Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / JUST JOSH: The Woke Catastrophe of “Snow White”

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JUST JOSH: The Woke Catastrophe of “Snow White” · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a dangerous idea for you.
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  We are currently sleepwalking towards a society where it's increasingly difficult to have the
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  most important conversations that we need to have to survive the 21st century, because
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  we are so fearful of becoming driven by algorithmic hate-filled nonsense that we pass bullshit
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  laws banning people from saying unpopular things. I want to draw a connection today between
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  the premier of New South Wales, that's like the governor of the most popular state in Australia,
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  Chris Minnes, a big advocate of hate speech bans. Introduce legislation here, a similar
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  legislation to what is occurring in other states as well, like Victoria and at a federal level,
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  saying that if you say certain things or you wave a swastika or what night or your protest too
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  close to a house of worship, boom, you're out. They're slapping the handcuffs on you and you're
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  feeling the jack boot of the state. The jaundoms are coming for you. And the reason why I find this
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  worrying is because I just had them as fortunate to go and see Snow White, the new Disney movie with
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  my children. It may seem like a stretch. You may not know where I'm going with this, hear me
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  out here. The Snow White movie is what you get culturally. If you see through to its fullest
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  expression the kind of sentiment, the kind of world view that lurks behind hate speech bans.
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  Here's what the premier of New South Wales had to say to people who want to repeal the hate
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  speech legislation a few weeks ago. There's been some that have been agitating in the parliament
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  to nullify the laws to remove them off the statue books. Think about what kind of toxic message
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  that would send to the New South Wales community. And I think the advocates for those changes
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  need to explain what do they want people to have the right to say? What kind of racist abuse
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  do they want to see or be able to lawfully see on the streets of Sydney? I recognise and I fully
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  said from the beginning that we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the
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  United States. And the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community
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  and have people live in peace free from the kind of vilification and hatred that we do see
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  around the world. So there you have it. What is it that people like me wish we could say? What
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  hate-filled bile is on the tip of my tongue is bursting to come out that is only prevented from
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  contaminating this great country of ours. This great tolerant multicultural country of ours
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  by the laws passed by Chairman Minnes. Well let me tell you a little thing or two about the
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  Snow White movie in order to get us there. You may know that there was some controversy about the
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  the Snow White motion picture because it takes some different choices, different creative choices
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  shall we say, from the 1937 original. Because you may be shocked and horrified to learn
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  that the 1937 original Snow White animated Disney film, perhaps the most important and foundational
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  animated movie of all time, that did not necessarily concur precisely with the social justice
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  dogmas of a left-wing elite in 2025. There were just a few differences. They unfortunately
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  failed to build a time machine, go forward about a hundred years into the future, see what the
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  norms were going to be and then retroactively include them in the Snow White of 1937. So the first
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  thing that had to go from the new film was Snow White herself. Well not exactly. The whiteness
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  of Snow White had to go in the original fairy tale, in the original story, in the original movie,
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  Snow White's skin is as white as snow. That's why she's called Snow White because she has white
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  skin. She's a pale, she's a pale lady. Think like imagine like a Scandinavian lass with skin
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  so white it's almost translucent. It's like you can see the blue blood veins underneath,
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  like some kind of an amphibious fish, like you can see the heart beating on it. That was Snow White
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  in 1937. It wasn't necessarily good, wasn't necessarily bad. That was just Snow White. She's only
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  one person. She can't carry the weight of the world's expectations about race on her shoulders
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  or can she? Well in 2025 she can of course. So they changed the Snow White and they say in the very
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  first scene of the motion picture film, they say she was named Snow White because she was born
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  during a blizzard. She was born during a blizzard. So that's why they called her Snow White because there
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  was a lot of white stuff around the castle when she was born. And they cast obviously a non-white
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  actress, Latina. So that's great. We've got the diversity checkbox ticked there. But then we get
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  to the questions about the story itself. And whether or not it's appropriate for a young princess
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  to pine for a prince, one of the most iconic songs from the original Snow White film. In fact,
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  one of the most iconic songs in the whole Disney pantheon is a song called Someday My Prince will
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  come. And she's singing about how someday she wants a prince to come and she wants to live happily
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  ever after. Well, we can't have that in the 2020s. The idea that a member of one sex might
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  desire a member of the other sex and somehow be saved by that coupling. No, I mean that would work
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  obviously if it was a male wanting a woman because, you know, males are fallen and women are
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  fabulous. So you could do it if it was a queer story. But you can't have a young empowered woman
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  in this era of girl power, girl power, bro. She don't need no prince. She's a sassy broad.
