Untrue As It Can Be

"Eye of the Beholder" is the first Halloween episode of Disney's Gargoyles. True to the spirit of the series, it has a deeper purpose than to be a holiday outing, as the story develops Xanatos' and Fox's characters and lays the foundation for further changes to come.

However, it's still wonderful as a Halloween episode. A particularly cool thing is Elisa dressing as Belle from Beauty and the Beast, choosing the golden ballroom gown and starting a tradition of having Elisa dress as a Disney Princess, since she was Jasmine in the comics. Goliath does not dress in any costume, choosing just to be concealed by the holiday. It's a very sweet moment, as Disney makes a nod to itself, and more importantly, a nod to one of my favourite Disney films, as Goliath serves as the "Beast" to Elisa's Belle.

But....

Okay, okay, I have to do it. I have to state that this meta reference, much as I love it, is not a profound expression of the similarity between the two couples. Some fans make it out to be this, but the central relationship in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and the relationship between Goliath and Elisa, are different except on the most simple visual level.

The major difference is that in Gargoyles, both characters are already the species they want to be. It's common to say that the Beast shouldn't have transformed at the end of the Disney film, but that's ignoring that the Beast hated being what he was, and his entire character arc, the plot of the whole film, was about him learning to become a better person so the curse would be lifted. The Beast becoming human was the only ending that would have made sense, no matter how many fans love the Beast as himself.

In contrast, Goliath and Elisa are already their natural species, and so they don't  need to change their forms, and indeed never will. Because of this, the source of the conflict is different, and so is the story being told. Beauty and the Beast is about a character learning to change so he can be transformed back. Gargoyles is about two characters having to meet the problems that come with being of two different species. The former is a single goal that must be met within the confines of a film's running time, and then it ceases being inter-species. The latter is about a slow burn, as Goliath and Elisa come to terms with their attraction, and the limits they have, because there is no space for a transformation to remove those limits.

Another important difference between Goliath/Elisa and Belle/Beast is that Goliath is not a dick. The personalities of Goliath and Elisa are not the source of their struggle; the source is the taboo and the surprise of their very relationship, while in the Disney film, the Beast's personality is the major obstacle. (That, and the whole imprisonment thing, but the film tries to re-direct viewers away from that unpleasant truth.)

Some fans of Beauty and the Beast interpret the central dynamic as less creepy than others do, so that maybe Goliath not being a dick would be a major difference. Among the supporting evidence: Belle gave herself to the Beast freely, the servants are nice to Belle, Belle stands up to the Beast, the Beast lets Belle go—there are all these things that are supposed to prove the central romance isn't creepy, and it seems like the writers are trying to prove it too, but I can't buy it. No matter how much I love and respect this film, it's still about a creepy romance. And Goliath/Elisa is not creepy at all, because neither starts off in a violent, hateful role towards the other.

 It's not that either type of story is better, just that they are so very different that any similarity between them is on the superficial level, and nothing deeper. I love that the Halloween episode of Gargoyles references Beauty and the Beast, but this doesn't mean the film will turn the crank of Goliath/Elisa fans, because it is a very different story.

A Half-Baked Self-Analysis of a Checkered Past

I've written briefly about my break-up with The Lion King, a beloved movie from my childhood that I just can't  love for itself anymore, though I also can't bring myself to hate it. It's because I can't swallow the film's support of ironclad hierarchy, one in which everyone has their place and those who try to change it are evil or misguided. I also find the handling of Simba's exile unconvincing in a few ways, and the easy diffusion of Scar as a threat once he becomes ruler to also be disappointing.

Which just leaves me wondering why the hell I loved it so much as a kid. I've decided I'll never know for sure, but that doesn't prevent me from thinking about it. The strongest thought was that I interpreted Scar and the hyenas as positive anti-authoritarian characters, and having decided, by age ten, that I liked characters who defied authority, I latched onto them as fellow aliens. In my mind, Scar was "snarky" and thumbed his nose at royal pretentions. The hyenas were (not literal) underdogs who had been treated unfairly and were looking for a better lot in life, and they also were "snarky" and didn't give a shit about authority.

If it really was the way I looked at those characters in the past, it's impossible for me to do it now. I look at those characters now and all I can see are the ways they support the "real" messages of the film. Scar is an idiot, and most emphatically not a saviour of the downtrodden, but one who uses them for his own ends. He can scheme his way to the top but isn't smart enough to be an effective villain once he gets there.

