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June 30, 2025 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
01:21:33
The Snow White Disney Doesn’t Want You To Know | EP 558
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I'm going to try something somewhat new today.
I'm going to read you the Grimms Brothers version of Snow White.
I picked that because I think I have some interesting insights into its meaning, but I also chose it because it's been the target of ideologically oriented rewriting,
most famously recently in the case of Disney, who produced what's essentially a very poor movie that was also a commercial flop by carelessly restructuring a story that either the makers of the film didn't understand or understood all too well and decided to mess with for
underground reasons of their own.
I suspect a little of column A and a little of column B. I'm going to concentrate a fair bit on the figure of the evil queen, not least because there's no shortage of evil queen manifestation in the current social and political environment.
And I'm going to draw on a body of research that has been conducted primarily by primatologists, scientists who study non-human primates, given that human beings are primates as well.
The field of inquiry is called fertility suppression, and it is the marked tendency of higher status female primates to suppress the probability that subordinates in their group will successfully mate and bring offspring into the world.
I think that the evil queen, in no small part, is a reflection of observations of fertility suppression.
People started studying fertility suppression in primates because of the observation that in many primate species, dominant females exhibit higher reproductive success compared to their subordinate counterparts.
So one thing you have to understand about social animals, and this is particularly true of primates, because they're hyper-social, social animals live in a tiered society, and there are marked differences in the life and success of those who are uppermost in the social hierarchy compared to those who are barely clinging to the bottom, let's say.
And scientists who are interested in the differential reproductive success of high-status females compared to low-status females started to investigate the possibility that the higher status or dominant females were actively engaging in strategies that undermined the ability of the subordinates to find a mate and to reproduce.
Why would they do that?
Well, perhaps they do that psychologically speaking, you might say, just for the sheer sadistic fun of it.
But from a broader evolutionary perspective, the purpose is to maximize the probability of their own reproductive success, their own success of finding a mate, and also leaving their genes to propagate into the succeeding generations.
How would they do that?
The effect of fundamental, or the mechanism of fundamental interest for our purposes, given its psychological significance, is that social stress, often imposed by dominant individuals, can elevate stress hormones, cortisol, for example, in subordinates, disrupting their hormonal cycles and leading to delayed ovulation or reduced fertility.
Females use reputation savaging and exclusion, gossip innuendo, and, well, and as I said, social isolation.
And those are all ways of lowering comparative status.
That's what gossip will do, for example, and reputation savaging, whereas exclusion is more directly and intensely stressful.
So here's some examples from non-human primates with regard to mechanisms of fertility suppression.
For example, in baboons, a particularly aggressive and vicious species, dominant females may physically intimidate subordinates to maintain their reproductive advantage.
In species such as marmosets, dominant females actually emit pheromones that directly inhibit ovarian activity in subordinate females, preventing them from cycling or conceiving.
By monopolizing food, mates, or safe nesting sites, dominant females limit subordinates' ability to sustain pregnancies or raise offspring, as seen in some tamarind groups.
The suppression is often temporary and context-dependent, lifting if the subordinate status improves or she leaves the group.
The goal is clear, to prioritize the dominant female's offspring by reducing competition for resources and care.
Okay, here's some potential examples among human beings.
In certain human societies, dominant females, often older women or those with higher social status, exert influence over the reproductive choice of subordinates.
Examples include control over marriage.
In some cultures, older women, e.g.
mothers-in-law, dictate when and whom younger women marry, delaying or restricting their reproductive opportunities.
Dominant women may enforce norms that discourage subordinate females from reproducing at certain times, such as stigmatizing early pregnancies or pressuring Women to prioritize education or work over family.
This social exclusion parallels the stress-induced suppression seen in primates, though it's mediated by culture rather than biology.
In modern contexts, dominant females in positions of power, such as corporate leaders or senior academics, may create environments that indirectly suppress the fertility of subordinate women.
So here's a thought.
You know, one of the things I've wondered about for years, how the radical, progressive, elite feminists can simultaneously criticize capitalism, yet insist that there's no higher priority for young women than to organize their lives around a career.
Well, if you want an explanation, fertility suppression by elites with regard to subordinate women foolish enough to listen to such advice certainly constitutes an explanatory hypothesis, and it's a brutal one.
Now, with that background firmly in mind, I'm going to read you the original version of Snow White.
So, a little background on the brothers Grimm.
Jacob and Wilhelm, they lived, Jacob lived from 1785 to 1863, and Wilhelm from 1786 to 1859.
They were German scholars and linguists renowned for their collection of fairy tales.
Their most famous work, Children's and Household Tales, was first published in 1812, and it included stories that everyone knows, such as Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel.
The collection was not a one-time effort.
The brothers revised and expanded it over the years, cementing its place as a cultural treasure.
They aimed to safeguard German folklore amid a growing interest in national identity.
At a time when Germany was a collection of disparate states, the brothers believed that traditional stories reflected the spirit of the German people and preserved their ancient wisdom.
As scholars, they saw fairy tales as a lens to explore the evolution of language and narrative, contributing to their broader academic interests in philology.
They gathered stories from diverse sources, including oral tales told by local storytellers, often women, and existing written folklore.
Rather than simply recording the tales verbatim, they edited and adapted them to suit their literary style and to appeal to a wider audience, including children.
Okay, so a few comments about the Brothers Grimm.
It's been a contention of mine for some decades and a cornerstone of my work that our consciousness is structured in the same manner as a story.
In fact, I think you can make a very strong case, I believe an incontrovertible case, that what a story is, is a verbal description of the framing of conscious experience.
Now, what that implies at a very deep level is that for diverse individuals to organize themselves into a culture, they have to develop a mechanism such that their consciousness is framed in a similar manner so that they pursue similar goals, they have similar values, and they experience similar emotions.
The only way to do that, as far as I can tell, is to provide a foundation of shared narrative.
And so the Grimm brothers were particularly perspicacious in their insistence that shared narratives define a culture.
A culture is a group of people who not only know but inhabit the same stories.
Now, it turns out that much of the Brothers Grimm work has provided a foundation for some of the unity of our culture, such as it is.
Now, what would you expect folklore passed down from generation to generation, often for periods of time that can exceed 10,000 years?
What would you expect such stories to concentrate on?
