5.3 Sleeping Beauty: Waking From the Dream

This week I’m reviving an old series on the podcast and talking about everyone’s favourite finger-pricking princess: Sleeping Beauty.

Once upon a time, a year ago, to be exact, at the height of Melbourne’s strict lockdown, I started a fairy tale series on the podcast in which I analysed and compared four Disney Princesses with their fairy tale counterparts. A year later, and Melbourne finds itself in yet another strict lockdown, and so what better lockdown activity than to fill in the blanks in the timeline?

Listen to the episode here

Download a full transcription of the episode here

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Other episodes on fairy tales

Quotes

‘he could never get comfortable with the story, even as it went into production.’ – Barrier, J. Michael. “Hollywood cartoons: American animation in its golden age”. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999

‘Sleeping Beauty’s expensive box-office failure brought the sharp upward trend in revenues and profits to a jarring halt. Profits fell in […] 1959, and revenue fell the next year, when the company suffered its first loss since the forties.’ – ibid.

‘It took us 6 years and 6 million dollars to make Sleeping Beauty, but to us it was worth it.’ – From the 1997 VHS of “Sleeping Beauty” (Version #2). “Once Upon A Dream: The Making of Sleeping Beauty”. YouTube, uploaded by Patrick’s Movie Corner, 1 Mar 2019

‘Sleeping Beauty compare[s] less favorably with Snow White. The musical score is sorely lacking notable melodies [and] the humor is also rather scanty.’ – Crowther, Bosley. “Screen: Sleeping Beauty”. The New York Times, 18 Feb 1959

‘Mulan […] is a great movie that does some lovely meditations on being a woman in a man’s world, but […] Mulan is the only female character in it who matters. Mulan is still an anomaly, an exception, an oddity in her world. Which is okay as far as it goes, but what’s awesome about Sleeping Beauty is that the Good Fairies are not exceptions or oddities (at least not in the sense that they are female), but simply who they are: heroes who happen to be women.’ – Butler, Leigh. “How Sleeping Beauty is Accidentally the most Feminist Animated Movie Disney Ever Made.” Tor.com, 6 Nov 2014