Sleeping Beauty is a Terrible Film
By Chris Cesarano
Disney Animated Classics are, technically, outside the demographic of this website. Sounds funny to say, but it is true. It’s outside of my demographic, even, and has been most of my life. While a few films in the 90’s appealed to me, such as The Lion King and Aladdin, I grew up with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. All I could do was compare protagonists and villains to the essential fantasy setting, and in the end Disney always came up short.
Then my niece was born and I started to see these Animated Classics in a completely different light. No, I didn’t learn to appreciate them. I learned to despise them. By watching what sort of toys and content my relatives brought to my niece, I began to see where the root of all misogyny truly spawns. It’s not about glass-ceilings and a patriarchal society keeping women down, and if it is it is instilled in us from birth. Every female that saw my niece dressed her up in pink, handed her a Barbie or Pony doll and taught her to wish she was a Princess.
Most of my thoughts on this matter would be controversial and way off-topic, but let me give some examples. Cinderella is subservient to her evil step mother and step sisters, doing nothing until her Fairy Godmother comes in and saves her. Never does Cinderella fight to earn her freedom, she needs someone else to come and grant it to her. Ariel in The Little Mermaid disobeys her father and almost brings ruin to the entire kingdom all because she’s obsessed with some boy on a boat, but it’s okay because “she’s in love”. In the end it turns out her naïve 16-year old heart was right, it was love and not lust, and her father with more experience on the subject clearly just doesn’t understand. The teenager has always known what true love is, and it’s a handsome young man dancing on a boat with his dog and playing the flute. Now that is love.
Even Peter Pan proved to be one of the worst offenders despite my expectations to be a positive influence. The hero of the story is a complete playboy, moving on from one girl to the next, frequently ignoring Wendy’s attempts at attention or communication. Despite how badly he treats her throughout the film, at the end she still speaks dreamily of this wonderful young man as if he gave her the night of her life. This is setting the stage for abusive relationships where, no matter what, the woman claims she loves the guy. Just because a man never lays a fist into the woman doesn’t mean he’s not abusing her. It is easy for a woman to be hurt emotionally and mentally time and again, yet they’ll still come crawling back because “that’s just how he is”. I’ve seen it happen, and my jaw dropped as I watched this same scenario play out in a Disney “Classic”.
This is nothing to say of Tinkerbell, whose catty and jealous actions are synonymous with the stereotypical cheerleader. She sells out her friends just because she wants Peter Pan to pay attention to her and not Wendy, hoping that they will leave ol’ Petey boy alone. Not only is Tinkerbell overcome with envy, but she proves to be easily manipulated by men that don’t actually care for her. Gee, another relatioonship dynamic I’ve seen play out in real life.
It is true that some of the more recent films are a lot better. As stated earlier, I’ve always enjoyed Aladdin and though Jasmine disobeys her own father, she is not happy with a life of luxury born to her. She wants to be ambitious and see the world, though her rash actions almost cause her to lose a hand. She never mentions being in love with Aladdin, but she is clearly interested in him despite being a poor (and let’s face it, bound to be smelly) street urchin.
Similarly, Belle from Beauty and the Beast is probably the best role-model of them all. The very fact that she is always reading is enough to be a good influence, yet her bravery to save her old father and risk personal harm at the Beast’s castle shows determination. She is not submissive as, no matter what, she does not yield to the horrific Beast’s demands (unlike subservient Cinderella or in-denial Wendy). The only catch is that a woman may be convinced that inside every asshole is a sweet man, when in truth most assholes will just move on if they can’t get what they want.
So what does all of this have to do with Sleeping Beauty in particular? Why not just title this entry “Disney and the terrible influence on women everywhere”?
While the above citations of Disney films are certainly terrible influences, that’s also their largest sin. However, Sleeping Beauty is a completely different monster that begs for greater critique. From the very beginning I found myself deconstructing it, pointing out the flaws in each character’s way of thinking. Throughout the film I was actually bouncing thoughts off to my sister, who never critiques films as deeply as I do. Yet this one each of us were capable of tearing apart to its bare bones as the most inept cast of characters ever.
The story begins on the day Aurora, our story’s token Princess, is born. As usual the whole Kingdom shows up to see her, because lowly peasants are actually invited to step their dirty boots into the castle and see who the next oppressor from the throne is. Three fairies also float down to grant a gift to our future Queen to be, the first being that of beauty and the second of song.
Let us pause a moment to consider what the first two gifts are. Beauty like no other, even though no matter what such looks will go away due to old age. She is also given the gift of song, because everyone knows Bards make for great rulers of kingdoms. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Britney Spears as the Princess of your kingdom.
