Blog 6: Snow White vs. Rammstein's "Sonne"



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This video fascinated me to no ends. Each time I viewed this video I noticed something new, actually, I’m still noticing new things each time. I thought it was ingenious how they used the dwarves’ perspective. I think often it’s easy to focus on just Snow White and The Queen instead of the dwarves.

What I liked was how this video contrasted the presentation in class “The Queen’s Looking Glass.” In the presentation, it was suggested that males were dominant. For example; while the dwarves gave Snow White a new life, they turned her into a dwarf servant/domestic housewife that cleaned and cooked for them. However Rammstein completely flipped the role playing; the dwarves were portrayed as servants trying to please Snow White.

But there were certainly parallels as well.  In class it was suggested that Snow White, her mother and the Queen were all the same person, and that they were more or less the “stages” of women’s personality. In “Sonne” Snow White’s personality mirrored the Queen’s; she was shown to be cruel in throwing the diamond back at the dwarf in disgust when it wasn’t to her satisfaction. Also towards the end it showed the dwarves clinging and groveling at Snow White, like lost children wanting their mother. Meanwhile, Snow White passively patted their heads in response, without much care to their feelings. In that particular scene there’s a window of light around Snow White’s head making her seem, almost holy. Or like a shining star or sun.

Speaking of sun, I should also mention that the lyrics were fascinating. I loved the lyrics. I kept finding new meaning in each line.

                                  Everyone waits for the Sun,

                                    It will not set tonight.

         I got the symbol of how everyone waits to become beautiful, and how we’ll do anything to make sure that it won’t leave; it will not set tonight.

                                                     Here Comes the Sun,

                                             It is the brightest star of all  

         I’m pretty sure these two lines above were directed towards Snow White; fairest of them all. Actually in the video, her yellow dress was what first connected me with her being the sun.

                                                The sun shines out of my hands

                                                 It can burn, can blind you all

                                               When it breaks out of the fists

These lines above reminded me of the Queen’s obsession for beauty and while it’s glorious and nice, it is also poisonous; if you obsess over it, it’ll destroy you, just as how the sun will shine though your fingers, and blind you and burn you when you try to hold onto it.

            Fairy Tales especially the Grimm Brothers versions, have a trademark element of Contrast. In Rammstein what really hooked me was the heavy contrast between the dwarves and Snow White. It was like yin and yang. The dwarves were small, and weak compared to Snow White who seemed to be majestic like the Queen, and was much bigger and more powerful than the dwarves. She knocked down a dwarf with a diamond!

            But what really got to me was the disheveled, filthy, grimy image of these dwarves in Sonne that were clearly busting their butts off to mine. . . I guess it was gold in the video. While Snow White looked absolutely immaculate and clean.

In the YouTube video of making “Sonne”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1Kb0h9_RvQ&feature=related

One Rammstein band member mentioned that they had about 38 ideas for “Here comes the sun” One of them said, 

“In seeing Snow White, we saw that somehow Snow White is like the sun for the dwarves, and how the dwarves, how we worship Snow White, how we serve Snow White, and that this is our fulfillment, but also our pain and suffering.”

I was reminded of the symbolism of glass, while watching the dwarves mine in the beginning. It was ironic; the deeper they dug into the mines with the picks, the more it seemed were trying to break out of the mines. Kind of like the Queen liking through the mirror; the deeper she looked into herself, the more obsessed she became of trying to break free of the inevitable aging.

            I never really considered what Snow White actually did while with the dwarves. Disney branded the image of a nauseatingly cheerful Snow White gleefully doing housework while with the dwarves. I definitely didn’t think about her shooting up gold dust, and then overdosing on it. Nor did I really think that she might have ever forced the dwarves to do it for her. Again, Disney branded the image of the dwarves cheerfully mining for diamonds. In fact back when I was five I swear that they were doing it for fun. I think I take those branded images for granted when I read the fairy tale versions.

            Another thing that interested me, when I saw “Sonne” a second time, I thought that the dwarves had given her an overdose earlier when they found her dead in the bathtub. That would certainly match up with the “Men in control” discussion; where the huntsmen held Snow White’s life in his hands in the fairy tale, Rammstein showed that the dwarves held her fate in their hands by causing her to O.D. (It certainly could explain why she looked so mad after the coffin shattered.)

            But looking at it a 3^rd and 4^th time I definitely think that she did the overdosing. Especially because the dwarves looked stunned and sad when they found her in the bathtub and then later when they carried the coffin up the mountain. If that’s true then it contradicts the idea that men (dwarves) held any control over her. It also shatters the Brother Grimm’s “angelic” submissive, dependent image of Snow White. Rammstein’s Snow White clearly showed that she’s independent enough to take her own life. She doesn’t need the Queen, dwarves, or a poisoned apple to do so. That active independence in taking her own life, matches the fairy tale Queen’s “monster” activism in trying to kill Snow White, which again, supports the theory that she the Queen and her mother are the same person.

            I think my favorite part of this video was in the end, when the dwarves are staring at the tree next to the coffin, where a single apple is dangling from the branches.  The subtitles say “It will never fall from the sky.” But a moment later it falls and shatters the coffin, reviving a malicious Snow White. My thought when that happened was “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”