Calls to Cancel Disneyland's Snow White Ride as 'True Love's Kiss' Not 'Woke' Enough
Scene deemed 'offensive' because 'she is asleep and not able to give the Prince consent'
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Calls are mounting for Disneyland's new Snow White ride to be canceled over claims the "true love's kiss" scene isn't "woke" enough.
A revamped version of the famous ride is drawing backlash for portraying the classic scene from the movie, which has now been deemed "offensive" by the cancel cops.
Critics claim the romantic scene undermines lessons about consent because the Prince is seen kissing Snow White while she is asleep.
The famed theme park in Anaheim, California reopened on Friday after shutting down for over a year due to the pandemic.
The reopening featured a significant overhaul of the classic Snow White ride.
The ride was previously focused on the wicked Queen and known as "Snow White's Scary Journey," but the updated version takes a more lighthearted approach to the tale, featuring all-new scenes and fresh animatronics.
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The ride now culminates in the "true love's kiss" scene, in which the Prince, believing Snow White to be dead, kisses her, breaking the Queen's curse that had put her into a deep trance.
"A kiss he gives to her without her consent, while she's asleep, which cannot possibly be true love if only one person knows it's happening," squealed reviewers for SFGate.
"Haven't we already agreed that consent in early Disney movies is a major issue?" the review continues.
"That teaching kids that kissing, when it hasn't been established if both parties are willing to engage, is not OK?
"It's hard to understand why the Disneyland of 2021 would choose to add a scene with such old fashioned ideas of what a man is allowed to do to a woman, especially given the company's current emphasis on removing problematic scenes from rides like Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain," the critics whined.
"Why not re-imagine an ending in keeping with the spirit of the movie and Snow White's place in the Disney canon, but that avoids this problem?"
Jungle Cruise, which launched in 1955 and remains closed for updates, is being revamped to remove "negative depictions" of native peoples that depict them as savages or subservient, Disney confirmed earlier this year.
Disney said last June that its Splash Mountain ride was also being overhauled to remove its associations with black stereotypes in the 1946 film "Song of the South," on which it was based.
It is not the first time the Snow White kiss scene from the 1937 film has drawn concern over the message it sends to youngsters.
In 2018, Kazue Muta, a professor at Osaka University in Japan, argued the act of kissing a sleeping woman can be likened to sexual assault on an unconscious person.
The feminist academic, 61, went as far as to say that the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty "promote sexual violence."
"When you think rationally about 'Snow White' and 'Sleeping Beauty,' that tell of a 'princess being woken up by the kiss of a prince,' they are describing sexual assault on an unconscious person," she tweeted.
Snow White was the first full-length animated Disney feature and remains one of the 10 highest domestically grossing U.S. films of all time, adjusted for inflation.
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In the film, the evil Queen, jealous of Snow White's beauty, creates a poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into the "Sleeping Death."
The spell can be broken by "love's first kiss," but the Queen presumes Snow White will be pronounced dead and buried before any such kiss can be administered.
But the distraught seven dwarves are so upset about finding Snow White in the trance that they cannot bring themselves to bury her, and instead place her in a glass coffin in a clearing in the woods.
A year later, the Prince learns of Snow White's fate and visits what he believes to be her uncorrupted body.
He kisses her, awaking her from her trance, and they depart to live happily ever after in his castle.
