This week I’ve revisited Disney’s 1959 animation Sleeping Beauty. I decided to watch this
movie for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Sleeping Beauty is unique for it’s stylistic
autonomy in the Disney cannon. Walt was largely hands-off in regards to the
visuals and the result is an interesting synthesis of flat, angular, medieval
illustration and typical Disney form and fluidity reminiscent of the best
aspects of UPA.
The other reason I wanted to see Sleeping Beauty was that unlike other Disney
films I have very little experience of it from childhood. As a result I could
enter into the viewing with fresh eyes and make an honest assessment.
Before watching the movie I had a hard time remembering
which princess the eponymous Beauty actually
was. When I tried to conjure an image in my head all I got was some muddled amalgamation
of Snow White and Cinderella. After watching the movie I realized that my initial
bewilderment is actually an effective summation of the movie. So she’s the one
that’s banished by her father, who loves animals and gets a sleep curse? I
guess she’s the blonde one that’s not
Cinderella. The fact that Sleeping
Beauty is widely considered an enduring classic is a bit perplexing. Eyvind
Earle’s backgrounds are just as engrossing to look at now, as they were when
they were made. The film is probably one of the most unique and visually
complex Disney films of the era. However, the prevailing sense I got after
watching it is that behind the excellent animation is a plot-shaped hole filled
with discarded bits cobbled together from Disney’s previous fairytale
offerings.
A delightful bit of animation by Milt Kahl
Some appealing characterization from Ollie Johnston &
Frank Thomas
The plot is driven by happenstance and the characters don’t
change over the course of the film, except for Maleficent, who goes from evil
witch, to dead evil witch. It is pure uncut good vs. evil
stuff. Although she is technically the main character, the Princess Aurora appears
in the film for less than twenty minutes, and much of that time is spent crying
and sleeping (in that order). Perhaps it is this one-dimensionality that has
allowed children to project their own unique fantasies onto the film. But that
brings me to a central question what is the fantasy world constructed by Sleeping Beauty?
Princess Aurora and all her musical forest companions are one
with the natural order. The characters function within their assemblies
without a hitch, brimming with unadulterated pureness and nary a unique thought
or spec of agency. Indeed throughout the story the woman cook clean, and
child-rear, while the men eat and drink, and stab things with their turgid, heroic
swords. The magic kingdom functions without any perceivable influence from the
Queen, much less from Aurora herself. The conflict resolves itself without shifting
the status quo an inch.
In the last fifty years Disney movies become a right
of passage for many children myself included. Looking back it’s difficult to discern
Disney’s influence from the haze of childhood nostalgia. The tendrils of Walt’s
empire reach far beyond comprehension both personally and in popular culture. The
Disney monolith seems to fulfill a need in the cotemporary psyche. It’s Good, clean entertainment, a
comfortable, safe brand in the uncertainties of the everyday world, it says
this all implicitly. The Disney ideology is really about making a promise to
the viewer. A promise of the American dream, retrofitted for boys and girls
everywhere, forever. It states that if you act a certain way, if you look a
certain way, if you behave a certain way, you will live happily ever after. Not
just because you want to, but because it is the right thing. Obviously, the Disney ethos has progressed in some significant
ways since the late fifties. The messaging is more nuanced than it was in
Sleeping Beauty; the moralizing is less overt, more slickly presented (See
Frozen or Big Hero 6). The fact remains however, that Disney and its modern
subsidiaries still determine what’s right
in entertainment. They don’t abide by the status quo so much as they create it
and absorb it. I don’t know whether Disney is a positive force on world culture
or on the individuals that consume it but I’m fascinated to see where it all
ends up.
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