David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Aug. 27, 2002

I'll have to explain movie
dialogue soon enough

Kill her, cut out her heart and bring it to me in this box.

"Yikes! What are we watching, Daddy?"

Anna will be asking me that question soon enough. It won't be long until she can fully comprehend movie dialogue, and I suspect there will be some explaining I'll have to do.

Let me back up.

We three at the Spates house have been sick all week, just downright ill. You name it, we've had it -- fever, chest congestion, hacking cough, conjunctivitis, ear and sinus infection, muscle pain and general malaise. (I'll have a pastrami and Swiss on dark rye, hold the malaise.) I guess it happens when you have kids -- your child goes out into the world, picks up a delicious little virus, and brings it home for the whole family to enjoy. My daughter, Anna, got it first, and I and my wife were soon to follow.

Consequently we've been cooped up in the house for days, ensuring we all get a taste of each delightful symptom. When we're not sleeping or complaining or moaning or blowing our noses for the umpteenth time, we watch TV. Since the gals balk at watching SportsCenter four or five times a day, we prefer movies on DVD. (I hate watching movies on broadcast TV. There are too many commercials, too many edits, but that's another column for another day.)

So we hunkered down Saturday afternoon and dropped a plastic disc in the player. After being sufficiently warned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation not to copy the movie or play it in a public place, we settled in for the show.

Kill her, cut out her heart and bring it to me in this box. Those are the antagonist's orders that set the stage for the ensuing drama.

Can you name the movie? Pulp Fiction? Nope. Hannibal? Nope. Beaches? Good guess, but nope.

It was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Kill her, cut out her heart and bring it to me in this box. Those are the directions the evil queen gives to her brutish toady. He's to lead Snow White deep into the forest, stab her with a big knife, cut her heart from her body, and then bring the heart back to the queen as proof that he did the deed. Oh, and here's a nice handcrafted box in which to carry Snow White's heart. You sure wouldn't want to use a common ZipLock baggy for a job like that. How pedestrian.

Are you expecting me to start bashing Disney? Forget it. Snow White came out in 1937. People weren't so sensitive back then. You could get away with stuff like that. The evil queen must be established as, well, evil. She's not disagreeable, ill-tempered or has rage-displacement disorder. She's EVIL.

You could also get away with a character named Dopey who is so stupid that he doesn't even speak. He's never even tried, according to Doc. There's no way a screenwriter in 2002 would be allowed to have a stupid mute stumbling along through the story. (I don't think "mute" is politically correct these days, but I'm not sure what the "compassionate" replacement phrasing is. It's probably something with three or four words and at least one hyphen.)

I hadn't seen Snow White since my age was a single digit, and

I don't recall being shocked or traumatized by the evil queen's gruesome directive. It's just part of the storytelling, and I'm not going to get into a twist over Anna watching it either. Maybe it will scare her the first time she realizes what's going on, but young kids are easily scared. I remember being deathly afraid of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Kids get over it.

Whatever happened to the good ol' days when Disney could make cartoons about Dopey and murder and organ transport? Well, first off, I reject the notion that the good ol' days were completely and unquestionably good. In 1937 most blacks were seated in the back of the bus, most women were uneducated and subservient, and Hitler was teaching the German populace how to goose-step. Ask around. We've made considerable progress since 1937. Is the world a perfect place? No, of course not, but I expect that in another 65 years the world will be even better than it is today.

That being said, Snow White holds up pretty well after all these years. Despite our sorry physical states, I enjoyed our Saturday matinee. I would hate to have been one of the dwarfs, though. With Sneezy in the house, it's a wonder the other six weren't sick all the time. He didn't cover his mouth once.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.