Well, they have to be highly memorable, which means they have to adapt themselves to the structure of human memory.
They have to be compelling and interesting.
And all of that points to the likelihood that they're describing realities that are unchanging and that are so necessary that their explication automatically grips interest and embeds itself in memory.
Okay, so with all that, we can turn to the fairy tale itself.
Little Snow White.
Once upon a time in the middle of winter, when snowflakes were falling like feathers from the sky, a beautiful queen was sitting and sewing at a window with a black ebony frame.
So why a beautiful queen?
Well, the same evolutionary psychologists, evolutionary biologists have also done intensive work, and I would refer you in particular to the work of David Buss, on outlining the evidence that female beauty in particular,
which has a pronounced sexual element, is highly associated with markers of fertility, youth, waist to hip ratio, symmetry, a feature which is a very good indicator, by the way, of underlying genetic integrity.
Butterflies, which are quite stunningly beautiful, can detect deviations from symmetry in a potential mate at less than one part in a million.
And much of the beauty of butterflies is actually a consequence of sexual selection.
I saw an amazing butterfly, I don't remember the species, with its wings closed, it looks exactly like a leaf, which is a consequence of natural selection.
And then, with its wings open, it has the beauty, the colorful beauty and symmetrical patterning and shaping that's characteristic, more characteristic of the typical butterfly.
What's the biological significance of beauty?
Well, insofar as it's associated with symmetry, for example, it is a marker, as I said, of biological integrity.
If there are mishaps during psychophysiological development, one way those mishaps make themselves manifest to perception is in marked deviations from bodily symmetry.
Many of the markers that we associate with female beauty and that females compete to make manifest are markers of biological fertility, waist to hip ratio, which is a stable marker for female attractiveness with the optimal ratio being 0.68 across cultures.
And that's independent, by the way, of body size.
So you can have women who carry more body fat and women who carry less body fat being equal in terms of their waist to hip ratio attractiveness, as long as it makes itself manifest at approximately 0.68.
So the fact that the queen is beautiful, you see, is directly associated with the issue of fertility and fertility suppression, because the first indication we have of her nature, the nature of her being, is that she's beautiful.
And so the simplest explanation for that is young and fertile.
A beautiful queen was sitting and sewing at a window with a black ebony frame.
As she was sewing and looking out the window at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle and three drops of blood fell on the snow.
The red looked so beautiful on the white snow that she thought to herself, if only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of the window frame.
Soon thereafter, she gave birth to a little daughter who was white as snow, as red as blood, and her hair as black as ebony.
That's why the child was called Little Snow White.
Well, why are those colors relevant?
Well, black, white, and red are the three colors most likely to be given color names across cultures.
And so there are no more directly perceptible colors than black, white, and red.
And then red is associated, let's say, with the apple, as we'll see later in the story.
But there are like reddening of tissue is also associated with both youth and with sexual excitation.
And so women, for example, put lipstick on their lips and rouge their cheeks to mimic both youth and fecundity, but also to mimic sexual excitation.
The queen was the most beautiful woman in the entire land and very proud about her beauty.
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Pride, you know, is the cardinal sin, you might say.
It's pride that is the fundamental characteristic of Lucifer, the usurping spirit.
You could think of the Luciferian spirit as the individual or the proclivity of the individual to elevate themselves to the highest possible position.
I'll give you an example.
When Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat the apple, which, or the fruit, it's not described as an apple in the Genesis story, but it has become that by tradition, which is relevant to this story.
The serpent, who's camouflaged, by the way, like female aggression, tells Eve that if she eats this particular fruit, which means if she consumes it and incorporates it and takes it into herself, becomes it, you might say, that she'll become like God, knowing good and evil.
What does that mean?
Establishing the moral order.
And so Eve eats the fruit offered to her by the serpent so that she can take the place of God and define the moral order.
And that's partly why the serpent in the Genesis story becomes associated as the mythology develops with Lucifer, the usurping intellect who attempts to take the place of the divine.
That's all associated with the idea of pride.
Pride is the vice that says, what I want now, I in the most narrow possible way, or what my whims want now should be superordinate to all other concerns.
The pride that the evil queen takes in her beauty is the taking to herself of a talent that was given to her by providence, let's say, by taking that to herself as a virtue that confers special privileges and benefits on her as an isolated individual.
What would the alternative be?
She could be extraordinarily grateful for her beauty and self-effacing and kind and self-sacrificing.
That would make her the good queen rather than the evil queen.
She also had a mirror, and every morning she stepped in front of it and asked, mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?
The mirror would answer, you, my queen, are the fairest of all.
Okay, well, what's a mirror?
A mirror is a place for self-reflection, but it's also a place of intense self-consciousness, right?
When you look in a mirror and you recognize yourself in the mirror, you are self-conscious.
In fact, self-recognition in the mirror is a marker used by biologists to determine the presence or absence of self-consciousness in animals.
So to look in a mirror is to become self-conscious.
Okay, so what's the problem with that?
Well, psychologists have known for decades that the experience of self-consciousness is so tightly associated with negative emotion that they're statistically indistinguishable.
So when the theorists who created the big five personality map, five-dimensional personality map, extroversion neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness, which is a creativity dimension, when they first laid out that map,
they noticed that their statistical inquiries indicated that being self-conscious was so tightly associated with trait neuroticism, which is the proclivity for anxiety, pain, grief, shame, guilt, frustration, disappointment, and anger, among other negative emotions.
It was so tightly associated with negative emotion that it was statistically indistinguishable.
So we should note that the queen's pride, in combination with her pronounced proclivity for self-consciousness, is destined to make her miserable and that the pathway from misery to bitterness and from bitterness to sadistic, what would you say, sadistic revenge and envy, that's a very short journey.
So mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?
The mirror would answer, you, my queen, are the fairest of all.
So she staked her identity on her beauty.
She staked her identity on her youth.
She staked her identity on her competitiveness, you might say, in the mating and reproduction market.
You know, and that's, I suppose, to some degree, that's developmentally appropriate for a very young woman whose primary whose primary orientation in the world could well be finding a partner and pursuing the reproductive pathway,
having children, worshiping that and developing pride in it, and then maintaining it past its due date, and then using it to suppress fertility in others, especially your own children, that starts to deviate into the pathological.
