Independence Day brings with it Sounds of Cinema’s annual controversial films special. The episode celebrates freedom of speech with a look at movies that have been censored, banned, or were otherwise controversial. Below you will find the commentary from today’s show. Note that this is not intended to be a complete list of controversial titles, just a selection of relevant pictures that have rattled the cage. For more information on controversial films, see the sources at the bottom. You can also check out the blog post for last year’s episode.
The Apprentice (2024)
2024’s The Apprentice is a drama about Donald Trump’s relationship to lawyer Roy Cohn. The film is an origin story for Donald Trump the public figure we know today. The Apprentice was released in 2024 while Trump was running for reelection and Trump’s representatives attempted to impede its release. The filmmakers were sent a cease-and-desist letter by Trump’s lawyers and Trump himself called the picture “a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job.” In the lead up to the release, a dispute broke out behind the scenes. Dan Snyder, a billionaire investor who donated over a million dollars to the Trump inaugural committee, was one of the financiers of The Apprentice. He was apparently under the impression that the film would be a flattering portrait of Trump. It’s reported that pressure was put on the filmmakers to alter The Apprentice. When that failed, Snyder ultimately sold his interest in the movie. The Apprentice was independently produced and had trouble finding distribution. The filmmakers resorted to a Kickstarter campaign to keep the movie in theaters.
While The Apprentice did open as scheduled in October 2024, the film failed at the box office, earning just $4 million domestically. However, The Apprentice was well recognized at the 2025 Canadian Screen Awards. The movie won Best Motion Picture, Achievement in Make-Up, Achievement in Hair, Performance in a Leading Role for Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Best Performance in a Supporting Role for Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. The timing of the Canadian Screen Awards coincided with a growing tension between the Trump administration and Canada after the President floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. The Apprentice was named one of the ten best films of 2024 on Sounds of Cinema.
Deaf Lovers (2024)
Deaf Lovers is a 2024 film about a romance between a Ukrainian woman and a Russian man who meet in Istanbul. They are both jobless, penniless, and deaf and the two of them fall in love. The film was produced and released amid the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Filmmaker Boris Guts, who is Russian, said that he deliberately set out “to create a film that shows how war destroys our humanity and, most importantly, it kills love.” The film’s political message proved contentious. Deaf Lovers was to be shown as part of the Standing with Ukraine event at the 2024 Tallin Black Nights Film Festival. The State Film Agency of Ukraine called on the festival to pull the film. Deaf Lovers was removed from the Standing with Ukraine showcase but it did ultimately remain on the festival schedule.
The Antique (2024)
The Antique is a 2024 drama set against Russia’s 2006 mass deportation of Georgians. A Georgian woman lives with an older Russian man to avoid being expelled. The Antique was a multi-country production and was shot in Russia. According to filmmaker Rusudan Glurjidze, the shoot ran into numerous problems. The Russian co-financier failed to fulfill their financial obligations, shooting locations were disrupted, and the costumes were vandalized. The filmmakers resorted to smuggling the footage out of Russia to avoid luggage inspections. Shortly before The Antique had its debut at the Venice Film Festival a copyright infringement lawsuit was filed. Glurjidze believed the suit was filed by Russia to sabotage the film. Although the matter was resolved in the filmmakers’ favor, the lawsuit disrupted the film’s debut.
The Death of Stalin (2018)
The Death of Stalin is a 2018 political satire taking place in the Soviet Union after the death of leader Joseph Stalin. The movie achieved nearly universal acclaim from critics but it was not so well received in Russia. The Ministry of Culture initially granted The Death of Stalin a screening license but the license was revoked two days before the film was to open, effectively banning the movie. Pavel Pozhigailo, a member of the Ministry of Culture’s advisory council, called The Death of Stalin “blasphemous” and said it was “insulting our national symbols.” Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky said the revocation of the film’s screening license was not censorship but an attempt to draw “moral boundaries.” Director Armando Iannucci surmised that the ban may have been motivated by the Russian elections which would occur shortly after the film’s planned release date. Despite the ban, some Russian cinema owners screened The Death of Stalin anyway and it played to packed auditoriums. Those theaters were raided by authorities.
