I’ve always had a mixed relationship with Disney animated movies. I have a few theories on why. I’m sure part of it comes from when I was born. Disney had just come away from a trifecta of very successful princess movies (debatably, I am including Aladdin) which to the eyes of a young boy, did their part to taint the image of the studio. By the time I had turned 5, they had added a further four movies to the roster. Admittedly, these again included movies like Hercules, but Megara was still treated like one of the princesses (at least while people could still remember that movie happened). Nowadays, Disney have made their princess club a little more exclusive (possibly due to trying to turn it into a real brand). Nala is no longer part of the pride and Tinkerbell bolted, but even with these more recent additions, 5 out of the 11-strong-roster made peak waves in popular culture during my childhood. Before too long Disney would start trying to re-capture my heart with faire like Lilo & Stitch (with which they would succeed) but there was still a noticeable gap for me between my first infatuations with Winnie the Pooh or The Jungle Book, and identifying on an emotional level with a little, blue, 6 limbed alien.
As a result, despite having seen them, the princess movies are somewhat of a blind-spot in my cultural knowledge, particularly with the level of analysis I enjoy going into. Never more so did this fact make itself evident to me than whilst watching Matthew Patrick’s Film Theory on Beauty and the Beast.
To summarise in case you don’t have the time, the video points out the massive injustice in the supposed morality of the film. It all stems from the central plot device of the film. A young man denies an ugly old woman a room on a stormy night, despite her offer of a rose, and is cursed to live a beast when the woman reveals herself to be a beautiful sorceress. She enchants the rose to bloom until the man’s 21st birthday, and if he fails to make a woman fall in love with him by that time he shall be forced to live as a beast until his death. This places the beast’s current age at 20. Only once in the film is the time period between that fateful night and the present addressed. Be Our Guest contains the line “Ten years we’ve been rusting, needing so much more than dusting”. This all means that the curse, around which the entire film is based, was placed on a ten year old.
The idea of a ten year old being potentially punished for life for doing what any child in today’s world would be applauded for doing (allowing a complete stranger into their home for the promise of a treats) inspired me to revisit the film, and whilst watching, ideas started circulating round my head. I then decided to watch the spinoff Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. I did so for two reasons. 1, to try and gather more information and clarification on any ideas I had and 2, to shut off the possibility of having to go through every version of Beauty and the Beast, because fuck that. There’s a lot of them.
Watching through the movies, it occurred to me that there are in fact a fair few more interesting narratives hidden in the movie. Whilst the story and message we are given are fine, a young, attractive yet misunderstood girl learning to judge people based on their personality instead of appearance (which incidentally goes against what Disney had done their best to instil in people for the previous 60 years) but compared to the other possibilities at hand it is ultimately dull. In the supposed interests of children, Disney (particularly at the time under the yoke of Michael Eisner) decided not to explore the story in the following ways.
The first perspective switch with a potentially better movie behind it is an obvious one. Tell the story from the perspective of the beast himself. A child forced into a life he did not choose, which warps him in the eyes of society, during which time he matures to the point where it becomes a fully-fledged part of his identity. In the movies he seems to have developed prejudices against such things as beauty and Christmas, all during a punishment intended to shape him into a more moral person. There are parallels that could be drawn between this and youth prison systems or even insurgent camps out in the Middle East: unequivocal punishment and alienation leading to indoctrination by radical groups / ideals which end up shaping a person and putting them on a worse path than they were already on. We even see similarities with homeless people losing their humanity after being treated for extended periods like they don’t have any in the first place. By the time Belle enters the picture, we should understand the severity of the Beast’s situation and what he has to lose. She is not only the potential promise of a better image, but his last chance of redemption within himself. The version we get seems to have its head far more up the arse of aesthetic. Which is more than a little ironic.
Another switch of perspective would be to that of the sorceress. Little is known about her, but we can see from her actions that she is either a) self-assured to the point of sadism or b) scorned as shit and out to punish the world. Disney could have animated, scripted, scored and choreographed a kid friendly Walter White / Ozymandias (Watchmen), but instead we got a side note. A waste of a character who feels it is completely acceptable, not to mention rational, to severely punish a 10 year old orphan (oh, did I forget to mention? Where the fuck are his parents?) for making assumptions based on appearance and protecting his property from a possible thief / murderer AND also punishing the boy’s servants by turning them indefinitely into ornaments. Speaking of which…
The parts of Beauty and the Beast which people seem to remember, more so than even Belle and the Beast themselves, are the living ornaments. Cogsworth, Lumiere, Mrs Potts, Chip and co. easily stole the show with their antics, witticisms and damn catchy tunes, but their story should be so much deeper. Within the story of the staff we should see exploration of Stockholm syndrome, the warping one goes through during extreme suffering and entrapment, the literal objectification and concurrent sexualisation of women via Lumiere and his feather duster French maid, and with the presence of Chip, either the anti-aging powers of enchantment OR the logistics of teapot birthing.
Oh, and genocide.
Sorry probably shouldn’t have sat on that one for so long. But let me lay this one out for you.
During the course of the two films we see hundreds of plates, forks, cups, clocks, candlesticks, footstools, wardrobes, instruments and many, many others spring to life. On the presumption (which we have no reason to doubt) that each living piece of furniture was once a living, breathing person, how many fucking staff did this one kid have at his command? Secondly, where did all the original furniture go? Was the house empty? Barren? For a staff of that size, one would have to presume, no. But within the house the amount of living furniture we see vastly outnumbers that which is stationary. So what happened to the original furniture? If I had to guess, I’d say that there would have been a growing tension in the house after the curse had been placed. All the staff members suddenly finding that many of the jobs they used to do are now inaccessible to them, whilst jobs they are now designed for are being done by being which look like them, but can work harder, longer and cheaper, beginning a situation similar to what birthed such groups as UKIP, the BNP and the EDL. The staff become used to each other in their new forms, and via a sci-fi-esque distrust of what is now the uncanny valley they start to correlate against the old furniture, seeing it as lifeless and robotic. Eventually, in a bid to make themselves more mentally comfortable with the bad situation they are in, they “cleanse” the house, no longer having to live with a reminder of what they have been forced to live as. Starting afresh. In the Christmas special we even see that staff have taken the place of festive decorations, taking on their new identities and spending the majority of their year in boxes instead of finding a way to cling on to any remnants of their old existence. Embracing the phenomenally shitty hand they’ve been dealt.
And despite which of these alternate readings and untold stories tickles your fancy, I think we can agree that the movie/movies are set at the wrong time. We need to see the whole journey. Belle may be a character whom young girls connect with, but despite her bookishness and strong mindedness making this not such a bad thing, far more interesting and complex lessons could be learnt from the Beast. After being broken and shaped by the curse, and the staff’s aforementioned troubles of their own, Belle could have been an interesting and uplifting third act. But existential angst and undeserved punishment don’t sell toys. And furniture genocide is reportedly hard to put into a parade. I’m hoping the upcoming retelling with Emma Watson is able to learn some lessons and grow some balls. But I know it’s a fool’s hope.
And finally, as a special treat, here’s Dave dressed as Lumiere. I don’t know why.
theburfdefect 