The Seafarers: October 2011

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Subconscious Film - Sleeping Beauty (1959)

These essays are specifically for reading after ones personal viewing

Sleeping Beauty is my second favorite Disney animated movie. Maleficent is the most truly evil, well written, best voiced and has the most interesting character design of any Disney villain; Prince Phillip the most righteous prince (only he could supersede my jealousy of being with Aurora); Aurora the most luscious princess. When the fairies cast their blessings over Aurora in her crib, I tear up during each spell. The music mixed with the abstract art colliding in the galaxy, somehow finds that certain connection in my brain on which to pull upon. Maybe it's because I wish the spells mine, or maybe it's because I wish to be a part of the world before me, or maybe it's because I wish so desperately for Sleeping Beauty to be mine (no, not as a baby); but it's most likely because it's such a beautiful display of art in each medium mixing together in harmony.

Although, over the years I've acquired certain criticisms with Sleeping Beauty that would seem to make my viewing, a less spiritual one. Gender and pretty bad woman stereotypes, for one. For some reason it seems odd to criticize an old Disney classic; it feels as though I don't have the right, or because it's a classic there's no need to. But when you grow you realize the conservative thought of the creators and of the time. Take Snow White's, "it's off to work we go." How are they possibly going to make clothes for sixteen years without a single spindle? I think about these criticisms before the film starts, and during I am totally enveloped in the renaissance of time. During my last viewing, I was completely transfixed by one thing in particular.

"I wonder. I wonder. I wonder why each little bird has a someone..." Auroras voice... You can see her lips that shame the rose, and hair like the brilliance of the sun in her voice. The vibrato and soprano so controlled at its quite volume, she delivers a most wonderful performance. The lines are poetry. Not hard to decipher, the meaning creates a relation with its listener and questions life by creating imagery. In one minute and 20 seconds we find a song that transcends the majority of music in today's society. Whether you look at it objectively, technically or subjectively, I know that you feel in your heart of hearts the truthfulness of this statement. This song is a true love song. Because, instead of speaking about a kind of man or women she's finally found in her life, she's directly questioning love and the life that exists around it. I live by the words "I wonder." To always wonder and to always question anything I can. I know that Sleeping Beauty taught me to do this at a young age. To teach the young to grow, and old the new, is an achievement I can only hope to present in my aging life. And to find someone who feels the same would only influence this love for relation. I hope someone will find me someday "and bring back a love song to me."