*sigh*
Sleeping Beauty.
Good Lord, Sleeping Beauty.
Sleeping Beauty tends to bug me more than a lot of other fairy tale princesses. Rather, a lot of the depictions of Sleeping Beauty in popular culture bother me for two reasons.
1. Sleeping Beauty seems more subject to overly sexual, rape-tastic interpretations than others by a good margin. This includes Snow White, who also “dies” and spends a long time asleep until she is awoken by royal male contact, but even despite the unfortunate implications of her being SEVEN when everything goes down she is nowhere NEAR as subject to this as Sleeping Beauty. I can only think of one depiction where the seven dwarves are disgusting dirty little men who are more than happy to find a helpless young girl they can imprison in their hut (the comic book series Fables) but even that is treated as tragic backstory for an otherwise fully-developed heroic character. With Sleeping Beauty it all too often defines her.
2. I hate the Disney depiction of her. To be fair, I did not grow up with this movie, so it does not have Nostalgia Power over me, but grrrrrr…she is such an empty-headed doe-eyed BARBIE DOLL.
First, I will start with the depictions of Sleeping Beauty I DID grow up with…
1. Beautifully Illustrated Children’s Book #1.
THIS was my mental image of SB. Mischievous and kinda cute. This book is gorgeous, written and illustrated by Trina Sehart Hyman.
2. Beautifully Illustrated Children’s Book #2 The Light Princess by George MacDonald
This is an interesting retelling because instead of cursing her to fall asleep, the offended witch causes the girl to lose her gravity. Not only does this mean the nursemaids have to keep the baby (and later, the woman) from drifting out of the nursery window, but the girl/young woman is incapable of taking anything seriously. She laughs at funerals, likes to play pranks, and her father’s raging fits only cause her to giggle at the funny faces he makes. The only way to cure her is for someone to make her cry.
But then, we get this bimbo…
FOR THE LOVE OF…YOUR ONE TRUE LOVE WHO’S STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU…SHOW SOME EMOTION, WOMAN!!!
Sure, she starts out cute and flirtatious…
…but…wait…she’s lived her entire life alone in the woods with three old women…specifically hidden and isolated from the rest of the world…has never seen a man since she was a day old…
Yet upon meeting Phillip for the first time her reactions is maidenly surprise, which quickly turns into flirting and cuddling. Then, when he asks her name…THEN she freaks out and runs off. While telling him to meet her later. At her house.
How does this work?? She has always been told to stay away from strangers because they’re dangerous, she has never met a tall, muscular male, and has never had a chance to observe any sort of interaction between sexes, ESPECIALLY mating behavior!! (Thank goodness Disney handles this scenario MUCH better in Tangled. Rapunzel’s reaction is significantly more believable). No, all we get is “They’ve met before in a dream!”
DON’T GIVE ME THAT TWADDLE, MOVIE! SNOW WHITE MAY HAVE THAT EXCUSE, BECAUSE SHE HAS NOT SPECIFICALLY BEEN ISOLATED FROM EVERYONE ON THE PLANET. YOU HAVE!!!!
Oh yeah, and then there’s the part where the fairies tell her about who she really is.
Please allow me to compare with other Disney Princesses…
Snow White: “Hello! I’m sorry for running through the woods screaming, but someone just tried to murder me…do you know a place I can crash so I won’t die? Oh, and I’m totally happy to do all the cooking and housework so I’m not a burden!”
Belle: “Hello, I’m crying because I just volunteered for Life in Prison in order to save the life of my kind and loving father, who I will now never see again.
Tiana: Hello, I’m crying because I’ve spent the last ten years of my life working two jobs and saving literally every penny to bring about a good livelihood/wonderful dream I shared with my now deceased kind and loving father, only to have it snatched away at the last second.
Cinderella: “Hello, I’m crying because I’ve spent the last ten years of my life trapped under the thumb of my horribly abusive stepfamily and all I wanted out of life was one night where I didn’t have to be a slave, could get all dolled up in a pretty dress, and maybe meet and dance with a cute guy, but then my stepsisters destroyed the wonderful present my only friends in the world made for me out of the only heirloom I have from my deceased mother.”
Jasmine: OH GOD I ACCIDENTALLY GOT THAT INNOCENT GUY EXECUTED!
Aurora: “Wait, so you’re saying that I’m actually royalty instead of a peasant, I have loving parents who are eagerly awaiting my return, and I’m betrothed to a prince? That’s okay, I’m not mad because you hid both your and my true identity from me my entire life…wait, we have to leave now? But…BUT THAT CUTE GUY I MET IN THE WOODS IS COMING BY LATER TONIGHT AND NOW I CAN’T MEET HIM BOO HOO HOO MY LIFE IS OVER!!!”
