An Andalusian Blancanieves by Pablo Berger: Translation and Intermediality

Abstract

In 2012, Schneewittchen - or Snow White, as we know it in English-, by brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, gets another rereading. Director Pablo Berger's film Blancanieves is inspired by the tale (more specifically, Märchen) taken from the oral tradition by German philologists. Based on two translations into Brazilian Portuguese, namely Tatiana Belinky (2013) and Christine Röhrig (2014), I examine the intermediate relations between literary and cinematographic works in the light of Irina Rajewsky (2012) and Claus Clüver (2011), especially with regard to the characterization of the main character, Snow White, his parents, the place and time where the action of both the tale and the film takes place. In Berger's production, characters, space, and time contained in the Grimm's work are evidently resignified from elements of flamenco and bullfighting, associated with the traditional Gypsy culture present, in turn, in the popular tradition of southern Spain. The presence of these elements makes the work dialogue with other well-known productions on such themes and the stereotypes that perpetuate in relation to them both in Spain and abroad for centuries. I analyze how the process of resignification takes place and how it discusses or not concepts and prejudices about popular and traditional elements very associated with what is commonly understood by ‘Spanish culture’, especially from the theoretical support of Rafael Jover (2007), Francisco Aix Gracia (2002) and Gerhard Steingresse (2002).