Film Theory: What REALLY Saved Snow White!

mirror mirror on the wall which youtuber is the fairest of them all I mean which theorist is fairest of them all okay sure that's true but which male theorist is fairest of them all come on hello Internet welcome to film Theory the place where kids at heart never have to grow up kind of like Toys R Us but without the creepy giraffe guy now if I've said it once I've said it a thousand times I love Disney so much so that I just got a bumper sticker attesting to it that is commitment my friends now while I love the recent stuff obviously since I've covered everything from the questionable sisterhood of Anna and Elsa to a fish who just so happens to forget things when it's most convenient for her we've got to give credit to the classics too and when I say the classics I mean the most classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the og feature-length animated film coming out in 1937 which by the way was a whole decade before televisions went on sale fun fact Snow White was such a monumental moment in movie history that at the Academy Awards it won a special honorary Oscar for being so innovative getting itself one large statue and seven tiny ones eight statues for one category that didn't even exist now that is called winning no I recently rewatched Snow White and somehow it's a lot more intense than I remember hey there mr. Huntsman my teenage stepdaughter is getting a little too pretty so would you do me a solid and wore her out into the woods and you know rip her heart out man and here we all thought that Zootopia being an allegory for racism was risque it also tell that I've been making these videos for a little too long because instead of just sitting back and you know enjoying the movie I saw tons of unanswered questions just write for the theorising like why Seven Dwarves just so happen to have a coffin line let alone a coffin made of glass let alone one that would fit a normal-sized person I mean are they in the habit of burying full-sized humans on the rag we're how about the fact that the prince's first instinct when he sees a dead girl lying in the forest is to pucker up seriously bro number one corpse germs and number two corpse germs but the moment that really got my gears a turnin was the scene where the Queen makes the poisoned apple all she calls her brew is the same but we don't see what really goes into it and it's such an iconic fairy tale and movie staple that it prompted my question of the day which is is it possible to create a weaponized fruit that behaves in the way that we see it Snow White I figured after making episodes about nuclear weapons hacking government drug conspiracies that all my Google searches are being monitored anyways so researching deadly fruits seems tame by comparison let's do this so obviously this has to be an apple dipped into some sort of fast-acting poison like the deadliest candy apple known to man but what sort of poison is it well remember that Snow White takes a single bite and then soon afterwards says that she's feeling a bit strange yeah thanks a lot for the help of the symptoms snowy but Web MD doesn't have a diagnosis for feeling strange shortly thereafter she passes out to lie in a coma before reviving so the biggest thing that stands out about the poison Apple is how fast it knocks out Snow White and this led me to first consider a poison famous for going fast cyanide cyanide is an extremely concentrated poison so concentrated in fact that if you're a 200-pound man it would take a dose of cyanide about half the size of an aspirin to kill you cyanide is also perhaps most famous as the poison of choice for spies and secret agents during World War 2 the Allied forces created a suicide pill they called the L pill for agents going behind enemy lines the pill which was filled with cyanide was about the size of a pea and agents were supposed to bite into it if they were caught behind enemy lines so that they could die without suffering torture and interrogation so is cyanide a likely culprit the poisoned Apple well at first it might seem so as cyanide is readily available in natural products like almonds and fittingly enough apple seeds with that said and all these natural products the traces of cyanide are very very low you need to eat well over 10 pounds of almonds to get a lethal dose and to get a more concentrated dosage like the one found in 2l pill you're gonna need to do some chemical treatment in a lab and that's a problem because no wait the Seven Dwarves is set in a time that's pre electricity so I think it's safe to assume that the Queen isn't doing much enzyme extraction in that little lab of hers besides it Snow White had cyanide poisoning she might have passed out that fast but there ain't no way she's getting back up a cyanide dosage like the one found in the L pill is enough to make a person brain dead in a matter of minutes and the rest of the way dead shortly thereafter no matter how long that creepy Prince makeout sesh goes she ain't getting back up cyanide is safely off the list so what we really need is a poison strong enough for a man but made for a woman or more accurately a poison strong enough to put her into a coma but not so deadly that she has no chance of coming out of it call me crazy but could Snow White be not like a Walking Dead 28 days later first things first I'll eat