Beauty and the Beast: Romanticizing of Abuse

[solare]

What kind of “Tale as Old as Time” romanticizes abuse?

When I was younger, Beauty and the Beast was my favorite Disney movie. I recently re-watched it with my younger sister.

Not a fan of Beauty and the Beast anymore.

The way in which “love” is approached the movie emphasized patterns of control and abuse in relationships.

Last time I checked, Love Shouldn’t Hurt.

It’s made incredibly clear right away how, in the eyes of the villagers, Belle’s worth, and thus the worth of all women, stems from her beauty. Her refusal to conform to traditional gender roles, because she “wants so much more than they’ve got plan” is seen as incredibly deviant to the villagers, who sing about her and perpetuate objectification.

All of them follow her around and stare at her through windows, as they remark at how weird it is that she wants to read and think. As you see Belle leaving the bookstore, owned by the ONLY character in the movie who doesn’t comment on her appearance, the viewer is reminded of Belle’s constant objectification by these three guys staring at her through the window.

Because she is the most beautiful, Gaston wants to marry her because she is the most beautiful, and therefore the best. Because he DESERVES the best. This means he apparently doesn’t have to listen to Belle when she expresses her disinterest in him, shown when he pushes Belle up against a wall and tries to kiss her.

Belle continuously makes it clear that she isn’t interested in Gaston, who doesn’t know how to take “No” for an answer. This sets him up as the antagonist of the story, and a foil for the Beast, because he can’t seem to accept that Belle doesn’t want him. The Beast is definitely different. He also doesn’t know how to take “No” for an answer, has anger issues, and pressures Belle into “falling in love” with him through kidnapping and manipulation.

What happens when we idealize relationships such as this in popular culture? We normalize patterns of abuse, communicating that it’s okay to not listen to the desires of those we attempt to pursue relationships with, especially when their desires don’t match our own. The emphasis on denial of agency proves this, as Belle’s agency in choosing a romantic partner is taken from her. In the village, everyone around her pressures her to love Gaston. In the Beast’s castle, the talking symbols of the domestic sphere, influenced by the ever watching, constantly angry Beast, pressure Belle into “giving the Beast a chance” when she clearly wants nothing to do with him.

All they have planned for Belle is to be a housewife, regulated to the domestic sphere and defined in relation to her husband. This would be okay if that was what she wanted. While her purpose, according to the society she is raised in, is to remain within the domestic sphere and being an object for the desires of others, Belle wanted more than planned for her. She wanted “adventure in the great wide somewhere,” but at the end of the movie, she ends up with the Beast. Countless days as a prisoner in isolation allows the Beast to convince her to fall in love with him, giving the illusion of agency when you realize other characters have gone out of their way to ensure that Belle’s dreams and desires for independence have been taken away from her.

Originally Published at CollegeIsMyLife.com

[justbanANNAz]

oh my lord... it's a Disney movie for pete's sake!

dont ruin that beautiful story for other people. this is one of the reasons i can't stand being around adults. our innocence has gone to a place beyond death that it begins to consume our thoughts and twist our minds in ways we'd have never imagined as kids. take it for what it is. that's what Disney aimed to achieve- to take children to a world of innocence where love works, even with hard circumstances.

u mentioned nothing about the fact that he was lonely... rather than just evil.
u didn't mention that she fell in love with him despite her looks.
u didn't mention he was shy, and felt hopeless.
u didn't mention that moment at the end when he transforms

i mean u ignore all the good moments, and those are the ones that the movie sets up.

#foreverdefendingdisney

[Noxifer626]

So pretty much, if you're lonely you're allowed to kidnap women, their fathers, abuse them but it's all okay if you end up being hot?

[justbanANNAz]

@Noxifer626 dont act stupid please.

[Other_Tommy_Wiseau]

In fairness, most of the Disney stories were actually more fucked up in the original text. The stories were romanticized. Look up the crazy shit that happens to Ariel, aurora and snow white... Or don't if you want your day ruined 😑

[ManOnFire]

This is a joke, right? The elements of the stories were characteristic of the times it was set in. Disney had no intention of conveying a message of abuse or "oppression of women" to children. This sounds like that sick new age uni bologna professors teach students so they can have a reason to find misogyny in anything and everything. How sad.

