Once Upon an Ideology

Wilde (2014) posits that fairy tales began through storytellers who shared certain belief
systems and teachings of their culture, reshaped through generations. Thus, historically,
these tales are prone to change according to the social and cultural changes in a certain
community. In connection to this, Lew (2001) refers to the didactic function of classic
fairy tales, explaining that “[they] serve[d] to acculturate women to traditional social
roles through certain storyline patterns that [indirectly] tell the audience what people of
certain genders can and cannot accomplish” (4). Thus, the reading of classic fairy tales
that espouse male chauvinistic values reproduces behavioural patterns and legitimizes
certain belief systems, which end up shaping women’s self-evaluation. Therefore,
according to Lew, in the face of this, a feminist retelling has taken place to address the
demeaning portrayal of females.

On their part, poststructuralist discourses posit that the adaptation of a novel into film
involves acts of mediation and representation shaped and produced within specific
cultural contexts. In this respect, by engaging the texts in dialogues, intertextuality
works on the premise that meaning is not permanent but rather a construct ―a text is an
open system which moves back and forth with other texts and can question the authority
of older texts, allowing for their adoption and re-vision to suit new situations and
meanings, a good example being “Briar Rose” (1812) ―also known as “Sleeping
Beauty”— by the Brothers Grimm with its numerous film adaptations. In this sense,
Stam (2005) states that “many of the changes between novelistic source and film
adaptation have to do with ideology and social discourses” (42). According to the
author, an adaptation pushes the source text either to the right, i.e., it naturalizes and
justifies social hierarchies, or to the left as it interrogates them.

In the light of all this, the purpose of “Once Upon an Ideology” —title which makes
reference to Miriam Wash’s thesis, cited in this work― is to explore ways in which
“Briar Rose” by the Brothers Grimm is reinstated by Sleeping Beauty ―the Disney
version of 1959— by virtue of reinforcing the patriarchal symbolic order based on rigid
notions of sexuality and gender and how, with more than fifty years in-between, the
latter serves as the hypotext of Disney’s Maleficent (2014), which offers a post-modern
retelling with gender consciousness as a current political issue.

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The re-instatement of the Grimm version by Disney takes place through a transposition
of the source text in terms of genre, i.e. from written text to film. In spite of the
approximately 150 years in between the two texts, a similar context plays an important
role in the correlation between the two. Such context is represented by the values and
morals of a predominantly patriarchal society, marked by a value system that denotes a
true woman’s honourability and respectability based on the virtues of piety, purity,
submissiveness and domesticity. In that respect, the function of both “Briar Rose” and
Sleeping Beauty is that of indoctrinating the audience by portraying women in a
chauvinistic way that adhered to these cultural standards, giving place to stereotypes. In
connection with this, in alignment with Zipes, Walsh (2015) posits that, in traditional
fairy tales, there is no character development since the characters are stereotypes
arranged to a credo of domestication, which is related to colonization insofar as the
ideas and types are portrayed as models of behaviour to be emulated. In this sense, these
stereotypes function as a means to make the intended audience conform to dominant
social standards dictated by a patriarchal code by which men hold the positions of
privilege and power. This is mainly done by depicting the characters as static —they do
not have any changes in the story and, as they do not develop, their personality remains
the same at the end of the story as it appears at the beginning.

One of the most common static characters portrayed in “Briar Rose” and Sleeping
Beauty is that of the damsel in distress, embodied by the protagonist. In order to
champion this ideal of feminine passivity, the main character’s role is practically based
on silence, which naturalizes the annihilation of female voice. On the one hand the
Grimm Brothers’ Briar Rose just makes three utterances —“Why, how now, good
mother,” “What are you doing there?” and “How prettily that little thing turns round!”
(Grimm, 1812)― and, after being awaken from the comatose state in which she has
been for the most part of the story, she never speaking with the prince but merely,
“open[ing] her eyes and look[ing] lovingly at him.” On the other hand, most of Aurora’s
—the protagonist― interventions in the Disney version revolve around her humming or
singing of “Once upon a Dream,” talking about love or flirting with the prince that she
has just met. In giving no inquisitive content to the princess’ speech, both versions
characterize her as a passive, vapid object. By making her lack her own voice, both
stories promote a passive feminine ideal by which women are depicted as a commodity
and property in a patriarchal structure. This feminine model perpetuates an idea of

