Original working title: “Charlize Theron Farts Ravens.”
I write this piece with James Newton Howard’s score reverberating in my head and the afterimages of angsty White people seared into my retinas.
Despite its 48% “rotten” rating on RottenTomatoes.com, I actually found Snow White & the Huntsman rather enjoyable. The script was rather lacking, as I expected, but the visuals more than made up for that. Warriors that shatter into obsidian shards, a gong-like mirror that spawns a liquid gold seer, and a majestic white hart (that bears an eerie resemblance to the one in Princess Mononoke) are only three of the divine cinematographical elements that surround the orgasm-worthy Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron. Oh, and Kristen Stewart of the Single Facial Expression—her, too.
But there was something more about the movie that I found perplexing. As the movie went on, a drawing of a gender-reversed Star Wars started popping into my head. And then I realized: SW&H is essentially a retelling of every story that pits two male (usually related) characters against each other in a battle over territory, prestige, and power—that is, to say, every story. The only difference here is that the two male adversaries were strong women instead. How’s that for quasi-feminism?
Granted, SW&H only barely passes the Bechdel test and relies heavily on the clichés inherent in the Snow White tale, but it does, in its own little ways, inadvertently expand the very antiquated genre of female conflict in a male-dominated world.
“Lucia” rolls off the tongue so much more easily than “Lukasia,” FYI.
Omnistrain 
