Heigh ho, oh no! Politically correct panto dumps Snow White’s dwarfs Culturally sensitive audience members attending this year's Christmas panto at Leicester's De Montfort Hall will be pleased to find that Snow White's seven dwarfs have been cut in favour of a septet of "friends". According to the Leicester Mercury*, a spokeswoman for the theatre explained that the term "dwarf" is "generally …
Quoting another version of Snow White as we used to tell it in high school:
The first one said, "Who has been sitting in my chair?"
The second one, "Who has been eating from my plate?"
The third one, "Who has been eating my bread?"
The fourth one, "Who has been eating my vegetables?"
The fifth one, "Who has been eating with my fork?"
The sixth one, "Who has been drinking from my cup?"
The seventh one, "Who is ... Oh never mind, turn off the lights brothers, let's go to bed"
Agreed - didn't we outgrow this stuff in the 90's? However, if we follow their logic the Soviet Socialist Republic of Leicester has made a major mistake. They still call the lead character Snow White. Surely, this too is discriminatory in a racist way - perhaps "Snow Counter-Racist-Approved-Pigmentation" would be a good alternative. I really think that this works for a new PC title....
Snow Counter-Racist-Approved-Pigmentation and her Seven Friends
Really rolls off the tongue (*rolls eyes*)
> Surely, this too is discriminatory in a racist way - perhaps "Snow Counter-Racist-Approved-Pigmentation" would be a good alternative.
You're on the right track, but the term "snow" is also inherently racist; it's only ever manufactured in countries predominantly peopled with whites, it is itself white (unless artificial colourants are added at which point it's usually derogated as "dirty snow", known on the street as "slush", or "yellow snow" in a similar fashion to the "yellow peril"), and it's almost never exported to more non-achromatically aligned latitudes - presumably because all you selfish saps in the snow-producing regions don't want differentiatedly ethnicalised people muscling in on the market; all a big first-world protection racket as usual. Until we see snow attain an equal distribution across the globe it's just another blatant tool of the white patriarchy.
As such, the play should be retitled "Non-Geographically-Constrained-Precipitation Counter-Racist-Approved-Pigmentation and hir Seven Friends" in order to avert its inherent offensiveness.
I object to Snow White being female whilst being saved by Prince Charming, a male. That is not only horribly sexist, but the stereotypical portrayal of a romantic male/female adult couple discriminates against paedophiles and the LBGT community. In fact, presenting a show that is predominately designed to entertain young humans is both ageist and specist. To be safe the production should consist of an empty stage and no dialogue.
Last panto Prince Charming I saw had some definite female characteristics.
As to the ideal show being an empty stage and no dialogue, closest I've come is a fair bit of dialogue but a rather small audience. At least the actors on stage didn't outnumber those who bought tickets (though the curtain call might have been a close-run thing).
Isn't most of the job of a parent to indoctrinate their kids.
I thought it was the job of parents to raise and educate their kids. We could all do with less of the indoctrination bit really, it's the root cause of this sort of lunacy.
The healthy position is to teach children how to ask questions, not to teach them to accept everything they are told.
Without that sort of attitude, we'd be living in a pre-enlightenment society, which would be fine only for those at the very top of religious organisations.
"How about: "A person and some people."
That should fix all potential issues, yes?"
No, no! This will not do it! You see, "some people" is clearly derogatory, implying that the "vertically challenged people" are less than the tall (and white!) one.
This is clearly a disaster, and we should scrub the whole thing. How about a choir, with just the vocalization? You see, lyrics are far too prone to offend someone to be permitted.
"Snow Counter-Racist-Approved-Pigmentation and her Seven Friends"
RACIST! How DARE You imply pigmentation has anything to do with a person's worth?
And what's with all that sexist exclusionism,"Her seven friends"?
Obviously the correct title should be, "Eight Acquaintances".
(Standing by, waiting to see which SLWs I've offended.)
"If Mr Davis is happy with the proper title, then that's good enough for me."
This, which pretty much captures the whole reason that this decision is problematic.
With any term that may or may not be abusive and lead to an allegation of having one of the -isms or -phobias it is not up to anyone other than the presumed target of the offense to decide whether it is insulting or not. Anything else is suggesting that the presumed target population is unable to think for themselves and needs to be told what they disapprove of by someone who knows best. Which is possibly a little patronising?
Rosie
The thing with an actual term like dwarf, black, gay or whatever else some bigots have a problem with, is that it's not term that is the problem, it is that someone thinks the thing it describes is bad. So presumably well-meaning people decide to try and prevent the use of the term as a solution to that. But it doesn't solve it, it just cedes ground to the bigots and says "yes, there really is something wrong with being X, let's try to hide the fact that someone is by finding a polite way of putting it". In pretty much the same way you'd find a polite way of putting it when someone's boyfriend was an irritating moron or other social situation where you need to be delicate. But there's no good reason to attack someone for being any black, short, gay, straight, whatever. You can't just endlessly kowtow to bigots.
Yes, sometimes a word eventually gets so tarnished, so used as a term of abuse, that it becomes effectively unrecoverable. But that's a thing we should strive to avoid, not pander to. If someone uses the term dwarf as a term of abuse, they get the ostracism, not the English language.
And of course 6'3" Corporal Carrot was a Dwarf, and it wouldn't occur to any Dwarf (of closer to mean height for their demographic group) that he wasn't. (The Fifth Elephant).
[Oh jeeebus, I have read the book twice and only just now whilst writing the above have I twigged that it is an pun on the Fifth Element. Is there a term for when two bits of info exist within the same brain but only collide some time later?]
