Maleficent: Myth Thing

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent

The 2014 movie Maleficent is a re-imagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale starring Angelina Jolie as the title character. In Disney's 1959 version, the evil queen's story is a modern take on Eris from Greek mythology, but with wardrobe, hair and makeup that's part Satan, part Joker and all fabulous. In this version, she wants you to hear her side of the story.

The opening lines of the 1959 story tell us, "In a faraway land... there lived a King and his fair Queen. Many years they had longed for a child, and finally their wish was granted. A daughter was born, and they called her Aurora."

Maleficent starts out:

"Once upon a time, there were two kingdoms that were the worst of neighbors. So vast was the discord between them that it was said only a great hero or a terrible villain might bring them together. In one kingdom lived folk like you and me, with a vain and greedy king to rule over them. They were forever discontent, and envious of the wealth and beauty of their neighbors, for in the other kingdom, the Moors, lived every manner of strange and wonderful creature. And they needed neither king nor queen, but trusted in one another."

Among them lives Maleficent, a free-spirited fairy girl with big, leathery wings. She's already on the fast track to running things as the protector of the enchanted forest. One day she befriends an orphan boy named Stefan, a poor thief who sleeps in a barn but dreams of living in the castle. They get older and closer, culminating in a kiss on her sixteenth birthday, but... it doesn't work out.

Stefan goes off and joins the army to be closer to the seat of power, and she misses him but dedicates her life to protecting the forest from the king's soldiers—until one such invasion goes badly and the king is mortally wounded. On his deathbed, the king promises the kingdom to any soldier who can kill Maleficent.

Betrayal and Repercussions

So the ambitious young Stefan goes into the forest to find his old friend and sort of, like, seduces her into falling asleep on his shoulder? But instead of killing her, he cuts off her wings and takes them to the king, who believes she's been killed and grants the kingdom to Stefan.

There is a way you could spin it, were you so inclined, that he was actually making the best compromise he could under the circumstances. Letting her live, leaving her kingdom intact and keeping her wings safe in a glass case in the castle (as it turns out, they're like Doctor Strange's cloak, fully anthropomorphic and autonomous).

But no, there's no nuance allowed. Stefan is an asshole/ rapist and pretty soon he's getting married to some blonde anyway, which is where the original story kicks in. A child is born, there's a big party at the castle and everyone's invited—oops, almost everyone...

Just like in the original, Maleficent curses the infant to an early death, the good fairies offer to chaperone the royal child and keep her safe, while the entire village burns their spinning wheels and locks the charred machinery away in a dungeon.

The dangerous, pointy parts are all still intact, but hey, a locked door in a castle should hold up against a curse and teenage curiosity, right?

Maternal Instincts

Baby Aurora grows into a cute little blonde moppet with the enchanted forest as her playground under the incompetent care of three fairies who can't even figure out what to feed an infant. Seeing this, Maleficent is moved to intervene and sends an enchanted flower to nurse the baby while the fairies sleep (which is absolutely not creepy at all).

Adventurous toddler Aurora has no self-preservation instinct and is prone to hurtling blindly towards cliffs (as I assume all toddlers left unattended are wont to do). Maleficent intervenes again to rescue her from certain death.

When the two finally meet face to face, teenage Aurora says she's always known Maleficent was there protecting her throughout her life. She calls her "fairy godmother" and now they're buds. We see them bond in a rom-com worthy montage. They go for long walks, laugh, watch fairy dance recitals and mud-wrestle... yes, seriously.

Meanwhile in the castle, 16 years of childless marriage and an ostensible ceasefire have taken their toll on King Stefan, who is slowly going mad. Now that the kingdom is separated from its only neighbor by a giant impenetrable wall of magical thorny vines, he sits alone in his castle talking to the severed wings of his childhood friend, while his queen dies of some unnamed malady off screen. (One parent down and one to go.)

Princess Charming

With her Sweet 16 fast approaching, Aurora tells Maleficent she knows what she wants to do when she grows up. "I'm going to live here in the Moors with you, and we can look after each other."

In response, Maleficent doesn't say, "Well, there's this little matter of a curse... I know because I'm the one who put it there. Stay away from spinning wheels and let's wait and see how this whole birthday/death day thing plays out before we set any plans in stone..."

She also doesn't say, "I'm flattered but you'll be a grown woman soon and you'll probably want to get out of these woods and see the world, meet new people, maybe fall in love or take up a trade... you know, contribute something to society?"

Instead she says, "You don't have to wait until you're older. You could live here now!" And Aurora, delighted at the prospect of sleeping in the trees and making friends with all the woodland creatures, declares, "I'll be happy here for the rest of my life!"

(Spoiler alert, a few plot turns later, this is pretty much the re-imagined happily ever after that we get. But back to the story...)

On her 16th birthday, Aurora learns that her parents are still alive—well, one of them anyway—and she gallops off to the castle, only to be greeted by the king who immediately locks her away in a room from which she easily escapes and wanders the halls until she stumbles into her destiny, a dungeon room chock full of pricks... wink.

