Talk:Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

GA Reassessment

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Issues unaddressed. Hog Farm _talk 04:35, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Lots of uncited text, as well as an "additional sources needed" and an "expansion needed" orange banners. Z1720 (talk) 02:14, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 16 March 2025

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film) → Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – While I am aware that there was a relatively recent requested move on this topic, I believe my reasoning is different enough to make this a worthwhile request. This is going to be a lot of text but please bear with me and read it through and click through the graphs.

Opposition to the previous RM was primarily based on the premise that the fairy tale has also often been called that. I do not believe this is true. I strongly suspect that the term "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was not used for the fairy tale prior to the 20th century, and that any usage of the term for the fairy tale is primarily derived from it being the title of the 1937 film. The original 1812 fairy tale was called Sneewittchen or Schneewittchen in German, which directly translates to "Little Snow White" in English, and English translations of the fairy tale have almost exclusively used the title Snow White. Neither the fairy tale nor anything else has ever been called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", as best as I can tell, prior to a 1912 Broadway play. The play appears to have functionally been the origin of that term, somewhat similarly to how the term "Snow White and the Huntsman" was later originated by the film a century later. As seen on Google Ngrams, the term has nearly no usage prior to the release of the play. The term "seven dwarfs" has some minor usage, as would be expected because that phrase does appear in the fairy tale, but it noticeably begins appearing with regularity upon the release of the play. This is exactly what would be expected if the term "seven dwarfs" suddenly began appearing in the title of the play and had not previously been used as the title of the fairy tale. Both then spiked significantly after the release of the 1937 film, and stayed consistently fairly high afterwards, showing the lasting nature of the film. This is not the case for just Snow White, the actual name of the fairy tale, which appears with consistency prior to the play. Admittedly, this next part is speculation, but I suspect the Disney film's title came from this play also; Walt Disney was inspired to adapt Snow White due to having seen the play's film adaptation, and he obviously would have learned of the play's existence during the making of the 1937 film at the very latest. That, plus the fact that the name would have been functionally unheard of prior to the play, means that the film's title is almost certainly pulled from the play and not directly from the fairy tale. This doesn't say much about the film itself, but it does perhaps indicate the sheer lack of usage of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" when referring to the fairy tale.

Because the usage of the film's title to refer to anything basically started in 1912, I do not think the original fairy tale is a major contender by the long-term significance criterion of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". The fairy tale itself has enormous long-term significance, but it has not historically been associated with this title, was functionally never referred to by this title for the majority of its existence but rather simply "Snow White", and is still overwhelmingly referred to as Snow White, not as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Not only this, basically the only reason anyone calls the fairy tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" today is specifically because of the association with this movie, and this has also been true for the entire period of the film's existence. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is not really an alternate name of the fairy tale, and it never was. Of the other possible choices, the 1937 film is clearly the primary topic. I probably don't even have to explain why, but just in case, here's the rundown: first cel-animated movie, first animated Hollywood movie, highest grossing animated movie inflation-adjusted, at one point second highest grossing movie ever, first feature film by Walt Disney Animation Studios, basically single-handedly the reason Disney as a company currently exists. This is one of the most important films of all time. By long-term significance, it is the primary topic for the term "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Ladtrack (talk) 17:00, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. I still would prefer to either error on the side of the current status quo, or change this redirect to point to Snow White (disambiguation) instead. Like I stated in the previous RM, when I still do a general Google search (with no Google Ngrams) of snow white and the seven dwarfs, yes the first few results are about the 1937 film, but there is not overwhelming results about it, as I start to get links about the general Snow White fairy tale, plus those about the current Snow White (2025 film). As the last paragraph of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC basically says, if there is a conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary long-term significance, consensus determines which, if any, is the primary topic. And IMO, the current usage today in 2025 is not sufficient enough to override claims that the phrase specifically points to the long-term significance of the 1937 film. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:55, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

  I would warn against using straight Google search results. Google hits are personalized by user, meaning that what you see when you google it may not be what I see when I google it. This makes it exceptionally unreliable as a metric, since it varies person to person. But, addressing the rest: the 2025 film results I would discard entirely. I understand that usage and long-term significance are going to differ sometimes but this is a case where the current usage is massively inflated by the fact that the other film is coming out in a week. Exactly how many pageviews the remake will get in a couple years is difficult to ascertain but it will certainly not be this high. What I am certain of is that in two years, the 1937 film will still be the first cel-animated movie, first animated Hollywood movie, highest grossing animated movie inflation-adjusted, at one point second highest grossing movie ever, first feature film by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and basically single-handedly the reason Disney as a company currently exists. I understand wanting the encyclopedia to be current but hopefully not this current, otherwise we would have had to move the 2021 Macbeth film to just "The Tragedy of Macbeth" and then back a year later once the play caught up again. For a few Disney examples, The Lion King, Dumbo, and Lady and the Tramp are all at the animated films even though the remakes outpaced the originals in view count when they came out; the original films are now on average higher, six years later. Aside from long-term significance, the likelihood of this occurring was part of the reasoning for leaving the animated films at the basename. This is the same situation, and the same reasoning should apply.

  As for Google results of the fairy tale: I can only speak to my own results, because as I mentioned Google personalizes search results, but perhaps yours will be similar. I searched for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the results I got, the first page had a section about the fairy tale, headlined by the words "Based on the book". As in, the film you're searching for is based on this fairy tale, which has a different title. It isn't a unique search result. That's a feature Google offers, which you can see in many movies based on a book, regardless of title. Similarly, if you google Blade Runner, you get "Based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". Obviously, the novel is not titled Blade Runner, and it isn't an actual search result for that query, just a built in feature Google has, just like for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Aside from that, there is not one result pertaining to the fairy tale in the first ten pages of results. Not one. There is no significant usage for the fairy tale. Ladtrack (talk) 09:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)