Snow White
Explanation
The Joke
The Evil Queen from Snow White asks her magic mirror, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" The mirror responds, "Snow White." The Queen angrily retorts, and then the scene cuts to the Queen being arrested by police, with the mirror shouting, "She's a freak! I never touched her!" — implying the mirror is being accused of some kind of inappropriate relationship with Snow White.
The Humor
The comic takes the familiar Snow White fairy tale setup and reinterprets the mirror's relationship with the Queen through a modern lens. The magic mirror, which traditionally serves as an objective judge of beauty, is suddenly recast as a suspect in a crime. The joke plays on the idea that a sentient mirror who ranks women by attractiveness is, by contemporary standards, deeply creepy.
The humor comes from the collision of fairy tale logic with modern social norms. In the original story, nobody questions why a mirror is ranking women by beauty — it's just how the magic works. But viewed through a modern lens, the mirror's behavior looks a lot like harassment or worse, and the police showing up is the natural consequence of applying real-world ethics to fairy tale scenarios.
Broader Context
SMBC often takes fairy tales, myths, and well-known stories and re-examines their premises through a modern or logical lens, exposing the absurdity hidden in narratives we accept without question. The comic is also playing with the broader cultural reckoning around power dynamics and inappropriate behavior — the mirror, a figure of authority and judgment, is held accountable for its behavior in a way the original story never intended.