Watching a good old Disney movie is the perfect thing to do while cleaning: I’ve seen ‘em a million times and I always enjoy them, which makes them great motivators. So, this afternoon I put on Beauty and the Beast while I was cleaning my room. I got the DVD for Christmas and this was its maiden voyage. All in all, it was a successful experience – the movie worked fine and my room is now clean. Hallelujah. But this is all background information.
You see, it occurred to me while I was watching the movie that Belle makes two decisions that when put together reveal something very interesting. At the beginning of the movie, Belle comes to a dark, imposing castle and finds her sick father stuck in a drafty tower. Seconds later a terrifying, monstrous Beast shows up. Although there really could be nothing positive about it, she readily agrees to stay in the tower forever as the Beast’s prisoner so that her father can go free. She is even the one to suggest it and determinedly resigns herself to her sad fate. The Beast shows none of his hidden softness or kindness in this encounter, and Belle has no idea of what the future will hold, yet she throws away her young life. Could this be because she really hates her “provincial life” that badly? No, I think it is because she really wants to protect her father and has faith that the future will turn out for her situation.
At the end of the movie, her father is in another kind of danger. The people of her town come to lock away her father in an asylum because they think she is crazy. All of this was orchestrated by Gaston, who tells Belle that if she agrees to marry him then her father will go free. Belle’s horrified is response is a vehement “Never!” Is this because her father’s life was more in danger while a prisoner of the Beast than while stuck in the loony bin? Possibly, but I don’t know about that. In asylums back then, proper care and medications to sedate violent patients were not available, so he could easily have fallen victim of neglect or violence. Maybe she responded that way because she had the mirror and thought she could prove her father wasn’t crazy…but I think she was smart enough to realize that no one would listen, especially with Gaston controlling the crowd. She just had to try. And even when Gaston gets angry enough that he accuses her of being crazy, too, she doesn’t try to come up with a compromise like agreeing to marry him then if he’ll spare them both of the asylum. Notice how he doesn’t call her crazy until she doesn’t respond to his accusation that she has feelings for the Beast and she says that Gaston is the true monster. He accepts that the Beast is real when she reveals him in the mirror, which should mean that her father can go free, since his talk of the Beast is what made them call him crazy in the first place. But because Belle calls Gaston a monster, his pride is so damaged that he throws both Belle and her father in the prisoner cart. She could have agreed to marry Gaston to save her father from committal, but lands both of them in the asylum (luckily, Chip is there to save them, but that is not pertinent to this story).
I’m not trying to tear down a great Disney movie, I promise. I just want to focus on this interesting juxtaposition. Belle is willing to remain a prisoner in an enchanted castle for the rest of her life, yet she is not willing to marry a man who could provide a home and comfort for her for the rest of her life. Both the Beast and Gaston are jerks to her, the Beast even more openly so. Why does she choose him at the beginning and not Gaston at the end? Is it because at the beginning she doesn’t have a satisfactory life, but by the end she is in love with the Beast even though she doesn’t realize it? Maybe…
I think the most likely reason is that Gaston is a narcissistic toolbag. And a chauvinist pig. The Beast is mean, sure, but even at the beginning Belle must have seen that he was a lonely creature who had nothing to live for, and was lashing out because of his inner pain and anguish. Gaston shows that even at the beginning, he has no respect for women: “It’s not right for women to read; soon they start getting ideas, thinking…” Gaston wants Belle for a prize. The Beast only wants a prisoner and doesn’t seem to care whether it is an old man or a young woman. If anything, the Beast reveals a glimmer of hope when he tentatively asks her, “You would…take his place?” That suggests that he wants her there more than her father, so he is likely to treat her better than he treated him. Gaston is shallow and vain, but is not your average puffed up windbag. There is an element of violence that lies beneath his egotistical exterior, showing that if they had gotten married he’d probably be an abusive husband. Beast has a cold, hard exterior with an aching but warm heart beneath, whereas Gaston is outwardly likeable and inwardly a cold, selfish brute.
So guys, maybe you’re a little hard on the exterior, but if you learn to let that go and show a warm heart, maybe a beautiful girl will fall for you. And if you want to get married, don’t be narcissistic toolbags or chauvinist pigs, or nice girls will choose the insane asylum over you.
Nice moral to the story.
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