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  She's got to, she's got to even figure it out for herself. So they get rid of the song entirely.
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  They get rid of the most iconic. So well, I guess hi, ho, hi, ho. It's off to work. We go
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  is another iconic song. We will get to that one in a sec. They get rid of Someday My Prince will come
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  and they replace it with a new number. I got a piece of paper here because I couldn't remember
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  because it's such a forgettable song. I got a piece of paper that says, instead, Snow White
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  performs a new song titled Waiting on a Wish. Now, Waiting on a Wish is about her sense of her
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  own empowerment. Now, she's just, she's just looking forward to being a big sassy, brassy broad.
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  And she's going to go out and conquer the world. She don't need no body. She don't need no body
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  this Latina. Snow White who's not white as the snow, but the snow she is called white because of
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  the snow, but not as white as the snow. She's no amphibious fish pumping her heart behind her skin.
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  She's a she's her own lady. She's her own last and good for her. It's the 2020s now.
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  So a couple of years ago when the actress who plays Snow White was interviewed when she got the
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  part. Now, she's only a 23 year old lass. She's going to remain a lass for the purposes of this
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  conversation. When this, this 23 year old lass got the part, she was 21 years of age. She's a
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  baby. You know, when you're 21, you're a little bebe. You don't know what you're talking about. You're
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  just saying bebe things. So she's saying bebe stuff. And she says it's very old-fashioned. The whole
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  film. She was like this 937. She was shocked. She was shocked to learn that a film made
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  literally before the Second World War was old-fashioned. What was the opinion of a world Disney
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  about trans people? I'm not sure. But anyway, she was shocked. And so she gave a few
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  interviews and she made she got herself into some hot water a couple of years ago and she was 21
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  years of age because she said, am I quote, the original film was extremely dated when it comes to
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  the ideas of women being in roles of power. Right. It was outdated when about women being in
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  a role of power. She said, there's a big focus in the original film that is on her love story
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  where the guy who literally stalks her, weird, said the actress. So we didn't do that this time.
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  She said, so good for them. Good for them. Good for her. For channeling the girl power of the
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  2020s, not the retrograde misogynistic patriarchal sexist nonsense of a woman wanting a man
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  and falling in love with a guy who literally stalks her, stalks her. Like, you know,
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  courtship is so old fashioned. Courtship is violence, words of violence. So anyway, they changed
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  that. They, um, they changed Prince Charming, in fact, from a prince to a guy named Jonathan.
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  That's a true statement of fact about the new Snow White motion picture. There is no
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  Prince Charming. It's a dude. And the dude's name is Jonathan. And, uh, Jonathan has, he's kind
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  of a Robin Hood character. He's like, he has to be, you know, you can't have him be a prince
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  too fancy. He's like, he's a Nair De Well, shall we say, but he's a raffish, rugged, charming,
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  Nair De Well. And he has a merry band of brothers. And I'll come to those in just a moment.
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  But suffice it to say he doesn't stalk her in an unseemly way or no unwanted overtures. You know,
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  the primarily Prince Charming was a little bit too Kevin Spacey for the, you know, the 2020s,
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  a bit too handsy. So we have him step back, be respectful. We have the princess, be a person who
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  would never day in to sing a song like someday my prince will come. She's not as white as snow.
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  So we've covered all our bases. You can just imagine the executives at Disney with their list of,
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  their checklist, right? Probably issued by the premier of New South Wales about things that you're
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  not supposed to say, things you're not supposed to represent, things you're not supposed to imply,
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  things you're not supposed to do. And they go and tick tick tick. Okay, we're going to the woman
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  of color in the lead role. We've gotten rid of the reference to her skin being white as the pure
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  snow. We got rid of her painting for a guy. We got rid of the guy being a prince. We got rid
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  of the guy stalking slash courting her. But now we come to a doozy, hotly mother of mercy.
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  You know what else this, this movie contains? You know what other horrendous transgressions,
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  the original Snow White indulged in on the eve of the Second World War, probably inspired by Adolf
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  Hitler himself. It had, it had little, it had people with dwarfism in it. It had people living
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  triumphantly, may I say, happily and triumphantly with the condition that is no worse than able
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  bodiedness dwarfism. And they were happy people. They were happy dwarves. They weren't dwarves.
