Why do Americans have more modern-day nostalgia for The Wizard of Oz than for Snow White?

I’ve heard Wizard of Oz described as America’s own literary/film epic. Snow White is a wonderful fantasy story but i don’t think it has the same cultural clout Oz does.

Because the Wizard of Oz is a story set in America in modern times. Snow White is a German fairy tale set in distant past

Before streaming a lot of America only had 4-6 channels if they didn’t have money for cable. And cable didn’t reach everywhere for a looong time. Anyways on one of those channels (CBS) started a yearly tradition showing Wizard of Oz. This ran from the 50s well into the 90s. This didn’t happen for Snow White. I remember it coming on sometimes around Christmas.

Just going to say it. The wizard of Oz is strictly a better movie. They are both classics. But I think modern kids struggle with snow white.

if you made a good snow white movie i think it would be pretty successful. snow white and the huntsman is pretty bad but still made almost 400 million.

Wizard of Oz is a phenomenal movie. Snow White is a pretty decent kids movie.

1. the *Wizard of Oz* f****** rules 2. Americans (and most Western countries) automatically s*** "cartoons" under "kid's stuff" and don't take it as seriously.

I think the “Disney Vault” kind of thinking before the days of streaming really limited the amount of people who could view Snow White over and over again. It probably also limited its views on network television as well perhaps. I remember watching the Wizard of Oz on television many times growing up, where I maybe saw Snow White once or twice. Google backs up this theory: “The Wizard of Oz (1939) became a dominant annual TV tradition starting in 1959, reaching massive audiences. In contrast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was famously protected by Disney, rarely shown on TV in its entirety until much later. Oz secured its classic status through repeat broadcasts, while Snow White remained a theatrical re-release staple.”

Because Wicked was a brand new piece of creativity, even as it uses the old movie as a springboard. Snow White was nothing new and was drowned by culture politics.

The subsequent Disney princess movies feel like an improvement to the formula (mainly talking about Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Mermaid, and Beauty & the Beast). Meanwhile, The Wizard of Oz still feels pretty damn unique in comparison.

I’m sure the cast of each had a huge thing to do with it

This is a very strange comparison. The Wicked movie is well liked because Wicked is good and is not just trying to remake an already existing movie. A straight remake of the Wizard of Oz I don't think would really be all that popular because we already have a beloved Wizard of Oz movie and we didn't need another one. In exactly the same way we already had a beloved Snow White movie and we didn't need another one. Nostalgia alone can't be the only thing a movie has going for it when people who really want nostalgia can just watch the original movie.

Once the novelty of Snow White wears off, there's not much you can say about a pretty standard movie. Still a cultural legacy of course. Wizard of Oz also has (clearly lol) better franchise ability.

I've always felt that you can easily tell that Snow White was Disney's first feature - the pacing is odd and it ends up feeling like a strung together series of shorts. The animation is also a little odd at times, they lean too hard into "Disney realism" in a way that later films don't. The Wizard of Oz is also episodic in nature, but holds together better as a picaresque. The oversaturated technicolor is gorgeous and really adds to the feeling of fantasy. Snow White is an important and impressive film, with some truly great sequences. Wizard of Oz is good movie.

As a film, Wizard Of Oz has been culturally ever present. It's got multiple memorable songs. It's got Judy Garland who has a tragic story behind her. The sets and makeup still have a certain Wow factor to them. It's been airing on TV since the 50s so generations of people have grown up with it. In that for decades it became a Thanksgiving time movie as that was usually when it aired. So then it became somewhat of the kickoff to the holiday season. Granted that's not much of a thing since tv/cable died and streaming took over. But for many like me and my family. It gets put on from bluray every Thanksgiving after the football games are over. It even has that huge showing in Las Vegas. Granted I've heard it's a scandalous butcher job AI abomination of the original film but still. It's selling like crazy and it's popular as hell evidently. Snow White as a film really didn't have any of that. It just has the notoriety of being the first animated movie which made it a new amazing thing back in 1937.

Snow White didn't have a hit Broadway show to piggyback off of.