Introducing Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Tweedleduuurrrrr
You’d think immortal beings wielding powers transcending science, engineering and the natural order of things would also have the intelligence to give this girl the necessary powers to actually rule her kingdom. However, it becomes apparent much later on that wisdom does not come with age, nor does power fall into the most responsible of hands. No, these fairies wasted two out of three gifts on superficial attributes that have no practical application for a Princess (other than to become a diva whose sex videos spread across the Internet faster than her STD’s).
Yet before the third fairy can grant her own gift (and honestly, it figures the short fat one would be the only one to have any bit of wisdom throughout the film), the evil witch Maleficant crashes the party. Why? Because she’s pissed off no one invited her, and as punishment she curses the princess to prick her finger on a spindle and die on her 16th birthday.
Let’s pause once more to give this some thought. Sauron was evil because he wanted to enslave and destroy the free peoples of Middle-Earth and take over. Shredder was evil because he wanted to build an army of robot soldiers and mutants and take over. Megatron was evil because he wanted to oppress humans, conquer the Autobots and rule the galaxy with an iron (or steel, or some other composite of metal) fist. Maleficant is evil because she wasn’t invited to the party.
Of course, all we know about Maleficant is that the other characters claim her to be evil. She certainly looks the part, too. However, why they fear her is beyond me. She has a castle filled with trolls to do her bidding, but she does nothing with them. She could easily use an army of creatures that know nothing but violence and war and take over the Kingdom. But she doesn’t. In fact, for sixteen years she pretty much sits on her ass allowing her army to grow fat. That is the worst possible threat ever and it makes one wonder why the King didn’t just spend a few years training an army to knock the bitch out of her tower.
Then again, I grew up on Lord of the Rings, so naturally I consider such ambitious and intelligent actions first.
No, instead our set of good guys take the most passive route possible. The third fairy grants the child the gift of sleep instead of death upon her 16th birthday until “love’s true kiss” or something or other comes to save her. Once again, the Princess being saved as opposed to doing anything herself.
The logic of using “love’s true kiss”, of course, is because love is the one thing Maleficant does not understand. Considering the kingdom’s attitude towards her, it’s no wonder. Someone will not understand love if they’ve never been shown it, but let’s just assume our evil witch was born with that sort of alignment by His Mighty Dungeon Master of the Greater Cosmos.
Now there are two major problems following here. The King has sixteen years to train his army to lay siege upon Maleficant’s castle with three spell-casting fairies as back up, and the fairies have sixteen years to work on a spell to remove the curse. Put twenty-four hour surveillance on the child and as she grows up tell her of the curse that was laid upon her. Not “don’t touch spindles or you’ll die”, but “we screwed up and didn’t invite the witch to the party, so now she’s cursed you to die on your 16th birthday if you touch a spindle”. Be blunt and honest and the kid will probably be smart enough to avoid a spindle on her sweet sixteen (especially if one of the fairies chose to maybe grant her wisdom or intelligence as a gift instead of beauty or song).
Instead, the King and Queen gather up every single spindle in the land and burn them. That means dozens or hundreds or even more are without jobs, left to less productive means to create clothes. Not only is it more time consuming and thus the clothing costs more to purchase and trade, but this means the kingdom now has to import clothing just to meet demand. The economy is now fucked because of two paranoid parents that somehow saw no other rational choice.
The fairies, in the mean time, decide to carry Aurora away into the woods and pretend to live a civilian life without using magic. Aurora is kept in the dark not only about her heritage, but of the curse looming over her head as well.
Fast forward sixteen years where nobody gets anything productive done, including the evil witch. Sixteen years that the fairies are hiding out and leaving the kingdom unprotected from magic. It sounds like the perfect diversion to go in and wreck house, but instead Maleficant does nothing except maybe search for wherever the princess is. Ineffectively, I might add.
On her sixteenth birthday Aurora steps out into the woods to practice her now popstar career of beauty, song and depraved life of sex and drugs. The fairies use this opportunity to try and make her a dress and cake without magic, and one must wonder how they’ve even survived so long. They can’t sew, they can’t even understand basic cooking instructions, and are a trio of air-headed buffoons. Except maybe the short and fat one, who does nothing but mope as the ineffectual leader of the pack tries to fit a dress on her.
Mr. Owl certainly knows how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop…
Meanwhile, Aurora uses a song of Bardic charm on all the woodland creatures while a prince mysteriously wanders into the wood. After having his cape stolen by an owl, two birds and some squirrels he follows them to some hot piece of ass singing in the glade, surprising her from behind with song of his own. In real life this would be a situation where the man gets mace in the eyes, but instead the two sing and dance together, ending off with a bit of cuddling. No conversation, no exchange of names, but instant public-displays-of-affection.
Of course, these two mystery lovers must part ways, trying to come up with a plan to meet up later that day, but it is all ruined as the fairies have to bring Aurora back to the Castle. Of course, while the princess was out they had to resort to magic after all, an act that finally revealed their location to Maleficant.
