Casper Gutman
Well-Known Member
"Logic established in the film" is key. Snow White is quite an odd film - I mentioned that it functions as an extended short. Alone among Disney films it doesn't really adhere to classic Hollywood narrative conventions, most notably psychological motivation. Snow White is barely a character - she has no arc, no really agency. We get almost no glimpse of her inner life. She never drives the action. She exists more as a symbol, something that is even more true of the Prince. This is where the "fairy tale logic" argument is fair - they aren't Hollywood protagonists, they're generic storybook cyphers.On this, I disagree with @Casper Gutman, because the prince's behaviour doesn't strike me as creepy or inappropriate by the logic established in the film itself.
The Dwarfs are different. The film is really about them, a series of vignettes featuring their antics in different situations - that extended short thing again. Unlike Snow White and the Prince, however, they have an arc, changing over the course of the film, and (ironically, given their names) they have more fleshed out internal lives then either romantic lead.
All of this had changed by Pinocchio or Dumbo, which are much more conventional Hollywood narratives. Snow White was always going to be the Disney film needing the most changes to be adapted to modern sensibilities, which is one of many reasons this brouhaha is silly.
So calling the Prince a stalker is definitely glib and possibly unfair because of the rules of the film, but those rules are incredibly unique even in the pantheon of Disney animation and would be very unfamiliar to any modern viewer not well versed in the historical place of the film.