Have you ever been starry-eyed, moonstruck, or just plain silly? Of course, you have. Maybe you don't remember, but that's how we all were when we were small children – doubting nothing, believing in everything. That's where Walt Disney comes in, filling our heads with fairytales of enchanted forests and magic kingdoms.

Make-believe

But, given the complaints about Disney's revamped Snow White ride in Anaheim, CA, it looks like some grownups have forgotten their age of innocence. The ride, now called Snow White's Enchanted Wish, boasts new audio, new animation, new music, and what Yahoo News calls "stunning visual technology" complete with laser projections and LED lights.

However, the last part of the ride - the grand finale when lovesick Prince Charming presses his lips to Snow White's to bring her back from death – is the sticking point. Protestors are accusing Disneyland of romanticizing sexual abuse. As the #MeToo credo goes, if a kiss or any intimate act isn't consensual, it's deemed an abuse.

Female complaint

Katie Dowd and Julie Tremaine, theme-park reviewers for SFGate, publishers of San Francisco Bay Area news, complain that the kiss "cannot possibly be true love if only one person knows it's happening."

Did Dowd and Tremaine forget this is a fairy tale? Syllogisms don't work there. They should have seen the original tale before Disney cleaned it up, the tale told by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm.

The U.S. Sun recounts lurid details of how Snow White was at first a seven-year-old girl who died a horrible death when made to put on iron shoes dipped into burning coals and "dance until she fell down dead."

Grimm tale

Surely, we can all agree that the Disney ending is less scary for kids to see. As for Prince Charming's kiss, yes, Snow White – under a spell cast by an evil queen - was not a willing participant in the prince's action.

But in keeping with the fairytale, he knew she could only be brought back to life by a prince who loved her. His kiss, then, wasn't some random, self-pleasuring act. He was trying to break a curse. Kids know this stuff. They know who the bad guys are in the story: Snow White's stepmother and evil queen.

Walt Disney, then, turned a horror story into a romance.

It was his idea of a happy ending. As reported by Screen Rant, "just about every classic animated Disney movie ends with a romantic kiss."

Unconditional surrender

Maybe those objecting to the fairytale kiss confuse it with another famous smooch – this one in real life – when a U.S. Navy sailor grabs and kisses a total stranger in Times Square to celebrate the end of World War II. The kiss was captured by Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt and further memorialized in a 25-foot statue called Unconditional Surrender by Seward Johnson. But unlike the prince's kiss in Snow White, the one in Times Square was inarguably abusive.

Yet, if memorializing a sailor randomly seizing a woman off the street for a kiss can be edified in a statue that has stood in five U.S.

cities and three European counties, surely a fairytale kiss to save Snow White's life merits a theme park attraction unless you believe that Snow White's Enchanted Wish ride will turn little boys into rabid molesters.

Granted, this is the age of protest, folks, but come on!
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