558. The Snow White Disney Doesn’t Want You To Know
6/30/20251 hr 21 min
Dr. Jordan Peterson offers a psychological and cultural analysis of the Grimm Brothers' Snow White, using it as a lens to explore evolutionary biology, female status hierarchies, fertility suppression, and the pathology of the “evil queen” archetype. Drawing on research in primatology and cultural commentary, Peterson connects ancient folklore to modern dynamics—critiquing contemporary feminist ideologies, careerism, and generational envy, while upholding the redemptive power of masculine responsibility in narrative tradition (and real life). Part myth, part science, part cultural autopsy—this is the synthesis of one of Peterson’s most impactful tenants: stories matter, and fundamental stories reiterate across time. This...
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First 90 secondsJordan Peterson· Host0:00
I'm gonna try something somewhat new today. I'm going to read you The Grimms brothers' version of Snow White. I picked that because I think I have some interesting insights into its meaning, but I also chose it because it's been the target of ideologically oriented rewriting, most famously recently in the case of Disney, who produced what's essentially a very poor movie that was also a commercial flop by carelessly restructuring a story that either the makers of the film didn't understand or understood all too well and decided to mess with for underground reasons of their own. I suspect a little of column A and a little of column B. I'm going to concentrate a fair bit on the figure of the evil queen, not least because there's no shortage of evil queen manifestation in the current social and political environment, and I'm going to draw on a body of research that has been conducted primarily by