COSMONAUTiCAL•net Passive/Pretty: A Mulvarian Analysis of Disney's Sleeping Beauty
Disney marketing emphasizes the “magic” of their movies; the very “magic” that Mulvey seeks to understand and ultimately destroy through her analysis of film (Mulvey, 202, 204). Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, an animated movie intended for a young female audience, displays the same male bias as live action films intended for an adult male audience. Particularly evident is the active/male and passive/female binary and Mulvey’s assertion that women in films are not characters of their own, but icons that stand for the perfect woman, who is beautiful and sectioned into pieces by the camerawork. The scene in which Prince Phillip gives Princess Aurora “true love’s first kiss” is exemplary for this analysis.
The third section of Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is titled “[w]oman as image, man as bearer of the look” (Mulvey, 206). Mulvey asserts that “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female … The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey, 206). Reading this initially brings to mind adult films; movies that are not necessarily explicit, but are created for viewers with a mature sexual identity – particularly male viewers, about whom Mulvey writes her essay. However, all of these patriarchal ideological biases are at work in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, a movie created for “children of all ages” and marketed particularly at young girls.
The title of the film, Sleeping Beauty, all but analyzes itself in light of Mulvey’s assertions. The first half of the title, the “Sleeping” of Sleeping Beauty, brings to mind the “active/male” and “passive/female” binary Mulvey asserts exists within film (206). In the penultimate scene of the movie, Prince Phillip gives Princess Aurora “true love’s first kiss” and wakes her from the evil Maleficent’s spell. Women’s bodies are investigated and ultimately punished (in the case of Maleficent) or redeemed (in the case of Princess Aurora) by the actions of the male protagonist. (Despite the film’s title, Prince Phillip is the hero of the story. Princess Aurora is only as a damsel in distress; she exists as a reward for Prince Phillip’s heroic actions. She only has power in that she motivates Prince Phillip’s actions, something Mulvey addresses with a quote from Boetticher about the role of the heroine in film. Boettitcher writes that “what counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents… in herself the woman is not the slightest importance” (Boettitcher quoted in Mulvey, 206). Princes Aurora herself appears in under twenty minutes of the movie, illustrating quite clearly that, despite being the eponymous character, she is of little or no importance beyond what she represents to Prince Phillip.)
The second part of the title, the “Beauty” of Sleeping Beauty, brings to mind another assertion that Mulvey makes about women’s appearance in film, and their connotation of “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey, 206). In the scene where Prince Phillip kisses Princess Aurora and wakes her from her enchanted slumber, viewers are treated to a close-up of Aurora’s beautiful face as she awakens. Long dark lashes frame bright blue eyes; her lips are perfectly shaped, a deep red and not a single golden hair is out of place. While objectification of women is usually thought of in sexual terms, a close-up of the face is just as conventional to narrative film as close-ups that focus exclusively on the woman’s legs (Mulvey, 207). Viewers are still transported to “a no-man’s land outside [the film’s] own time and space” by the close-up on Princess Aurora’s face (Mulvey, 207). For three seconds, the narrative ceases so that viewers can simply look at and admire Princess Aurora; the “visual presence” of a woman “freeze[s] the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (Mulvey, 206). While not explicitly erotic, the scene is “shot” over Prince Phillip’s shoulder, thereby aligning the viewers with his gaze. Mulvey’s idea of the male gaze is made explicit here as we as viewers (male and female alike) join Prince Phillip in his voyeurism.
What makes Sleeping Beauty particularly worthy of Mulvarian analysis is the target audience. Despite the fact that this film is marketed towards young girls the camera still takes on a noticeably male perspective in looking at Princess Aurora. Mulvey’s analysis suffers a similar flaw; although she is a feminist film theorist, her essay focuses exclusively on male viewers, her thoughts on female spectatorship relegated to a secondary and less famous essay, “Afterthoughts.” This correlation is an interesting one. Although Sleeping Beauty privileges male phantasy and “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” seeks to deconstruct the male gaze, they both center around male viewers. This may have been Mulvey’s point: these conventions of narrative cinema are so pervasive that they are at work even in a movie marketed towards a young female audience.
Works Cited
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The Routledge Critical Cultural Theory Reader. Eds. Niel Badmington and Julia Thomas. Routledge: London, 2008. 202-212.