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woman as existing to be used and, in this sense, assumed passivity deletes her will and
provides the man with the opportunity to act upon it. Significantly, in both “Briar Rose”
and Sleeping Beauty, the prince kisses the protagonist, which is the catalyst for her to
return to consciousness.

In both stories, the kiss is the patriarchal symbol of the princess’ sexual awakening,
which will lead to marriage. In this sense, in her state of stagnation, the only way to
achieve a sense of fulfillment is through the mediation of a prince, her ultimate saviour.
In his article for the website Huffington Post, Winkle (2016) states that sleep and death
are both experiences of a non-conscious state which are intimately intertwined. In
connection to this and in alignment with Roberts, Walsh (2015) explains that:

For a woman to be good, she must be dead, or as close to it as possible. Catatonia is the
good woman’s most winning quality. [In “Briar Rose”, the protagonist] slept for 100
years, after pricking her finger on a spindle. The kiss of the heroic prince woke her. He
fell in love with her while she was asleep, or was it because she was asleep? (…)
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel —all [are] characterized by
passivity, beauty, innocence, and victimization. They are the archetypal good women —
victims by definition. They never think, act, initiate, confront, resist, challenge (177.)

In alignment with Novoa, she also posits that women wait to be saved and that their
bodies remain open to the rescuer, communicating their need to be awoken, this
perpetuating the commoditization of women and the notion that their bodies are
property with explicit consent not needed. In that respect, in both “Briar Rose” and
Sleeping Beauty, the princess’ prolonged sleep can be considered social death since her
sexuality is dormant. The protagonist in both stories is not just physically asleep; her
adult wisdom, intellect, and sexuality are symbolically frozen as well. In other words,
her comatose state is the reflection of the patriarchal wish based on the idea that women
remain sexually passive until the time when a man whom they are going to marry
arrives. Thus, the protagonist is temporarily derailed from the path that her life would
otherwise have taken had she remained awake; nevertheless, once she awakens, her
destiny still lies in the price’s desires. Thus, Briar Rose/Aurora is the archetypal good
woman as she never thinks, acts, initiates, confronts, resists or challenges —she seems
to be reduced to a mere prop in her own story as she unquestionably conforms to the
course of events that lead her destiny, over which she exerts no control.

In both “Briar Rose” and Sleeping Beauty, while the protagonist is in a comatose state,
beauty becomes her main and only asset. The princess is endowed with natural beauty

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and youth, which are essential in solving the conflict since they constitute her key to
happiness. In alignment with Beauvoir, Andaru (n/a) states: “[s]ince woman is an
object, it is quite understandable that her intrinsic value is affected by her style of dress
and adornment” (11.) Thus, outer beauty will affect inner beauty, giving place to a
process of reification ―the gaze freezes the person in time and space and the one who
scrutinizes is in power to judge. In that respect, in all their descriptions of Briar Rose,
the Grimm Brothers highlight her beauty —as a child, Briar Rose “was so beautiful that
the King could not contain himself for joy (…) [that] he ordered a great celebration”
while, as a young woman, she appears to the prince “so beautiful that he could not take
his eyes off her.” On its part, in the Disney version beauty is seen as one of the valued
qualities in a woman since it is bestowed to Aurora ―the protagonist— as a birth gift.
In using Briar Rose/Aurora as a model for young girls and women, both texts attempt to
uphold the idea that beauty, rather than character, is a woman’s most valuable asset. In
this way, beauty turns the princess into an object under the scrutiny of the male gaze;
therefore, self-empowerment is downplayed ―she does not rely on her intelligence to
outwit her foes, but is made to remain in a passive —frozen— state in which her sex
appeal constitutes her key to success by the mediation of a man. As her value as a
human being lies on what she can accomplish with her physical attributes, she is
trivialized and appears to be powerless.

