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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Print: 2576-0556 Downloads: 1348493 Total View: 9096882
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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.01.001

Snow White in Literary Transformation: Dwarfs as a Motif of Pop

Sayaka Oki

Faculty of Global and Regional Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.

*Corresponding author:Sayaka Oki

Published: February 7,2023

Abstract

Brothers Grimm’s famous fairy tale Snow White (1857) became the motif of Walt Disney’s first feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Previous study has often interpreted the growth of the protagonist in her adolescence negotiating her relationship with (step) mother and daughter as a process of producing womanly ideal. In Disney’s film, the seven Dwarfs appear as the truthful friends who act characteristically through naming besides the pro-tagonist Snow White. This paper aimed to analyze which effective roles the Dwarfs play in Snow White’s development. In this connection, parallel to the interpretation of Albert Ludwig Grimm’s Snow White (1809) as well as Disney’s film, contemporary German authors’ works—Wolfram Siebeck’s Seven Dwarfs (1973) and Karen Duve’s Dwarfs’ Idyll (2012a)—were analyzed, because these works have a remarkable similarity—these stories show the tendency to precisely describe the seven Dwarfs’ perspectives. This aspect can be highlighted in the detailed characterization of each Dwarf. This paper also aimed to analyze the visual and acoustic cuteness of the seven Dwarfs in Disney’s film using the psychological term “Aww-Effect” which symbolizes the emotion accompanied with perceiving cuteness. The symbolic meaning of Dwarfs should be clarified through comparative analysis of above-mentioned works. Further, this study focuses on the background of art history from the 1960s in which the artistic movement of “pop” becomes obvious. Leslie A. Fiedler’s thoughts about Freaks should be reconstructed as the theoretical framework for the analysis. Fiedler’s philosophical dictum “Cross the border—Close the gap” (1972) structured the postmodern movement. Fiedler’s study about Dwarfs in Freaks—Myths and Images of the Secret Self (1978) describes the image of the anomalies, such as those among Dwarfs, Giants, Supermen, Superwomen, Hermaphrodites, and Twins. Thus, the article suggests emphasizing the point that human physical differences should not be despised.

Keywords

Snow White, Dwarfs, Brothers Grimm, Pop-movement, Aww-Effect, Leslie A. Fiedler, Walt Disney, Contemporary German Literature

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How to cite this paper

Snow White in Literary Transformation: Dwarfs as a Motif of Pop

How to cite this paper: Sayaka Oki. (2023) Snow White in Literary Transformation: Dwarfs as a Motif of Pop. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 7(1), 1-12.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.01.001