It's a weird comparison because despite their timing as films and origin as children's tales, they are very different stories with very different histories. The Wizard of Oz is an American story, and a fairly recent one at that. It is not just that it was written by an American. The story starts out in the heartland of the US. It simply doesn't get any more American than Kansas. The wizard is the American businessman obsessed with all the wrong things and Dorothy is American innocence trying to find her way through the propaganda and greed to something she might recognize as home sweet home. Then you have the books and the story of Ozma and the complicated way that modern Americans (especially the LGBT) connect with that story. And then you have the witch and Gregory Maguire's choice to approach her character with curiosity, knowing she would ultimately do evil things but wondering why, wondering what drove her to it. Snow White is a beautiful tale, but it has very old European origins and a very old European feel to it and Disney kept everything at the surface and was careful to prevent anyone else from muddying up their snow white money maker. There wasn't that degree of control over the land of Oz. The end result is a richness of cultural memory in the Emerald City and the munchkins and the wizard himself and, well, everyone knows the Wicked Witch of the West. I can't for the life of me recall the name of Snow White's mother. The evil queen. That's all I got. I mean, Maleficent was brilliant, but... oh, that would be sleeping beauty. See? The Disney princesses kind of look alike after a while. Dorothy was no princess and a green witch is pretty unforgettable.

It’s all about the Annual TV Tradition. From 1959 until the 90s, The Wizard of Oz was a massive, once-a-year event on network TV. It was appointment viewing that entire families sat down for together. Snow White was kept in the 'Disney Vault' and only brought out for theatrical re-releases every 7–10 years. One became a consistent childhood ritual; the other was an occasional treat you had to pay extra to see.

TV reruns made Oz everyone’s childhood.

d...do we? I don't think about either of these movies/stories.

Wizard of Oz was always the better movie, and on top of that it's aged much better. Particularly the acting style, where Judy Garland and friends elevate it even further. Meanwhile Snow White's 1930s Betty Boop voice is strange and unrelatable to a modern audience.

The original Snow White is a very simple story. It's beautiful to look at, but the story is just a simple fairy tale with nothing really added to it. The Wizard of Oz holds up in a completely different way. The source material is a book, not a slim fairy tale. The acting and the visuals come together in a way that still resonates today. The music also feels more timeless than the music in Snow White (which is lovely but still). Another major reason for it is how the Wizard of Oz was re-released into movie theaters frequently for anniversaries and it was a major fixture on television on holidays. It became a part of people's lives more than Snow White ever did. None of this explains why the Snow White live-action remake bombed. It could have been very popular if it was good. It was simply not good. It's not that people rejected it for being Snow White. I think people would accept a good Snow White remake, but it's very hard to update it into something substantial enough that people would want to see. The world created by the Wizard of Oz, on the other hand, is deep enough that it can still be mined for more material and new interpretations.

The word you're thinking of is *appreciation.* Not nostalgia. If I'm nostalgic for anything, it's Toy Story. Toy Story was my generation's Snow White. It was the first time anybody ever saw a fully CGI movie. The word nostalgia is being used incorrectly, it twists the mind, because most of the peoppe who saw it in the 1930's and 1940s, and 1950s are gone. These movies played in theaters for decades, before television even existed. The movie theater window back then wasn't 30 days, like it is today. These movies played constantly. Walt Disney was the first person in history to take his movie out of the theaters, because he feared overexposure. Movies never left the theater. If you had a hit movie, it would just play forever in the theaters. Just like on Broadway. There are some Broadway shows that come and go. But then there are shows that stay on Broadway for decades. The cinema was that exact same way. If a movie remained popular enough, it was just always playing there. And Snow White was undoubtedly one of those movies. And Walt just decided one day to yank it out of all of the theaters, and just store all the reels in a vault. And that was the start of the Disney vault. Now I know all of that, because I'm a history buff. But I'm not nostalgic for that time. How old do you think I am? I wasn't around in 1937. I have no nostalgia for either of these movie's first 60 years of existence. Why would you think I have 1930's nostalgia for anything? Just because it came out in the 1930s? You can't have nostalgia for the 1930s, if you didn't live in the 1930s. That's basically stolen valor. You can't claim a tribe you're not a part of. I can't claim to be of the 1930s, and miss the good ol' days, when I wasn't even born duting the good ol' days. I have zero nostalgia for the 1930s. I have nowhere near the same amount of "nostalgia" for those movies, as I do for Toy Story, and The Lion King. I have more nostalgia for Toy Story because that came out in the 90s, and I was a kid in the 90s. So I was actually around in the 90s. And to answer your question, there's no evidence that Americans appreciate Disney's 1937 Snow White movie any less than MGM's 1939 Wizard of Oz movie. It's such a weird comparison, other than they are both by far the two biggest movies of the 1930s.

Wizard of Oz has a huge gay following that Snow White doesn’t.  It is funny though, as Oz actually was a bit of a flop when it came out. It was only when it was shown on television that it then became a hit, and later on, a camp classic. Meanwhile Snow White was massively popular on release but just got superseded by the later Disney films.

Do they?

their both classics fr