In upholding traditional gender roles of their time, not only do the Grimm Brothers and
Disney encourage feminine passivity but also stigmatize female power. In that respect,
in reference to the Grimm version, Lew (2001) explains that, with the portrayal of
passive Briar Rose as “so beautiful, modest [...and] kind that everyone who saw her
could not but love her” (3), passivity is equated with appropriate female behaviour and
rewarded with male love and approval. She also explains that, by contrast, the only truly
assertive female is the bitter, evil, neglected thirteenth fairy who is portrayed as wicked,
rude and wanting to avenge herself for not having been invited. In connection to the
Disney version, Walsh (2015) explains that traditional evil women in Disney are
portrayed as powerful, in leadership positions, and as not being simply evil but also
insane, with no apparent explanation for their cruel behaviour. Although, in both “Briar
Rose” and Sleeping Beauty, there is a number of female fairies with some degree of
power, ultimately, female power is only associated with superhuman status, suggesting
that female authority does not belong to everyday life. As it is cast in a negative light —

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all the worst aspects of leadership are associated with women in power―, ambition is
depicted as dangerous quality for females to possess, as it can only lead to destruction.

On its part, Disney’s Maleficent is adapted to the current socio-cultural environment and
offers a post-modern retelling of the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty. In this sense, it engages
in a meta-textual relation with its predecessor by offering a critique. The movie aligns
the story with modern values, providing the audience with a new perspective on gender
roles and, thus, it constitutes a commentary on the previous version by making
observations on its politics by means of alteration and addition. In this way, in
Maleficent, Disney engages in the rethinking and reworking of the values that it had
promoted in Sleeping Beauty and opens up problems about the access to such values as
a way of de-naturalising present ideas.

The movie becomes self-reflexive in the change of narrator, which reflects a symbolic
shift in perspective. While in Sleeping Beauty, a male voice tells the audience about the
story of a princess who falls asleep and is rescued by a gallant prince, with the
protagonist never being given a voice or point of view, in Maleficent, it is precisely that
unvoiced character who becomes the source of authority. When she says “let us tell an
old story anew, and we will see how well you know it” (Stromberg, 2014), Aurora
begins the story with a conspicuous narrative prologue that tells that the story is actually
a long story that will be retold ―a story about a story― and describes that its content is
different from the previous one, conveying the idea that the reading of her own story
had always been prejudiced and biased.

In Maleficent, the main character turns out to be the villain from the traditional fairy-
tale and events begin from a time prior to the actions presented in the original version.
Thus, the succession of occurrences is enriched and the causal relations are altered. In
this sense, the movie can be considered as a response to something that was unseen in
the Disney adaptation of 1959, namely, the villain’s motivations. In this way, not only
does Maleficent expose the fallacy in the polarized representations of the female,
perpetuated by traditional fairy tales, but it also questions the social and cultural
structures which limit and reinforce such representations. As the traditional Disney
Sleeping Beauty was both written and directed by men, little consideration was given to
the reasons behind Maleficent’s motivations. In connection to this, Walsh (2015)
maintains that:

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 [I]n the majority of mainstream Hollywood films, stories are usually told, of not
explicitly from a male point of view, then at least implicitly by making male characters
the “boundaries” within which the films’ central characters operate, thereby re-framing
what are ostensibly women’s stories into women’s stories as seen through the eyes of
the men in their lives (185).

