Moving forward with Christ in a post-Covid, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ world
by Melvin Tinker, Christian Concern:
The Canadian clinical psychologist, Professor Jordan Peterson presents a fascinating analysis of the 1959 Walt Disney film, Sleeping Beauty, which, in many ways as we shall see, is a story for our time. Princess Aurora had parents who were quite old and had been desperate to have a child. And so when this bundle of joy eventually arrived, understandably they didn’t want anything to happen to her and they became somewhat overprotective. This shows itself when the parents invite a whole host of people to the christening party with one notable exception – Maleficent.
Maleficent is an evil queen, and later in the film has the power to transform herself into a dragon. So she represents the dark, dangerous side of reality and the parents of Princess Aurora wants to shield her from such things in order to allow her to grow untroubled by having to encounter raw nature, if you will. Well, Maleficent shows up anyway and somewhat suspiciously in the first instance appears to be bestowing a blessing on the child, giving her exactly what her parents want for her which, in the words of Maleficent, is that she would ‘grow in grace and beauty, beloved by all who know her’. But then comes the dark twist as the blessing becomes a curse that on her sixteenth birthday she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die- (the spinning wheel representing the wheel of fate).
The spell is weakened by the fairy Merryweather into the princess falling asleep until she is awakened by the kiss of her true love. The King and Queen then go into overdrive to protect their daughter by banning all the spinning wheels in the kingdom. Of course they fail for there is one left in the castle tower and the inevitable happens- the princess finds it and pricks her finger, thus triggering the spell and at puberty falls into a deep sleep.
Peterson says she wants to go to sleep, she has been so overprotected that her life isn’t really much of a life and she doesn’t want to wake up. She remains in this comatose state until the prince arrives to save the day. The prince is also symbolic in that he represents the woman’s own consciousness, that without that courageous, forward going consciousness the woman will drift into unconsciousness and terror. She has to wake up and face reality otherwise her existence, if you can call it that, will be one of the sleeping dead.
What is the point of all that? It is this: over the last few decades we have been creating in the West a ‘Sleeping Beauty culture’, where fear has been the dominant outlook, shaped by the creation of worse case scenarios with the result that maintaining safety becomes the paramount concern. This is especially seen in the way many parents adopt the posture of the King and Queen in the story. This is the way the sociologist, Professor Frank Furedi, describes the situation:
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