MovieChat Forums > Sleeping Beauty (1959) Discussion > Princess Aurora is great, rabid feminist...

Princess Aurora is great, rabid feminists are morons.

posted 3 years ago by alanparsons (541)
10 replies | jump to latest

I've seen people bashing Princess Aurora for being a weak character, damsel in distress type that does nothing and "needs" a prince to save her. The kind of morons spouting this stuff are beyond pathetic and can't admit that the thought of a defenseless 16 year old just makes them feel insecure about themselves so they push an aggressive feminist agenda to counter it.

Let's look at this movie with a rational view. Princess Aurora is a 16 year old teenager who simply does what her caretakers (fairies) tell her to do. If they tell her to go out and pick berries, she does that. If they tell her put on this dress and let's go to the castle she does that. She is a well mannered child who is respectful to the 3 fairies that raised her. Next, when at the castle an evil witch literally put a spell on her that made her touch the spindle to "die". She's under a spell, what else is she supposed to do??? Next, Prince Phillip "saving the day". Prince Phillip couldn't have done jack without the help of the fairies. The fairies broke him out of prison, gave him a sword and shield, told him where the princess was in the castle and that he needed to go there, saved him several times from the monsters at the witches castle during the escape, helped him through the thorns, and further enchanted his sword so it would kill the dragon in one good throw. This nonsense that Prince Phillip saving the princess as being part of some sort of machismo patriarchal agenda is absolutely ridiculous. He literally needed three old women fairies to save his life and help him literally every step of the way until it was time for the wakeup kiss at the end.

In fact, not just Aurora, not just Phillip, but the ENTIRE KINDOM was at the mercy of Maleficent. The entire movie was essentially a power struggle between Maleficent and the fairies, and how their decisions amongst the mortals played out. And for some stupid reason moronic losers focus on Aurora for not being a stronger female character.

The truth is the desire to attack Princess Aurora for being a "weak" character and symbolic of the damsel in distress waiting for a man to save her is simply a projection that ugly feminists put on this character to push their own agenda. She's a 16 year old girl who did what her caretakers told her to do and then the evil witch got to her. There's zero reason to attack her for not being a "proud, defiant, I don't need no man, woman.

The only somewhat credible gripe I can see with this story is there are a lot of thematic similarities with Snow White in this movie, but the stories just happen to have similar aspects to it. Disney took the source material from these short stories and ballooned them up to full feature movies.

Some side notes: To me Aurora has the quintessential appearance of a Disney princess. They knocked it out of the park with the stylizations of this movie, all the characters and especially those gorgeous background scenes. And lastly, even though prince Phillip needed help during the entire action sequence, it was cool to see him put up such a good fight for a mortal going against all the crazy magic and monsters.

[–] Ace_Spade (9381) 3 years ago

Well, I don't think Aurora is a great character - she isn't terribly deep - but as you say, Philip isn't either. This is a great story because it just straight-up tells a faerie tale, and those protagonists aren't multi-layered exercises in psychology. They don't have to be what we would call "great characters".

And anybody who thinks liking Sleeping Beauty or Princess Aurora is a threat to feminism are dumb. Women and girls have plenty of role models and deep characters to love and look up to. If an Aurora slips through once in a while, fine.

[–] sut6432 (2840) 3 years ago

Lots of real life women have needed a man to save them over the years...it happens. Die hard feminist psychos will just need to learn to deal with that fact and get over it.

[–] Otter (24464) 3 years ago

Well, that's the thing about Aurora, she just does what other people tell her what to do. She does what the fairies tell her to do, she does what her parents tell her what to do, she does what the spell tells her what to do - the only decision she makes in the whole film is to obey her parents and do her duty to the kingdom, even if it breaks her heart. Which is admirable, I suppose, she does go with the greater good, but she is basically passive and obedient. I suppose some people like that and wish children would be more like Aurora, but not me.

I admire the fairies, who do whatever they can to fight evil, and never break their own ethical rules in doing so. They're brave, too, when the final battle comes they successfully confound Maleficent's army, they defeat eeevil with clever and non-lethal means. So many movie heroes win by using tactics that make them no better than their enemies, but the fairies win without compromising themselves and bring happily ever afters to everyone but their enemies.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 2 years ago

I pretty much agree that the fairies are the real heroes. If a protagonist is the character acting against the antagonist in pursuit of a goal, then the fairies are the ones who fit the bill. Philip would have been stuck in a dungeon if they had not intervened, so this movie does have active female characters-- just not the titular one.

[–] Furienna (3322) a year ago

Aurora is pretty much doing what a Medieval princess was supposed to do though.
All of them couldn't be Merida.

[–] Otter (24464) a year ago

Yes, she did her duty as a princess, even if she'd only found out she was a princess that day! She did seem like a good person overall, kind to animals and willing to make personal sacrifices for a greater good, so I suppose she was admirable overall. She just wasn't very interesting.

No, it was the fairies who were interesting, they drove all the action and had all the good lines. They were the real heroes, and I'm still pissed at "Maleficent" for making them look worthless!

[–] Furienna (3322) a year ago

It is true that Aurora got very little screen time for being a titular character.
Then again, it is not her fault that she had been cursed and had to be asleep for a big part of the story.

I must agree that "Maleficent" did everyone who wasn't Maleficent herself or Aurora dirty.

[–] Otter (24464) a year ago

Most of Aurora's active screen time was spent flirting with Phillip or being fought over, she really doesn't get a chance to be interesting, she's actually kind of sidelined in her own story. But I suppose that was inevitable, in any story that involves someone being asleep for 100 years, there have got to be other characters to fill that screen time. It's not a story that lends itself easily to screen adaption, I'd say Disney did about as good a job as could be done.

And yeah, "Maleficent" sucked! The only thing I liked about it was discovering that Angelina Jolie is getting as campy as Joan Crawford and Faye Dunaway did at the same age.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

Only a mental patient would write this seriously about a crappy children's film.

[–] alanparsons (541) 2 years ago

I notice this about leftists. They leave these nonsense responses and then delete their accounts. Cowards.