In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent is depicted as fundamentally evil. On arriving at the

celebration of Aurora’s birth and provoking concern among the guests, Merryweather
―one of the fairies— states “[y]ou weren’t wanted” (Geromini, 1959), which suggests
that the human kingdom had been wronged by her in some way. Even though she is
depicted as ruthless, devious and willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve her
goals, there are no apparent reasons that explain her evil nature. On its part, Maleficent
readdresses this lack of motivation with a female screenwriter who aims at giving a
voice and a sense of agency to the evil character in the traditional version. The active
role that Maleficent plays is reflected in her depiction of human qualities, which break
from stereotypes perpetuated by Sleeping Beauty, destabilizing the traditional binary
oppositions where women are divided into good versus evil. Such dichotomy is
generally based on the representation of goodness by a blonde young virgin, who is
extremely passive and is circumscribed to the private sphere of the house, and the
portrayal of evil by a dark-haired femme fatale who plays an active role and belongs to
the realm of magic.

In this sense, Maleficent as a text opens a third space instead of creating representations
of women divided into heroine and villain, as Sleeping Beauty does, this third space
being located in-between the two concepts of good and evil. In this respect, in alignment
with Derrida, Walsh explains that the term Khôra makes reference to “a third thing, a
third nature or type” (200) and that a character who is neither purely evil nor purely
good becomes a hybrid. In connection to this, Mărginean (2014) states that Maleficent
goes over the different phases explained in Campbell’s The Hero with a thousand
Faces:

“she is a warrior (…) a lover (…) an empress and tyrant (…) as she reigns over The
Moors inspiring fear and bringing about transformations to the land that suit her morose
disposition (…) and, finally, a “world redeemer” (…) as she teaches everyone the lesson
of love (6).

Taking all this into account, Maleficent can be considered the representation of the
Khôra as she opens up a third space. By carrying many archetypes of traditional fairy-

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tales in her identity, she ends up subverting them. Not only does she embody all the
traditional depictions of womanhood —damsel in distress (as she is robbed of her
wings), godmother (playing the part of Aurora’s mother) and femme fatale (the sexually
villain who is unscrupulous and ambitious)—, but she is also the epitome of the
patriarchal hero, since it is her who runs different risks to ultimately save the princess.
In connection to this, Mărginean (2014) also explains that Maleficent mirrors
Campbell’s idea that “[t]he deeds of the hero in the second part of his personal cycle
will be proportionate to the depth of his descent during the first” (ibid). Maleficent’s
triumph over evil is as resonant and her evolution as overwhelming as her previous
despair and decadence are dark.

Thus, in contrast with Sleeping Beauty and other Disney Classic Princess films,
Maleficent is not built on the premise of female jealousy or greed nor is the plot
propelled forward by feminine beauty, which is absent as a source of conflict. In this
respect, Walsh (2015) states that male writing has committed a great crime against
women by pitting them against not only other women, but also themselves. As a
reaction against canon, the narrative focus on Maleficent and her internal motivations
aims to challenge the authority of traditional fairy-tale patterns associated to one-
dimensional characters and perpetuated by the Grimm Brothers and solidified by Walt
Disney. It also exposes how one can attribute the main character’s evil nature to the
hardships that she has endured and thus allows for new insights into her position in a
patriarchal structure. Whereas, in Sleeping Beauty, the villain wants to avenge herself
because of not being accepted in the royal palace, Maleficent’s deeds are revised
through her experience as a victim of patriarchal injustice. Her wings are plucked
because she posits a threat to the human structure —the king fears her power and needs
to control her. In contrast to the traditional Maleficent, the modern one has endured
victimization and the violence inflicted upon her is what drives her to commit an act of
vengeance through the cursing of the king’s child. Nevertheless, after taking care of
Princess Aurora silently, she begins to develop a close bond with her to the point that
she strives to undo her curse and takes risks to save her, such as taking Prince Phillip to
Stefan’s palace so that he gives Aurora a wake-up kiss. Thus, Maleficent is a dynamic
character, as she significantly leads the plot of the story —she undergoes several
changes on her self-development throughout the story due to events that exert an
influence on her personality.