[BCRanger10]

My thoughts exactly. This ridiculousness HAS TO stop.

[ManOnFire]

@BCRanger10 God, I know it. I'm sick of hearing about this and that being perceived as some kind of injury to women. Makes no sense.

[Sunburst223]

Oh lord. No, Beauty and the Beast does not romanticize abuse, nor does Belle have Stockholm Syndrome. In fact, I'd say the Beast has Lima Syndrome more than Belle has Stockholm Syndrome. And I'd say the movie condemns abuse more than it condones it. Yes, the Beast does initially have anger issues, is violent, and won't take no for an answer. However, Belle never bows to his behavior or demands. She's continually defiant, and when he does lash out violently when he finds her in the West Wing, she flat out runs away. Yes, she takes him back to the castle after he saved her life from the wolves, but that's because it's the right thing to do. Even then, she doesn't bow to him out of a sense of gratitude, but still exerts her own will and voice. When the Beast tells her that none of that would have happened had she not gone into the West Wing, she retorts that he should have been the one to control his temper. These words stay with the Beast, and he eventually begins to change his ways. Belle stays with him because the Beast genuinely changes, and because she sees these changes. She falls in love with him because she wants to, not because he makes her. And yes, the Beast does initially have his own ulterior motives for having her there, but those eventually fade away as he comes to genuinely love her and genuinely wants to make her happy. And he's even eventually willing to let her go for her own sake, nor does he ask her to return, even though it will leave him stuck as a Beast forever. He comes to value someone else over himself, which is the exact opposite of abusive. By the time of the ball, even though the Beast says "You're no longer my prisoner" to let her go save her father, Belle wasn't really a prisoner anymore in anything but name. Had she asked to be let go earlier, I think he would have let her. They're both there at that point because they both want to be there, not because one of them is being forced. As for Gaston, well yes, the Beast is indeed the opposite of him by the end. The Beast changes his ways, while Gaston does not. It's important to note that neither Gaston's or the Beast's actions are ever condoned. The difference is one of them changes. The Beast comes to respect and love Belle as an individual, while Gaston continually acts entitled. This is why Gaston is punished in the end, while the Beast is not. He has earned his happy ending because he is a better man. Not because he pressured Belle into it.

[ObscuredBeyond]

Belle didn't start giving in to Beast until he stopped being a jackass. The tipping point was when he released her, deciding death as a beast was better than watching her suffer. That's when she knew she was dealing with someone truly transformed on the inside, and not with the monster that first took her captive.

This was confirmed when he heeded her advice not to rip Gaston to shreds, in spite reaching a point where he would have been seemingly totally justified in doing so.

If it weren't for the fact that he then lets his guard down completely, allowing for the sucker stab, then this would have been a perfect move. Belle would have transformed him, Gaston would have been convicted of treason in the prince's court, and there'd be nothing the villagers could say or do about it.

The real story is of two men taking very different approaches to learning that their initial strategies were wrong. The Beast learns from his mistakes - albeit, grudgingly, and corrects course. Gaston doubles down on his path of folly and error. Belle is merely a catalyst to make these things happen. She changes the least of anyone, except for the part where she becomes more aware of what that enchantress and her magic can do.

What I'd like to see, is the film where the enchantress is made to answer for her pettiness in picking targets for beast spells. Instead, she completely vanishes from the plot, never to be seen or heard from again. Justice must be served!

[Lightspeed-Lemon]

Geez... was this an essay for your women's studies class? Pretty sure the movie and the audience are both on Belle's side, not the side of the villagers or Gaston. The film openly ridicules Gaston as the buffoon he is and portrays the villagers as an unthinking angry mob. We're not meant to sympathize with them.

The Disney films are taken from fairytales written long ago, that take place in bygone eras and forgotten lands, and thus are very traditional. So to apply modern theoretical concepts like objectification and the male gaze to them is absurd. It's like getting offended at a western because everyone is carrying guns (haven't they heard of gun control?), smoking cigarettes and referring to Native Americans as Indians.