"calling the lead character "Snow White" smacked of blatant racism."
Which, IMO, reinforces Warwick Davis' belief that "it's all a smokescreen anyway. The profit margins for pantos are not very big and it's obviously much cheaper to involve schoolchildren than it is to pay lots of professional short actors."
If they wanted the panto to be politically correct, they'd change that aspect of its title as well - and probably a few other things in the content.
Any publicity is good publicity however it's not big and it's not clever, where is de montford? and how far away are they?
I thought the PC term was vertically challenged.
Also if anyone is wondering about the difference between a dwarf and midget you apply the cartwheel test, dwarf have little arms.
I hope no one is offended by this but if they are my uncles cousins flatmates brother is a dwarf.
In the seventies one of the lads in our gruop suffered from dwarfism, he was about 4' 10" at the age of 20. His standard greeting was;" lend us a fiver "' cut down obviously from lend us a fiver I' a bit short this week. A wicked sense of humour and ha hard worker he ended up a successful stockbroker.
I have to agree that Warwick is indeed a lovely person, and always has time for people......
I just wonder when Leicester took over the PC mantle from our beloved Hackney council
We don't even have black and white TV's anymore
If people ask me why i'm short I tell them I have Dwarfism, seems that most normal people understand that, if I said "I have vertical challenging" they'd assume I was taking the piss and probably larrup me one and walk away
The problem here isn't the fact the people who run the panto are thinking "Lads, we might offend people here if we use the word dwarf or dwarves".
No, the problem comes from these idiots listening to maybe one or two people who have nothing better for doing other than to complain, and then taking that as a gauge of the country's opinion.
I don't have a problem with the word dwarf, but then again I'm 6ft 3.
Either that or- as Davis commented in the original article- it was a convenient excuse to hire schoolchildren more cheaply than paying a group of professional short actors.
Sounds similar to the misuse of "health and safety" as a convenient excuse used by jobsworths and general lazy ****s not to do something they want. "Can't do XYZ.... 'elf and safety".
Cue gullible Daily Mail reader complaining that her decorator was obliged to take a two hour paid lunch break down the pub because of Health and Safety gone mad.
(Or cue Daily Mail printing a similar trumped-up/completely-manufactured story disparaging excessive "Health and Safety" on the front page, then the next day running a scaremongering story about which innocuous household item will give you cancer this week and their readers not minding the contradiction in attitude).
Anyway, I'd love to pay you £25 an hour for that job, but rules from some vaguely-defined government body say I have to employ an illegal immigrant at £3 an hour to do the same thing instead. No, really! It's political correctness gone mad.
"... feature Benidorm and Loose Women’s Sherrie Hewson in the lead role ..."
I'd always thought Snow White was a young girl, not somebody on the verge of retirement. Mind you I suppose that's sexist, ageist or something like that now...
"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted" - Mae West
What part have they assigned to the traditional Dame - the wicked Queen? Pantomime has had cross-dressing for the leading "boy" and the Dame for a long time - along with double entendres and poking fun at the establishment. Sounds like this production has strangled all the traditional elements.
It's just stupid fcking students. I was a student and I still despise them generally.
On a side note I was Widow Twanky in our amateur groups's Aladdin last year and it was hilarious. MASSIVE fake boobs and 6-inch platform disco boots. I gained a new respect for women after wearing those bloody things all day.
This year I hope to be an Ugly Sister.
A deliquent boy from a broken home squanders his own mother's meagre wealth on "magic beans", breaks into a pensioner's house, steals his things, and kills the unfortunate victim when confronted.
You remind me of the - possibly apocryphal - summary of The Wizard of Oz once printed in a TV listings magazine, which IIRC went:
"Transported to a new land, a young girl kills the first person she meets then teams up with three strangers to kill again"
All the short jokes aside this is just about money and has nothing to do with political correctness except as an excuse.
This panto is trying to avoid paying 7 expensive actors when there are alternatives (there aren't a huge number of people who are short enough and willing to play pantomime dwarves, therefore they can demand substantially more money than most actors who don't have a name that'll put bums on seats)
Warwick Davis is trying to avoid losing a major revenue stream, he's talking as a co-owner of the UK's largest acting agency for short actors (Willow Management), who is hoping to take at least 10% of the wages of each of those seven dwarves at every production of Snow White across the country.
Strangely enough rumour within the theatre industry is that theatres that do a panto every year take more revenue when they're doing Snow White because there's a significant audience willing to pay to see the show with the little men that don't otherwise see panto.
Wow, I always took the term "dwarf" in the context of this fairy tale to be the characters' race; that is dwarves in the folklore or Tolkien sense.
I had no idea that they were supposed to just be humans in the the lower 5th percentile of height. Is this established in the original version or something? I admit I have only ever seen the Disney one...
I liked his phrase "offended on our behalf."
I think folks with ordinary sensibilities are willing to cut people slack as long as they're not intentionally being dicks.
The problem arises from sociopaths trying to "pass" as people with empathy. All they can do is rely on rules to fake a conscience.
I see I'm going to have to play the PC-Challenged Card. "The what card?" you say. Well, there's the Race Card, the Sexism Card, the Autism Card and the Gay Card, so I'm going to start using the PC-C Card for when people are so totally PC-confounded that they see a sense of humour as a disability - "Hey," they shriek, "you could only laugh at that if you're sick in the head!" I slap down the PC-C Card: "Sorry, I'm going to say something that offends you, but you can't complain because I am PC-challenged, and you're a bigot if you disagree." Win!
BTW, El Mod, you rejected a post of mine earlier......
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