Lians Posted June 8, 2014 Posted June 8, 2014 You saved me from watching this vile film and for that I thank you! Let's see if I got this right... A pretty and insane woman has sex with an alpha male and gets pregnant. This, from her perspective, is the man taking away her freedom and independence--her wings--and sacrificing them on the altar of patriarchy--the monarchy. She vows to kill (eternal sleep being a euphemism for death) the fruit of her bad choices, projecting culpability on the helpless child. Aurora is supposed to fall asleep (die) when her sexuality fully awakens at the age of sixteen, and this is only fitting given that Maleficent was supposed to die at the hands of Stefan. Through the refusal of responsibility, the bad choices of the mother are passed to her daughter, leading to the chaotic events that will inevitably unfold later in the story. Harmony can only be restored when the mother kills the father--the man who started it all in the eyes of the unrepentant woman. Maleficent's kiss of true love summarises the whole mother-daughter relationship: "Deep down she truly loves me even though she wants to kill me!" Well done, Disney, you managed to surpass Frozen in terms of corruption! The spinning wheel (I believe it was a spindle in the original story) is a very powerful symbol in the narrative and I'll only touch on it briefly. In medieval times, dowry was an important part of the marriage contract. If the woman wasn't born into wealth or didn't posses great beauty, she often had to accumulate fabrics and clothes as both a marital fund and a sign of her ability to take care of a household. The spinning wheel in this context is a symbol for marriage. Maleficent had a child out of wedlock so it's not surprising that the trigger for her curse is a marriage symbol. "What I didn't have, you will not have." Why did Aurora have to prick her finger on it? Born a princess and possessing great beauty, she doesn't have to develop any skills or virtues for men to find her valuable, hence her lack of experience with a labour device. Indeed, women possessing accidental "virtues" and deliberate vices is a Disney hallmark. Maleficent was born a ruler of the forest realm while Stefan had to cheat his way out of poverty through theft and lies. You see, it was the evil man who corrupted the pure fairy! Screw reality, this is a fairy tale!
powder Posted June 14, 2014 Posted June 14, 2014 That is an interesting and insightful synopsis Shem. Well done. I just saw the movie. I was engaged by the visual spectacle of it all, I am so impressed with what they can do with CGI these days. I really am amazed at how the stories, esp aimed at children, are filled with such violence and wickedness. The main characters are so lacking in virtue and integrity and intelligence it really is scary. I also found it remarkable that the young Aurora was so taken with Maleficent and how she greeted the father, who had abandoned her and never seen her before, with such joy - he quickly dismisses her. He did mention that she looked just like her mother - I did not catch the idea that she was Maleficent's child in the movie. the standard for female behavior portrayed by the characters in these movies really is twisted as you say. I couldn't get past the first 20 minutes of Frozen.
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