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Are fairy-tale Prince Charmings sex offenders? A professor says yes
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A still shows a scene from Disney’s 1937 classic animation, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. (princess.disney.com/File)
T
hose who dream of being awakened by true love’s kiss from Prince Charming, just like in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, might want to think twice.
According to foxnews.com, Prof. Kazue Muta of Osaka University said that princes from these fairy tales represented “quasi-compulsive obscene sexual acts on an unconscious partner”, or in layman's terms, had committed “sexual assault on an unconscious person”.
Back in early December 2017, Muta tweeted on the matter, garnering both positive and negative responses, and it was even picked up by Yahoo! JAPAN News. The gender studies and sociology professor then wrote an article for Women’s Action Network to explain her stance to critics.
Read also: Thousands respond 'me too' to actress's Twitter prompt on sexual abuse
One of the most common criticisms against Muta is that she had “mixed up fiction and reality”. The professor returned that fairy tales were a reflection of reality, explaining that literary criticism was often used to offer a different perspective through deep analysis of a fictional work.
The story of a princess who wakes up after being kissed by a prince, getting married to said prince and the couple living happily ever after could be viewed as a story of sexual assault if looked at from a different point of view.
“Because the prince, however noble and handsome he was, kissed a stranger woman sleeping unconsciously in the forest without her consent,” Muta said in the English translation of the article.
Apparently, she is not alone. According to independent.co.uk, last November a mother in Britain, Sarah Hall, urged that Sleeping Beauty be taken out from her son’s elementary school curriculum, because it showed children that it was OK to kiss a sleeping woman. (wir/asw)