Look, part of the reason that human beings have the lifespan they have, which basically allows us to be grandparents, is that it's useful for young people who are raising children to have their parents around to pass on some wisdom about how to manage this.
But it's also the case that it's inappropriate for grandmothers to compete with their daughters on the sexual attractiveness front if that's done in a manner that undermines and supplants the younger woman.
So that's all background for this story.
You, my queen, are the fairest of all.
And then she knew for certain that there was nobody more beautiful in the entire world.
However, little Snow White grew up.
And when she was seven years old, she was so beautiful that her beauty surpassed even that of the queen.
And when the queen asked her mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
The mirror answered, you, my queen, may have a beauty quite rare, but little Snow White is a thousand times more fair.
When the queen heard the mirror speak this way, she became pale with envy.
And from that hour onward, she hated Snow White.
And when she looked at her and thought that little Snow White was to blame, that she, the queen, was no longer the most beautiful woman in the world, her heart turned against little Snow White.
Okay, so what's the problem with that?
Well, one of the things that you see in pathological families is that the parents who've made a hash of their own life become jealous of the unblemished possibilities and opportunities that lay themselves out in front of their children and instead of encouraging their development in the world, start to regard the fact that they haven't been corrupted yet by laziness and spite.
They start to regard the contrast between that childhood potentiality and their own wasted and pathological lives as unbearable.
And to reduce the contrast, instead of straightening the hell up so that they're not embarrassed in front of their children, they discourage their children from moving forward and encourage pathologies in them so that the competitive stress is lessened.
And so that's exactly what the evil queen is doing here.
She's now jealous of her child instead of stepping back and really taking second place, which is, you know, which is what a wise mother should do and would do if she had her true interest in mind, but also the interests of her children.
You know, one of the tropes in teenage movies is the mom who tries too hard to be cool, let's say, to pretend that she's still young, to even to partake in the social hierarchy structuring of her teenage daughters,
let's say, instead of stepping back and letting the young women have their moment, just as she had the opportunity, just as the mother had the opportunity to have her moment.
That's part of the sacrificial nature of motherhood when it's undertaken appropriately, right?
Because the child becomes the star of the show, let's say, rather than the mother.
And the mother isn't trying to become the star through the child either.
Her heart turned against little Snow White, right?
What did Nietzsche say?
We're best punished for our virtues.
If you really want to hurt your child, then you find out what's good about them that's embarrassing you by contrast, and then you hurt them for the existence of that good.
That'll make you an evil queen.
And so what is she like?
Well, this is a very harsh part of the story, you see.
And this is the sort of thing that modern people find upsetting and perhaps presume shouldn't be shared with children.
But the vicious turn this story takes now is an indication of just how absolutely devouring and pathological this evil queen jealousy in relationship to younger women truly is.
So this is what the mother of Snow White does to pursue her envy and pride, her usurping capability.
Her jealousy kept upsetting her.
And so she summoned her huntsmen and said, take this child out into the forest, so out into the dark unknown, to a spot far from her, then stab her to death.
That's bad enough, I would say already, the mother who's going to kill her own child, have her henchmen kill her own child.
But that's not as bad as it gets.
And it's not sufficiently symbolically terrible.
Because it's like a vampire, right?
A vampire is a force of death that feeds on life to keep itself going when really it's already dead.
The mother, the queen in this story, doesn't only kill her daughter, she devours her.
She attempts to incorporate her own vitality into herself.
She's truly the devouring mother, truly the devouring mother.
And that's a symbolic representation of maternality gone most pathologically wrong in the opposite direction.
I mean, women, mothers, literally nourish their children with their own bodies.
Breastfeeding mothers, their bodies can detect if their children lack calcium, if their infants lack calcium when they're breastfeeding through receptors in the nipple.
And if the child is lacking calcium, the mother will decalcify her own bones, take calcium out of her own bones to increase the proportion of calcium in the milk to feed to her child.
And so the proper maternal orientation towards infants in particular, but also children, is voluntary self-sacrifice, right?
To give the mother gives herself up, gives herself over to the child.
This is a complete inversion of that, where the mother becomes the devouring agent and the child is nourishment for the pathologies of the mother.
You see plenty of that, by the way, in the modern world with mothers, for example, who utilize their demented identity politics with regards to their children.
My boy is really a girl.
My girl is really a boy.
There's some fertility suppression.
And use the notoriety generated by that pathologization of the child to elevate their social status among their idiot friends at the cost of the child's happiness, physiology, and future reproductive success.
So no matter how brutal this story becomes, and that's what happens next, it pales in comparison to the truth of the pathology of the devouring mother.
Take the child out into the forest to a spot far from here, then stab her to death and bring me back her lungs and liver as proof of your deed.
Lungs, that's inspiration, that's respiration, that's the resting place of the spirit.
Liver?
Well, think of the word live.
The liver is the part of the body, the vital organ that can regenerate itself and is regarded symbolically as the seat of vitality.
So it's spirit and vitality that the evil queen devours in consequence of her jealousy, her inappropriate jealousy of the benefits of Snow White's youth.
After that, I'll cook them with salt and eat them.
Now you think, do you tell your children that story?
And that's a hard question because one thing you want to do, if you have children, is protect them from the evil queen.
The huntsman took little Snow White and led her out into the forest, but when he drew his hunting knife and was about to stab her, she began to weep and pleaded so much to let her live and promised never to return but to run deeper into the forest.
The huntsman was moved to pity, also because she was so beautiful.
Anyway, he thought the wild beasts in the forest would soon devour her.
I'm glad that I won't have to kill her, he thought.
Just then a young boar came dashing by and the huntsman stabbed it to death.
He took out the lungs and liver and brought them to the queen as proof that the child was dead.
Then she boiled them in salt, ate them, and thought she had eaten little Snow White's lungs and Liver.
So that's pretty damn rough, but now you understand its significance.
This reminds me, you know, of the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty.
Remember, the evil queen in Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, entraps the prince in a castle, and her goal is to keep him locked up until he's so old that he can't find a mate and reproduce, right?
And when he dares to challenge her, she turns into the dragon that devours everything, right?
Into the full-bloody fury of nature itself in all its predatory catastrophe.
