Social media, am I right? What started out as a means for the world to communicate instantly, bringing people together from across the planet, has since metamorphosed into that slime from Ghostbusters 2 that feeds on anger.
And now we’re stuck, knee-deep in a bog of the loudest opinions, all being digitally shouted by everyone that never figured out their internet inside voices. We’ve been here for a while. We all know what it looks like. Arguably, it all boiled over around the time that Captain Marvel came out.
That’s when Brie Larson became angry-boy-Twitter’s favorite place to drag their knuckles, thanks to the way she voiced outlandish opinions like “I don’t have to smile when strangers tell me to” and “I should get treated the same as my male co-stars” and, if we’re being honest, mostly because she was a pretty lady on the internet who wasn’t going out of her way to make strange dudes feel like she’d love to meet them for coffee sometime and really get to know them. The rage was ubiquitous. You couldn’t swing a dead flerken on Twitter without hitting six burner accounts telling Larson how to be an actress.
But that was what, four years ago? We’ve probably moved on as a species, right? If nothing else, I’m sure Twitter has become a more thoughtful public square since Elon Musk took over – I can’t do it, sorry. I’m kidding. Everything is still the exact same kind of bad, only this time the boys are mad about princesses, actress Rachel Zegler playing Snow White in the upcoming live-action to be precise.
The ghost of Brie Larson’s past is making the rounds on Twitter again
The latest target for social media’s putridity is Rachel Zegler, star of Disney’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Snow White. In a recent interview with Variety, Zegler discussed some of the changes that the new film would make to its story – specifically, the lead character is driven by a desire to lead now, she is “not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love.”
The merits of Disney remakes aside, they’re changes that make sense. As Zegler puts it, storytelling has changed since 1937. People don’t pay to see feature-length movies about women eating fruit, taking naps, and being awoken by non-consensual kisses anymore. But not everyone agrees.
What happened next will shock you, especially if you just now got your America Online disk and you’re logging onto the internet for the first time: People got mad. Tikitok and Twitter sprayed their musk all over the story, calling Zegler’s takes “pseudo-feminism” and accusing her of “single-handedly destroying this movie.” The rhetoric was hyperbolic. It was acidic. It was, you know, Tuesday. Eagle-eyed viewers noticed a pattern.
There’s a lot that stings about the story. It’s rough, knowing that film Twitter might never stop being a free box of megaphones for everyone with a one-way brain filter and a “No Girls Allowed” sign on their bedroom door. It’s also a little bit gutting to know that conversations about live-action Disney adaptations are always going to swing back around to accusations of surreptitious political agendas and the formation of parasocial disgust targeted at opinionated female performers.
Like, these remakes (mostly lacking originality) are often pretty bad on their own merits, guys. Maybe focus on arguments that actually hold water.