The revocation of The Death of Stalin’s screening license was the first event of its kind in Russia since the fall of communism. The Russian constitution technically bans the state from censorship. However, the Russian government has a virtual monopoly on media outlets in the country and observers feared that The Death of Stalin controversy was a sign of increasing government control over the cinema.
Strangely, the ban on The Death of Stalin may be linked to controversy over the Russian release of Paddington 2 earlier in 2018. Many of Russia’s domestic films are funded by the government, especially patriotic stories about Russian history and culture, and Paddington 2 was scheduled to open the same weekend as the Russian productions Scythian and Going Vertical. At the last minute, the Russian Ministry of Culture postponed the release Paddington 2. This caused an uproar among cinema owners and moviegoers who were looking forward to seeing the family-friendly movie. Buckling to pressure, the ministry restored Paddington 2’s release date. The cancellation of The Death of Stalin may have been an attempt to appease Russian leaders in Moscow and to avoid any more embarrassment for the ministry.
Fireworks (1947)
“Fireworks” was a short experimental art film first released in 1947 and directed by Kenneth Anger. The picture is regarded as one of the earliest gay films; in surreal fashion, “Fireworks” deals with homosexual desire and homophobia. Ara Osterweil claims that “Fireworks” is a subversive picture in the way that it used dream imagery, the realm of fantasy and desire, and wove it into the reality of the character’s life in a way that suggests “the actuality of homoerotic desire and sexual activity.” “Fireworks” was included as part of a program of experimental films assembled by Raymond Rohauer and exhibited at Los Angeles’ Coronet Theatre in 1957. Rohauer was arrested and charged with obscenity. Rohauer was initially convicted but that verdict was subsequently overturned. The decision was a major win for representations of sexuality in cinema.
Victim (1961)
The 1961 British film Victim is an important and somewhat underappreciated title in the history of LGBTQ representation at the movies. Victim is about closeted gay men being blackmailed. The movie has a terrific central performance by Dirk Bogarde. Reflecting on Victim’s sixtieth anniversary, film critic Guy Lodge observed that Bogarde himself was gay but never came out of the closet and Bogarde’s role in Victim altered the trajectory of his career. After Victim, Bogarde was no longer cast in romantic lead roles but instead played more complex characters in edgier movies like 1971’s Death in Venice and The Night Porter.
One of Victim’s transgressive qualities was the fact that the word “homosexual” is said by the characters. The word had not been spoken in a mainstream film before. The discussion of the character’s orientation is the only sexual content in the movie; the characters are blackmailed with innocuous photos. Victim was produced at a time in which overt expressions of homosexuality were resisted by censors; the film was intended to challenge prevailing social attitudes about sexuality. Victim managed to get by the British censors with an X rating. In 1961 the United States film market was still ruled by the Production Code Administration which had strict prohibitions on any kind sexual expression and Victim was rejected for a U.S. release. The film is now widely available.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Based on a short story by Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain was a drama about the love affair between two cowboys. Predictably, groups that oppose homosexuality precipitated a backlash against the film. Brokeback Mountain was pulled from exhibition by a Utah theater chain and protests were held outside of show houses in Auburn, California and Panama City, Florida. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops originally classified Brokeback Mountain an L for “limited adult audience” and conceded that the film was “a serious contemplation of loneliness and connection.” However, the USCCB reclassified Brokeback Mountain as “morally offensive” after groups hostile to homosexuality criticized the review.
Despite the protests, the reaction to Brokeback Mountain was generally positive. The film was released just as mainstream acceptance of homosexuality reached a tipping point and the popular reaction to Brokeback Mountain illustrated how cultural mores had shifted. Among the best examples of this was Walmart. The retailer had a family friendly image and it refused to sell music CDs with “Parental Advisory” stickers on them. George Carlin’s book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? was banned from Walmart’s shelves as were skin magazines like Maxim and gay publications such as The Advocate. Hoping to enlist Walmart as an ally, the American Family Association launched a campaign to dissuade the retailer from stocking Brokeback Mountain when it was released on DVD. A decade earlier Walmart might have acquiesced but it ignored the campaign and sold the movie anyway.