The hyenas are also not meant to be oppressed in any way. Their desire for food is because they are gluttonous rather than starving, and according to the rules of the narrative, they "deserve" to be kept out because if they don't, it'll fuck everything up. They're also too stupid to realize when they're being manipulated, and not intended to be worthy of sympathy for it. All four characters are anti-authority, but negatively so. Their refusal to stay in their pre-ordained roles is why they are villains.

I know part of the beauty of fiction is seeing characters in different ways, finding emotional resonance that the creators may not have intended. I still believe that, and there are times when I balance my feelings towards a character with the knowledge that these reactions were not intended by the writers. However, in this case, I can't see the Lion King characters as anything but what I believe they were intended to be, with no other emotions in the way.

I just cringe to imagine the Lion King villains being spun for any kind of progressive interpretation, because I see them as so strongly the opposite of that, so obviously meant to show why defying authority/order is a bad thing, that I can't connect with the characters on any other level anymore. They're not competent, they're not "right", and they don't care about each other. Something's just gotten screwed up in the last eighteen years.

Pixar's "Brave": Questioning the Rebellious Princess

Brave is not about a Rebellious Princess who undergoes an awakening into heroism. Instead, it's about a Rebellious Princess who puts a spell on her mother in order to break out of the role, and must right her wrong. There's also a lot of comic relief, an impending clan war, and an evil monster bear.

There were some good parts to this movie, some parts that didn't work, and an it overally defines the term "mixed bag", and thus leaves a viewer wanting a little bit more, for it to stick to what it established.

Because Merida ends up turning her mother into a bear as a result of the usual "spirit not letter" wish, and then refuses to admit it is her fault, the movie places Merida's mother, Queen Elinor, on the moral high ground. True, Merida and her mother both must reconcile their dislike of each other in order to break the spell before it becomes permanent, but Merida is further in the wrong right from the start.

Merida's objections to stifling protocol and an arranged marriage are played like the carping of a spoiled brat, and her objections never feel as though the narrative takes them seriously. She is also the one who cast that damaging wish, and clan war starts brewing over her defiance of that arranged marriage. When Merida must finally fight a monster, all her crack shooting with arrows becomes completely ineffective. This all makes it clear that Brave wishes to tell a story that questions the value of the cherished fantasy archetype.

In the end, however, Brave becomes hesitant about any of these things. Despite all the dumping on Merdia, the narrative still decides to stick with modern values. Merida declares that people can choose who they love instead of engaging in contests for her. It feels like lip service, since the implication is that the three clan princes are still all she can choose from, and of course because Brave was, up till that point, not celebrating female rebellion.

The best thing to come out of the film is the relationship between Merida and her mother, Elinor. It's rare that a mother/daughter relationship is at the centre of an animated fantasy film, and the reconciliation between the two is honest and heartfelt, but it only begins when Merida tries to make good on her mistake.

 Elinor is also not a strawman, since her desires are instead connected to current practical need as stemming from tradition. However, developed characters does not mean a movie is neutral, and it is exactly because Elinor's concerns are justified that Brave appears to challenge the Rebellious Princess myth.

Another false impression that Brave gives from the trailers was that it would be a more dramatic and earnest film than it was. As it happens, there is a lot of comic relief, which isn't grating if a viewer expected it, but it's disappointing when it seemed Brave was to be going in a more straightforward direction.

Most of this comic relief comes from the entire male cast. Merida's father King Fergus is a ferocious warrior and loving father, but he's also there to be "the fun parent" and "the goofy dad". Queen Elinor is clearly the one who wears the "pants" in the castle and the only one concerned with making sure it's running smoothly. As a result, Fergus is just comic relief, and stacked up against his wife's emotional growth, is a weak character. When Pixar movies are usually so good, to see such a lazy dynamic between the parents is disappointing.

The other clan heads and their sons are even sillier, which makes the threat of impending war harder to take seriously. Because they are such silly characters, one could think that this is a concession to the championing of western values, a knock on arranged marriage, but it's difficult to shake the impression given by the main storyline. There is still potential war going on, however comical it looks.

Add to this Merida's little brothers, who are only named once and no lines at all, it seems like the movie built up its central female dynamic and just decided to call it a day, instead of creating a fully fleshed-out cast of both genders.

