For Christmas, I had the pleasure of receiving Sleeping Beauty on DVD. I always loved this movie. It is such a visual piece. The artists for this movie took about six years, making it the longest animated movie that Disney ever made. When watching it, is obvious why it took so longs. Not only is it beautiful visually but the music was based off one of the greatest ballet composers, Tchaikovsky. Look up the Sleeping Beauty ballet on Youtube and you can see that the music between the two are inseparable at times. The reason the movie took so long to create was the art. Walt Disney wanted a “moving tapestry” so medieval art was used as inspiration for the movie. This is obvious in the beginning scene of the movie with everyone celebrating Aurora's birth in the street with bright colors and sharp shapes.
Going deeper into the story, it is beautiful but a big hole is missing. If I asked you what is Aurora like, could you tell me? You could tell me about her physical features, the gifts that the fairies gave her, but you couldn't tell me what she was like. The closest you could get would be describing a teenager in love. But that is so generic. Despite having a whole song sung just about her, the movie does not focus on Aurora herself but is geared towards the fairies. In other words, the sidekicks.
Yes, the three fairies. I'm sure you can tell me what they are like, all three of them. The three Disney princesses we are familiar with before Walt Disney's death, Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora, all had sidekicks that took up much of the film with silly antics, despite the princess's name in the title!
I have to give props to Sleeping Beauty though on plot. The plot moved! It separated from Snow White's dwarf antics of washing hands and Cinderella's mice trying to get food. There was not really any superfluous scenes, yes there was the whole seen preparing for Aurora's birthday with the color fight, but that was an important plot point since that was how Maleficent found Aurora in the first place. So it all was relevant oppose to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.*
Sidekicks seemed to suck the life of princesses. Which is why I disliked Cinderella. The mice overtook her rolein the movie. The only time I saw her in her true form was in Cinderella III but that is a different blog. It was the same genetic personality for Cinderella, Snow White, and Aurora: modest, polite, gentle, everything a princess should be. A perfect example of this same personality is Enchanted which gave me a good laugh because I saw the three original princesses in Giselle. So it seemed that all princesses were doomed to the two dimensional frame.
Then in 1989, we see a change and her name was Ariel from The Little Mermaid. Now the princess movie was actually about the princess. Not only that, but the control was put into the princess. Before, the princess lived then because of certain circumstances, they are put into danger and then rescued, all of it being out of their control. With Snow White, she was forced to run away and was protected by seven dwarfs. Aurora, she fell asleep and had to wait for someone else to save her. For the first time ever in a Disney movie, the princess took control. Ariel was the one that signed Ursula deal, she was the one that went off to search for her prince, she was the one that took affirmed action.
After that, came a wave of tough, determined, beautiful women with personality that would not fade away. Perhaps it was because the feminism movement in the 60's. And the sidekicks aren't the focus anymore. It is actually about the princess. Not to say that there weren't sidekicks. Jasmine had Rajah but he was only on screen for about ten minutes total. We got to know the princess, got to see them angry, and got to see them fight for their man. We even saw women that fought for no man or at least it wasn't the main focus, like Kida from Atlantis (she was a princess) and Mulan (not a princess).
Maybe I had to wait until Disney decides to vomit out a Sleeping Beauty sequel before seeing some personality in Aurora or decide to actually watch the movie shorts made for younger children. The art and the music is stunning in Sleeping Beauty, but if you want to see Aurora, look somewhere else because all you get is the generic princess.
*Random fact: On the original poster for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, “dwarves” was spelled “dwarfs” because the word, “dwarves” actually derives more from J.R. Tolkin's idea of dwarves. Both spellings are acceptable.