Me too, Little Phillip. Me too.
The biggest problem I have with the Disney movie is that out “heroine” is not the hero, or even a person. She is the plot device. Aurora does nothing. NOTHING! A third of the way through the movie when the fairies tell her that she’s a princess and she has to go marry the prince she was engaged to at birth, she runs up to her bedroom crying. SHE DOES NOT HAVE A SINGLE LINE FOR THE REST OF THE MOVIE. She gets led around like a sheep, gets hypnotized, falls asleep for a while, and when she finally wakes up spends the remainder of the film showing all the emotion of a Barbie doll.
She wakes up from a near-death experience to the man she loves standing over her, she then discovers she gets to marry him after all, AND she meets her parents for the first time…and never does anything more than smile. Slightly.
No, the heroes of this film are these ladies…
They bless her at the christening, they SAVE HER FROM DYING, they sneak her away and spend 16 years raising her so Maleficent won’t find her, when the prince goes and gets himself captured they are the ones that break him out of prison, protect him for most of the ensuing fight AND they give him the magic sword and shield by which he is able to defeat the dragon. These fairies deserve FAR more credit than they ever actually get.
The other reason to watch this movie is, of course, Maleficent. She is THE badass of Disney villains, and certainly one of the most iconic (she is even one of the main antagonists in the video game Kingdom Hearts). Normally I dislike villains who’s motivation to do evil is because…they like evil/evil is fun/good is gross and disgusting, etc, but I don’t mind Maleficent for some reason…maybe because she actually has the badassery to back it up. At the very least, one could make the argument that she wants power, and being the Mistress of All Evil gives her a crapton of power.
But in terms of what Disney tries to promote in its marketing, Aurora gets the spotlight. Due once again to the Disney Princess franchise.
Now, I understand that Princesses sell. There are a lot of girls that like pretending to be pretty princesses and I accept that. Hell, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, as long as it is acknowledged that not ALL girls like that sort of thing.
But it does bother me that Disney never tries to promote the awesome characters (or DE-BADASSES THEIR AWESOME ONES. OH GOD MULAN, I AM SO SORRY ABOUT WHAT THEY DID YOU!!! But I will rant about that more in another post).
Unfortunately, dumpy old ladies do not fit the Disney Princess “mythology” (yes, that’s what they call it, and use as their bulls#%t excuse for, say, not including Kida from Atlantis: the Lost Empire).
Before I move on, however, more pretty concept art!
A very different Aurora
Oh yeah…don’t forget the sketch models! These are photos of the models the animators would draw from…
And then Maleficent…awesome, awesome Maleficent…
I don’t know for sure, but I think this was an older version of her to match the fairy pic above…
Oh Disney Animators…no matter how evil your Corporate Overlords may be, I will always love your artwork…
One of the other reasons I will continue to be grateful for this movie is because it DID save Disney from going out of business. I may hate them sometimes, but I am very glad Disney did not go out of business.
MOVING ON.
Now, if you want a Sleeping Beauty that is at least a bit more satisfying as a protagonist, I recommend taking a look at Faerie Tale Theatre’s rendition. FTT is a TV show from the eighties that a friend of mine recently told me about, and you can look up the episodes on Youtube. They are hilariously low-budget, but I would still recommend taking a look.
This version seems to take place in Russia, has BERNADETTE PETERS as Sleeping Beauty, and CHRISTOPER REEVE as the prince.The main reason I like this version is because SB feels like an actual person instead of an object.
Granted, my brain just can’t quite accept Peters as a sweet innocent young princess instead of the sultry seductress or ulterior-motive skank that I’m used to seeing her as, but it works. And she gets a solo!
The prince, his noble steed, and his loyal servant…in 80’S PSYCHEDELIC LAND!
In this version, SB is betrothed to a prince, but unlike the Disney version she actually accepts that her father loves her and believes has chosen a good husband for her. He hasn’t, though it’s because he’s so desperate to keep his daughter from dying (he has not told her about the curse) that he picks the first prince that comes along. The prince is a complete jackass, which sends SB running through the castle in an attempt to flee.
Instead of being HYPNOTIZED INTO STABBING HERSELF
there is a much more believable scenario where the princess stumbles across a woman working on a funny machine she has never seen before and wants to try it out. The woman guides her hand until…oopsies!