However, there's also a lot of slapstick coming from the female characters. The transformed Elinor refuses to get rid of her crown or dainty behaviour, and communicates through pantomime and anthropomorphic expressions. The forest witch also sells bear carvings, with an entire hut full of quirky wooden automatons, and also puts on a welding mask to use her cauldron, which also functions as a voicemail. There's a maid who always screams and is tormented by the princes. It's all just a little too goofy.

Another problem is the antagonist Mor'du, the monstrous bear of legend. Mor'du was once a man, fighting his brothers for control of a kingdom. He wished "for the strength of ten men" and became a giant bear instead. There are reasons for him to be in the film: he appears in the cold open and took Fergus's leg, his legend is what Elinor uses to try to teach Merida a lesson, and the forest witch implies she was responsible for him, too. His fate reinforces the notion that you must Be Careful What You Wish For, and reminds viewers that Elinor's transformation could become permanent. However, Mor'du only appears at the beginning and the middle of the film.  He is connected to the story, but it's a weak link, because when Mor'du is not there, his presence is not missed.

In fact, because the film already has the mother/daughter conflict, the need to break the spell, and the need to reconcile the hostile clans, Mor'du feels like a fifth wheel, maybe added only because of the false expectation an animated family film must have a villain.

In the middle of this muddle, viewers might ask why the film is called Brave when it's not about a heroic rite of passage. The most likely explanation is Merida is "Brave" for admitting her mother could be right, and that the spell was her fault and not the witch's. In addition, Elinor and Merida are both "brave" for reconciling themselves to each other's worldview. If this was the intention, however, the theme does not hang strongly enough. As mentioned above, it obvious that Merida needs to change far more than Elinor does, and the film still waffles, unable to commit to the criticisms it makes.

Many have compared the film to How to Train Your Dragon, but the similarities are only surface, coming from their visual motifs. There is a fundamental difference between the two movies, which is that Hiccup learns he can be himself instead of being the Viking boy his father wants him to be, while Merida learns that being the princess girl her mother wants her to be isn't that bad. How to Train Your Dragon also sticks absolutely to its theme and makes it clear, while Brave backs off.

The overlaid comic relief, the fifth-wheel antagonist, are also problems. As a final cap, the movie also feels derivative and predictable. Much of Merida and Elinor's arguments have a familiar ring, as does the fact of wishes that backfire, and the sitcom dynamic between husband and wife. Many events are easy to call before they happen.

These facts are as disappointing as they are aggravating. Brave represented a change for Pixar, its first attempt at heroic fantasy and its first film with a female protagonist, and it could have been much better than it was. This doesn't represent a permanent step down for Pixar, but it is a sad thing.

How Beauty and the Beast Tries Not to Creep You Out

Though I love Disney's Beauty and the Beast, I can't get on board with the backlash against the backlash, the disdain for any attempt to describe the film as representing Stockholm Syndrome or metaphorical domestic abuse. Usually this rebuttal is that the film is about the Beast becoming a good person, and Belle never puts up with his shit, so that those who criticize the film's morality simply aren't looking at its contents properly.

That's not really the issue, though. The fact is, there's no way to intellectually "prove" that Beauty and the Beast is or is not about this sort of thing. Relating the specifics of its story or the intention of the writers will not talk viewers out of their gut reactions. Nor should there be any need to try: viewers ought to be open when a work disturbs them. It doesn't mean they want the work censored, or think it's actually bad: it might just creep them out in ways not intended by the people who made it.

Asking myself the question, "Does the plot of Beauty and the Beast unintentionally make me uncomfortable?", well, I love the film a great deal, because it is well-crafted in terms of plot and animation, has actual character development, and it's likable with good songs. I love the character of Belle, and the design of the Beast, and when they start falling in love, it feels very natural and true to the characters rather than a generic love story. But...I can't help but wince a little when I think about the conditions of the movie.

I can't get over the idea that when they start falling in love, Belle is still technically his prisoner. Sure, she's happy, and the Beast isn't getting a free ride, either--he has to learn to become a better person, and sets her free when she needs to go. But Belle is only there because she was imprisoned. I believe in the central romance well enough, but I just can't forget that. At the start Belle was terrified: she was crying, despairing, and so on. I can't forget it.