Prior to Brokeback Mountain, gay cinema had generally been a niche arthouse subject but the film was a commercial and critical success and Brokeback Mountain earned the most nominations at the 2006 Academy Awards. Its recognition was a source of criticism from anti-gay groups but when Brokeback Mountain was passed over for Best Picture in favor of Crash, the movie’s fans considered this a great injustice and a result of homophobia within Hollywood. (Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx wrote a bitter editorial about it and W. David Lichty drafted an equally tart retort.) The anger over Brokeback Mountain’s loss was somewhat assuaged by the subsequent Best Picture win of Milk in 2009.
Internationally, Brokeback Mountain had a mixed reaction. The movie was directed by Chinese filmmaker Ang Lee but it was banned in his home country. Brokeback Mountain was also banned in the Bahamas and the United Arab Emirates. One of the strangest reactions to Brokeback Mountain came in Italy when it was shown on state television in 2008. The movie was re-edited in a way that removed the homosexual romance, transforming Brokeback Mountain from a gay love story and into a film about a platonic male friendship.
Dogma (1999)
Filmmaker Kevin Smith’s body of work is distinguished by its combination of glib and foul-mouthed humor combined with sincerity. One of Smith’s best and most beloved projects was his 1999 movie Dogma which applied the filmmaker’s style to religious faith and in particular Catholicism.
Religious-themed movies are popular with a certain moviegoing crowd but only if the film fits within specific parameters. Dogma did not fit in that box. It was earnest about matters of faith but Dogma was also irreverent toward religious authority and had plenty of silly, vulgar, and scatological jokes. A copy of the script was acquired by the Catholic League, a lay organization (not affiliated with the Catholic Church) that purports to defend Catholics from bigotry. The Catholic League launched a campaign against Dogma, publishing a booklet about the movie that was circulated to dioceses across America. The protest against Dogma gained traction and Kevin Smith was inundated with 300,000 pieces of hate mail and death threats and he was escorted by bodyguards to the film’s screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Smith expressed exasperation with the controversy as no one protesting the film had actually seen it.
Dogma was produced by Miramax, which at that time was owned by Disney. When the Catholic League took issue with Dogma, Disney ordered Miramax to not release it. According to Kevin Smith, the Catholic League lost interest in Dogma once Disney was unassociated with the film. Dogma was still released and protesters did show up at theaters. One demonstration was held in Eatontown, New Jersey at Kevin Smith’s local cinema. Smith decided to crash the protest and picketed the movie anonymously alongside local demonstrators. Over 1000 protesters were anticipated but the total headcount was estimated at about fifteen.
Dogma fell out of availability for years. Miramax was run by Harvey Weinstein and when Disney interceded in Dogma’s release, Weinstein purchased Dogma from his own company and then licensed the distribution rights to Lionsgate. Because of that deal, Harvey Weinstein owned Dogma outright. After Weinstein was outed as an abuser and convicted of sex crimes, the distribution rights to Dogma expired and the film was out of print for years. Smith said in interviews that he did not want to give Weinstein any more money. However, Weinstein sold a tranche of properties to pay his legal fees and a third party picked up the rights to Dogma. In 2025 Dogma was treated to a 4K remaster and given a limited theatrical rerelease with Smith taking the movie on tour. It’s expected that Dogma will be available for home viewing in the near future.
Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Although a lot of films are considered controversial or shocking, very few have achieved both the revulsion and admiration of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom. Salò is adapted from Marquis de Sade’s unfinished novel The 120 Days of Sodom, in which a group of clergymen abuse young people in an attempt to work their way through every possible form of sexual debauchery. For the film, Pasolini updated the setting to 1940s Fascist Italy, changed the perpetrators from clergy to politicians, and set the action in the town of Salò, which was known as the capital for the Fascist government. The film features lots of grotesque imagery including sexual violence, mutilation, and coprophagia.