your brains kind of zombie but an actual Haitian voodoo zombie in his 1985 book the serpent in the rainbow Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis examines a case of Haitian zama fication and describes the process by which a voodoo shaman called a book or poison someone and buries him only to bring him back to life when that poison wears off Davis cites in his book tetrodotoxin a powerful neurotoxin as the main culprit and knocking the victim out the source of the tetrodotoxin is a pufferfish which any ardent fan of The Simpsons knows has the capacity to be fatal poison poison tasty fish and tetrodotoxin is definitely strong strong enough to send you into a coma with very small dose or kill you with one that's slightly larger but it's here that we run into our problem geography tetrodotoxin is found in a variety of sea creatures but which all of them and especially the puffer fish are found in tropical climates the movie version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves never explicitly tells us where we are but considering that Snow White the Seven Dwarves is coming from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales is probably taking place in southern Germany since that's where they were from and where they based most of their stories additionally if you look at the landscape of forests and mountains the architecture of the Evil Queen's castle and even the animals present throughout the movie they're all indicators that were in Germany or close by long story short the likelihood of the Queen getting her hands on an exotic pufferfish especially in the pre-industrial era is just too big of a stretch so to recap even though the Apple scene and Snow White is really short we actually know a lot about it from the contact clues we need a fast-acting poison that with a single small bite is gonna be powerful enough to cause a coma but not so powerful as to guarantee death it has to be easily found in nature since the Evil Queen doesn't have any breaking bad as lab equipment for distilling down the poison and it also must be indigenous to Central Europe well after scouring the internet and following a ton of leads I finally have the killer who meets all our requirements say hello to a tropa belladona also known as deadly nightshade deadly nightshade grows in the wild and is most notable for its shiny dark blue-black berries which are sometimes mistaken for non-toxic blueberries or elderberries crucial mistake and it just so happens to check off every detail on our list Snow White is poisoned by just a single bite of that Apple so the poison needs to be potent well the lethal dose for an adult is usually in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 of these little berries considering that Snow White is small and young it's safe to assume something on the lower end would kill her though remember we just want to knock her out not outright kill her to a bite of that coated Apple would be just about the right dosage which also begs the question can a tropa belladona actually put you in a coma while you're picking the right berries because it sure can non lethal doses of deadly nightshade caused a wide range of symptoms from heart palpitations to hallucinations a first-person account of non lethal belladonna poisoning from 2015 reported that the first thing the person wanted to do was go to sleep which was then followed by vivid hallucinations the nap fits Snow White's condition perfectly and surprisingly so did the hallucinations of course in the animated movie the only information that we ever get from Snow White is that she feels strange and collapses immediately but for more information we can turn to the Disney ABC series once upon a time yes I watch it and yes I'm just as annoyed as you are that the crew still trusts Rumbles all skin come on oh sorry I've had that building over the last couple years I had to get it off my chest anyway in that series we actually get to see what it's like inside snows mind when she's under one of these sleeping curses and what we see is that victims of the sleeping death are shown to experience some crazy visual nightmares after being poisoned just like the vivid hallucinations caused by deadly nightshade but there's even more one thing that we haven't considered yet is held a poisoned case you'd think that if snow-white bent into the Apple and it tasted weird she would either spit it out or say something like it not tasting like an apple kind of like Apple Jacks [Music] for instance if Walter White had made the Apple for snow and coated it in his favorite poison ricin ricin contains castor oil which would make the Apple taste bitter and well not like an apple signaling to snow that her bite was a bit off but as poisons go deadly nightshade actually tastes relatively good people who have eaten belladona berries report that it has a pleasant mildly sweet flavor just like most other fruits and berries and that's important if you're trying to make sure that your victim doesn't get suspicious of your Apple and lastly Atropa belladonna makes a whole lot of sense in the geographical and historical context of the story Atropa belladonna is native to southern and Central Europe including the southern part of Germany so location is a definite fit and Atropa belladonna was historically a very popular poison in European history around the time Snow