Gal Gadot’s Snow White Song Is a Remarkable Anti-Performance
It’s rare to see something so misconceived, committed to with such force, in a way that isn’t trying to be camp.
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With Snow White, Disney set itself upon the task of expanding an 83-minute animated film into a one-hour-and-49-minute live-action spectacle. Logically, it makes sense that it took any opportunity to expand the universe of the film (mostly through confusing lore) and add new music. But it wasn’t until Gal Gadot’s Evil Queen actually started to sing that I began to process what was going to unfold in front of me. Midway through the film, the Evil Queen discovers that the Huntsman she’d sent out to the forest to kill Snow White didn’t actually kill her because Snow White was simply too nice to him. In a rage, the queen responds in just the way you might hope and/or fear, by breaking into a breathy, lilting solo about … politics as described by Machiavelli in The Prince?
That’s my best guess, at least, because it’s pretty hard to make out what exactly Gadot is going on about in the Pasek and Paul song. She isn’t very interested in enunciating, and the lyrics themselves are deeply confusing. The songwriting duo have a habit of churning out late-2010s-style theatrical pop for the screen — you may wonder why so many of this kingdom’s residents are prone to stomping and yodeling at their celebrations like they’re at a Lumineers concert. They’ve written a big, belt-y solo for Rachel Zegler (free her soprano!), which is generic and fine and kind of an earworm. Gadot’s song, called “All Is Fair,” is stranger than that. It’s aiming for something sultry and lexically dexterous, but because the world-building of the live-action Snow White is deranged, it becomes deeply convoluted fast. The Queen starts out condemning the Huntsman — “diminish him, then finish him” — and provides legal justification for this as “all is fair when you wear the crown.” In this film, you see, the Queen has become the head of state by marrying Snow White’s widowed father, the king, sending him off to die in a border conflict she has ginned up, then ordering a guard to give Snow White a bob. Also, the Queen has turned her kingdom into a pseudo-fascist state, making all the farmers work as soldiers and leaning heavily on gem mining as the primary industry. (The Queen seems to be the only one allowed to actually wear jewelry, however; hard to see how this is economically viable.) You have to know all that to understand why, midway through the first chorus, she announces that “She, with the diamonds, decides.” There’s a brief flash of self-awareness. “Perhaps, I’ve been a bit confusing,” she announces as she launches into the next verse, “But I’ve no need for your advice.” Suddenly, the song becomes instead about … girl power? And the Queen reacting to people who want her to be nice, because she’s a woman? “Well, nice will only get you nowhere,” she sings, “Nice won’t get the doing done. Ambitious girls must be vicious girls. And boy we have fun!” It’s a nice rhyme scheme, but what does it mean … What does it mean???
This song would be a lot more understandable if the Evil Queen had any backstory, but that is oddly something this otherwise lore-choked movie lacks. Did she make some deal with a devil for her looks? Was she once a little peasant girl who had a name, like, say, Kelsey (Zegler’s love interest is named Jonathan), but had her heart hardened by great tragedy and decided to throw it all on the pure pursuit of power? Why can she magically generate both roses and crystal daggers? Whence the magic mirror? Nobody knows! In a good villain song, the audience gets to be tempted over to the villain’s side. Scar is right that the Circle of Life is bullshit. Ursula is right that she’s helping people and it’s their fault they’re not reading the fine print. Frollo is terrifying because you at least understand how the collision of religious indoctrination and horniness is making him crazy. The Evil Queen of Snow White is theoretically insecure about being the fairest, but that’s not what the song emphasizes; she’s just proclaiming her strength from her position of power. Listen to me because I’m beautiful! The ends justify the means when you have cheekbones like these! For a song from a character written as irresistibly gorgeous, it’s awfully unalluring.
Compounding all this is the fact that Gadot herself simply cannot sell the song. In her big breakout role in Wonder Woman, the actress had a part that was seemingly custom-tailored to her strengths: notably to exude blank physical superiority. Since then, such as when trying to fill the Nile, she hasn’t found a way to communicate depth, and she certainly doesn’t find it while singing. Gadot’s delivery of “All Is Fair” aims for the purring of Marlene Dietrich but ends up unintentionally close to Madeline Kahn’s parody. I’m not sure to what extent Gadot required coaching to hit the notes that Pasek and Paul have written, but you do wonder how these were the best takes, and why somebody didn’t just suggest changing the keys, or that she talk-sing her way through all this.
As Gadot swirls around the film set, mugging hard for the camera and straining to sing the song, the thing becomes a remarkable anti-performance. People overpraise a lot of things that are trying too hard to be campy. But it’s rare to see something so misconceived, committed to with such force, in a way that isn’t trying to be camp at all. That’s the truer definition of the thing. The sequence feels endless — it’s a full three minutes and 33 seconds long! — and you just have to sit back in awe as it keeps happening. Gadot struts around throwing her hands at odd angles. The guards do a bit of choreography. It’s worth noting that the costumes are also hideous and cheap looking. And those jewels the Queen keeps gloating over all look like costume jewelry, or the kind of thing you’d dig out of a barrel in the gift shop of a mine-themed roller coaster for 99 cents a scoop. Corners have been cut, yet this woman is supposed to be singing about the joy of ultimate luxury.
All of which is to say that, unfortunately, I’m obsessed. I can’t get “All Is Fair” out of my head. I keep repeating that “ambitious girls must be vicious girls” to my editors and they’ve gotten annoyed to the point of making me write a blog post. It’s the song for the moment, a song about the joys of abusing power, which makes power look deeply unappealing. It’s a performance of glamour without any glamour. It makes one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates on earth look terminally unable to replicate the kind of cinematic magic upon which it built its entire brand. Did you know there’s a reprise?
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