Starting with snow white

Snow White
, there is no huntsman at all; instead, there is a 
gang or mob-like entity, comprised of four men under orders to murder So White. The 
group is aptly referred to as, “Murder, Inc.” and had been hired by the Queen 
“BLACKOUT SO WHITE” (Clampett). While they do serve the function of delivering 
her into the woods, and she appears to be unconscious (her body horizontal and 

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unmoving) when she is removed from the car, So White quickly regains herself. As she 
waves the four off, her other hand set upon her hip and her body bouncing to the beat, So 
White sing-songs, “Well thanks for de booty ride, you’re So White’s squeeze” 
(Clampett). Clearly, almost none of the shock, fear, and horror of preceding Snow White 
figures into this experience. While there is a scream of shock heard as she is taken from 
her dance with the prince, an audience soon finds that she has quickly recovered herself.
So White does not wax sentimental as have earlier Snow Whites, plying the huntsman 
with her innocence and engaging his compassion through kindness (the obverse of the 
queen’s jealous rage). Instead, she utilizes the singular quality by which she has been 
most readily defined by Clampett thus far, her sexual body and sole means for male 
engagement. Although a viewer does not see the exchange which precipitates her 
freedom, the evidence of red kisses covering the faces of all four of the hired men, as 
well as So White’s language indicate not only how So White came to be free and yet 
alive, but also her own gratification in the presumably multiple sexual encounters that 
occurred within the car.
This sexually charged So White continues to exert her provocative influence 
when she meets de Sebben Dwarfs in the wood, kissing each in the line-up squarely on 
the mouth. As they fall back, she poses dramatically with her high-heeled bare leg 
extended, breasts thrust out, and hand across her forehead. The image calls the dwarfs to 
take her, as she is there for the taking. Her body is her means of negotiation, the 
commodity she is ever-willing to exchange. This is not the motherly figure Disney has 
presented, nor the female caretaker of the home that the Grimms’ dwarfs negotiate the 

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presence of, but neither of these figurations jive with the representation that Clampett has 
heretofore generated. His earlier exploitation of the African American female body, 
necessitates a continual adherence to that form of caricature and again offers something 
of the “mystique of the black entertainer” that so entranced Clampett
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(Klein 192). At 
once Clampett tells us that this is 
not 
Disney’s Snow White, 
and 
she is an American 
figure defined by his own gaze.
Even though So White is figured as a sexually charged being, loose with her body 
and easily taking on additional men for her pleasure, one, a dwarf, does wake her and 
rises above the rest of her potential male suitors, seemingly in line with the more 
traditional 
Snow White
tale. Yet, in this too, Clampett appears to poke fun at the idea of 
Disney’s “true love,” for the dwarf that wakes So White is strongly reminiscent of 
Dopey—bald-headed, a single tooth in front, sleeves hanging down over his arms, and 
smaller than the rest. The idea of So White waking to this “Dopey-like” figure 
deliberately mocks Disney’s “true love,” or the romance which traditionally resolves an 
American 
Snow White
tale. There is no indication that the two will live happily ever after 
or even marry; he was merely the right kiss for the moment, a theme with the each of the 
men that So White encounters throughout the short. In every scene in which So White 
appears, she becomes more and more sexually charged in opposition to the virginal 
innocence of the traditionally referenced burgeoning beauty. Not only does Clampett’s 
adaptation dramatically oppose Disney’s heroine in this way, but he further undoes her 
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It is this character, “‘So White,’ a spunky little pinup designed by Clampett and Rod Scribner,” that 
Klein notes was a and a “particular favorite of Clampett himself, who used to keep a drawing of her, 
winking back like a teenage Betty Grable, in his office forty years later” (193).

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connection to the