Your Take reminded me of this extreme conservative film critic I once heard, who said his kids were forbidden to watch Disney's Little Mermaid because of its anti-authority message. Yes, Ariel defies her parents in wanting to marry the human prince. Yes, the Beast "kidnaps" Belle and acts scary because, well, he's a beast after all. These things happen in fairytales for dramaturgical reasons, it's what makes them so exciting compared to our staid real life. If you want everything innocuous and inoffensive to your modern sensibilities, then avoid classic fairytales like the plague!

[Jayson101]

Hahaha. And, not to be sexist, but with women it's different. Women, for some reason, work with troubled and difficult men.

My father is just insufferable, but all the abuse was directed at my sister and I. As a man I can not operate with him. He's too awful. But the women in my family somehow manage to work around it and manipulate things to their advantage.

[BCRanger10]

I don't seem to remember the Beast "manipulating" or pressuring Belle into falling in love with him. He didn't kidnap her to make her fall in love with him. He took her prisoner for... wait for it... TRESPASSING! So really, BELLE is ultimately the criminal here! Had she not done that, we probably could have been spared this tirade here.
haroldgibbons.files.wordpress.com/.../giphy.gif

Really though, in all seriousness, why are we planting all these ridiculous undertones in these innocent childhood fairy tales nowadays, which in some cases, are several centuries old (like Beauty and The Beast)? A man wanders off course looking for the county fair, ventures into a castle uninvited, so again, TRESPASSING (I'm really starting to wonder about this family now...), his daughter comes looking for him, FREELY OFFERS to stay if her father is released, she goes off into the forbidden West Wing (TRE... never mind...), and then... wait for it... THE BEAST CHASES HER OUT OF THE CASTLE! He wants her gone! But guess what? He saves her life when she's attacked by wolves and then... she takes him back to his home and nurses him back to health. And then guess what? They fall in love. No manipulation or anything.

But then what happens after that? He lets her go again so that she can go save her father's life, knowing full well that if she does not confess her love for him, he is cursed to remain a monster forever.

Meanwhile, back in the village, Gaston tries to have Belle's father thrown in the looney bin if Belle refuses him again. So I pray thee, please explain who, between Gaston and the Beast, is really the one manipulating and pressuring Belle?

[Anonymous]

You forgot about the sleeping beauty movie of Disney where a stranger (prince) kisses a sleeping woman without her consent. In an older version he married her, raped her and got her pregnant. In some versions she wakes up before she gives birth to her children.
How many girls want to be woken up by a kiss from a prince?
I don't want to start with other fairy tales like Cinderella where the first stepsister fits into the slipper by cutting off a toe, but the doves in the hazel tree alert the prince to the blood dripping from the slipper, and he returns the false bride to her mother. The second stepsister fits into the slipper by cutting off her heel, but the same doves give her away. In the end the evil stepsisters are punished for their deception by having their eyes pecked out by birds.
That were the versions that were printed in my children books.
And remember the stories of One Thousand and One Nights? In the non-Disney version the girl telling the stories is a sex slave of the king that should be killed the next day after having sex with him but she delays this by telling the king interesting erotic stories every day so he wants to her how it goes on and doesn't kill her. The censored versions of these stories is what we know as One Thousand and One Nights today.

[vishna]

I liked the book better. It wasn't perfect, but the moral was, "young high born ladies, see more than good looks in a man. Even an ugly man can be a good partner"
I never really liked BATB (i'm lazy) because I didn't watch it first until I was in middle school. And the sub was deaf and wouldn't turn down the tv, so, it was too loud and hurt my ears. And by the end of middle school from all the loud ass noises, I learned from the doc I had acoustic trauma. (so basically I should sue school and church for breaking my ear hairs)
I did like the songs though <3 I was in the play at school, I was a fork <3 and we twirled and danced :)

LOL, this is petty and against the moral, but he wasn't even cute when he transformed, he looks like a beautiful Squidward. Homeboy was ugly!

[Valkyrie1]

The Beauty and the Beast is actually a lot like an old skool romance novel. Beast's nature actually highlights Belle's inner strength. The Beast was cruel to Belle but in no way was Belle a victim. Belle saved the life of her father, made the most of her circumstances, lives her very own adventure (just like the romances she has read about that she sang about wanting to live out in the beginning of the movie), and "tamed" the beast.
She may not be any better than Ariel in the role model department due to her poor choice in suitors she did in fact choose him because she did have an opportunity to leave him and given her personality she probable would have fallen for the beast had she not been captured regardless.
The Beast was undeserving of Belle's love undoubtedly but besides having some dominance and submission undertones to it. It really is not a bad movie for children with adult supervision of course.