Film critics continue to debate the merits of Salò. For those who defend it, the rationales most often given is that the film expresses the trauma of living through fascism and that it is a parable about capitalism. Pasolini was a communist and he had been enamored by the leftist and anti-capitalist uprisings of the 1960s. The films Pasolini made immediately preceding Salò such as Decameron and The Arabian Nights were partly about the possibility of youth creating a new and better culture. But by the mid-1970s Pasolini had begun to despair that the dream was over and that the youth movement had been coopted by consumerist values. The torture of the young people by the fascists of Salò is a metaphor for the triumph of capitalism and the total domination of individuals by political and economic elites. One of the main examples of that is a scene in which a young man defiantly raises a closed fist to the fascists before being executed. But as some of Salo’s detractors point out, the film’s visceral horrors are so overwhelming that it is difficult to navigate to any underlying thematic point. The themes of Salò will be even more difficult for a non-Italian audience to deduce since they may not understand its context.
Salò was released in a period in which Italian filmmakers were pushing the limits of screen content and authorities were seizing movies left and right. An Italian court declared Salò obscene and criminal charges were pursued against producer Alberto Grimaldi in part due to the casting of underage actors. The charges against Grimaldi were dismissed. In 1978 an Italian court cleared Salò to be screened in its entirety. Salò was banned for decades in Australia and the UK. In 1994 an LBGTQ bookstore in Cincinnati was charged with “pandering obscenity” for providing an undercover police officer a copy Salò. (That case was dismissed because law enforcement were found to have violated the Fourth Amendment.) Aside from the legal action against the film, the legacy of Salò is colored by the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini who was murdered under suspicious circumstances just before the film was initially released.
Salò was named by horror writer Stanley Wiater as the most disturbing film ever made and it is certainly a candidate for that title. The fact that Salò is still able to get such a reaction half a century after its release is extraordinary given that the Universal Monsters of the 1930s and 40s were regarded as silly by viewers who saw them a generation later and how Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees became a joke by the end of the 1980s. Even horror pictures released around the same time as Salò such as The Exorcist and Jaws aren’t considered nearly as frightening today as they were in 1970s. But Salò has retained its power if only because of its uncompromising nihilism.
The Bibi Files (2024)
The Bibi Files is a documentary critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Bibi Files is primarily concerned with allegations of corruption; Netanyahu and his wife are accused of receiving expensive gifts in quid pro quo arrangements. The documentary makes the case that Netanyahu and his political allies are trying to upend Israel’s judicial system and have prolonged the war in Gaza to hold onto power. The Bibi Files includes police interrogation footage of Netanyahu and his family as well as Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and casino magnate Miriam Adelson. Vanity Fair reports that the Israeli government tried to block the release of the film, citing the country’s privacy laws. The Bibi Files is banned in Israel but according to director Alexis Bloom the documentary has “been widely pirated” in that country. Netanyahu unsuccessfully sought an injunction to keep the documentary from being screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
No Other Land (2024)
Also released in 2024, No Other Land is a documentary about the occupation of the West Bank. The film focuses on the relationship between Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian activist Basel Adra who co-directed the documentary with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. No Other Land was extremely well received, winning dozens of awards from film festivals and cinema groups including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. An editorial at The Wrap argued that the Academy should rescind the award because the documentarians omitted relevant facts and context. While speaking at the Berlin Film Festival, Yuval Abraham spoke out about the war in Gaza and called the situation there “apartheid.” In response, German and Israeli officials accused the filmmakers of antisemitism. Abraham claimed that he received death threats and that his family had to flee their home when a mob of Israelis showed up looking for him. Three weeks after winning the Oscar, filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was attacked by a group of about fifteen armed Israeli settlers and he was then arrested by the Israeli military. Following the attack and arrest of Ballal, the Academy released a milquetoast statement about free speech that did not name Ballal or No Other Land. That statement was criticized by Academy members and the organization released a follow up statement. Despite the publicity surrounding No Other Land, the film is virtually impossible to see in the United States. The film has no distributor here. When a cinema in Miami Beach, Florida did screen No Other Land, the city’s mayor threatened to evict the theater. That threat was eventually dropped.
Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone (2024)
The BBC broadcast of the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone caused considerable backlash and an internal investigation. Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone documents the lives of children in that region during the war that followed the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas. The BBC received over 600 complaints from viewers about Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. The documentary was narrated by a Palestinian teenager and it was revealed that the boy was the son of the deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government which is run by Hamas. The producers of the documentary failed to disclose the narrator’s tangential relationship to Hamas which the BBC used as grounds to remove Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from their iPlayer and cancel any rebroadcasts of the documentary. The censorship of the documentary was criticized by Artists for Palestine UK, in particular the way the BBC’s decision conflated a civil service role with terrorism.
Munich (2005)
In 2005, Steven Spielberg released the most controversial film of his career. Munich is a fictionalized account of Israel’s retaliation for the murder of Jewish athletes at the 1972 Olympic games. Based on George Jonas’ book Vengeance, the film encountered a troubled reception upon its release. Michelle Goldberg argued that there was a concerted effort to discredit the film in the lead up to its release. When it premiered, Munich drew a polarized response in the worst way. Those sympathetic to Israel saw the film as an anti-Israel picture; Israel’s consul-general called Munich “superficial” and “pretentious” and “problematic” and the Zionist Organization of America called for a boycott. On the other hand, Munich was dismissed as yet another film depicting Palestinians as terrorists. As a result, no one from either camp went to see the film or if they did, it was perceived through an ideological lens that skewed or ignored the complex moral and political questions that Munich presented. However, Munich’s reputation has improved with time. Eighteen years after its release, film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum called Munich the best film about Israel and Palestine.
Coonskin (1975)
Ralph Bakshi is an animator whose work has a distinct style. Within his oeuvre, Bakshi produced a niche of animated films that were vulgar and sexual, namely 1972’s Fritz the Cat which earned an X rating. Bakshi, who was a Jewish immigrant, grew up in and around Brooklyn’s Black community during the postwar era and Bakshi’s 1975 film Coonskin channeled those experiences and his interest in and concern for Black culture.
Coonskin stars Barry White, Scatman Crothers, and Philip Michael Thomas in a mix of animation and live action. Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox relocate from the rural south to Harlem where they take on religious con-artists and the mob. It’s a bold film stylistically and politically. Coonskin uses elements of Black American folklore as well as racist tropes. The film was released as the height of the Blaxploitation film movement which often told stories of Black characters who were criminals and sex workers. Coonskin commented on those caricatures and the ideas that they reinforced.
According to Ralph Bakshi, the title of Coonskin was forced onto the movie by producer Al S. Ruddy, who had just produced The Godfather. Bakshi has called the title “indefensible” and suggested that it caused him and the movie considerable trouble. Coonskin was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 and the event was protested by the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which called Coonskin racist and tried to stop it from being released. CORE picketed outside Gulf and Western, at that time the parent company of Paramount Pictures. The company backed out of distributing Coonskin amid the controversy.
After Paramount backed out, Coonskin was acquired by Bryanston Distributing Company which was known for releasing the porn film Deep Throat and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bryanston was also a known mafia-affiliated company and it went out of business not long after Coonskin was released. Coonskin’s theatrical showings were disrupted by repeated bomb threats.
Various versions of Coonskin were available in different markets. The original cut is reported to be 100 minutes. The Bryanston version of Coonskin was altered for its release in 1975 and most available versions run eighty-three minutes. Coonskin was later released with alternate titles such as Street Fight and Bustin’ Out.
Song of the South (1946)
Coonskin was loosely based on Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories which had been previously adapted by Disney in 1946’s Song of the South. Both films combined animation with live action and featured an elder Black character narrating in a frame story. Song of the South was set in Georgia during the Reconstruction era. Uncle Remus (James Baskett) tells folk tales to young Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) to impart important life lessons to the boy.
Song of the South was considered offensive for its white-washing of the Jim Crow era and for its racial stereotypes. At the time of its release in 1946, the NAACP spoke out against Song of the South and protests were staged outside theaters showing the film. Disney did itself no favors when it held the premiere of Song of South in Atlanta which was segregated at the time and the film’s Black stars could not attend. With each rerelease, Song of the South became increasingly anachronistic and after a brief theatrical run in 1986 Disney announced that it had retired the picture and had no plans to rerelease it in theaters or on home video.
