Snow White in the Age of Social Media

Snow: A Fairy Tale for the Age of Social Media.

Episode One: Mirror

Rose, a fifteen-year-old girl, is one of two adopted children of a self-focused celebrity and social-media influencer. Prince, the older brother, maybe around twenty, is constantly rowing with his mother as she seems more interested in her own media presence than any of her children (who are just part of this image). Rose is a sassy self-opinionated young woman, and we see her out with friends, playing with a choker and heart pendent, and spending long periods of time on social media with her online friends. The mother wants both the children to attend parties and humiliates Rose because she is not traditionally attractive. The mother gets angry at some other celebrity who appears to be eclipsing her on social media and seeks the help of Al, her publicity guru, to take the rival down. This shows her ruthlessness and lack of concern for others. Towards the end of the episode, the mother notices that her daughter has more ‘likes’ than her, despite not conforming to her idea of beauty and behaviour. Rose’s posts are based on ‘clean living’ and condemning the values of her mother and her lifestyle. The episode ends with Rose reading a long rant on her tablet in which her mother is threatening to tear her to shreds and even to kill her.

Episode Two: Heart

A party is getting underway, hosted by the mother. She is insisting that Rose is present, although she is very reluctant and wants to be with her own friends. The Party is attended by a whole series of celebrities, all of whom are getting off their heads with drink and drugs. The mother instructs Al to get Rose drunk or stoned, but she is not touching either drink or drugs. Al spikes her drinks and slowly she begins to lose control, and, at the mother’s insistence, she is plied with drugs. The mother tells Al to take Rose into town, to photograph her in compromising positions, and to upload these onto her social media sites. The next day police arrive at the door, only Prince is around having come back early in the morning to find the remnants of the party. The Police give him the choker, a coat and boots and Rose’s phone. They say they found them by a bridge over the river. Prince screams through the house, waking his mother and asking what she has done. She pretends to be shocked, blames Al and then collapses again. Prince finds Al in a seedy bar in town, distraught. He says that he cannot go back because he has killed Rose and cannot be forgiven. He just wants to die.

Episode Three: Forest

Rose is walking, dishevelled and dazed along the back streets of the town. A Police car stops but Rose swears at them, and the officers choose to drive on. Rose collapses and falls in a doorway. A street preacher passes, tries to raise her and then goes to get help. Once he has gone, Rose struggles up and starts to stagger down the street. She is picked up by a man in a beaten up, but once expensive, car. He can get nothing out of her and takes her back to a run-down house where there are other men and girls, all illegal immigrants. He clearly runs some kind of trafficking outfit and is constantly arguing with the other men. The other girls are more street wise and can give as good as they get, although there is a constant air of violence and menace. When Rose comes round, she cannot, or pretends not to, remember her name, and is initially treated well by the other girls. However, after a few days, one of the girls asks why this new girl (called Snow because of the remnants of drugs down her front when she was brought in) is not ‘earning her keep’, there is an almighty row and the bloke who picked her up, Forest, insists that she is not that type of girl. When he is away for a couple of days, and the guy in charge gets a call. He decides it’s time for Rose/Snow to work (it is never stated what the ‘work’ is and we are left to guess), and dresses her in white before taking her out to the car only to see Forest standing in the road looking daggers at him.

Episode Four: Fairest

Prince has been searching for any sign of his sister. He demands that the police officer at the station tell him whether any bodies have been found, they have not, and why they are not out there looking for her. The officer is dismissive, it is clearly a case of suicide. Prince goes back to his flat. Al is there, drunk and in despair. He cannot say whether he killed Rose, or whether she jumped, or whether he imagined the whole thing, he is beginning to doubt his sanity and blames the mother, who is now all-over social media as if nothing had happened. Prince is also touring the bars, asking for any news. At one, on the edge of the district, he meets the bloke from the traffickers clearly the worse for wear. Prince shows him the photo and bloke says that he can get him a girl that looks just like her, but it will cost. The next day Prince comes back, and the bloke comes in with a different girl, he says this one will have to do, the other is worth more than he could afford, and then leaves. Prince asks the girl about Rose and shows her the photo. The girl recognises her and says how the boss is protecting her, she cannot leave the house, and does all the cleaning, but she is also not being asked to work. She thinks her boss is keeping her for himself. Prince asks if the girl would be prepared to smuggle a phone to Rose and at first the girl is reluctant, but she is persuaded. The episode ends with the mother scrolling through her phone and suddenly seeing an image of her daughter looking fresh faced with no further comment. She screams.

Episode Five: Choker

The mother is waiting in an upmarket hotel, scrolling on her phone and vaping. She is joined by Forest looking very suspicious. She shows him the picture and asks if he knows the girl. Forest denies it, but the mother persists. She says that she represents a very important client who would pay handsomely for time with this girl. Forest looks again at the picture and asks where the mother got it and why she thought it had anything to do with him. She says he was not easy to track down, but the image is trending on social media and gaining lots of attention. Forest is now nervous and asks what the arrangements might be. The mother says she wants the image taken down and that she wants to meet with the girl to ‘prepare’ her, she will make it more than worth his while. Later, at the house, all the other residents have been sent out and only Forest and Rose are present. Forest also leaves and says that he is expecting a visitor, Rose is to entertain her till he returns. The mother arrives, veiled, and Rose does not recognise her, or pretends that she does not recognise her. They talk and the mother says that she should smarten herself up. She says that she has some things in her bag that would make her look pretty. Rose is reluctant but is talked into it by her mother. Standing behind Rose, her mother removes her veil and Rose recognises her in the mirror although she says nothing. The mother combs her hair, applies make up etc. and then takes the choker out of the bag. Rose says that the choker was given to her by her birth mother, and the stepmother smiles. Rose lets her stepmother put the choker on and makes some comments about social media, taunting her stepmother, who proceeds to tighten the choker around her neck.

Episode Six: Glass

Forest is pacing up and down a hospital waiting room with glass walls and large window. Rose is not dead, but she is unconscious. Forest is making up stories about how she choked on a piece of apple. The doctors want to call the police, they are not convinced by the explanation. Forest is getting scarred and is about to get violent when Prince arrives, the other girl has called him. He goes for Forest who stumbles and runs for the door. Prince is sitting by the bedside when his stepmother walks in, she says she has come to look after her daughter, how relieved she is that Rose is alive, etc. Prince tells her to leave and the mother throws insults at him, accusing him of always lusting after his sister. Prince is angry and threatens his mother. She leaves, throwing down some grapes that she said she had brought for Rose, insisting that Prince makes sure Rose gets them when she wakes up. Somewhat later Al comes in, sobering up and wanting to seek Rose’s forgiveness. She is still in a coma, or is pretending to be, and he sits with Prince absentmindedly eating the grapes. He suddenly jumps up and rushes out with stomach pains and Prince urgently calls a doctor, saying the grapes must have been poisoned. The show ends with Prince giving a statement to the police, saying how he believes that his sister was trafficked and strangled by Forest and that his mother tried to poison her. The police look very sceptical and say that they could only corroborate this if Rose wakes up, all the evidence is circumstantial, and the show ends with a police guard on the door of Rose’s room in the hospital.

Not a satisfactory ending, I know, but then neither is the happy ever after of the original story! I also want to make Rose’s complicity, or direction, of the action somewhat ambiguous, she cannot be a passive ‘victim’. Likewise, we should never be sure if Forest is a trafficker running a prostitution racket, or a legitimate asylum seeker, and that others in the house are taking advantage of him. I would want to leave a certain level of moral ambiguity.