Game of Thorns

At this point, I feel the need to address the elephant in the throne room… There's some thorny symbolism leftover from the original, and by that I don't mean the well-intentioned Disney original where handsome Prince Philip is Aurora's betrothed from birth.

In that version, he's a brave and clever lad who any girl would be lucky to have. Once he figures out that Aurora is the very same enchanting girl he met in the forest, asleep on the wrong end of a century's worth of thorn bushes, he moves heaven and earth (and fights a dragon!) to reach and awaken her with True Love's Kiss.

That version is perfect just the way it is.

I'm talking about the original, published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, which was based on folk tales passed down by oral tradition dating back another three centuries. The interpretation of that one seems to be that it's an allegory of spring, with nature coming back to life and vanquishing winter. But with children's stories, there is always a "moral," or at least subtle cues about what the real world expects from its little girls.

Pretty Women

By comparison, Snow White is a pretty straight-forward caution against vanity, among other things. In the original story, the jealous stepmother tries three times to kill Snow White by tempting her with cursed objects that play to the young girl's vanity; first a corset, then a poisoned comb, and finally the apple.

The original Snow White is a bit of a heathen as well, messing up the dwarves' home when she breaks into it rather than tidying up like in the Disney version.

Cinderella dates back even farther, to a tale of a Greek slave girl around 7 BC who marries the king of Egypt. An eagle steals one of her sandals while she's bathing in the river, and drops it into the lap of the king, who sends his men in all directions to find the owner of the sandal.

It’s pure peasant wish-fulfillment fantasy, a classic rags-to-riches tale for the ages, destined to be remade at least once a generation.

Old Time Cringe

When it comes to Sleeping Beauty, all the historical variations involve a curse and the prick of a needle around her 16th birthday, then the prince awakening her with a kiss after battling through bushes and brambles and the two living happily ever after. Pretty standard if metaphorically heavy-handed coming of age stuff.

In some versions, it's not an evil fairy or even a witch but the prince's own perversely over-attached mother that does the cursing—and in one truly offensive version, it's the prince's wife who seeks revenge on the princess after discovering that her husband has been sneaking off and having sex with some sleeping girl who's locked away in an enchanted castle. He even fathers two children with her, both conceived and delivered while she sleeps—omg, gross!

No Consent, No Cure

But Maleficent wants you to know it's not down with all that true love's kiss stuff. "True love does not exist," not one but two of the characters declare without argument.

And sure enough, after the prince is knocked unconscious and dragged through the forest to the bedside of the sleeping princess to deliver the expected antidote, he surveys her apparently lifeless body and, at the urging of the three fairies to kiss her, says, "I wouldn't feel right about it. I barely know her."

This might be his redeeming moment in the eyes of a generation raised to suspect everyone is a potential rapist just waiting for her to drop her guard or leave her drink unattended, but it doesn't solve the narrative problem of the moment. And neither does his kiss.

Sorry, Philip. You seem like a nice boy, but we all know you would only disappoint her in the end... drinking too much in front of her children or carrying on with a younger woman... Oops, where were we?

True Love's Kiss

Ah yes, there's no such thing as true love. In this story, only Maleficent has the power to resurrect the princess and break the curse, which she does with a motherly kiss and an apology that's part rationale for cursing her in the first place, and part marriage vow.

"I was so lost in hatred and revenge... you stole what was left of my heart. And now I have lost you forever. I swear no harm will come to you as long as I live... And not a day shall pass that I don't miss your smile." MWA!

And with that, Philip is relegated to the same margins as the other men in the story, where he'll presumably be waiting until he's called upon at a time of Aurora's choosing, I guess.

It's not like they have any chemistry whatsoever, but then maybe we're not supposed to believe in true love or chemistry in an age when most couples meet online? It's all about the algorithm now, you know?

Fairy Goddess Monster

Shortly after the resurrection, Maleficent is under attack by the castle's guards when her severed wings find her and reattach themselves—an ecstatic moment infused with all the rapture and intensity that in another time might have been expected from a kiss.

Wings unfurled, the leather-clad fairy/goddess/mother stands backlit in her full angelic glory and fights off the soldiers with a little help from her loyal but sexually nonthreatening shape shifter sidekick, before the final boss battle to the death with the King.

Wait, why—you might ask, does she now want to murder Aurora's only remaining parent, with whom after all she herself was once in love? I don't know... Why do you think?

To be fair, she’s merely defending herself, and besides, the event goes largely unnoticed by Princess Aurora, even though the act that orphans her also technically makes her the sole heir to the throne, questionable past methods of succession notwithstanding.

Maybe it's the cycle of violence or maybe it's just tying up loose ends. Being a girl boss means never having to explain your motives, am I right?

