Sleeping Beauty

[osprey_archer]

“So is Sleeping Beauty the first Disney movie to pass the Bechdel test?” I asked Julie, as we watched Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather bicker over Aurora’s birthday dress.

After some discussion we decided that Cinderella was probably the first, given all the conversations that Cinderella has with her stepmother about cleaning the grates etc, but Sleeping Beauty is the first one where the female characters conversing actually like each other.

IMO Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are the real stars of this film: Aurora and Philip are pretty much just along for the ride in this titanic battle between the fairies. (Thought: maybe Maleficent’s curse on Aurora is motivated not just by general petty “you didn’t invite me to the christening” spite, but also “I’m mad at my fellow fairies and want to show them up in public” spite.) It’s all a big fairy chess match, and the humans are mere pawns!

...actually, that’s quite unfair to Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, who are genuinely goodhearted and truly love Aurora (I’m still mad at the movie Maleficent for butchering Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather’s characters in order to make Maleficent look good), but I would 100% read a retelling that went the “fairy chess match” route.

But nonetheless, Philip could never have gotten out of that dungeon without Flora, Fauna, and Meriweather’s help. Plus, the fairies get all the best lines! Truly a case of the side characters stealing the show.

Comments

[sovay]

(I’m still mad at the movie Maleficent for butchering Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather’s characters in order to make Maleficent look good)

I saw Maleficent for the first time about a week and a half after rewatching Sleeping Beauty for the first time since elementary school and the downgrading of the fairies was one of the parts I did not enjoy. I understood that it couldn't retain them as competent parents and run its "hello, beastie" plot, but once it decided to go the route of pure comic relief, I would have strongly preferred something on the order of Tinkerbell—the idea that fairies are so small that they can only hold one thought or emotion at a time, therefore they keep losing track of Aurora because of multitasking issues, not plain dumb nitwittery. Nonhumanness alone could have landed essentially the same jokes. Trying to feed a baby raw carrots, you just look like an idiot, but I can see even a conscientious fairy being puzzled by her human charge's mystifying failure to thrive on the nourishing diet of hearty buttercups and pollen-rich morning dew that perks up even a colicky infant pixie.

Rewatching Sleeping Beauty, I had not remembered and loved the ways in which Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are spectacular at fairy godmothering but amazingly bad at being human. Aurora just doesn't think so because, like Miranda raised alongside Caliban and Ariel, she has no idea what the human norm looks like and frankly she's not going to get much help from one mildly bemused prince and his sarcastic horse. I love the moment when Merryweather finally stumps upstairs and gets everyone's wands out because she's quite right that Flora knows nothing about dressmaking, Fauna can't bake worth a damn, and personally she hates cleaning and is blowed for a game of soldiers if she's going to do it by hand. Agreed that without them Philip would have been toast.

[osprey_archer]

Given how badly they fail at making Aurora's birthday cake and dress I just can't see how they survived sixteen years without magic. Maybe Aurora does all the actual housework? Maybe when she was young they hired an actual peasant woman to come in and help and Aurora learned everything from her.

Or maybe they were all using their wands on the sly, but for sentimental reasons they wanted to make Aurora's birthday gifts with their actual hands.