Czar Red #1
I too have a confession.
I am crazy about the movie Sleeping Beauty.
Everyone knows Aurora is more beautiful than Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel combined, even if she is a blonde. And everyone has whistled I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream at least once without realizing what romantic tune is falling from their lips. Of course Prince Charming proved that tights can be sexy – even if you still look like more like a wide-eyed eager boy than a man.
After my family and I finished watching Sleeping Beauty together last Christmas, my dad earnestly asked me if Disney movies had screwed with my mind. He was curious, did I conceptualize the ideal relationship as being one in which I gave up my feminist respect and instead succumbed to the power of my prince’s kiss? I laughed – did he know me at all? – and said no.
It wasn’t until later that I realized Sleeping Beauty did fuck me up. The breathtaking romance made me fall in love with love itself. I believe I’ll meet my prince charming and then we’ll be “happily ever after.” That perfect “renegade-crush-forever” relationship is possible if you only believe.
If I loved someone enough to live with them, they’d have to be warned that I can’t give up that fantasy. I cling to it through the darkness of solitude and disappointment. I refuse to believe that I’ll be anything short of happily ever after when I meet him. His white cotton underwear will be sexy because they are his. The pile of dirty laundry he’ll inevitably leave strewn across the room will be romantic because I’m in love with him.
And I’ll be happily ever after – I just wish that ever came sooner than after.
2 Comments:
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I was thinking about it the other day and Sleeping Beauty was my favorite early Disney movie. I make that distinction because Beauty and the Beast rules all. Yes, the princess was much more svelt than Snow White or Ariel. (Cinderella's inclusion in that list is a tough sell for me.) I do think that's really just a reflection of the feminine ideals when they were drawn. Snow White was a product of the depression era where the vamp of the twenties met the hard reality that anything getting enough food to have color in its cheeks was deemed marriagable. Ariel on the other hand was formed in the ideals of the post feminism rejection of Barbie-ism.(I don't want to dwell on her too long. That movie was all about Sebastian and flounder for me anyway. ;) )
In terms of romancism I think what I like most about sleeping beauty is not Aurora at all. I always wanted to be Prince Charming, though accepting the name always required me to suspend belief for just a little more than I would have liked. (You sure he wasn't named Hans or Percival or Chuck or something?) I always wanted to be the guy who could ride into danger heedless of his own personal safety for the higher ideal of saving so many others. Slashing away creeping vines. Breaking free from prison trying to save an entire kingdom and even when all seems lost getting by with a little help from my friends. Sleighing the dragons which enslave humanity. Eventually succeeding where a hundred years of gallantry and pride had failed and all others had given up.
This having been said, it I would also pose that you do not need to feel conflicted about being a feminist and liking the movie because if you think about it Sleeping Beauty is a very feminist fable. Arguing as a feminist; Even though Aurora was rescued by a man, he might as well have been a life guard giving her CPR after someone had tried to drown her. She was unconscious through no fault of her own and unable to assert her freedom as a progressive woman to help herself and her kingdom. Now someone bent on debating this point might recount the pricking of her finger as a consequence of a conscious act of curiosity and thus would make the case that she bore some measure of responsibility. If such a case were made, I would scream entrapment and further remind you that if anything this story only upholds feminine ideals by warning of the engaging the destructive influence of traditional social mores like spinning wheels. The fact that he was a Prince, and apparently quite a Charming one at that is incidental. The fact that it took three female busy-bodies to point him in the right direction is not. Let's face it, the prince was a tool.
Sleeping Beauty: guilty pleasure for the modern feminist.
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