So Aurora, in tears, is dragged back to the castle because she can’t be with the creepy man from the woods. Prince Philip, meanwhile, heads back to the castle to his father as, oh coincidence of coincidences, he has been arranged to marry Aurora. But he refuses! He wants to marry that bardic peasant girl in the forest whose name he does not know! Thus he flees the castle, leaving his father angry and dumbfounded.
This is the most interesting plot point of all. If they had even bothered to exchange names the Prince would have known who he was marrying to begin with. Yet instead he runs out of the castle, looking to find the princess. Meanwhile, Maleficant hypnotizes Aurora into walking down a magically hidden passage containing a magical spindle at the top of the tower. Rather, Maleficant transforms into a magical spindle. For some reason the fairies were to detect a series of magical illusions in the room they placed the princess into, despite being magical creatures themselves. Such a thing should resonate with them, or so reading piles of fantasy and D&D books has taught me.
Even then, the most important problem of all is revealed. There was no curse. After all this time people were fretting over nothing, as Aurora had to be hypnotized by Maleficant in order to even bother pricking her finger on a spindle. This means, as stated earlier, the king and fairies could have raised an army to strike at the witch’s castle and all would have been undone.
Yet such a plan would have been too efficient, and so Aurora is put to sleep. In order to buy some time the fairies put all the kingdom to sleep instead of inspiring them all to arms against Maleficant. They go out to search for this mysterious love Aurora had been weeping over losing, only to discover the witch manages to get to him first. Yes, even the inefficient and hardly evil witch manages to plan better than our protagonists. Yet instead of killing the man and dooming Aurora to an endless sleep, she is content to let him sit in his cell until he’s an old man, then sending him off to the castle, where everyone else would have also grown old.
Yes, because there’s no chance that could go wrong. After explaining her plot, Maleficant then leaves to deal with the three fairies to ensure nothing else can go wrong.
Wait, I’m sorry, that’s what a rational being in a rational universe would have done if they were being evil. Instead, she sits upon her rotting throne and watches her army of trolls dance in celebration of absolutely nothing accomplished. Meanwhile, the three fairies sneak in, break the prince out and give him his weapon and shield. As the witch uses her spells to try and keep the Prince from fleeing, the fairies aide him, finally proving useful in some manner.
Maleficant finally gets sick of playing and transforms into a dragon, almost beating the prince if it weren’t for those pesky fairies. The only beings in the entire kingdom that could prove a challenge to her and never had she thought to eliminate them, acting her aggressions out exclusively on the mortals instead. As a result, the fairies cast a spell on the sword that pretty much causes the Prince to roll nothing but natural twenties, granting major damage bonuses and ultimately driving it through the heart of our evil witch.
I’d say she’s about a CR12, 13 tops…
The prince travels back to the castle, where he discovers the pop singer from the woods is actually the princess, and kisses her. Now, let’s back track a bit and consider what Philip would have been able to learn had he known Aurora’s name in the first place. If they had even bothered to exchange names, he would have learned that she was the princess he was betrothed to. So instead of running out of the castle, he would have been there at the ready as soon as Aurora pricked her finger on the spindle.
A simple exchange of names could have avoided the entire trouble present in the third act of the film. Yet instead, these two nobles learn each other’s names after their wedding, gazing into each other’s eyes with what is most certainly love and not lust.
This is supposedly good and healthy entertainment for our children. Characters that are fools and make the most inefficient plans ever are providing role models for kids. I’ve heard people say “but it’s a fairy tale!” as if that somehow makes it ok. The problem is that this isn’t a fairy tale, because in fairy tales the “protagonists” rarely survive. Hanzel and Gretel are eaten by the mean old witch. Little Red Riding Hood is devoured by the big bad wolf. The original intent of fairy tales was to scare the shit out of children so they would behave.
Sleeping Beauty is not a fairy tale. It’s a bad joke of a plot. Try running that story in a D&D campaign and see what people do. They’ll come up with a much, much better plan than any of the idiots in the story had managed. Everything could have been avoided if a few smart choices were made. I don’t mean how the entire Star Wars trilogy wouldn’t have happened if the gunner shot the escape pod containing C-3PO and R2-D2, either. I mean there are multiple points where the entire cast of characters make inefficient and idiotic choices that, ultimately, don’t help.
The other Disney films are notorious for providing poor role models, but Sleeping Beauty provides poor everything. It is, without a doubt, a really bad film, and I took physical damage having to watch it with my niece.
If you ever have a daughter, any of you out there reading this, never let your relatives buy gifts for your kid. This is the sort of thoughtless and worthless dreg they’ll be giving her. It’s McDonalds for the brain, and your child deserves better if you ever want her to grow up to be a strong and ambitious individual.
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