So were you aware that the The Beauty and the Beast story we all know is a heavily abridged and rewritten version of a much longer novella by
Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve? And that a lot of the plot holes existing in the current versions exist because the 1756 rewrite cut out the second half of the novella, which consisted entirely of the elaborate backstory that explains all the weird shit that happened before? And that the elaborate backstory is presented in a way that’s kind of boring because the novel had only just been invented in 1740 and no one knew how they worked yet, but contains a bazillion awesome ideas that beg for a modern retelling? And that you are probably not aware that the modern world needs this story like air but the modern world absolutely needs this story like air? Allow me to explain:
The totally awesome elaborate backstory that explains Beauty and the Beast
Once upon a time there was a king, a queen, and their only son
But while the prince was still in his infancy, in a neat reversal of how these fairy tales usually go, the king tragically died, leaving his wife to act as Regent until their son reaches maturity
Unfortunately, the rulers of all the lands surrounding them go, “Hmm, the kingdom is ruled by a woman now, it must be weak, time for an invasion!”
And the Queen goes, “Well, if I let some general fight all these battles for me, he’ll totally amass enough fame and power to make a bid for the throne; if I want to protect my son’s crown, I have no choice but to take up arms and lead the troops myself!”
(Btw, I want to stress that this woman is not Eowyn or Boudica and nothing in the way her story is presented suggests that she had any interest martial exploits before or in any way came to enjoy them during these battles. This is a perfectly ordinary court lady who would much rather be embroidering altar covers for the royal chapel and playing with her child until necessity made her go, “Oh no, this sucks, I guess I have to become a Warrior Queen now” and she just happened to kick ass at it anyway.)
And the Queen totally kicked ass, but the whole “twice as good for half the credit” thing meant that no matter how many battles she won, potential enemies refused to take her and her army seriously until she had defeated them so no sooner would she fend off one invasion than another one would pop up on a different border.
So she spent the majority of her young son’s life away from the castle leading armies, but it was OK because she left him in the care of her two best friends, who just happen to be fairies! This was an awesome idea because a) fairies have magic, and therefore are like the best people to protect the prince from any threats and b) fairies consider themselves to be so above humanity that the lowest fairy outranks the highest mortal, so they’d have no interest in taking a human throne. Good thing they were both good fairies instead of one good and one evil one!
(Spoiler: they were not both good fairies.)
So the two fairies basically take turns raising the prince until he’s old enough to rule. And on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, the evil older one comes into the prince’s bedroom.
“So listen, kid. You’re about to become king, your mother’s on her way home from the war to see you crowned, and I have a third piece of good news for you! You see, I’ve actually been spending so much time here lately because Fairyland’s become a bit too hot to hold me for reasons totally not related to me being secretly evil. And if I have to hang in the human world, I might as well reside in the upper echelons of it, so even though as a powerful fairy I completely eclipse your puny human status in a staggeringly unimaginable way, since you’re about to be king and since my premonition that I should stick this whole guardianship thing out because you would be hot one day has totally proved accurate (go me), I will graciously lower myself to allowing you to marry me. Please feel free to grovel at my feet in gratitude. (Btw, we can totally start the wedding night now, we’ll tell your mother about it when she arrives tomorrow.)”
I see him as the biggest villainous threat in any of the Disney films. He has no special powers. He’s not Jafar, or Ursula, or Maleficent. He’s a human being! He’s an arrogant, narcissistic, bigoted, chauvinistic, self-absorbed man who, once he’s told no, is driven by jealousy and revenge to fuel the fear of quite an idiotic group of villagers to go kill something they’ve never seen before. I mean, it resonates massively to what’s happening in the political climate throughout the world now. Luke Evans
why come they called him “beast” in the castle when everyone knew his name cuz they’d been working for him forever anyway? like …. i would just be like “hey chewbacca-Adam” or some shit, there’s no reason to call him beast … id hide in my room all day too if my employees started making fun of me..
If my manager decided to pull some rude ass shit with a witch and got me living the next ten years of my life as an immortal singing toaster oven you can bet your ass I’d wake him up every goddamn morning with a flaming panini directly to the face. rise and shine, you ugly fuck, time hear a song
I call this one, “ode to an inconsiderate pissbaby” and the first 9 verses are just me screaming at various decibels
me: i don’t really care about all these disney live action remakes disney:
me:
I’ve always wondered why the people in the town thought Belle was so weird and more importantly how does a bookshop stay open if it only has one single regular customer who is also not wealthy? The only explanation is that there must be something else about Belle that is considered to be odd or strange that was never addressed or thought of in the animated film.
Frollo and Mother Gothel convince Quasimodo and Rapunzel that their lives are dependent on them. The two villains claim the outside world is a terrible place even though they know this is not true. They also constantly emotionally abuse their victims by implying their worthlessness and destroying their self-esteems. Quasimodo and Rapunzel sympathize with their captors and even believe their captors are protecting them and treating them with kindness. However, both captors are merely using and manipulating their victims for their own selfish purposes.
Belle does not sympathize with the Beast when she is treated poorly. She becomes angry and leaves the castle, only returning by her own wish so that the Beast (who saves her) does not freeze to death. She does not respond nicely towards the Beast until he treats her with respect. In this situation, Belle has control and is not manipulated into feeling for the Beast, nor does the Beast treat her disrespectfully after the first night. While the Beast does have an underlying motive as to keeping Belle in his castle, he abandons this idea and sets her free to make her happy. If anything, this story is a case of Lima Syndrome where the captor starts to sympathize with the victim.
