Surrendering expectations of the girl in Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty

Abstract

Following a screening of Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty (2011) at the Sydney Film Festival in 2011, I was surprised by the antagonism in questioners' responses to the main character Lucy which appeared to reify the ‘girl’ within conventional expectations of feminine behaviour. Lucy is a young university student who, as one of many part-time jobs, is voluntarily drugged so as to sleep naked and peacefully in bed with older men who may do with her as they wish, so long as they do not penetrate her. Identifying Lucy as ‘girl’ highlights both the space of liminality in which she exists and the desire for her to transition through this stage of her life to become a responsible woman. I examine the expectations of girls produced in the media and society and the contradictions they entail, the vulnerability that Lucy's employment as a sleeping beauty represents, and the ways in which the character encourages viewers to rethink what constitutes passivity. I argue that Sleeping Beauty highlights the importance of placing aside such expectations and accepting the challenge of confused and imperfect representations. Indeed, surrendering such expectations enables recognition of the heteronormative constraints that structure society.