[TakeMaker]

It's a shit story, like most Disney stories are. It's filled with bullshit and fear and violence and the importance of pretty girls to marry rich men.

Disney films are shit usually. I remember being very puzzled that my young peers were so into them when I found them so utterly predictable, formulaic and generally sexist.

[Anonymous]

yeahhhh but if u look at the time period for when this story takes place, it's kind of historically accurate. Women weren't expected to read and be smart and "think for themselves". They were supposed to be pretty little things to cook and take care of the man when he came home. And it's not like the BEAST gained the love of Belle through his kidnapping. Remember.. he realized his mistake and set her free. <3

[Vesuvius87]

This. If I recalled clearly, Belle was leaving from the castle because she couldn't tolerate the Beast's temper and the Beast saved her from getting mauled to death by wolves.

[Vesuvius87]

Then off course their romance become and she nursed him back to health. But yeah initially she didn't like the Beast at all.

[anonman32]

https://i.imgur.com/mGMmPJd.jpg
when i was a kid they showed shows on tv of a skunk trying to rape a cat because it was funny and people werent so easily offended.

[BaileyisDarcy]

Loved that show XD

[anonman32]

@BaileyisDarcy yeah me too, it was funny because it reflects life.

[Reallio]

Jeez, grow a pair, will ya? Holy crap Beauty & the Beast was my favourite Disney movie, next to Lilo and Stitch. Everyone always has to find a problem with something. It's a children's movie there's nothing wrong with it people love to make things bigger than they are.

[MargaritaPeach]

Wow--that is pretty deep. One of the most well-written MyTakes that I have read in a while. I never thought about it that way, but you present some good arguments. Belle was beautiful and happy just the way she was. Love doesn't always make things better or make people happier. Same with society's idea that people need to be part of a couple. Sometimes we can just BE. :)

[SovereignessofVamps]

I agree!! Surprised this got so much hate.

[MargaritaPeach]

@SovereignessofVamps some people just can't accept that being single is perfect fine. Disney should make a movie about how great it was to be single.

[SovereignessofVamps]

I srsly think that would be cool. I mean friends can be awesome.

[aficionado]

I'd take this any day over the computer-generated crap Disney has been churning out over the past few years, totally ignoring the charm of traditional animation.

Also, this wasn't an original Disney movie. Until early 2000s, none if Disney's animated movies were originals. They were all based on books, novels or fairytales. So it's not Disney's fault.

By the way... I'm HUGE Disney fan, and will always remain so. Mickey Mouse is my hero and idol! ;)

[Zumba_dancing_27]

I do like this movie and yes I have also watched some of the classic disney films and shows over and some of the things are true. They do have some questionable, things in it. I do still like Disney films and some of there older shows and that it teaches people to use there imagination and think big. Some people don't and they are not creative or don't know how to think of anything good.

[karahiri]

even when i was a kid, i really, really disliked Gaston. now that i think about it, he might be part of the reason why i have a knee-jerk reaction to extremely buff dudes lmao. interesting take! :)

[clampfan101]

Did you honestly watch the whole movie?

The Beast wasn't the "Love me, or I'll kill you!" type for even a quarter of the movie. He changed, Belle realized so and forgave him, and they were able to start over and find love the right way.

"He's not a monster! You are!"
~ Belle to Gaston

[chc0009]

No, it isn't. I'd say that horrendous 50 Shades of Grey is romanticizing abuse, along with Twilight, Divergent, and those other stupid young adult novels. They're teaching young women to be develop Stockholm syndrome for their Prince Charming.

And let me tell you something, I read another version of Beauty and the Beast and the Beast wasn't a spoiled brat like he was portrayed in the Disney version, he was more of a quiet and depressed type, not to mention that he looked like a black panther.

[martyfellow]

I don't think these old legends lead to real life abuse. This story has a happy ending, and the symbolism teaches us not to 'judge a book by its cover.'

Hey, a lot of people need to learn that lesson, don't they?

[mermaidrocketship]

And this is what happens when we force adult issues onto movies made for children.

[AmethystAngel]

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/57011773.jpg