Check out this post which refocuses the purpose of Beauty and the Beast from merely (and wrongly) being about Stockholm Syndrome to it’s original purpose.
FUCKING FINALLY
I don’t usually reblog stuff like this, but Beauty and the Beast is my favorite movie and I’d like to have this on my page!
this is actually a very good analysis. I take back all the times I’ve called Beauty and the Beast a ‘stockholm syndrome’ romance.
I want to take a few minutes to unpack a common criticism of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, namely that it glorifies abusive relationships, telling impressionable young girls that it’s okay if their boyfriends shout at them and get physically violent, because they can “fix them with their love.” While it’s easy to look at the movie’s reputation in pop culture and make that assessment based on the broad strokes, if you look a little closer you’ll see that this conclusion is complete hogwash. Let me explain why.
Frollo and Mother Gothel convince Quasimodo and Rapunzel that their lives are dependent on them. The two villains claim the outside world is a terrible place even though they know this is not true. They also constantly emotionally abuse their victims by implying their worthlessness and destroying their self-esteems. Quasimodo and Rapunzel sympathize with their captors and even believe their captors are protecting them and treating them with kindness. However, both captors are merely using and manipulating their victims for their own selfish purposes.
Belle does not sympathize with the Beast when she is treated poorly. She becomes angry and leaves the castle, only returning by her own wish so that the Beast (who saves her) does not freeze to death. She does not respond nicely towards the Beast until he treats her with respect. In this situation, Belle has control and is not manipulated into feeling for the Beast, nor does the Beast treat her disrespectfully after the first night. While the Beast does have an underlying motive as to keeping Belle in his castle, he abandons this idea and sets her free to make her happy. If anything, this story is a case of Lima Syndrome where the captor starts to sympathize with the victim.
Check out this post which refocuses the purpose of Beauty and the Beast from merely (and wrongly) being about Stockholm Syndrome to it’s original purpose.
FUCKING FINALLY
I don’t usually reblog stuff like this, but Beauty and the Beast is my favorite movie and I’d like to have this on my page!
this is actually a very good analysis. I take back all the times I’ve called Beauty and the Beast a ‘stockholm syndrome’ romance.
I didn’t even know about any of this until I read it here.
THANK YOU THANK YOU
thank youuuuuuu
Another difference too is that the Beast never pretends that this is for Belle’s own good or anything like that. He makes it very clear that this a trade for her father, and that she is taking on her father’s punishment for trespassing. I’m not saying locking Maurice up in the first place was a good thing (obviously not) but there is no trickery here, and when the Beast finally embraces the goodness inside of him he freely lets Belle go even knowing that to keep her would benefit himself. He realizes how selfish and wrong that would be, unlike the actual villains on this list.
Frollo appoints himself as Quasimodo’s guardian, Gothel convinces Rapunzel she is actually her real mother (which honestly makes her one of the most groundbreaking Disney villains to date imo, showing children that just because someone is in the ultimate authority over them doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be questioned; unfortunately in this world, not all parents are automatically “good guys”), but the Beast is Belle’s captor until he lets her kindness start to transform him. (And also take note: Beast changes because he wants to change, Belle is who shows him how.)
i’ve been reading for most of the day now about howard ashman, the lyricist for the little mermaid & beauty and the beast. he was one of the biggest creative forces behind both films, helping to shape their characters, narrative arcs, and themes as well as their music; he was also a gay man who was diagnosed with aids during the production of the little mermaid and died shortly after beauty and the beast was finished. alan menken, the composer who collaborated with him on both movies, said that beauty and the beast is heavily influenced by ashman’s experiences and perspective.
and i can’t stop thinking about it. i’ve always considered beauty and the beast to be one of the darkest films in the disney canon, as well as its most beautiful. it’s entirely about monsters, about the ways that people are determined to be wrong and dangerous: there’s the beast alone in his castle in the forest, and belle mocked and sneered at by her village, and even maurice carted off to an asylum.
and that it was written and conceived of in part by a gay man who, according to his sister, trained himself out of “effeminate” physical mannerisms when he was young because he was bullied for them, and who as he wrote it was dying of an incredibly stigmatized illness— like, god.
i mean when you just listen to those songs he wrote, the mob song (“the beast is] set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite / he’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free”), belle (“it’s a pity and a sin / she doesn’t quite fit in”)— and there was a cut song, human again, where the castle servants looked forward to rejoining the world.
like it’s obviously queer, but more than that, it’s the self-identification and self-validation of a man who knew this was this work was probably his last. at the end of the film, the beast is so sad, has succumbed entirely to despair and death. his society is coming to destroy him, and he can’t even be angry, because he doesn’t have anything left. but then he does. and he is still precious, and his life is still meaningful. he’s a person, and he can be loved. he can find happiness.
in the original beauty and the beast, the beast proposes marriage to belle every night and it’s her acquiescence that breaks the spell. in the disney movie, the beast only waits for belle to love him, because he cannot love himself. it’s such an unexpected blessing for both belle and the beast that they can find acceptance in each other, after both are so othered and dehumanized by their communities. their vulnerable joy in each other and themselves is so important, and their love song so wonderingly sweet. at the end, it is only when someone loves and accepts you that you stop being a monster.
john musker, one of the directors of beauty and the beast, told this story about how ashman cried at disneyland when the little mermaid’s music was integrated into a parade and said that he was glad to know that his music would outlive him. beauty and the beast was my favorite movie when i was young and trying not to be queer, when i felt very wrong and very alone. it has been unbelievably important in my life. and so i am also glad— and so grateful— that howard ashman’s music outlived him, and that he lived at all.