And he defeats her with a cross on his shield and the sword of truth and advances through her, through the thorns that she's placed around Sleeping Beauty so that he can find the princess.
And that's the story of the young man's heroic rejection of the destruction of his life possibility and youth by the evil queen.
Meanwhile, little Snow White was so all alone in the huge forest that she became afraid and began to run and run over sharp stones and through thorn bushes.
This is a typical fairy tale motif, and the emphasis of the story here actually shifts to Snow White because it starts to become a developmental story rather than a story about the evil queen.
So Snow White has been moved from pathological order, and that's the domain ruled by the evil queen, out into the unknown.
Those two things are conflated, you might say, because whenever you are in a situation where you are encountering the unknown, for example, when you're lost in a forest, when you're away from everything that brings you security and familiarity, you are in the unknown, in unexplored territory, but that unexplored territory is going to be populated by the monsters of your imagination.
And so any journey into the unknown is simultaneously a journey into the unconscious.
And so what's happening here is that Snow White has left security and is now encountering the unknown.
And that's part of the developmental trajectory.
Everything we learn is on the border of order and chaos.
Everything we learn is a step into the unknown.
And so this is a radical initiation for Snow White.
She ran the entire day.
Finally, as the sun was about to set, she came upon a little cottage that belonged to seven dwarfs.
Now, this is very interesting.
So Snow White has gone, you could say, into the unknown or into the unconscious and quite deeply because it takes her a whole day to get there.
And what does she discover?
So this is in her own mind, you might say.
This is part of the landscape of possibility that presents itself to any young woman who is being persecuted by the forces of the evil queen, down deep into the unknown, down deep into the unconscious.
Go far enough, you find the home of the dwarfs.
Okay, so what are the dwarves here?
The dwarves are ordinary, faceless, hardworking men.
Now, in the modern Snow White story, this last travesty that Disney so catastrophically produced, the dwarfs are basically a mess.
And that's part of the pathology of the modern world, which assumes that typical, faceless, ordinary, hardworking men are part of the pathological patriarchy and incapable of taking care of themselves.
That's not the case in the Grimm Brothers story.
The dwarves have a perfectly functional house deep in the woods, and they're capable of taking care of themselves.
In fact, you might think about the dwarves as exactly that.
The dwarves are seven ordinary, hardworking men who've made a place in the forest of the unknown that's safe and secure and functional.
And so you could think about the dwarves as indicators, as representatives of the ordinary functional patriarchy.
Now, what's particularly interesting about that, you see, is that Snow White finds respite from the evil queen in the dwelling place of the ordinary man.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means that one of the things that ordinary men offer young women is protection from the pathology of fertility suppression by toxic older women.
And given the absolute widespread pervasiveness of elite-induced fertility suppression in our culture, the notion that an alliance between young women and ordinary men is the protection against that fertility and youth-destroying pathology is a lesson well worth learning.
And certainly not the lesson that was put forward in the most recent version of the Snow White narrative.
So she ran the entire day.
Finally, as the sun was about to set, she came upon a little cottage that belonged to seven dwarfs.
Okay, so that happens at night too.
So that's deeper into the unconscious.
However, they were not at home, but had gone to the mines.
See, as miners, you see, they descend into the depths themselves and they find, through their labor, treasure.
And so the dwarves, you see this in mythological representations of dwarves, like in the Lord of the Rings, the dwarves are often heroes.
They're tough little guys and they go into the darkest recesses of the bowels of the earth to find the glittering treasure.
And so it's very appropriate to notice that these dwarfs Are good men.
They're still dwarfs, however.
They were not at home, but had gone to the mines.
Okay, so they're also diligent, conscientious, and hardworking.
And that's reinforced by the next line.
When Little Snow White entered, she found everything tiny but dainty and neat.
Okay, so this is a well-tended place, right?
So these are lone men who are capable of taking care of themselves and establishing habitable order, habitable patriarchal order, cooperative, conscientious, oriented towards the treasure, brave and resolute.
There was a little table with a white tablecloth and seven little plates with seven tiny spoons, seven tiny knives and tiny forks, and seven tiny cups.
In a row against the wall stood seven little beds, recently covered with sheets.
So their beds are made too.
Take note, all of you who have unmade beds and still are struggling even to be dwarves.
Since she was so hungry and thirsty, so now she gets to eat in this place of masculine provision.
Snow White ate some vegetables and bread from each of the little plates and had a drop of wine to drink out of each of the tiny cups.
And since she was so tired, she wanted to lay down and sleep.
So she began trying out the beds, but none of them suited her until she found that the seventh one was just right.
So she lay down in it and fell asleep.
When it turned night, the seven dwarves returned home from their work and lit their seven little candles.
Then they saw that someone had been in their house.
The first dwarf said, Who's been sitting in my chair?
Who's eaten off my plate?
said the second.
Who's eaten some of my bread?
said the third.
My vegetables, said the fourth.
Who's been using my little fork?
said the fifth.
Who's been cutting with my little knife?
said the sixth.
Who's had something to drink from my little cup?
said the seventh.
Then the first dwarf looked around and said, Who's been sleeping in my bed?
The second cried out, someone's been sleeping in my bed.
And he was followed by each of them.
Until the seventh dwarf looked at his bed and saw little Snow White lying there asleep.
The others came running over to him, and they were so astounded that they screamed and fetched their seven little candles to observe little Snow White.
Oh my lord, they explained, how beautiful she is.
They took great delight in her.
Okay, well, you know, that's actually an indication that these are pretty decent little dwarfs, too, because if they were as pathological as the little queen and they came across an attractive juvenile female, God only knows what hell could break loose, as we've seen repeatedly in places like the UK, for example.
So the dwarves are protective of Snow White and her beauty and serve a proper paternal and partnership function.
They took great delight in her, but didn't wake her up.
They let her sleep in the bed.
So that's very generous of them.
They're very hospitable, which also indicates their essential morality.
Well, the seventh dwarf spent an hour in each one of his companions' bed until the night had passed.
When she awoke, they asked her who she was and how she had managed to come to their cottage.
Then she told them how her mother had wanted to have her killed, how the huntsman had spared her life, and how she had run all day until she had eventually arrived at the cottage.