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  They were little, they were people living with dwarfism. But how do you do that in the 2020s?
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  Holy mother of mercy, holy nelly, that's what I says to myself. So they go back and they go,
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  all right, well, we can't obviously, we can't cast people with dwarfism in this because the dwarves,
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  I guess, are inherently, they're sort of looked down upon their objects of ridicule or
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  they're objectified in some way. So they go, you know what I'm going to do? We're going to make
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  CGI, you know, those creepy CGI faces that don't really look like real people. Like, you know, Tom
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  Hanks in like the Christmas train movie, well, you know, they're just weird looking, weird looking
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  movies. So they look kind of like that. There's no spirit behind the eyes. There's no characterisation.
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  And then they go, well, hang on, now we've just done out of a job, seven actors with dwarfism
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  who now don't get to star in our movie. I mean, there aren't that many jobs for little people.
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  They got Game of Thrones and then they got, you know, dwarf throwing championships or some such.
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  So give them a job, give them a job, but no, they want to be so politically correct, they're not
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  going to give them work. Instead, they're going to get a computer to make renditions of the seven
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  dwarves. And then by the way, the word dwarf is never, it's never uttered. You never even hear it.
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  You never hear it or see it or it's the again, it's a word that they're not mentioned its name
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  in the new Snow White. There is no dwarves mentioned dwarves. There are just these CGI creatures
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  who happen to look like people with dwarfism. So what do they do? They go, well, hang on, this is
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  no good. We can't have no people with dwarfism in the movie. So why don't we give Jonathan the prince
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  who's not a prince who kind of wants to spend his life with Snow White, but not so much that it's
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  creepy. When we give him a ragtag team of individuals who follow him, like a band of merry brothers,
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  and there are seven of them, some of whom have dwarfism also, but aren't the dwarves of Snow White
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  and the seven dwarves? Literally. So Jonathan has seven followers who follow him around to do his
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  Robin Hooding. One of whom is an actor who was in, guess, can you guess what he was in? Game of Thrones,
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  only other place where people, little people get work in Hollywood. He was in Game of Thrones,
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  they take him, they put him, they cast him in the new movie of Snow White and the seven dwarves,
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  but not as a dwarf because they would be politically incorrect. They cast him as a normal person,
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  his size is never referred to. It cast him as one of the teammates of the prince who's not a prince
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  who's very respectful of Snow White and doesn't try to court her too hard too hard too hard. So
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  you're watching this thing and you're going, okay, here's the Snow White who's not white and she's
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  not, the whiteness is not about the Snow or rather her skin is not about being as white as the Snow,
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  the whiteness is only just an homage in her name to the fact that there was a blizzard. Then
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  there's no prince and there's no someday my prince will come song. There's only a song about
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  her being an empowered, sassy, broad lady of the 2020s, powerful, power woman, a sea sweet.
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  I can have it all, a Cheryl Sandberg. And then she comes upon these seven creatures, CGI creatures
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  who are never referred to as dwarves, but then we need to cast dwarves as well. So let's cast them
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  in this other group of seven people who are not referred to in any way other than being the team
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  that Jonathan, the non-prince takes around. And one of them is an actor with dwarfism.
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  Now the studio at the world premiere in Los Angeles did declined to have any media at the red carpet
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  because they didn't want the cast to be asking, to be answering any potentially provocative
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  questions about any of this. Let alone their opinions about Israel and Palestine, which is a whole
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  other shit storm for the studio. But the whole film is like you asked a really, really woke AI
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  to just cobble together the most anodine, inoffensive shards of intellectual social justice
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  pap into a mosaic of utter, unappealing, uninventive, uncreative, uncorragious nonsense. It is a vomit
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  bag of a movie. My kids loved it. That there was great. You know, there's seven that I don't
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  understand any of this. There's some singing CGI little people, and then there's Jonathan,
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  the non-prince, and you know, wham bam, you're all good. But a little part of my soul died.
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  It is a desecration of an intellectual asset, of a gem of creativity. It is a desecration of
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  a part of the Western canon. It is a desecration of something that is fundamental to the DNA of Hollywood.
