I was actually talking with some small children recently about the snow white story, and I found it amazing how for them there was nothing magical about the mirror on the wall - it's just a different form factor of a google home device.
Edit: on a separate note, this got me thinking - why does the story make it a mirror? I don't recall it ever being used for its reflective property. Is there supposed to be some deeper meaning to the mirror being a reflection of the queen? Because otherwise, it could have just been a magic talking picture.
I'd caution against looking for deliberate symbolism in these ancient tales. The Grimm brothers wrote these in the early 19th century, but the folk tales they drew from are far older. But the mirror seems to be a representation of vanity. The Queen is gazing in the mirror because she's obsessed with her beauty, which is why she's jealous of the younger Snow White.
Perhaps the fable needs a modern update:
“GPTmazon-Portal on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
“Excellent question! Before we delve into the answer, let me tell you about today’s sponsored product presented by Samsung advertisement -- crypto.com beauty credits!”
I don't know for sure, but it's worth noting that the original story was from 1812, which is...based on a quick wiki search, right on the cusp of mirrors being made for the masses. (Seems like they would have been available for royalty though.) And as the story was retold, it wasn't always a mirror.
The Grim version was published in 1812, but it's based on older stories. Here's one published in 1782 that also features a mirror:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richilde_(fairy_tale)
However these are both just published versions of oral folktales. The basic outline of the story might go back hundreds of years earlier, and nobody will ever be able to say when the mirror first showed up.
To the extent that I'm trying to make a point, I think this supports it!
> By the time Richilde is fifteen, she is an orphan and the new Countess. Her dying mother warned her to be virtuous and never use the mirror for frivolity
This is something that would be a lot harder to synthesize in a world where mirrors are abundant, and the link between self-reflection and vanity is strong here.
as others have noted there are elements of vanity associated with mirrors. But that is not all of the reason, generally when one makes a decision in a story there are many things leading into the decision and the mirror is superior to a painting. The reasons follow:
1. A mirror does offer a current view of who you are, she asks it who is the fairest of all and looks at herself, but one day the mirror tells her she is not the fairest when she looks at it. This is as noted vanity, but it is also true. She is vain to ask the mirror who the fairest is, expecting the answer to be be her, but the mirror is truthful.
2. paintings do not move, a mirror moves, it is a better subject to query. You look at yourself in the mirror you move it moves, people can talk to themselves in the mirror. The painting of yourself offers the past and should stay untouched. This is why the picture of Dorian Gray does not say untouched, it behaves as a mirror, showing the truth while Dorian behaves as a painting showing the past and falsehood. The mirror is a better object to interrogate, the painting a better object to observe.
3. I believe at the time mirrors were known and more valued as objects to possess by the lower classes. This is just my belief. It is difficult for me to conceive of poor people thinking boy, I sure would like to have a portrait of me done up super fine. That would be sweet! Whereas I can totally imagine them thinking Wow, having a really large mirror would be super luxury and so useful! Damn I wish I had a mirror!!
on edit: obviously there can be many more reasons for choosing a mirror, these are just the three that immediately spring to mind if I were writing the story what I would choose.
Mirrors have many supernatural associations. Vampires, for instance, cast no reflection within them. They invoke spirits if the spirt's name is spoken three times. Sometimes, they can trap spirits or demons (must be a dozen modern movies that still utilize this trope, though the writers don't necessarily even recognize where the trope originates).
It's some very ancient meme (in the true sense of the word) that follows humans around without them even recognizing that it's there.
The thing with vampires was because silver is considered pure (c.f. silver bullet) and ‘could not countenance evil’. iirc this was added quite late in the development of the vampire mythos.
Photography as well. Some cultures thought that having your photograph taken would steal your soul.
My first introduction to this idea as a kid was a great episode of the TMNT cartoon named "Camera Bugged"[0], which had aliens with a camera that actually made people disappear.
[0] https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Camera_Bugged
The name of a tool is often closely associated with its primary use case, not the mechanism of its function. Tools which offer expansions of a particular use case are often named for the tool that they build upon, not for the mechanism by which they fulfill that use. Smartphones, for instance, are clearly computers, yet we call them "phones" because we use them for social connections over long distance—it expands the use case for the Western Electric 500, not so much a Compaq 386. (This is why the fight to preserve total app freedom on Android is a lost cause; success would make an Android phone a better Compaq but a worse phone.)
If the queen had an ordinary mirror, she would use it to ensure and maintain her beauty. It's specifically a magic mirror because it expands that use case, through magical properties that allow her to compare her beauty to that of every other woman in the kingdom.
The association between beauty, vanity, and mirrors is pretty clear I would think.
Also, mirrors have always carried some mystical qualities in folklore. In my country, many superstitious people still cover up mirrors for a few days in the house of a recently deceased, out of some obviously pre-Christian belief that the soul could get trapped/hide inside.
My interpretation: the mirror is a symbol of vanity.
Isn't it a mirror because the queen is so obsessed with her looks? She gazes at her own beauty in the mirror, before asking the mirror to confirm that she is indeed most beautiful in the land.
That is probably part of it, but mirrors are often used in the occult to summon spirits and see the future, so it's also an appropriately "witchy" thing to do.
Ever try implementing a mirror in a video game? They're just inherently magical objects, portals into an illusory world, you see into them in a way you don't with a picture. A magical talking picture just wouldn't hit the same, it'd be too clearly fictional.
Ever try implementing a mirror in a video game?
Completely off-topic, but how many people would you realistically expect to answer “yes” to that question?
Very few lol, I haven't even tried it myself to be honest but I couldn't quite think of a better way to express what I meant. It's more that if you've ever looked into the kinds of tricks that are necessary to do it, and compare that to how trivial it is to splash a simple texture onto a wall, that's a good demonstration of why they're so much more magical.
Yes. All the things in the mirror are actually there. It’s not just a trick of the light, it’s an actual hole in space leading to a mirror dimension. Kinda creepy if you think about it.
> why does the story make it a mirror?
This is what's called a metaphor.
ok what's it a metaphor for?
A mirror is a metaphor for yourself, your interior world. The image she saw in the mirror was her own.