Then the dwarfs took pity on her and said, If you'll keep house for us, cook, sew, make the beds, wash and knit, and if you'll keep everything neat and orderly, you can stay with us, and we'll provide you with everything you need.
When we come home in the evening, dinner must be ready.
During the day, we're in the mines and dig for gold.
You'll be alone.
We'll have to watch out for the queen and not let anyone enter the cottage.
Okay, so what's the deal here?
Well, Snow White has run from the destructive force of her evil mother and the most pathological element of nature and plunged deep into the unknown where she found the dwarfs who are emblematic of the stable patriarchy.
The stable ordinary productive patriarchy.
Now, the deal for her is that she has to serve the dwarfs and they'll protect her from the evil queen.
So that's a pretty good deal, given that the evil queen wants to eat her lungs and her liver, so is posing a mortal threat.
And it's indicative of the notion that prior to finding a prince, you might say, and finding permanent protection from the evil queen in the form of a stable, long-term, desirable partnership,
a marriage, the young woman threatened by the evil queen, which is the eternal archetypal situation of isolated young women, has to make a pact to serve ordinary masculinity, right?
To partner with ordinary masculinity, to have respect for it, to understand its productive function, and to know that it's ordinary masculinity, you might say, that stops female pathology from making itself manifest as the ultimately destructive force it can all too easily become.
Right.
So what's the moral of the story as we proceed?
If you want to find a prince and escape from the evil queen, you have to serve the dwarfs with some degree of gratitude and conscientious dedication, right?
With some real emphasis on gratitude.
And why?
Well, better the dwarves than the evil queen, right?
Which is exactly the opposite of the feminist narrative, which is that there are only power-mad, pathological men, and all that's feminine is benevolent.
It's like, yeah, right.
God.
In the meantime, the queen believed that she was once again the most beautiful woman in the land and stepped before her mirror and asked, mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?
The mirror answered, you, my queen, have a beauty quite rare, but beyond the seven mountains, this I must tell, little Snow White is living quite well.
Indeed, she's still a thousand times more fair.
Hmm.
So, what does this mean for the poor queen?
Well, you know, at one level of analysis, the queen is battling against her own daughter.
But at a different level of analysis, the aging woman is battling against youth itself.
And even if she does manage to destroy her own child so happily, sadistically, and delightfully with envy and spite making themselves manifest as primary motivations aligned with pride,
let's say, even if she manages that, she's not going to win the ultimate battle because age is always supplanted by youth.
No, it's reproduction is a young woman's game.
And so it's less intense for men, although men are more fertile when they're younger.
But for women, youth and reproduction are intensely associated.
And the battle of the aging woman against her own daughter is a microcosm of the battle of age against youth.
And on the fertility front, let's say the sexual attractiveness front, as well, to a large degree, at least the natural sexual attractiveness front, the evil queen is not going to be able to stamp out youth itself.
Although, you know, in cultures where the old women cover all the young women up so that you can't even see their eyes, the vicious battle of envious age in women against the beauty and attractiveness of young women has been taken to a staggering extreme.
I suppose most thoroughly made manifest in the absolutely brutal practice of female genital mutilation, which is also, by the way, often undertaken by grandmothers.
When the queen heard this, her mirror's objection, she was horrified, for she saw that she had been deceived and that the huntsman had not killed little Snow White.
Since nobody but the seven dwarfs lived in the seven mountains region, the queen immediately knew that little Snow White was dwelling with them and began once again plotting ways to kill her.
As long as the mirror refused to say that she was the most beautiful woman in the land, she would remain upset.
Since she couldn't be absolutely certain and didn't trust anyone, she disguised herself as an old peddler woman, painted her face so that nobody could recognize her, and went to the cottage of the seven dwarfs, where she knocked at the door and cried out, Open up, open up.
I'm the old peddler woman.
I've got pretty wares for sale.
Little Snow White looked out the window.
What do you have for sale?
Stay laces, dear child.
That's a corset.
It's a corset.
The old woman replied and took out a lace woven from yellow, red, and blue silk.
Do you want it?
Well, yes, said Little Snow White.
If I remember correctly, women spend 80% of the consumer dollar.
It's a very interesting statistic.
So men might have an advantage on the earning side, slight.
It's about 8%, something like that.
And that has virtually nothing to do with prejudice against women, by the way, if the statistics are calculated properly.
But women have a marked advantage on the spending side, and it's a real toss-up.
Who has more power?
The people who make the money or the people who spend it?
In any case, Snow White is interested in shopping, and so the old peddler woman has some wares for her.
Now, she lets her inside.
Well, yes, do you want it?
Well, yes, said Little Snow White thought, I can certainly let her.
This good old woman inside, she's honest enough.
What does she think?
She just wants to make me beautiful.
She just wants to do something for me.
Okay, so little Snow White unbolted the door and bought the lace.
My goodness, you're so sloppily laced up, said the old woman.
Come on, I'll lace you up properly for once.
Little Snow White stood in front of the old woman who took the lace and tied it around Little Snow White so tightly that she lost her breath and fell down as if dead.
Then the queen was satisfied and left.
Well, let's think about a corset for a minute.
And so, you know, the feminist scuttlebutt is that the Victorian proclivity to use corsets was an imposition of the masculine superstructure.
But women compete with one another to make manifest their signs of beauty and fertility and don't need men to intercede to make that happen.
Now, it was the case that in Victorian England, corset use could become so extreme that it interfered with breathing and sometimes even caused death.
So what does that point to at a deeper level?
The evil queen, it's so awful, the evil queen entices Snow White to maximize her attractiveness in a manner that compromises not only her health, but her life.
And that's, if you can't see that playing out in our society at the moment, then you're not paying attention.
Some of you might be familiar with Bonnie Blue, the prostitute in the UK who's slept with, had sex with 100 men in one night and is now attempting 1,000, apparently.
Her mother is her business manager.
And if you think that's all right and you're female, well, then you're definitely the evil queen.
And if you think that's all right and you're male, you're not even a dwarf.
And so you can give that some consideration.
Little Snow White stood in front of the old woman who took the lace and tied it around Little Snow White, so tightly that she lost her breath and fell down as if dead.
Then the queen was satisfied and left.
So that's a very sophisticated method of fertility suppression.
