Credit: Walt Disney Animation StudiosToday’s popular train of thought amongst many movie-goers is, “They just don’t make them like they used to.” To a point, that’s an incredibly apt statement, but it’s the wonderful world of Disney where sentiment stands higher than the towers of Sleeping Beauty Castle.
Whether it’s simply due to the passing of time, cultural shifts, or even the “woke” movement, today’s audience is leaps and bounds different from Walt’s day. However, Walt Disney and his team of artists and animators might not have been as conservative or straight-laced as some might think. Although the counterculture of the ’60s wouldn’t roll around for another year or so, Walt himself penned one of the most significant feminist narratives before Betty Friedan even hit the scene.
Sleeping Beauty: A Feminist Fairytale
@babbity.kate Replying to @RjTok He might have to wake her up wirh a fist bump or something tho #disneyprincess #disney #sleepingbeauty #aurora #animation
@babbity.kate makes several good points in her video above, and there’s a great deal more to be unpacked than just her analysis alone. While she does address the heavy feminist themes of the original Sleeping Beauty (1959), she only scratches the surface. To quote Inception, we need to go deeper.
Although Aurora is one of the quintessential figures in the Disney Princess franchise, she’s not even in half of her own movie. Even Prince Phillip, one of the only prince characters in all of Disney who even gets a first name, only has 18 minutes of screen time in the entire production. That said, it was never really about them.
Sleeping Beauty is a film that’s more in love with its side characters than its leads, but that’s kinda what makes it work. Moreover, the true leads of this Disney classic aren’t just women, they’re women of power whose every action or inaction has some effect on the main plot.
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Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are the true protagonists of the film, and that’s been a fact since 1959. While they’re primarily a comical trio, they do the most to aid Aurora in the film, as well as aid Prince Philip in the battle against the dragon. All the titular princess has to do for the rest of the film is sleep off Maleficent’s curse.
On that note, the Mistress of All Evil is one of the most iconic and recognizable villains in all of fiction, and we all have Disney to thank for it. She’s a woman of power who is unapologetically evil, commands an army of monsters, transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, and commands “all the powers of Hell!” If there’s one thing fans always remember about the movie, it’s Maleficent.
Every day, fans beg for more female representation in modern media, especially from Disney. How quickly they forget that Walt practically wrote the instruction manual on how to cast strong women characters in an animated fairytale. Perhaps the studio should revisit these elements and give modern audiences the representation they crave?
Do you see any hidden meanings in Sleeping Beauty? Tell Inside the Magic what you think in the comments below!