Beauty and the Beast: Revisited

Right, I've just finished this acclaimed Disney ‘masterpiece’ and it’s swiftly becoming quite likeable. I have laughed out loud more than once. It is, admittedly, magnificently flawed but that adds to what its makers call the ‘charm’ of the film.

You can tell it’s a Disney film when ‘evil’ is defined as spoilt, selfish and unkind. I mean, to be honest, that makes almost every aristocrat ever ‘evil’, which is a neat bit of class-warfare propaganda. I mean, come on; he has everything he wants, no wonder he’s spoilt and selfish, and it’s tough to be those two things and not be unkind too. Being honest, the enchantress is far more evil than the prince/beast, as she condemns some poor eleven year old boy to being turned into an animal that looks like many folklore descriptions of the devil for all his life – or ever, the film isn’t clear on that point – simply because he doesn’t let her in when she looks like an old hag and offers to pay rent with a rose.

Really? That’s a legitimate and reasonable thing to do with ones glorious, magical powers? Go around terrorizing pre-teen boys because they don’t understand the concept of inner beauty and/or don’t trust old women? Yes, it’s teaching him an important moral lesson, but she could have done it for, say, a year and then changed him back while threatening to do it again if he didn’t buck up and find some decency. That woman is heartless.

As an aside, where will you find someone who will take in an old lady for the night who offers recompense with flowers? I mean, gypsies give flowers away all the time and you wouldn’t let one in your house, right? Admittedly, you would wake up grateful that they’d brought the flower but that’s only because pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down would be gone the next morning.

Now the Beast; he’s a little ungrateful for his condition. Yes, he’s not human any more. No, he’s probably not classically attractive to women. But at least he has shiny, healthy fur, super-human strength and agility AND still retains opposable thumbs. I mean, in medieval Europe he could have carved out an empire; he’s already got the castle and everything else he wanted (apparently), a private army shouldn’t be too hard to come by. Plus, at the age of eleven being turned into a hugely strong and fast animal is what a lot of boys pretend to do anyway; realistically, he wouldn’t become depressed until puberty hit hard at about 15-16, and since there are no women in the castle anyway this would be mitigated quite a bit I’d imagine.

That’s another thing; that bitch of an enchantress turned all the prince’s servants into furniture. Now what was that for? What moral lesson does that teach you? Honestly, some people have some warped codes of ethics.

Gaston is very quickly become a bit of a hero for me – he grew up being taught by society what was attractive and, quite wisely to be honest, decided to become the paragon of those virtues. Yes, he’s a bit of a chauvinist and a little insensitive but this is provincial France; what did you expect? Charm? Egalitarianism? Mon Dieu and zoot alors.

Belle is odd. I know there’s a whole song about it at the beginning, but you don’t really understand until later on in the film. Her father, while patently weird, is still in control of his mental faculty and quite rightly points out he’s pretty old anyway and she shouldn’t trade places with him in the Beast’s castle. Then, once she has met the Beast, she decides to be as rude, nosey and rule-breaking as she can be with all the suicidal persistence of manically depressed lemming. She could inherit this trait from her father who, before becoming trapped in the Beast’s castle, decides to take a dark and winding path rather than the straight, well lit one when lost after uttering the famous last words, “This way, don’t worry; it’s a short cut.” I can excuse him somewhat in that, having grown up pre-20th century, he wouldn’t have seen any American horror movies. If he had, he’d know that phrases like, ‘it’s a short cut,’ and ‘let’s split up,’ are nearly always synonymous with ‘we’re all going to die.’

Big, angry beast-person bellows at you not to go into the West Wing. Logical response: Go there. This, in my opinion, is a bit of a cognitive failure.

Oh yeah, and where the hell did Belle learn to read in pre-renaissance provincial France?

Back to her suicidal urges. When she does go into the already forbidden West Wing, she investigate with all the blind hope and willful neglect of personal safety only otherwise found in science fiction characters, computer gamers and the late Steve Irwin, who will go to any lengths and reach any point in the search for something new or shiny.

When she removed the case from the rose, I was reminded horribly of the scene in Alien where the scientist puts his head over the self-opening alien egg to look inside. Sure enough, BAM! The Beast appears and is, surprise, surprise, pretty pissed off. Yes, he has an angry fit but he does have pending psychological worries and a unique physical condition to be concerned about. Belle’s answer to the question, ‘What are you doing here?’ is classically terrible – ‘I’m sorry!’ No explanation.

You can also tell this was set in western France, as the Beast’s castle is massive yet unnoticed. As in vast, huge and colossal at the same time. If this had been the area now known as Germany or further into Eastern Europe, this would never have happened. Instead, pretty soon after the enchantress pulled her nasty little stunt on the prepubescent prince, a mob of peasants with pitchforks and burning torches would have rushed to castle screaming, “Slay ze monster!” Apparently, the inhabitants of nearby villages in France look up at an amazing piece of gothic architecture and just thing, “That’s nice, I wonder who lives there?” and then forget all about it.

This happens later when Gaston saves the day; as soon as he finds out about the Beast, he’s there to protect the village, with courage and keen blade. And lots of fire, the logical weapon of choice when attacking a stone castle. Classic mob mistake, but I'll forgive it; you need to follow tradition, right?

As for the ever present and apparently limitless pack of wolves outside the Beast’s castle, well. They look pretty well fed, glossy coats and all. I doubt they’d attack anything as large and clearly predatory as the beast just to get at Belle and her horse. In fact, they seem pretty intent on decidedly not attacking either of them convincingly; no hamstringing, no surrounding tactics, no normal wolf maneuvers. Maybe French wolves are just less up for violent things. Or maybe the Beast paid them so he could impress Belle. Cunning ploy there.

Gaston let me down at the end by begging for his life. I guess he is French so there was only so long before his courage failed and he had to stab someone in the back.

At the end of the film, suddenly all is forgiven and the castle becomes host to a huge ball – quite where, in the countryside of provincial France, so many well-to-do aristocrats appeared is an interesting question but I’ll let it go for now.

Moral of the story is; if an old woman comes to your door needing a place to stay and all she offers as a thank you is a rose, shoot her.
J.C.

N.B. Firstly, I worked out that the prince was eleven when cursed because the rose would wilt on his 21st birthday and the servants/furniture said they’d been waiting ten years for a girl to come to the castle. Secondly, Fifi the feather duster is hot when she gets turned back into a human. Lucky Lumiere.