Once upon a time… You know the story. King and Queen have a baby girl, evil fairy shows up to the celebration and curses the girl, girl is raised in the woods by good fairies, girl meets prince, girl falls into enchanted sleep, prince slays a dragon, true love’s kiss saves the day, happily ever after. But behind Disney’s 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty lies a dark and disturbing fairy tale tradition, one in which gender and sexual politics and questions of fate are as tangled as the thorny briars surrounding the castle. This week, Derek and Laurel explore the legacy of our most beloved fairy tales and their Disney adaptations. We’ll uncover corollaries to classical mythology, psychoanalytical interpretations, gender stereotypes and more in Sleeping Beauty.

CW: brief discussion of sexual assault

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