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In this respect, Maleficent can be considered a bildungsroman as it describes the
processes by which the protagonist achieves maturity through various negative and
positive experiences —those of falling and redemption. In her transformational process,
Maleficent displays some of Vogler’s archetypes explained in The Writer’s Journey. As
a heroine, she is closest to the action and experiences some kind of growth or change
through a figurative death and resurrection. Such death is embodied by the plucking of
her wings, which triggers her embracing of the shadows. As Vogler explains, the
shadow represents the energy of the unexpressed, unrealized, or rejected aspects of the
self and its dramatic function is to give the hero an opponent in his or her struggle. In
this sense, Maleficent turns out to be both the hero and villain —a body in which both
the powers of good and evil are in dialectical tension, which ultimately turns her into an
anti-heroine or that which “is (…) a specialized kind of Hero, one who may be an
outlaw or a villain from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience is
basically in sympathy” (Vogler, 2007: 35). Thus, Maleficent’s main struggle is internal
—she must find the tools to triumph over her evil part and redeem herself, to find her
own voice.

Significantly, in such a challenge, Aurora ―a somewhat static character as in Sleeping

Beauty— plays the key role of catalyst hero, a “central figure who may act heroically,
but who do[es] not change much themselves because their main function is to bring
about transformation in others” (ibid 37). Even though she is unaware, she keeps
Maleficent’s pure side alive by virtue of representing her lost innocence; the fairy’s
permanent connection with Aurora is the proof that she has not lost contact with such
innocence and triggers her desire for redemption. She redeems herself by giving Aurora
a wake-up kiss, the patriarchal symbol of Aurora’s sexual awakening in Sleeping
Beauty. In doing so, Maleficent de-constructs and, consequently, re-constructs the
notion of “true love.” It is not the heterosexual romantic love that ultimately saves the
princess, but a form of homosexual expression, a bond which does not necessarily entail
sexual attraction and which is related to motherly love. True love can be deemed as
unconnected to a certain type of ties, i.e. those of gender constructed by traditional
discourses, which are based on the union between a man and a woman, as seen in
Sleeping Beauty. Thus, the final message of the film is positive: true love exists,
irrespective of its form, subverting the traditional construction of enmity between
women since the protagonist and the princess serve as mentors to each other. Whereas,

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in the version of 1959, Aurora wakes up to be a mere companion to a patriarchal leader,
in Maleficent, Aurora’s physical awakening mirrors Maleficent’s spiritual one and
fulfillment as a heroine, giving place to a new genesis ―Aurora is given the possibility
of turning into a leader that unites two kingdoms —human and fairy―, thus
establishing a matriarchal society.

All things considered, it can be stated that, as an open system, “Briar Rose” is engaged
in different dialogues with both Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent, which reflects that its
meaning is a construct that depends on the context in which it is born. On the one hand,
the Disney version of 1959 offers a reading of “Briar Rose” that is in keeping with its
male chauvinistic values, which legitimized certain belief systems. In this way, it pushes
its source text to the right, by virtue of naturalising and justifying social hierarchies
based on gender distinctions. In this sense, “Briar Rose” and Sleeping Beauty
encapsulate certain behavioural patterns expected of women at the time of their
production. These are mainly reflected on the overvaluation of physical beauty over
character, the association of feminine passivity with mindless conformity, the depiction
of female assertiveness and independence as dangerous traits and the achievement of
personal fulfillment as intrinsic to attachment to a man.

On the other hand, Maleficent functions as a revisionist tale by virtue of establishing a

subversive relationship with its predecessor. In this sense, it pushes it to the left, by
providing a feminist re-telling that addresses the demeaning portrayal of females. This
is done by challenging stereotypes on women, mainly through the protagonist’s
depiction as an ambivalent character, which renders her human. As well, by
highlighting the positive side of sisterhood, it provides alternative perspectives on the
relationship between women and further exposes the negative influence exerted on them
by patriarchal structures, opening up the possibility of re-defining the concept of
womanhood. Thus, as Maleficent questions the values that its predecessor espouses, it
also exposes that it is a product of a specific cultural context and that, as such, it can go
under revision.

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