Happily Ever After

After that, they all head back to the enchanted forest for a quiet ceremony where Aurora is crowned the queen of the forest. But wait, I thought the Moors "needed neither king nor queen, but trusted in one another," no?

Yeah, whatever, she's the queen now—she's got the crown of leaves and everything. She even shakes hands with Treebeard, the King of the Ents from The Lord of the Rings.

Then Aurora speaks the movie's closing line, "In the end, my kingdom was united not by a hero or a villain, as legend had predicted, but by one who was both hero and villain. And her name was Maleficent."

So, Maleficent is both hero and villain, martyr and savior, victim and victorious, virgin queen and mother goddess all rolled into one. Wow.

And Aurora? Well, she's free to do as she pleases, I guess...

Will she or won't she fall in love with Prince Philip, who ostensibly travelled all this way from some neighboring kingdom, presumably with some purpose in mind... Was he there to broker a trade deal? Deliver an ultimatum or request military aid against a common but hitherto unseen enemy? I guess we'll never know because this movie isn't called "Prince Philip."

Will Aurora take back the castle and lead her armies to conquer the lands beyond the Moors, ushering in an age of empire, uniting the known world under the benevolent banner of the forest queens? Who knows? This movie isn't called "Princess Aurora" either. Besides, she's about as compelling a character as the moss under Maleficent's feet.

But can it really be called a fairy tale if there isn't a moral to the story? Some might say: who needs morals when we have science (and magic) plus personal freedom? Okay, fine. I guess there are two morals...

Don't take advantage of sleeping girls (as if you didn't already know that!) and love the one who mothers you because, if I may paraphrase, there ain't no truer love.

Myth Thing

It's almost like the ancient Greeks came the closest the getting it right all those years ago, in their cautionary soap opera stories about gods and goddesses behaving badly.

Demeter wanted to protect her daughter and keep her young and unspoiled forever in their perpetual garden paradise, but Persephone grew up and wandered off and curiosity has its consequences.

In the end, Hades had a wife for half the year and Demeter had a daughter for the other half. Vegetables and flowers grew and were harvested, then died in the winter and life went on.

Persephone discovered love and sex and marriage in the underworld. Was he Prince Charming? Is anybody?

Hades doesn't seem half bad—he made Persephone his queen and let her take half the year off to frolic in the forests of her youth, no questions asked. For the ancient world, he sounds like a pretty progressive husband (besides—are you kidding me? The sex was probably amazing).

It's Generational

It was the Greatest Generation, that fought in World War II, that brought us those classic fairy tales—Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and all the rest. They were about heroic acts in the face of adversity, being nice to animals and settling down in the end with your true love.

They settled down and gave rise to the Baby Boomers, a generation that was better fed and cared-for than any that had come before it.

But when they grew up, they felt alienated and rebelled against the suffocating strictures of a society that felt commercialized, crass and lacking in humanity. They were bold and individualistic and they wanted their kids to have all the freedoms they had to fight against the "man" to achieve.

When the Baby Boomers took over at Disney, we got self-actualization fantasies on a grand scale—The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King—adventures, true love and a true purpose in life for everyone. Yes, you can have it all, kiddos.

Their oldest kids—Generation X—grew up, allegedly feral in the streets, staying out until the streetlights came on or sleeping under bridges like Kurt Cobain. Many came to regard their early childhood freedom as abandonment by a generation of narcissists who were too busy "finding themselves" to be the ever-present protectors and surrogate best friends they would strive to be to their own children.

When Generation X grew up, the ones who actually mated in captivity, ended up over-parenting the living shit out of their kids, who would never know the freedom of walking home from school or an unsupervised "play date" or eating a peanut butter sandwich in proximity to their classmates.

Their Gen Z kids would grow up thinking of their parents as their friends, terrified of the outside world but raised to believe they could be anything they wanted if they put their minds to it…

Start their own channel, be an influencer, “lean in” and join the corporate world, make a living playing video games or the stock market, invent an app or a meme coin, fight the patriarchy or climate change, be neurodivergent or gender-nonconforming, fall in love with a man or woman, or both or neither.

Okay, I Give Up, What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Sticking to the "fairy tale" genre, the Millennial Generation gave us Frozen, Brave, Maleficent and Inside Out, all of which turned the "princess" narrative about finding true love and settling down with a handsome prince on its head. In the end, the princesses in these stories all triumphantly end up reuniting... with their families.

The quest for true love and happily ever after were supplanted by the promise of unconditional parental support and the enshrinement of the glorified innocence of extended childhood.

Self-acceptance was the new self-actualization, with endless options (and sequels) offered up as a safer alternative to a proscriptive, heteronormative, ableist, elitist (fill in the blank) happy ending.

So what kind of stories will the children of today bring forth? When they're old enough to take the helm at Hollywood's historic animation studios and the offshore subsidiaries thereof, will it all be video game adaptations and endless reboots of the immortal franchises they inherited from their antecedents?

Or something new and totally incomprehensible to previous generations? Only time will tell...

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