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  Those early Disney films, what the modern Disney studio has done, is unforgivable. It has
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  taken a gigantic steaming dump on the heritage of Walt Disney, on the most valuable thing about
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  the Disney Corporation, which is its original instantiation as the most creative and forward
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  thinking and brave and innovative studio doing animation in the world. And the original
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  Snow White in 1937 is the apotheosis of that heritage, of that tradition, and to take it,
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  and to feed it through the stupid, dewy-eyed, doughy-brained mandates of a new, very, very temporary
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  social justice agenda that will seem as ridiculous in ten years as any fad always readily seems.
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  This is just a way of crashing a brand, and the studio executives should be ashamed of themselves.
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  They will be ashamed of this, if they're not already. It's like a distillation of what happens
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  when the reticence to offend becomes the singular priority in any creative pursuit.
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  Snow White is the dystopia that people like me fear that hate speech bans will lead to.
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  This is the kind of anodyne safe bullshit that you get when people are so terrified of
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  treading on any egg shells, of offending anyone, that they're doing back flips and summer salts
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  in order to undo the possible offence that could be caused by their undoing of another thing that
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  might have caused offence to another group when they were trying to undo something that might
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  have caused offence. It's an endless, infinite regress of ask covering, and just the most superficial
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  glib capitulation to a dogma, to really a McCarthyite, Stalinist, thought-policing dogma.
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  And if you think that's hysterical, of course, it's hysterical, because in order to get a glimpse
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  of possible dystopias, you have to see the first crack in the door, you have to sort of understand,
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  you know, nothing terrible ever happens without the first few incremental steps.
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  And I do think that just as much of a risk for the 21st century, for us as a civilization,
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  as the sort of Elon Muskian, Trumpian, shitposting, shitting grin algorithmic bullshit,
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  is a reaction to that, which hunkers us down and makes us less creative, less tolerant,
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  more and more averse to anything that might smell potentially, like a risky or politically incorrect
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  statement of fact or thought or creativity. So I want to sort of school the premier and the
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  social justice left on free speech using Snow White as a case study, and I shall do so thusly.
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  The question that the premier asked in that clip that we just played was, what do opponents of
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  hate speech bans want people to have the right to say? He was very upfront like, what is it that
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  you want to say? What is it that you want to say that you can't say? Go on, tell me.
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  Well, firstly it's a trick question, because anything that is true hate speech is bad enough
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  that you don't want to say it, and anything that's mild enough for you to want to say would not be
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  banned by hate speech laws right now. But that's the relevant point, right now. We can all think of
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  things that in the past we would like to have been able to say or we wish people had been able to say
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  which from the privileged position of the present day we regret they're not being able to say, right?
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  COVID lockdowns went too far. Is a thing that now I would not be punished for saying. But a lady named
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  Zoe Bueller was arrested in Australia during COVID in September of 2020 for posting about an
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  anti lockdown protest. That was an actual crime. She committed a crime for saying that COVID lockdowns
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  had gone too far and for trying to agitate against them. Another thing that you might want to have
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  been able to say is that nobody should be fired for reporting on pediatric transgender medical care.
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  But I know people who lost their jobs as some of the most August newspapers in Australia for merely
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  daring some years ago at the peak of the sort of post George Floyd social justice panic
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  fired for simply reporting on a controversy inside the medical establishment about how to treat
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  Trent kids with gender dysphoria. Another thing that you might want to have been able to say is
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  nobody should be fired for arguing that there may be circumstances under which a white
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  person can discuss the N word and say that word while they're trying to discuss its usage.
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  Well, I know people who are fired Mike Pesca my friend and colleague lost his job not for saying
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  the word not for even writing the word but for articulating the point of view that it should be
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  possible for a white person to discuss the usage of the word. Another thing that might have been nice
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  to be able to say was that the 9-11 terrorists were not cowardly. That's something that Bill
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  Mar did say on the air in the wake of 9-11 and he lost his show on ABC TV in the United States
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  for saying so everyone was saying oh this is a cowardly attack the cowardly attack. He said
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  come on it may be dustedly it may be a lot of things they weren't cowards flying planet
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  were building isn't cowardly lost his show. You know people were banned from Twitter for posting
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  men aren't women at the height of the social justice moral panic so don't give me this bullshit
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  about what is it that you would like to say right now that I can try to pin you down on
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  cynically and force you to say that would be in breach of hate speech laws that's not the point
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  the point is that our understanding of what is worth saying what isn't worth saying is at
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  every point in time incomplete and there are things that we understand now to be hate speech
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  that in 20 years time we'll look back on and go oh we probably got that wrong. I mean unless
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  unless the premier of NSW thinks that this is the first time in place in the history of the world
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  where we understand perfectly everything that should be said and should not be said.