Granted, this Bad Fairy is much more a comedic banter-trader and not a Mistress of All Evil, but it works with the tone of this version. It is supposed to be fun and funny, not epic, and it does it very well.
The prince hacking his way to his love through the rubber thorns and…good lord…
I haven’t seen an ax that big since I was playing Little Red Riding Hood in a LARP…
…What?
Anyway, the prince goes to wake her up and….*sigh* okay, okay, there really is no reason for her to act like she knows who he is and is expecting him. Given that she’s never seen him before. Still, at least she gives a genuine smile and then they have a proper make-out session. Better than the Disney wooden statue, especially after Reeve puts so much effort into making a heartfelt “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful” speech.
Oh, yeah…did I mention her parents were in the room when everyone fell asleep?
Hilarity!
ORIGINS
As with a lot of fairy tales there are multiple “origin stories”, or stories that the current tale may have/probably evolved from. Some people have argued that Sleeping Beauty has a historical basis in noblewomen from ancient civilizations who would be buried with grave goods and servants who would awaken to serve them in the afterlife (reflected in the inhabitant of the castle awakening once SB has been kissed). In mythology, Brunhilde from the Volsunga saga (popularized as Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas) is apparently what convinced the Brothers Grimm to keep the story in their collection as it seemed to indicate a Germanic origin.
(for those unfamiliar with the story, Brunhilde one of the Valkyries, goddess-like maidens from Norse mythology that appear to warriors on the battlefield as they are about to die. Brunhilde defies her father’s order to kill a certain mortal, and as punishment he makes her mortal and puts her to sleep on a mountaintop surrounded by a ring of fire, to await a hero who can brave the dangers to awaken her. Also the origin of the following opera steryotype…)
To my great irritation, not only has Sleeping Beauty given Freud scholars a field day (what with her symbolizing passive female sexuality, etc), but a bunch of modern interpretations have depicted her with very sexual overtones. Maybe this is because in some versions the fairy tale has her not waking up with a kiss, but with full-on sex. Or another version where she doesn’t wake up until the Prince rapes her in her sleep, she gets pregnant, carries the babies to term, GIVES BIRTH, and one of the babies sucks out the splinter in her finger.
I know I’ve read one short story where she’s a numb, drugged-out sex worker, and Anne Rice took it all the way by writing an enormously popular, full-out historic erotic BDSM trilogy where it STARTS with the prince taking her back to his castle to train her as a sex slave…
And earlier this year there was the film…Sleeping Beauty… about a modern university student who takes a job as a special sex worker…they are sedated while with clients, and the protagonist struggles with not being able to remember what happens while she sleeps.
As a disclaimer, I have not read or seen these two works, so maybe they’re brilliant and I just don’t know it, but this is still a trend that annoys me. I have nothing against reinterpreting a work in a way that is significant to the author/director (and presumably to the audience), and that includes ways that incorporate sex (or are predominantly sexual). But there is just something about how often it seems to happen to Sleeping Beauty and how infrequently to any other specific fairy tale that I guess just rubs me the wrong way. Or maybe I’m just old-fashioned and like sex to NOT be the focus of my fairy tales. If SB and the prince want to have some private time before coming down to meet the parents, that’s fine. I just wish people would play around more with reinterpretations that don’t revolve around eroticism.
Like Spindle’s End! I’ve only read this book once and it was a long time ago, but I remember it being a good read. The gist of it is that the princess is sent away to be raised by a fairy in the forest. As she grows up, she turns out to be a tomboy instead of a girly-girl like her very pretty best friend…and then someone comes up with the idea for them to switch identities to help protect her.
There’s also Shrek 3 (yes, I know I mention the Shrek films a lot, but it’s one of the few works that incorporates a LOT of classic fairy tales).
She’s not one of the main characters, but she does help out. She’s just a narcoleptic!
Oh, and speaking of Narcolepsy…there’s an actual, very rare neurological disorder colloquially known as Sleeping Beauty Syndrome (real name Kleine-Levin Syndrome) where someone will fall asleep days and even weeks at a time. They can be woken for brief periods to eat, drink, and use the bathroom, but they remain a virtual zombie and go back to sleep as soon as they can. Interestingly it is much more common in men than women.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_beauty_syndrome
Article about a modern teenager with the problem: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35254886/ns/today-today_health/t/rare-illness-turns-girl-sleeping-beauty/#.TtNIM_IXJ2I
And speaking of sleeping, it is my sleepy-time. I am going to close with one more pretty picture