Entice young women into advertising themselves sexually so brutally and in such an all-consuming manner that it interferes with spirit, that's breath, and life itself.
Jesus, brutal.
Not long after nightfall, the dwarfs came home.
And when they saw their dear Snow White lying on the ground, they were horrified, for she seemed to be dead.
They lifted her up, and when they saw that she was laced too tightly, they cut the stay lace in two.
So it's the men, it's the dwarfs that rescue Snow White from the pathologization of her own sexuality.
Right, it's not the bloody dwarfs who put her in the corset and make it impossible for her to breathe.
It's her own mother, her own evil mother, right?
At once she began to breathe a little, and after a while she had fully revived.
So the dwarfs, with their essential, ordinary, conscientious, masculine sensibility, are able to protect Snow White against the pathologization of her own sexual attractiveness at the hands of the evil queen.
Right, so the dwarfs can manage that.
That was nobody else but the queen, they said.
Pay attention to the dwarfs.
It's not us.
It's your evil mother.
She wanted to take your life.
Be careful.
And don't let anyone else enter the cottage.
Now the queen asked her mirror, mirror mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?
The mirror answered, You, my queen, may have a beauty quite rare, but little Snow White's alive.
This I must tell, she's with the dwarfs and doing quite well.
Indeed, she's still a thousand times more fair.
The queen was so horrified that all her blood rushed to her heart when she realized that little Snow White was alive once again.
So she began thinking day and night how she could put an end to Little Snow White.
Finally, she made a poisoned comb, disguised herself in a completely different shape, and went off to the dwarf's cottage once again.
When she knocked on the door, however, little Snow White called out, I'm not allowed to let anyone enter.
The queen then took out the comb.
So now Snow White, you see, Snow White gets enticed in some ways by her own vanity.
Now the dwarfs have told her, be careful who you let in, right?
Remember in the story of Cain and Abel that when Cain becomes possessed by envy, in consequence of the failure of his own second-rate sacrifices, he invites the spirit of murderous sin in to possess him as a voluntary response to his own pathological inadequacy.
Pathological and voluntary inadequacy.
He has to invite the pathological agent in.
And that's what Snow White does, right?
She does that because she wants first the lace stay and then the comb.
And so she's enticed by the opportunity to make the most of her own beauty, which is an understandable motivation.
She's enticed by that motivation to hearken to the voice of the evil and destructive queen.
So that's a morality tale about the danger of vanity, right?
When Little Snow White saw it shine, the comb, so it's a shiny comb, right?
It's glittery, it's numinous in Rudolf Otto's phrase.
It attracts her attention.
And so I suppose that's why the queen brought the comb.
When Little Snow White saw it shine, so it's a phenomenon.
Phenomenon, that's a word from the Greek root, phanisthai.
Phanisthai means to shine forth.
Something that shines attracts your attention, right?
It's and things attract your attention because they what?
They speak to a conscious or unconscious motivational force.
So Snow White would like to make use of her beauty.
And fair enough, but there's great danger in making use of your beauty.
Come, said the peddler woman.
When little Snow White saw it shine and that the woman was someone entirely different from the one she had previously met, yeah, she was entirely different on the surface.
So there's different manifestations of the evil queen pathology, all selling something hypothetically different, but they're all avatars of the same underlying pathological fertility suppressing, devouring dragon force.
When she saw that the woman was someone entirely different from the one she had previously met, she opened the door and bought the comb.
Come, said the peddler woman, I'll also comb your hair.
She's so thoughtful and helpful.
Right, so you see, that's part of that camouflaged pathology.
The little peddler, the peddler woman, to begin with, who has the lace stays, offers to lace Snow White up properly and then to comb her hair.
And so she's disguising her murderously destructive, reproductive, savaging pathology in a show of maternal compassion.
Brutal, brutal.
But no sooner did the old woman stick the comb in Little Snow White's hair than the maiden fell down and was dead.
Now you'll remain lying there, the queen said, and her heart had become lighter as she returned home.
However, the dwarves came just in the nick of time.
When they saw what had happened, they pulled the poisoned comb out of little Snow White's hair, and she opened her eyes and was alive again.
Okay, so that's the second time this is insisted upon in this fairy tale, right?
The dwarves are not the masculine patriarchal force of the ordinary society of men who entice young women to become pathologized in pursuit of beauty.
In fact, they're the force that protects themselves against the intense female competition that tilts that struggling for supremacy in beauty and attractiveness in a spirit-destroying and murderous direction.
So that's why it's so important for Snow White to learn to serve the dwarfs, to be grateful for them, and to be able to establish a relationship of mutuality with ordinary masculinity.
Right.
And this is as a precursor to meeting the prince.
Right.
And so you might say, well, a woman who's indefinitely proud, particularly of her own attractiveness, might have nothing but contempt for the dwarfs.
But what this story indicates is that she'll be vulnerable beyond belief to the machinations of the evil queen in consequence.
And without that ability to be grateful to ordinary masculinity, the prince will never make himself, the prince will never make his appearance.
And so why would the best of men make an appearance if in a woman's life, if the woman was pathologically incapable of having any respect whatsoever or offering any service in return for protection to masculinity as such?
That's something worth thinking about in a time when gratitude for the benevolent element of the patriarchy is slowly, sorely lacking.
The dwarfs came just in the nick of time.
When they saw what had happened, they pulled the poison comb out of little Snow White's hair, and she was alive again.
She promised the dwarfs that she would certainly not let anyone inside again.
Okay, so, you know, they tell Snow White a number of times, but she's really too immature and too easily tempted, both of those, to protect herself against a force as pathological as the evil queen.
And so that's worth thinking about, too.
It's too much to ask a truly young woman to make the wisdom manifest that would be necessary for her to see through the disguises of the evil queen and her proclivity to use temptation in service of murderous pathology.
It's too much to ask that a young woman will be wise enough on her own to protect herself from the poison gifts of the evil queen.
Right, she needs the intermediary of the dwarfs.
And so, well, that would be for the typical young woman, that would be the protective phalanx of her brothers and her father.
Now the queen stepped in front of her mirror once more and asked, Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?
The mirror answered, You, my queen, may have a beauty quite rare, but little Snow White's alive.
This I must tell.
She's with the dwarfs and doing quite well.
