If you read the news as often as I do, you start to realize that there are always ridiculous stories. Truth be told, if I get to a point where I can’t think of anything relevant to write about, that’s where I go. And that’s what I did this week, when I happened to stumble upon a news story from merry ole’ England.
Apparently a group who’s performing the play ‘Snow White’ is going to change the word dwarves to gnomes in an effort of greater political correctness. I, for one, think it is a good move to take. And no, I’m not being sarcastic at all; in fact, I think Disney should formally change the name of the movie, as well as all of their other movies with offensive titles.
Instead of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ let’s call it, ‘Beauty and the good-lookingly challenged man.’ Instead of ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ let’s call it ‘The bell-ringer of Notre Dame, differently abled with scoliosis.’ And last but not least, we have to change the name of the ‘Little Mermaid’ to ‘I am Mermaid, hear me roar.’
But why stop there? Changing dwarves to gnomes is only the first step. We need to take this up a notch and start looking at the very names of the dwarves. Dopey? Please, how dare they? He should be called Silly. Grumpy can be Disgruntled, and then that leaves Sneezy to be called Cocaine Addict. Or “UT student.”
I would say this story was unbelievable, but political correctness never ceases to amaze me. Also, if there weren’t stories like this, I’d be out of a job, so I can’t pretend I want them to stop.
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‘Dwarf’ is not a derogatory term – it’s what they are. It doesn’t offend them to be called as such. Dwarves know they fall into the category of ‘dwarf.’ They’re not walking around thinking they are actually gnomes, which according to Dictionary.com are “one of a fabled race of dwarflike creatures who live underground and guard treasure hoards.” They get it. There are no treasure hoards. It’s not like how a person can be really ugly and just live in utter denial about it.
And it’s the same thing with dwarves, except names that are not OK to call dwarves include: Squirt, Shorty, Tom Thumb, Pygmy, Runt or Polly Pocket. Now, if you’ve never seen me in person, I myself am a tad on the short side (but I’m feisty; one of my fraternity brothers is a bouncer at Sky Bar, and it’s widely known I could take him in a fight).
Anyway, back to my point. All of this PC stuff is ridiculous. We’re getting to a point where not only do we not say things that are offensive (which is fine), now we can’t say things that aren’t offensive but can be interpreted as offensive by people who aren’t even in the group being offended. Make sense? No? Good, because neither does this ‘oversensitivity.’
For a person who’s not a dwarf to change the word dwarf is really the greatest insult of all. It’s essentially saying, “You’re not offended by this … but you should be, so we have to change it.” It’s the tall man keeping the short man down. OK, that last part might have been a reach. I just wanted an excuse to use the phrase “keeping the short man down.”
People need to get over themselves. Not every single thing that ever gets said is offensive. People might take something the wrong way and get offended by it; but, contrary to popular belief, sometimes that’s the problem of the person who’s getting offended. Life is too short to always over-analyze and try to find the most neutral term that you can. Besides, isn’t changing the word dwarves to gnomes going to offend the gnomes of the world?
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