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  We can see perfectly well that everyone else in every previous place and every previous
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  era had blind spots and in the future we'll be able to see that of other other places and other
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  peoples but we right now we are the first time in place in human history who have got everything
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  right in the future nobody's going to look back on our current moment and go well obviously they
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  had blind spots about this no no no in perpetuity everyone in the world is going to go you know what
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  yeah New South Wales in 2025 they nailed it they nailed it you know though over the long arc of
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  human history the thousands of years of human civilization no one quite got there but I think
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  the Chris Minnes government in the 2020s was the first time in place where everybody knew exactly
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  what should be said and what shouldn't be said and there was no need for a capacious rambunctious
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  understanding of the public square because we could just carve out from from the public square the
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  things that we didn't like and there were no mistakes so it was lucky lucky that his antipathy to
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  free speech coincides perfectly with the moment at which we don't need full free speech do these
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  people not see the tradition that they're part of do they not understand the kind of mob
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  justification that pontificating people who are in favor of speech restrictions are always falling
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  back on they are part of a long and timeless tradition they are part of a McCarthyite kind of
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  Stalinist attitude towards deciding what can and can't be said like what do you want you can
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  imagine this going back to the snow white film right you can imagine the studio executives
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  saying like why is it necessary to be peddling the tropes of the 1930s in the 2020s like what is
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  it that you really want to say that you think is so important to be said that you know the 1930s
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  film really had to say you want to say that it's good to be white really it's so important to you
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  to say that it's good to be white it's so important to you to retain that aspect of the film
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  the implication that snow white was white was called snow white because her skin was white
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  as snow you really think it's that important to retain that you don't think we can just move past
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  what else in the in the 1930s film is so important for you to cling to you want to say that
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  women can't manage life on their own you want to have a woman a young woman a a role model to
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  other girls in the 2020s singing about how someday her prince will come because she's not a full
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  badass girl a lass in her own right you want you want that to be the lesson really really you
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  want to stand up and really defend your right to to say that women can't manage life on their own
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  what else is it that you think you should be able to say that you think it's so important to say
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  that you don't want to be cowed by our supposed attack on free speech because we're such nasty
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  worksters well you want to be able to you want to say that dwarfism is cute that dwarfism is a joke
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  to you you think that's really important to you to say that dwarfism is is a cute joke that we
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  should look down on people with dwarfism is that a message that you think it's really important to
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  convey so you can see how this goes you can see how people who are hostile to allowing a maximum
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  number of ideas to circulate can always use the jack boot to try to cow people into phrasing the
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  things that they're trying to play with in such a way that they sound beyond the pale which then
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  constricts your creativity and constricts your thinking in such a way that you end up with a
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  motherfuckin turkey like snow white because you don't want to imply that people with dwarfism are
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  a joke you don't want to imply that young women need males you don't want to imply that being white
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  is in any way good so as the bureaucrats go through the list of things that you don't want to imply
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  what you end up with is just a mishmash of anodine easy inoffensive nonsense there's no sparkle
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  there's no risk there's no frisson of anything there's no passion there's no humanity there's
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  none of the messiness of the human condition in this stupid fucking film it is a camel a horse
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  designed by committee it is an absolute travesty for the Disney corporation for Disney studios
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  and I think every person who supports hate speech legislation who supports banning particular
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  types of speech should be forced to see snow white with like a couple of toothpicks holding their
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  eyes open like in a clockwork orange and watch the whole thing over a hundred different times you
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  know maybe maybe the virtue in saying things that Chris minns the premier would find beyond the pale
• 27:46
  is not in the saying of them themselves but in being able to walk up to the line walk up to the
• 27:54
  edge of saying things that in isolation would sound unseemly but if we're not terrified of
• 28:03
  accidentally going over the edge of propriety in fact foster a superior public square
• 28:10
  a more flourishing creative space a better democracy than if we would live in an environment where
• 28:18
  a pre-selected set of taboos make art and thought and debate style and Stalinist and predictable
• 28:29
  and fundamentally dishonest if you want to see the dystopia that awaits us if we embrace hate speech
• 28:38
  bands do yourself a favor go and see snow white