
tradition indeed displays further 
transformation, I would also like to suggest that the recurrence of postmodern and 
contemporary themes and values presented therein might be signaling a new turn in the 
use-value and revisionary possibilities of these post-Disney 
Snow White 
tales. 
More recent, twenty-first century 
Snow White 
transformations are not so 
frequently guided or even gauged by either the Grimms’ or Disney’s “classic” folkloric 
modeling, but instead embody and transform these traditions based upon a new cultural 
trend, system of values, or creative impulse. By productively highlighting alternative 
attributes of the tale, these adaptations embody subsequent (contemporary) cultural trends 
and values in addition exhibiting motifs from the “classics.” These re-formations of 
Snow White 
are thus giving way to an alternatively understood lineage within the tale, 
which traces many variations of 
Snow White
, but prioritizes none. Rather, it serves to 
emphasize its own value, be it the treatment of gender, “fractured fairy tale form,” 
disability, history, religion, sexuality, or some other internal or external element. In so 
doing, this adapted representation inserts itself into the tale’s conversation, becoming a 

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contender for subsequent adaptation and re-presentation (as shown through the 
feminizing swing of the 
Snow White 
tale). 
What becomes clear in these contemporary adaptations and in the American 
tradition of the 
Snow White 
tale on the whole is the continual interdependent influence of 
multiple forms of media. While in some respects, Disney’s folkloric impact amplified 
the effects of film’s influence on literature and literature’s influence on film and other 
media, this dynamic movement between various types of representation actually 
resonated in and with American culture (albeit in a more limited way) prior to Disney’s 
classic—through the theatrical play (as performance), play (as text), and silent film, 
presented with titles. It is this movement between forms which has regenerated and 
continues to regenerate the folkloric tradition of the 
Snow White 
tale in the United States, 
gradually employing progressive experimentation to reaffirm or reconfigure cultural 
values to address societal needs. 

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REFERENCES CITED
 
Abramson, Doris. “‘The New Path’: Nineteenth-Century American Women
Playwrights.”
Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, 
Fairleigh 
Dickinson University Press, 1990, pp. 38-51. 
Allan, Robin. “Still is the Story Told: Disney and Story.”
Storytelling in Animation:
The Art of the Animated Image
, vol. 2, edited by John Canemaker, American Film 
Institute, 1988, pp. 83-90. 
Aloff, Mindy. “Disney’s 
Snow White 
at 75.”
Virginia Quarterly Review
, vol. 89, no. 1,
2013, pp. 238-244.