Indeed, she's still a thousand times more fair.
When the queen heard this once again, she trembled and shook with rage.
Little Snow White shall die, she exclaimed, even if it cost me my own life.
Yeah, well, that's an enemy that's pretty hard to stand up against, you know, someone who will light themselves on fire just to singe you.
And if you don't think people are capable of that kind of hatred at all cost, then you don't know much about human psychopathology.
You know, those people who shoot up schools and that commit suicide when they could just as easily do things in the reverse order and save everyone a lot of trouble.
It's like their capping off of their murderous rage with their own self-destruction is actually part of the art.
They know perfectly well that even if their motivation is suicidal, that the biggest manifestation of resentment and spite with regards to the structure of reality and their fellow man and their own spirit and God himself is to create the maximum amount of mayhem possible in the most viciously sadistic way and to cap that off with a demonstration that even their own life is worth nothing,
especially in relationship to their desire for revenge and their capacity for spite.
Then she went into a secret chamber where no one was allowed to enter.
So this is like the heart of her poison, right?
So the bodice was one thing, the stays, the corset, the poison comb was another.
This gets to the heart of the matter.
She goes to where the most genuine evil is made manifest.
Once inside, she made a deadly poisonous apple.
Well, why an apple?
Well, an apple is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right?
The apple is the thing that you incorporate that changes you.
The apple is information.
The apple is education.
The apple is ideology.
The apple is an idea rather than an artifact, right?
That's what it's symbolic of.
That's what it represents.
And so the first kinds of poison or death that the pathological evil queen attempts to administer to Snow White are pretty straightforward and basic, right?
They're appeals to her own vanity in the form of pathologization of her attractiveness.
But this is a deeper form of poison, right?
It's a poison that strikes right to the soul.
Remember, it's the consuming of the apple that is the original sin that knocks Adam and Eve out of paradise.
The poisoned apple is, what is it?
It's pathological knowledge, right?
I think it's exactly the same as the symbolic representation of the kind of evil doctrine that young women are fed by jealous, miserable, single, bitter, envious, resentful old women to knock them out of the mating game, partly to reduce competition and partly just out of self-destructive spite.
A deadly poisonous apple.
On the outside, it looked beautiful with red cheeks, right?
Red cheeks.
So the apple is red cheeks.
It's emblematic of health itself, of flourishing health, right?
If you wanted to be a healthy young woman, this is obviously the apple that you would eat.
And that's exactly what young women are taught in today's universities, right?
To pursue that path of career that now has left the prioritization of self-interest.
It's not precisely career.
The prioritization of narrow self-interest that compromises their youth and leaves 50% of women in the West childless at the age of 30, with the probability that 90% of them will regret that as the years pass by.
Apple, beautiful with red cheeks.
Anyone who saw it would be enticed to take a bite.
Well, so this is propaganda in its most attractive form.
It's like, well, if this is what you were offered, of course you'd take it.
It sounds like you could have it all.
Young women, you can have it all.
Yeah, well, the question is, who's offering that particular apple?
And what exactly is their motivation?
We're just looking out for our younger sisters.
It's like, yeah, maybe you're looking out for them.
And maybe you're a manifestation of the evil queen whose fundamental motivation is to devour their liver and lungs.
Yeah, well, thereafter, she disguised herself as a peasant woman, a lowly woman, not a haughty beauty, went to the dwarf's cottage and knocked on the door.
Little Snow White looked and said, I'm not allowed to have anyone inside.
The seven dwarfs have strictly forbidden me.
Well, if you don't want to let me in, I can't force you, answered the delightful peasant woman, right, emblematic of the oppressed working class.
I'll surely get rid of my apples in time.
I have something that everyone wants, obviously.
But let me give you one to test another manifestation of her evil making itself camouflaged in the guise of care and compassion.
No, said Little Snow White, I'm not allowed to take anything.
The dwarfs won't let me.
Yeah, well, you see, that's the sensible manifestation of the ordinary, productive, patriarchal impulse inside her, protecting herself from the depredations of predatory, competitive females.
You're probably afraid.
Yeah, said the old woman.
Look, I'll cut the apple in two.
You eat the beautiful red half.
However, the apple had been made with such cunning that only the red part was poisoned.
When little Snow White saw the peasant woman eating her half, and when her desire to taste the apple grew stronger, she finally let the peasant woman give her the other half through the window.
As soon as she took a bite of the apple, she fell to the ground and was dead.
The queen rejoiced, went home and asked the mirror, Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is the fairest of them all?
And the mirror answered, you, my queen, are now the fairest of all.
So the evil queen produced the pathological fruit of knowledge that dooms Snow White to death, administering it under the guise of compassion and caring in the form of a fruit so attractive that anyone with eyes would be tempted to take it.
Brutal.
Now I can rest in peace, she said.
Once again, I'm the most beautiful in the land, and Snow White will remain dead this time.
So couldn't kill her with the bodice or the corset, couldn't kill her with the poisonous comb, but could certainly kill her with the consumption of the fatal apple.
When the dwarfs came home from the mines that evening, they found little Snow White lying on the ground and she was dead.
They unlaced her and tried to find something poisonous in her hair, but nothing helped.
They couldn't revive her.
Okay, so what does that mean?
The core element of the evil queen is so unbelievably pathological, so destructive, that ordinary, conscientious, diligent, protective masculinity is revealed as insufficient to redress the poison.
Right.
So that's why the queen, the prince has to come along.
Right.
It's only the higher order form of masculinity that's associated with true nobility and true courage that has the archetypal force, you might say, to provide true protection from the depredations of the evil queen.
Well, Snow White is the helpmeet of the dwarfs, right?
But there's no individualized relationship there.
She hasn't moved beyond cooperation with the social patriarchy as such to the establishment of a personalized relationship with an individual and identifiable man, right?
So she's still in the land of generic masculinity.
And that's a hell of a lot better than the land of pathological, evil queen, destructive femininity.
But it's not a relationship that's of sufficient depth and intensity to provide protection against the most fatal of feminine poisons.
They couldn't revive her.
So they laid her on a bier and all seven of them sat down beside it and wept for three whole days.
Then they intended to bury her, but she still looked more alive than dead.
And she still Had such pretty red cheeks.