However, Song of the South is a technically and historically significant piece of filmmaking. It mixes live action with hand-drawn animation almost two decades before Mary Poppins and the film won a pair of Oscars including Best Original Song for “Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah,” which was later the theme song to the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland. Furthermore, Song of the South is a cultural artifact. Its racist caricatures were unfortunate but not unusual in Disney films or in American entertainment from that time and erasing that record creates cultural amnesia without actually addressing the sources and repercussions of those images. As Aramide A. Tinubu points out, “by refusing to address its own racist legacy (which extended well beyond the 1940s), Disney is only adding to the problem.”
Disney’s decision to withhold Song of the South remains in force and the company has doubled down on its efforts to clean up its history such as removing a casting couch joke from Toy Story 2. The House of Mouse made clear that Song of the South will not appear on the Disney+ streaming service and Disneyland retooled its Splash Mountain ride, eliminating references to Song of the South and reimagining the ride as a tie-in with The Princess and the Frog.
Hail Mary (1985)
Hail Mary was directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It retold the Christian story of Mary and the virgin birth of Jesus Christ but set in 1985. The film is intended as a meditation on the relationship between spirituality and the body which it does to mixed effect. Hail Mary upset some religious viewers. Attempts were made to ban the film in Argentina and Canada. When Hail Mary was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Belgian writer Noel Godin threw a shaving cream pie in Goddard’s face. As reported by UPI, cinemas showing the movie in France were picketed and stink bombs were set off in auditoriums. Pope John Paul II weighed in on Hail Mary, releasing a statement that said the movie “distorts and slanders the spiritual significance and historic value and profoundly wounds the religious sentiment of believers.” Goddard asked the Italian film distributor to withdraw Hail Mary from that market but was refused.
Brazil (1985)
Brazil is a dystopian fantasy picture about a future in which bureaucracy has run amok. There is nothing actually offensive in Brazil but controversy erupted between director Terry Gilliam and then head of Universal Pictures Sid Sheinberg. Gilliam completed the film, running 132 minutes, but Sheinberg deemed it too long and too confusing for audiences and blocked Brazil from being released. When Gilliam refused to make changes, Universal attempted to take the film away from the director and created its own ninety-four minute cut, known as the “Love Conquers All” version. In an attempt to keep control of his film, Gilliam made the dispute public by taking out a full-page ad in Variety magazine asking Sheinberg to release the film. This did little to improve Gilliam’s relationship with Sheinberg but it did make critics and the public curious about Brazil and cast the narrative in the press of an independent artist struggling against an oppressive studio system. The final stroke came when Gilliam set up clandestine screenings of Brazil on college campuses, which he wasn’t supposed to do. Brazil was eventually screened for Los Angeles film critics who later awarded Brazil the Best Picture of the Year award, at which point Sheinberg gave up on trying to recut it and released Gilliam’s version. Later critical judgments of Brazil were mixed. The LA film critics were accused of siding with Gilliam in his dispute with the studio and ignoring the actual shortcomings of the film. In retrospect, Brazil is an interesting but flawed take on government, bureaucracy, and identity but the controversy around it is fittingly consistent with the movie’s themes.
Snow White (2025)
In the past few years online fandom has gotten ugly. Reactions to the 2016 female-led Ghostbusters remake were colored by sexism (although that may have been exaggerated). The behind-the-scenes skullduggery that removed Zack Snyder from Justice League resulted in an online harassment campaign that persists even now, four years after Snyder’s cut of the film was released. And fan dissatisfaction with Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi led some knuckle draggers to bully and harass actress Kelly Marie Tran so badly that she deleted her social media accounts.
2025 brought another harassment campaign, this time against actress Rachel Zegler and her participation in Disney’s live action remake of Snow White. Trouble started back in 2021 when news of Rachel Zegler’s casting was announced. Zegler is of Columbian descent and some purists objected to her playing a character originally described as “white as snow.” Zegler made a seemingly innocuous comment about the original 1937 film and how she found its gender politics dated (which they are). This was characterized by her critics as “trashing” the original Snow White. (Years earlier, actress Lily James made similar comments about her role in the live action remake of Cinderella but without the same level of blowback.) Zegler is an active social media user and she weighed in on the 2024 presidential election and the war in Gaza. When the trailer for Snow White debuted online, Zegler posted a social media message thanking viewers for watching and added an additional message of “free palestine [sic].” Those political messages transformed the conversation around Zegler and the film. That was not lost on Disney executives nor the film’s producers who were reportedly upset with Zegler associating Snow White with a political topic.
