Wee Man Rips Disney For Not Casting 'Dwarves' in 'Snow White' Remake

[queenursula]

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‘Jackass’ stunt performer Wee Man (real name Jason Acuña) is ripping Disney for swapping out "dwarves" for taller actors in the upcoming live-action version of "Snow White" ... he says it's another existential threat facing his community.

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[little_vienna]

Disney claimed after Dinklage's comments from 2022 (I think 2022?) that they were "consulting with members of the dwarfism community" but then like a few hours later said "oh we're going to make them magical creatures instead," but seems they have (presumably) backtracked on that as well.

Without knowing who they actually consulted, it's hard to say exactly what the right step is.

It reminds me of different approaches to the Peter Pan musical. For Peter Pan Live, they consulted a Chicksaw composer (Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate) and rewrote the stereotypical music originally created for Tiger-Lily and the tribe to better reflect Native American music and remove & rewrite the outdated racist material. For another production of the musical that consulted a local Native American group, the end-result of discussions was that the group recommending rewriting Tiger-Lily and the tribe as a group of "Lost Girls" led by Tiger Lily, and completely remove the idea of there being a "tribe" on Neverland, because the concept itself was rooted in racism.

I feel like I understand where actors with dwarfism who have said that Dinklage is speaking from a position of privilege with his comments are coming from--Dinklage is definitely far beyond being limited to these types of almost always stereotypical cast roles, but for other actors, this may be their only shot at being in these types of big budget films.

I also wonder... did Disney actually consult with an organization or advocacy group, who said, yeah, you should just rewrite the characters? Or did they say "yeah we'll just ignore the concept entirely, that should make people not mad at us!" and call it a day? My guess would be the second one, but.

Why not rewrite the characters so that aren't "7 little men living together in a little cottage, isn't this silly and cute??" but like... fully realized characters?

The "Shelly Duvall" version tried to humanize the characters by bringing up (vaguely) how they were ostracized for being small, and how that impacted their lives, rather than them being like... "ohh 7 silly men!! lol!!" In the end she asks them to be her advisors in the kingdom. It wasn't perfect but I feel like, especially since it was the 1980s and this type of fleshing out was not remotely the norm for Snow White adaptations at this point, is better than what Disney went with here.

[ginainabottle]

Without knowing who they actually consulted, it's hard to say exactly what the right step is.

I have an incredibly hard time believing that members of the dwarfism community, especially active, militant ones, would've thought the best way to go was just removing little people altogether from the film. They probably presented plenty of proper solutions but Disney, as usual, just wanted to go for the dumbest option possible in order to keep whatever idiotic storyline they figured was best.

[spidergwen]

Disney’s track record with consulting X group is not a good one. Remember how Mulan was written and directed by Chinese/Chinese American? Oh wait, that didn’t happen. The director(a white lady from New Zealand) even stated “why can’t a woman direct Mulan?!” Even tho that wasn’t the criticism.

Sure enough…. There were a lot of cultural/historical inaccuracies to say the least.