So instead, they made a glass coffin and placed her inside so that she could easily be seen.
So they're worshiping her, in a sense, even in her poisoned and near-dead state.
They still value her, right?
So what does that mean?
It means that the ordinary men apprehending an attractive young woman who has been poisoned by the teachings of the evil queen still hope in their soul for the revivification of her spirit, but are unable to match the machinations of the evil queen themselves.
Right.
So they stand back and observe, and that's all they can do.
They wrote her name on the coffin in gold letters, showing how much they value her, and added the family name.
One of the dwarfs remained at home every day to keep watch over her.
So Snow White lay in the coffin for a long, long time.
Right.
So now she's, that's failure to launch.
Now she's in a state of suspended animation because of her poison knowledge, because of her receipt of the poisoned apple, she is mimicking life, but is unconscious and unable to fully participate.
She was still white as snow and red as blood, and if her eyes could have opened, they would have been black as ebony, for she lay there as if she were sleeping.
Now, it happened that a prince came to the dwarf's cottage one day and wanted to spend the night there.
So what's a prince?
Well, a prince actually wants to have a relationship with the individual woman.
He wants to take on that responsibility.
He has the power and the capability to bring her to a place in consequence of that individualized relationship that offers her both protection and opportunity that's of such high quality that the depredations of the evil queen and her temptations are defeated.
That's what a prince is.
And it's the individualized relationship that's of crucial importance.
When he entered the room and saw little Snow White lying in the coffin and the seven little candles casting their light right on her, he couldn't get enough of her beauty.
Then he read the golden inscription and saw that she was a princess.
So he asked the dwarfs to sell him the coffin with the dead little Snow White inside, but they wouldn't accept all the gold in the world for it.
Then he pleaded with them to give little Snow White to him as a gift, because he couldn't live without gazing upon her, and that he would honor her and hold her in high regard as his most beloved in the world.
Well, so that's so interesting, eh?
Because the dwarfs are protecting Snow White and they have a relationship with her, although it's more fraternal or paternal.
And they aren't interested in capitalizing on her attractiveness.
And they are willing.
However, they are willing to turn her over to the prince if he promises.
So this is what good men do when they're protecting an attractive and worthy young woman.
They're willing to deliver her to the proper prince who can protect her from the evil queen if he swears to honor her and hold her in high regard as his most beloved in the world.
Well, the dwarfs took pity on him and gave him the coffin where the poisoned girl lies languishing.
God, that's the story of many a modern romance.
And the prince had it carried to his castle.
It was then placed in his room where he himself sat the entire day and couldn't take his eyes off her.
So he can see her potential life even under the poisoned, breathless death that the incorporation of the toxic fruit has what?
Has doomed her to.
And when he had to leave the room and couldn't see little Snow White, he became sad.
Indeed, he couldn't eat a thing unless he was standing near the coffin.
However, the servants who had to carry the coffin from place to place in the castle all the time became angry about this.
And at one time, a servant opened the coffin, lifted Snow White into the air, and said, why must we be plagued with so much work, all because of a dead maiden?
Yeah, well, there's no doubt that it's a tremendous amount of work to revivify the spirit of a young woman who's been severely poisoned by the worst work of the evil queen.
On saying this, he shoved little Snow White's back with his hand and out popped the nasty piece of apple that had been stuck in Little Snow White's throat and she was once again alive.
So once the languishing young girl is brought to the castle and attended to, even with some degree of harshness in this story, loved and attended to, then she has the possibility of recovering from her state of suspended animation and lifelessness and rejoining the world.
As soon as this happened, she went to the prince.
And when he saw his dear Snow White alive, he rejoiced so much that he didn't know what to do.
Then they sat down at the dinner table and ate with delight.
The wedding was planned for the next day.
By the way, just so everyone knows, there was no wedding in the most recent version of Snow White, and that bloody well figures.
There was a, you know, hedonistic celebration that, in principle, stood in for the wedding, but the filmmakers seem pathologically unable to understand that the wedding is the culmination of the story, right?
Because that's the establishment of that particularized relationship between the poisoned sleeping princess and the true prince who serves and honors her and who delights in her presence.
That establishment of that permanent relationship Is the magic defense against the poisonous fruit delivered by the most malevolent of the evil queen's motivations?
The wedding was planned for the next day, and Snow White's godless mother, it's the first time we hear that she was godless, but she has a god, right?
That's her own reflection.
She's Narcissus, who falls in love with his own reflection and drowns in consequence, right?
He leans too close to the river where he can see his reflection and drowns, right?
She only worships her own beauty, which she had nothing to do with bringing into the world, so to speak, and has no right to be proud of, much less to be murderous in defense of.
When she now stepped before the mirror, she said, mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is the fairest of all?
And the mirror replied, you, my queen, may have a beauty quite rare, but little Snow White is a thousand times more fair.
When she heard this, she was horrified and became so afraid, so very afraid that she didn't know what to do.
Yeah, well, the marriage of Snow White, the awake Snow White, to the prince is the defeat of the evil queen.
However, her jealousy, right, a crucial insight.
However, her jealousy, what's she jealous of?
She's just jealous of the fact that Snow White has established a genuine relationship with an actual prince.
Her jealousy drove her so much that she wanted to be seen at the wedding.
When she arrived, she saw that little Snow White was the bride.
Iron slippers were then heated over a fire.
The queen had to put them on and dance in them, and her feet were miserably burned.
But she had to keep dancing in them until she danced herself to death.
Right, well, what's that ending?
Well, how about the queen ends up in hell?
And what's the hell?
What is she doing?
Well, she was driven to the wedding by her own pride and jealousy, and she's consumed by fire in consequence of her pathology and its ultimate failure.
So, not Snow White, and it's no bloody wonder Disney rewrote it.
Thanks very much, everybody, for listening.
I may do more of these.
You know, they're quite something.
It's amazing how much information a story can contain.
You know, and you might ask, well, did the authors know what they were representing?
And the answer is, you know, we never know the full extent of anything we communicate or imagine.
Everything has implications beyond what we can apprehend.
I would say that the story shaped itself to be maximally memorable and striking across time.
And what's maximally memorable and striking has inevitably has the ring of deep truth about it.
And so that's how such things come to be.
Thanks for your time and attention.
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