In the months leading up to Snow White’s release, an online campaign targeted Zegler and the film. Zegler was far from the only Hollywood actress to speak out against the reelection of Donald Trump or the war in Gaza but hating Snow White became a referendum on Zegler’s politics and what she represented.
What was particularly galling was the attempt to blame Zegler for Snow White’s box office failure. Snow White earned $87 million domestically and $205 million worldwide, less than the film’s reported production budget. When it became obvious that Snow White was going to be a financial bust there was a concerted effort to scapegoat Zegler. Variety ran an article purporting to tell the inside story of Snow White and pinned the movie’s failure on Zegler’s politics. Over 180 film journalists signed onto a letter condemning Variety’s article, characterizing it as bullying. However, Variety wasn’t alone. A flood of social media posts and YouTube videos piled onto Zegler and celebrated the movie’s financial failure. There is no evidence that Snow White failed because of Zegler’s political positions. In fact, Snow White overperformed in Republican-leaning areas.
Despite proclamations by trolls that Rachel Zegler’s career was doomed, things are actually looking up for her. A piece in Vanity Fair argued that the harassment campaign probably backfired and improved Zegler’s public image.
Rachel Zegler was not the only Snow White actor getting harassed. Gal Gadot received death threats. Gadot is Israeli and had made public comments supportive of her home country in the aftermath of the October 7th terrorist attack. In the same Variety article that condemned Zegler, it was reported that Disney had to pay for extra security for Gadot during the Snow White publicity tour due to a spike in threats. Some commentators made the ridiculous claim that the threats against Gadot were somehow the fault of Zegler’s political comments. Gal Gadot’s casting resulted in Snow White being banned in Lebanon. That country has an “Israel boycott list” and none of Gadot’s movies have ever been released in Lebanon.
The Snow White mêlée is a clarifying moment that is bigger than one film or a single political topic. Writing for The New Yorker, Jessica Winter argued that 2025’s Snow White is “emblematic of an industry that has no new concepts and poor judgment about which of its old ideas warrant revival” and indicative of “a larger narrative about which kinds of views on the Israel-Palestine conflict are acceptable in Hollywood—or anywhere in the U.S. circa 2025, really—and who is permitted to air them.” As Winter points out, actress Melissa Barrera was fired from the Scream franchise for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiments on her social media accounts. Although she was a lead in that series, Barrera was expendable because the value of the Scream intellectual property is in its name and the visage of the Ghostface killer. The same is true of Disney remakes in which the cultural clout of the brand is king. Understanding this, what’s most notable about the pile-on of Rachel Zegler and the death threats against Gal Gadot is the silence of the Walt Disney Company. They did not defend Zegler from online trolls just as they did not protect the cast of their Star Wars projects from harassment. Disney’s silence in the face of harassment may be viewed as consent. They let Zegler and others be harassed as an implicit warning to other actors to keep their mouths shut. When the film failed, Zegler was offered up as a sacrifice to save the company’s face and distract from the fact that Disney made a godawful looking movie that no one wanted to see. The nightmarish CGI dwarfs are a far more plausible reason for Snow White’s failure than any actor’s social media post.
Additional Sources
Curti, Roberto. Proibito! A History of Italian Film Censorship, 1913-2021. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2023.
Dirks, Tim. “The 100+ Most Controversial Films of All Time.” AMC Filmsite.
An Evening With Kevin Smith. DVD. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2002.
Matthews, Jack. The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam vs. Universal Pictures in the Fight to the Final Cut. Applause Theater & Cinema Books, 1998.
Warf, Barney and Thomas Chapman. “Cathedrals of Consumption: A Political Phenomenology of Wal-Mart.” Wal-Mart World: The World’s Biggest Corporation in the Global Economy. Ed. Stanley D. Brunn. New York: Routledge. 2006.
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