PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, metaphysical*
It could be argued that SLEEPING BEAUTY
is the first “Disney prince” film, since so much of the action revolves around
the male lead. Certainly my best
childhood memories of the film—possibly in an early re-release, as I would’ve
been age four for the first release—are of the bravura closing act of the film,
with particular emphasis on Prince Philip’s escape from the castle of
Maleficent. As a child I was
particularly fascinated by the magical transformations in the escape-scene,
wherein the Three Good Fairies change arrows into flowers, or protect Philip
from boiling oil with a rainbow. This
was perhaps my first exposure to an “otherworldly fantasy” in the form of a
full-length film, though I imagine I’d seen short cartoons on similar subject
matter.
Two earlier “princess films,” SNOW
WHITE and CINDERELLA, followed a pattern common to many European folktales, in
which a girl of high standing is reduced to domestic drudgery, only to recover
her former status by marrying up. What this trope meant in the folktales has
received a good deal of speculation, but in this essay I can only deal with
what it may’ve meant in the Disney films.
For SNOW WHITE and CINDERELLA, it’s essential that the central female
characters should accept their domestic duties with grace and good cheer. This in turn earns them the regard of
woodland creatures and of supernatural benefactors, both of which are oriented
on helping the “princess-brought-low” to escaping the life of drudgery through
marriage.
SLEEPING BEAUTY is not the same
sort of animal. Though the Disney film
works in a sequence about Princess Aurora being raised in lowly
circumstances—though to be sure, she never knows any other state of affairs—the
main trope of the original folktale is that of “the princess enchanted.” In the standard “Sleeping Beauty” narrative,
the princess’ enchantment causes her and her kingdom to sleep for hundreds of
years, until she’s awakened from her sleep by the kiss of a prince.
Though waking the princess with the kiss of a total
stranger passed muster in 1938’s SNOW WHITE, for whatever reason the script of
1959’s SLEEPING BEAUTY chose a diametrically opposed approach. Precisely because Aurora is raised in humble
circumstances—a “fortunate fall” if there ever was one—she has the chance to
“meet cute” with Philip, so that they can fall in love prior to discovering
that they have already been engaged to one another by their parents. This comic plot means that both Aurora and
her kingdom don’t descend into sleep for more than a day or so, so that Aurora
can be rescued, not by the mere
stereotype of a marriageable prince, but by a true love aroused with no thought
of one’s improvement in social standing.
Still, though many viewers might
not mind the excision of domestic drudgery from Aurora’s program, it must be
admitted that without these or something similar, Princess Aurora seems to have
it a little too easy. Without the
necessity to show “grace under pressure,” she seems to exist for two purposes,
to be beautiful and to be married.
All this said, it might not be
correct to consider BEAUTY as either a “princess” or a “prince” film. The true conflict is, for the first time in a
Disney film, between two feminine forces—quite in contrast to the original
folktales, where both good and bad fairies exist solely to establish the circumstances
under which the princess is first cursed, and then allowed to survive the curse
under certain conditions. At times the
whole thing is brought about by some functionary simply forgetting to invite
the “bad fairy,” which brings about the whole conflict.
BEAUTY, in contrast, polarizes the
forces of good and evil more decisively.
It’s no accident that malicious Maleficient isn’t invited; good fairy
Meriwether makes this explicit. Indeed,
Maleficent is so deliciously in love with being evil that one imagines she
might’ve cursed Aurora even if she had been invited. The king-fathers of both Aurora and Philip
are utterly impotent in this conflict, and neither child has a mother with any
function in the story—doubtless because Maleficent and the Three Good Fairies
subsume the roles of “bad mother” and “good mothers” respectively. From the first, the battle-lines are drawn
between the three fairy-sisters—who are chubby and somewhat competitive with
another, but eminently forces of life—and cadaverous Maleficient, who rules a
gloomy death-realm and has but one totem-animal, an unnamed raven, who provides
her with affection. Further, it could be
said that the script takes the essence of the folktale’s concern—that of an
enchantment that stands outside time—and reverses it. Maleficent mocks Philip with the threat of
keeping Philip imprisoned until he’s a bent old man, so that he cannot possibly
be united with his ever-youthful beloved.
The fairies intervene to foil the time-binding enchantment and thereby
to restore the proper alliance of young lovers.
Given this relatively cosmic
scope— suggested in part by Maleficent’s claim to harness “the powers of
hell”-- one might argue that even though Prince Philip slays the matriarchal
dragon in the end, he’s just as much a pawn as Aurora in the fairies’
chess-game. At the very least it seems
evident that the fairies can’t conquer the Dragon of Death without Philip, and
he needs their help just as much to counter Maleficent’s forces. It’s an unusual take on the heroic tale,
where mothers, even magical ones, usually do not participate much. One can find a smattering of hero-tales in
which male hero and female heroine team up to defeat evil—say, Buck Rogers and
Wilma Deering, whose alliance dates back to 1929. But how often can one see Buck Rogers defeat
evil thanks to an alliance with Wilma’s mother?
In a DVD commentary on BEAUTY,
it’s said that SLEEPING BEAUTY was the end of an era for Disney, due to the
rising costs of making such sumptious, highly stylized fantasies. Certainly none of Disney’s 1960s animated
features are quite as ambitious as BEAUTY, and I’d say that even the best works
of the Michael Eisner years—LITTLE MERMAID being among the main
contenders—there’s not quite the same focus on otherworldly enchantment.
I've labeled the mythos of SLEEPING BEAUTY as being akin more to "drama" than "adventure" given that the heavy emphasis on romance, while I label it "combative" due to the invocation of a "good vs. evil" battle at the climax.
I've labeled the mythos of SLEEPING BEAUTY as being akin more to "drama" than "adventure" given that the heavy emphasis on romance, while I label it "combative" due to the invocation of a "good vs. evil" battle at the climax.
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