Fiction is funny because sometimes you're okay with witnessing things that would disturb you in the real world, and sometimes you aren't. No one can predict how they will react, and no one knows how to create a work so the audience will completely forget about the real world and look at the fiction only in terms of its "objective" creation and not their own values or experiences. Many viewers forget entirely about the real-world suggestions found in Beauty and the Beast and enjoyed the story as-is, but no one needs to apologize for a piece of fiction making them uncomfortable.

The particular backlash towards criticism of Beauty and the Beast, however, may be founded on how hard the film tries to make its potentially unsettling aspects presentable for a modern, egalitarian audience. Given the way popular art is designed to evoke emotions, Beauty and the Beast should not be attacked for trying to do this, but it can be studied as an expert way to create a movie that gets viewers to feel what you want them to feel, and render a potentially disturbing situation palatable.

I went briefly over the ways the film does this in my initial review, but I'm going to talk about the attempts again. The makers of the Beauty and the Beast were apparently cagey enough to understand that some might find the idea of a man trying to woo his prisoner unpalatable in the 1990s. So, they do the following:

Firstly, Belle, the heroine, is an egalitarian dream. She is strong-willed, intelligent, and adventurous. Giving her this strength makes it seem as though she is on equal footing with the Beast, and therefore there is no problem in what they do together. 

A lot of us nerd girls also identified with her, and so we are even more willing to give her experiences the benefit of the doubt, lest we start seeing our empowerment fantasy as a simple victim instead. It ought to be a lot more complicated than that, since the Beast still has power over her, but I can see why Belle's characterization makes many people want to go with it.

As a particular example, Belle is technically in the castle of her own free will. She must stay, because she willingly gave herself in exchange for her father, whom the Beast had imprisoned. In the eyes of many viewers, Belle is less the victim because she acted for herself, and stays in the castle in part because she chooses to obey that obligation. Furthermore, she only starts to love the Beast when he realizes he must be nice to her and actually tries.

However, I don't forget that Beast had no reason to keep Belle there except the most mercenary one: here is a girl that could break my spell. The situation is treated as an awkward romance opportunity, completely ignoring the fact that Belle has no choice but to stay there. Perhaps in real medieval France, the Beast would also be obliged to keep her out of dishonouring the castle, but this being Disney, we can't assume historically-accurate values when not in evidence, and put the onus for Belle's freedom entirely on the Beast. Still, I can see why that part worked for most viewers, too.

Secondly, the film gives the Beast an even worse "beast" to play off. Enter Gaston, who actually and overtly does want to enslave Belle in marriage. Gaston is vain, callous, anti-intellectual and sexist. With him around, sticking his chauvinism right in your face, of course audiences are more likely to root for Belle and the Beast, because the disturbing stuff there is only subtextual and unintentional. Since Gaston is everything that a liberal-minded woman would hate, this also helps to explain why many progressive people would come to the defence of Beauty and the Beast while decrying similar works.

Thirdly, just gloss things over. When it comes to portraying the Beast, the film very speedily moves away from his initial threatening entrance to replace it with something more along the lines of grouchy and awkward. The scenes where the Beast appears bristling and cloaked in shadow are extremely brief, and his look also softens for the first time when he hears Belle's offer of exchange, which is very early in the film. The film is then ready to make the viewers sympathetic towards the Beast in earnest, to make them forget about that small period where he seemed truly monstrous.

After Belle is set in the castle, the Beast is portrayed as less a terrifying monster than a big, hairy man-child taking his first steps at an awkward courtship. He gives this impression that he is, if not yet likable, is somehow non-threatening. When he starts yelling at Belle's door to come down to dinner, no matter how loud Robby Benson is in that scene, one never gets the impression that he actually would break in and hurt Belle.

It makes some sense, since he was transformed basically for being a brat, but it's also a convenient way to defuse the audience's dislike of the scenario, by making them believe the Beast isn't that bad. It turns the narrative into "woman civilizes man-child" which has its own set of philosophical problems, but is also more benign than the "woman is successfully wooed by her monstrous jailer" angle.

