The movie Chloë Grace Moretz apologised for before it released: “I am sorry for the offence”
Chloë Grace Moretz has been in some truly excellent movies.
As a child star, she played memorable roles in (500) Days of Summer and the Kick-Ass franchise, before graduating to more adult content like Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspira, but not everything she puts her name to works out.
In 2019, Moretz lent her voice to a South Korean animated movie called Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs, or just Red Shoes in some territories, which was based on the classic tale of Snow White, whom Moretz played, and also starred Sam Claflin, Gina Gershon, and video game BNOC Nolan North. On the surface, there’s very little to say about this film – a kids’ movie featuring a few big names from a company that nobody had heard of, but it quickly hit the headlines, and not in a good way.
Before the film even came out, a poster for it sparked major controversy because the marketing material featured two pictures of the main character: one slim version and one curvier version, and this image was accompanied by the tagline “What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the seven dwarfs not so short?”
This was supposed to hint at the subversive nature of the film. Snow White, initially portrayed as the overweight daughter of a king, puts on the titular ‘Red Shoes’ and transforms into a traditionally ‘beautiful’ woman. The poster did an absolutely horrible job of conveying this message, though, and was rightfully slammed for body shaming, and as her character was at the centre of this storm, Moretz, who is no stranger to having comments made about her body, took it upon herself to release a statement regarding the matter. She pulled no punches, siding with the public.
“I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else,” she wrote. “This wasn’t approved by me or my team. [Please] know I have let the producers of the film know. I lent my voice to a beautiful script that I hope you will all see in its entirety. The actual story is powerful for young women and resonated with me. I am sorry for the offence that was beyond my creative control.”
In theory, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs comes with a lot of very positive messages… in theory. The story ends with Snow revealing her true self to her love interest, Merlin (Claflin), who accepts her for who she is, and the two wed. Unfortunately, this body-positive message is handled incredibly poorly. The film falls into so many of the same traps as other poorly thought-out ‘inspirational’ stories.
It labours its point way too hard to the point of patronising both its characters and audience, as the entire ethos comes across as forced and unnatural, and it’s basically telling the exact same story Shrek told much better about two decades earlier.
Body shaming is such a serious issue in our society, and one that films can play an active role in combating, and while Moretz should be praised for speaking out against it in her own work, it’s a shame she even had to do it in the first place.
