Starting with snow white

Snow White
, that which propels the plot further, but Clampett has missed it, only 
conveying some measure of the queen’s anger at her spoiled opportunity with the Prince.
While this creates something of a scene of jealousy, the depth of the episodic action is 
reduced by its failure to capture the effects of the feminine life cycle and fading beauty’s 
impact on the same. Further, because this is the central theme of the tale, these initially 
reductive scenes both parodically break Disney’s version and the broader tradition of the 
tale. 
Where Disney paid homage to the tale’s tradition and themes, Clampett cast both 
aside and with them Disney’s cohesive form. Clampett was not so concerned with 
displaying his adaptive influence on
 the Snow White tale
as he was representing his 
adaptation of 
popular
animation
. Where Klein argues that Clampett’s version “was 
intended as a declaration of personal independence” in which “Black music was literally 
presented to as an antidote to Disney sentimentality,” I would press this assertion a bit 
further to suggest that Clampett’s 
Coal Black 
was not only operating as a revision to 
“Disney sentimentality” but to Disney’s very role as conductor of animation. Clampett’s 
means for assuming this position could not be through story, as this did not represent his 
interests, but through representations of musical entertainment he could counter the 

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former, displaying instead his own unique animative force and ideologies by 
manipulating Disney’s memorable filmic moments.
In Clampett’s version, one views a 
Snow White 
with a deliberate slant toward the 
Disney version. Yet, one might just as easily argue that although Disney’s version is 
much referenced, its and with it the 
Snow White 
tale’s substance is lost in lieu of 
Clampett’s view of American culture, and more predominately, African Americans and 
their culture from a white gaze (outside looking in). Here, the Queen is not transformed 
by jealousy; rather, she is “mean” to begin with, and wealth and villainy are bonded 
together, as “she was just as rich as she was mean” (Clampett). The wealth here is 
significant because it allows Clampett to display what wealth allowed Americans of that 
time. Following this statement, the camera pans across a series of images, from treasures 
and jewels, to tires, sugar, and coffee—commonplace items rationed or restricted during 
the time of WWII. The queen’s gluttonous behavior is then imaged as she gulps down 
“Chattanooga Chew-Chews” (Clampett). While wealth and gluttony are unimportant to 
the 
Snow White 
tale, they are important for Clampett toward a different effect. These, 
paired with the Queen’s desire, evident in her request of the mirror (to “send me a Prince 
about six feet tall”), display the bodily (physical and sexual) appetites stereotypically 
understood of African Americans, from the opposing racial viewpoint (Clampett). This 
sexual or sexually frustrated theme appears once again when the Queen angrily appears at 
her window, eyes wide and glaring, teeth clenched, her gaze fixed on So White and the 
Prince dancing, upper bodies pressed close together. The dance itself, while fast-paced, 
elicits a kind of sexual advance. Once more, in Clampett’s version of the Queen’s 

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response, but even more in the exhibition of dance (between the Prince and So White), 
only a single-sided perception of African American desire is conveyed. While this 
heightened sexuality displaces both the innocent romance of the Disney version and, 
more importantly, the recognition of beauty lost, Christopher P. Lehman argues that “The 
unprecedented amount of African American sexual imagery in the film was another of 
Clampett’s methods for visually interpreting swing. The romantic leading characters, So 
White and Prince Chawmin were animation’s first heterosexual African American couple 
to demonstrate sexual chemistry” (77). Although sexual chemistry is not as significant to 
the