Furthermore, by making the Beast's learning to be a nice person into the central character arc, viewers sympathize with him even more. Belle may be the initial viewpoint character, but it's Beast who goes through the most changes in the story; he is the protagonist, she is the love interest. Because we see him doing nice things for Belle without being prompted, starting with saving her from the wolves after he chased her from the castle for almost touching the enchanted rose, it is easier for the audience to forget that she is technically his prisoner. He loses his childish grumpiness and starts to try to love her in earnest, giving Belle gifts that cater to her interests and self, such as the castle's huge library. We love the Beast because he tries and succeeds to be good, and so it is harder and harder to think of him as a jailer. Just as with Belle's strength, the movie tries to redeem its scenario simply by moving away from the most black-and-white understanding of victimizer and victim. Most of us know intellectually that it's more complicated than this, but we are willing to go along.

Finally, Beast makes the decision to let Belle go when she sees her father lost in the woods: it might cost him his human form, but he loves her enough to do it. Very few, perhaps, could hold onto their objections after such an unselfish display. Introducing such a modern, progressive notion of love also further serves to soften viewers towards the situation the Beast created. After all, he really must see her as a person if he can let her go at this most crucial time, right? Of course, because it's held up as the ultimate proof of their love. Intellectually viewers know that if the Beast were a good person he never would have held her captive at all, but emotionally, one can be pulled in by an individual character's circumstances.

Another justification is not found in anything specific to Beauty and the Beast, but a general unspoken conceit in fiction: the most moral option may be one that would destroy the story as it was, and therefore the character must engage in suspect actions in order to further the plot. The plot proceeds because the Beast and his servants want to keep Belle there regardless of her desires, on the chance she may fall in love with him and break their curse.

Belle is not consulted and does not know their circumstances; if she did know about their plight, it would have killed the suspense of the romance if she agreed, or made it too dark if she disagreed. To some, this serves as justification for the actions of the Beast. If he didn't keep Belle captured, there would be no story, and so it is pointless to complain about his actions.

Yet it is not that easy for anyone to get rid of their instinctive reactions to a plot that hinges on this behaviour. No matter how hard Beauty and the Beast tries to frame a scenario where the actions of the title Beast are considered entirely justifiable, someone is going to be uncomfortable with it.

Like I said, it doesn't entirely work for me. It does because I enjoy the film, but it doesn't because I am still mildly uncomfortable with the main scenario. Still, whatever I do feel, the thorough and meticulous way the film tries to cast Beast and Belle in a palatable light while keeping true to the original prisoner motif is admirable in its craftsmanship. It makes for good product.

This does not mean viewers who feel disturbed by the film are "wrong" or just aren't taking into account the fact that the Beast needed to become a better person before Belle truly loved him. No, sometimes, whatever a story does, a viewer is disturbed by it.

In Defence of the OTHER Prince Adam

When I rediscovered my childhood love of Beauty and the Beast, it made intense a disagreement I had already had with a lot of its fans: the idea that the Beast should never have transformed back into his human self (officially called Prince Adam in supplemental material). At first, I disagreed on sheer abstract principle: I was so damn sick and tired of stories of human women being able to fall in love with strange male beings that I didn't want Beauty and the Beast to go any farther than it already had. Afterwards, I realized that to desire the Beast to remain untransformed goes against both what the film was actually building up towards, and what the character himself actually wanted. In other words, it's an arbitrary desire based on personal sentimentality rather than the actual contents of the film.

For some fans, it's just about being unable to empathize with a character that has a different body and voice type than the one they had spent the entire film experiencing. I can understand that--after all, I've been there. Some simply find the prince ugly on his own, which again I can see, though I very much don't share the opinion. Other times, however, dislike of the Beast's transformation is phrased in terms of spiritual enlightenment: the film ought to have taken its endorsement of love transcending appearance to the logical extreme, and have Belle live completely with the persona she had fallen in love with, because she had done it in spite of his monstrous visage.

Fantastical xenophilia is often used as a metaphor about accepting others for their differences, or transcending petty physical concerns for the higher realm. However, when it is always about a human female learning to love a male being of another species/form/attractiveness level, all the progressive implications are erased, and it seems more like a male fantasy, designed to coddle the egos of certain men, by telling them that women are too pure and good to care about looks. This is why I don't endorse Beauty and the Beast on those terms; what it is telling us on those terms is nothing shocking or new.

(This is also my response to anyone who complains that Quasimodo didn't end up with Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

However, this aspect of xenophilia/transcendence actually isn't the main focus of Beauty and the Beast. While in the prologue, the enchantress warned the prince not to be deceived by appearances, and certainly such messages can be derived from the titular romance, the main message is actually "Stop being a dick and you will get a beautiful girl to fall in love with you" not, "Learn to love yourself as a Beast".