White was sat in the 11th century the Scottish King Macbeth yeah that Macbeth he was real used a trope a belladona to poison an army of invading danes it's even believed that deadly nightshade was used to kill the Roman Emperor Claudius back in 54 ad clearly this poison would have been known about and prevalent at the time in other words every last detail in Snow White in the Seven Dwarves points to a trove of belladonna has the poison in the poisoned Apple but I'm not done there's still one massive problem and it's one I'm sure that all of you are thinking right now if Snow White had been poisoned by a very dangerous potentially deadly toxin like those found in a tropa belladona how is she cured by the princes kiss the short answer is she's not boom mind blown drop in the my screw true love's kiss all your gonna wind up with his corpse germs nope my loyal theorists it wasn't love that saved the fair maiden it was chemistry Atropa belladonna poisoning has a few popular antidotes one of which is activated carbon no activated carbon is essentially charcoal dust that absorbs toxins in the body swallow some activated carbon activated carbon draws the toxins from your system and absorbs them and then poof those toxins no longer damage your body now Snow White obviously didn't intentionally swallow any activated carbon pills but she has been in contact with it from the moment she entered the forest how the dwarves it's the dwarf remember these guys work underground in a diamond mine and a diamond is nothing more than a bunch of carbon put under intense pressure in fact it's established earlier in the movie that when the dwarves come home they're always covered in dirt and soot so much so that Snow White has to convince them to wash off before they eat so all that cleaning she does all that time she's spending with the dwarves she's inhaling activated carbon it's already in her system then Snow White eats the Apple gets poison and gets sent into a state of sleeping death from there the dwarves once again covered in carbon soot from the mines carry her off to the glass coffin along the way she inhales even more carbon and all along the way the carbon in her system is slowing the absorption of the toxins until finally enough has been drawn out of her system that she's able to wake up that's right Snow White wasn't cured by Love's first kiss or some doofy corpse germy Prince no she was cured by none other than the Seven Dwarves now remember kids an apple a day may keep the doctor away but an apple covered in deadly nightshade it's just gonna kill you but hey that's just a theory a film theory nice now that I've ruined a classic fairytale trope I hope you're ready for more old-school childhood ruining Disney fury action because it's time to click this poison Apple right here and have the Lion King get utterly wrecked for you that's wrecked with an R ekt which means you know I'm serious my friends over on the wisecrack channel did an incredible analysis of The Lion King which gets you to really question whether scar is all that evil to begin with who are the true bad guys here in that movie because at its core it's a story of the haves and the have-nots and scar is just advocating on behalf of the little guys it completely changed the way that I look at that movie and I'm sure you'll have the same reaction so click that Apple and go have the Lion King get poison for you and hey if you liked what you saw in this episode click here to subscribe we've got a lot of awesome theories planned for the final months of the year with some big-name titles like Star Wars and Pixar so you're not gonna want to miss a theory especially the wall-e one that's coming out in two weeks here click and subscribe then go watch The Lion King wisecrack video and if you do both of those things you'll have made two fantastic decisions today well 3 actually because he chose to watch this video in the first place so three fantastic decisions today your brain will thank you and I'll make you just a cooler person on the whole now if you'll excuse me I feel something strange brewing that one's for next week see you then [Music]

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 13,820,922

Keywords: disney, snow white, snow white and the seven dwarves, disney princess, snow white movie, snow white poison apple, poison apple, disney movie, disney movies, snow white evil queen, snow white theory, film theory, film theorists, matpat film theory, matpat

Id: Uj48E3QhE_8

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 08 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/RandomRedditor44]

1. Really, 99% of the video is about the poison and not about 'saving' her? Really Matpat? Stop usig clickbait titles.

2. Once Upon A Time is not canon in the Snow White universe. Its just a random TV show.

[u/TacoPi]

I was really disappointed by the end of this video. Activated carbon does not work like this at all. This is like saying that a diamond would work as a pencil tip because its just carbon but we all know that would just shred your paper. Activated carbon works to absorb poison because of its high surface area which regular old carbon doesn't have. Even if you did manage to find activated carbon in a diamond mine breathing it in would just give you black lung, not help you pass poison.

[u/NintendoGamer1997]

Or it could've just been magic...