I imagine some people won't take this very seriously, but I do. What I got out of this movie as a little girl (mingled with the teachings of my traditional Christian parents) was that I not only could change a bad man if I were good/godly enough, I was obliged to do so, like a war nurse tending to wounded men. I ended up marrying someone who terrified me from the beginning, and I did this out of a sense of duty, as the man himself told me that he required my presence in order to be good. Even when he nearly killed me, I did not leave, because I saw his faults as the direct result of my imperfections. I just kept trying to be as good and sweet as a princess. And, embarrassingly, it took an intervention to get me out. That was years ago and I'm in a much better place now... but I want people to know that even if they, personally, didn't take Beauty and the Beast and similar indoctrinations to heart, some of us did. The video is very funny but the real world implications are not.

I've often said that there is little to know difference between the Beast and Gaston. Actually, Gaston would probably have been a better choice of the two. He was a vile idiot, but the Beast was downright sociopathic.

I'm a little weirded out by Gaston being described as "goal-oriented".

As a child I always hated Beauty and the Beast. Throughout the whole movie I was mainly aware of how horrible he was. All the good things did not even equate to redeem him for the things he did otherwise. Then the ending incensed me. At five I couldn't understand what exactly he'd done to earn Belle's love, let alone break the curse. I can remember demanding to know why he hadn't been killed like the monsters in other movies.

Yeah, I didn't really like BatB much either, but that's because I'm more than somewhat hirsute, and it's not a flattering portrayal. Being that hairy brings with it its own issues, and it really cut when listening to (what came across to me as being) the snide comments about the bad qualities of hairy guys. (True, she was talking about the beast in BatB, but if that's your argument as to why I shouldn't take it seriously, one could say the same thing about why girls shouldn't seriously compare themselves with the princess characters in Disney movies. But many girls do, just as I did with the beast.)

And thanks Tegan for that "I can remember demanding to know why he hadn't been killed like the monsters in other movies." Thanks. That didn't bring up any personal issues. I realize that it was likely when you were a kid, but still, statements like that can hurt.

I bet 10 million Internet feminist dollars that this post is going to get flooded with a deluge of comments warning the OP to "not take Disney so seriously" and "it's just for kids", because everyone knows that cultural products produced for children exist in a vacuum completely separate from every other cultural influence.

Yes, but when you come out of the gate presenting an argument against a point that no one here has made, it appears as if you were setting up a straw man. You are right, there are plenty of people who dismiss the impact of children' entertainment, but wait until one of them shows up and then pounce.

Ha! In all seriousness, I agree that too often people tend to dismiss this line of discussion. I think kids' entertainment is a great way to begin talking about the impact popular culture has on the way we see the world.

My 9 year old daughter watches Disney films and I know she takes what she sees to heart. So, we'll talk about what she's seen. I'll ask her "What would you have done if you were Belle?" "Should she have gone back to the Beast?" "Was the Beast a good guy or a bad guy or something in-between?" Her responses frequently surprise me.

To be honest, people will dismiss analysis of any sort of cultural product if it interferes with their bias. I've heard people say that commercials don't skew us because nobody pays attention to them anyways, and that movies don't skew us because we just watch them for entertainment and don't take them to heart, and that magazine ads don't skew us because everyone just flips past them anyways, etc. Not surprisingly, I've noticed that these sorts of comments tend to come from... less disadvantaged groups.

When people talk about Problematic Messages in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, I get frustrated, because invariably it will degrade into Literary Criticism Fail.

Disney actually did improve things a bit on some older tellings of the story. It's far from perfect, with the standard Disney aggressive heteronormativity, but they did clearly make an effort. I'm not saying we should give them a cookie, but to ignore the changes they made in their adaptation is just bad analysis.

All that stuff about changing an abusive/beastly husband with the Power of Love? Some sources argue that is a _deliberate_ part of some earlier tellings, that certain tellings of this story were for young women in arranged marriages to older men. But in Disney's version Belle didn't start to fall for the Beast until _after_ he stopped being abusive and controlling*. Her love for him didn't change his behavior; he had already changed on his own. This is an important detail from a lit analysis perspective.

Yes, Disney could have spent more time affirming that he'd truly changed his behavior: _that_ is fair grounds for arguing that the film is still Problematic. But that's not what the video does, and not what a lot of commentors here are doing.

Disney was, I argue, aware of (some of) the inherently problematic aspects of older tellings, and created Gaston as a foil for the Beast in an attempted antidote for this. He doesn't respect Belle or even care about what she wants; by contrast the Beast does ultimately come to respect Belle and care about what she wants. It doesn't perfectly succeed, so we can criticize them there. But again, ignoring this aspect of the story (even if you are a hardcore Death of the Author type) isn't accurate from a lit crit perspective.

The direct-to-video sequel does show Belle as falling for the Beast while he's still a shouty asshole. Let's condemn Disney for sending the "if you love him he will change" message there, by all means. But it's not anywhere near as cut-and-dried in the original Disney film.

* Except for the stuck-in-the-castle thing. That's still fair game for criticism, although frankly I'm not sure how to get around it and still preserve enough of the original story to justify calling it Beauty and the Beast.

Wednesday - there's no reply button under your post. Yes, I think I misunderstood your comments. I don't know who Robin McKinley is, but I'll look up the book. I really enjoyed Spinning Straw Into Gold by Joan Gould.

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