Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.29162/ANAFORA.v13i1.2
“Fairest of Them All”: Exploitation in Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and Snow White (2025)
Valentina Markasović
orcid.org/0009-0005-1899-3818
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
As one of the most famous fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, “Snow White” continues to provide inspiration for contemporary authors across genres and media. In 2012, Rupert Sanders’s Snow White and the Huntsman pitted the protagonist against her evil stepmother, who drains the life out of young women to preserve her own beauty. Most recently, Marc Webb’s live-action Disney’s Snow White revolves around the princess’s fight against an exploitative queen who uses her subjects to gain military power and monetary profit. This paper aims to determine how both adaptations of the fairy tale delineate different types of biopolitical exploitation. After establishing the Foucauldian theoretical context of docility, which results in both overt violence and discursive domination, the paper turns to Snow White and the Huntsman and situates it within the fairy-tale trope of a beauty contest. In Ravenna, the evil queen in this film, this trope converges with the biopower she has over her subjects, resulting in the murders of women whose essence she steals. The violence of Snow White (2025) lies in the Evil Queen’s reign: the once thriving kingdom becomes grim as she discursively turns people docile and self-centred. The paper thus shows that both movies cast light on how the villains use biopolitical strategies—one as a woman ready to kill others to preserve her status in patriarchal society, and the other as a ruler who sacrifices the wellbeing of her people for her own gain.
Keywords
biopolitics, exploitation, violence, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Snow White (2025)
Hrčak ID:
348111
URI
Publication date:
19.6.2026.
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