Belle does learn to accept the Beast, but it doesn't really change her character. The true character development is instead in the Beast's nature, and does not involve his learning to accept his appearance as permanent. Instead, he learns not to be an overgrown brat, explicitly so that he can become human again. Although he learned to be a nice person while still a Beast, his monstrous state was originally a symbol of his nasty nature. To become human, therefore, symbolizes his success at overcoming this nature.

Not only is this transformation the main focus of the film, it is something the Beast actively desires. He keeps Belle around because he wants the curse to be broken, and freaks out when she almost touches the Rose, his timetable for when the transformation will become permanent. He also shows active distaste for his form, shredding his own portrait, locking away Belle's father after he thinks Maurice is staring at him, and referring to himself as a "monster". Finally, when he is at last returned to human form, he is overjoyed.

In short, everything in the film points towards the Beast wanting to become human again, and there is no reason given as to why he would not wish it so. In fact, if you listen to the audio commentary for the film, one of the intentions for the story was that the Beast was losing more of his human nature as time went on, to the point where he might have eventually lost his sapience.

Because of all this, it becomes petty to demand a film change everything it was building up to, and a main character change everything they wanted. There are many stories where characters have their goals altered or thwarted, but in the best cases it is built up by the plot and supported by the story's themes. To simply introduce failure in the end without reason or support is bad writing. As Beauty and the Beast exists now, there is nothing that suggests that the Beast would or should remain untransformed in the final reel, and to do so would make the film far too dark and too much of a waste.

Compare it with Shrek. When this movie tries to subvert the Beauty and the Beast story by Fiona turning permanently into an ogre instead of the human princess she expected, it's foreshadowed and endorsed by events in the story. Since Shrek is an allegedly egalitarian subversion of the Disneyfied fairy tales, the audience expects Fiona's, "This is not how a princess is supposed to look" line to be challenged. In addition, her anguish about her ogre form already seems more flimsy than the Beast's equivalent, in light of the fact that Shrek is an ogre, too, and she has already become attracted to him.

Furthermore, Fiona is marrying Farquaad, who is clearly wrong for her, just to break the curse, meaning that working to break the curse is not associated with positive character development as in Beauty and the Beast, but in unnecessary negativity. Learning to accept herself as an ogre coincides with general positive development, i.e. finally rejecting Farquaad and accepting Shrek as her lover, the man she was actually having a good time with. Thus, when Fiona remains an ogre, it is actually what the plot was leading towards. Beauty and the Beast did not create the same expectations.

Many people who protest the Beast's return to human form might instead be considering it from Belle's POV. Belle, like a good chunk of the audience, has fallen in love with the Beast as he is, and so must find it difficult to accept the change. And she briefly does, her face quirking as she looks at the new human form, only accepting him when she sees the same eyes that he has always had.

It might provide more fuel for the anti-prince fires: Belle having brief difficulty accepting his form for a second is transformed into a daydream that he remained a Beast. However, Disney's Beauty and the Beast is unusual in that while Belle is the viewpoint character in the beginning, the Beast is the character who develops the most, and who is considered the actual protagonist. Therefore, any of his desires trump Belle's when it comes to what form he has: because he is the protagonist, the Beast "deserves" to dictate what will happen with his body, and as we've already seen, he wants to become human. Or if you want, simple logic: who decides what their ideal body should be--the owner of the body, or the person who's fallen in love with it? The owner, of course. In addition, if it is about love transcending appearances, then Belle does should not care what he looks like either way, right?

Alternatively, male viewers might look on the Beast as a power fantasy and feel disappointed when it is taken away. But again, this is not what the character or the narrative wants, so the desires of viewers are moot.

Essentially, the Beast's returning to human form is the only way the story could have ended. To have it otherwise would be like Star Wars without the Death Star blowing up. The Beast is the protagonist, he wants to be human, already has a lesson to learn about emotional control, and so there is no reason for him to permanently remain a Beast once he has succeeded in his quest to not be one. Love beyond appearances already exists in Beauty and the Beast (for women, at least), and it must eventually stand aside for the plot development and the fulfillment of a character’s goals.

Not to mention it would seem pretty half-assed to have him stay a Beast, while the rest of the castle's servants transform back into humans and the castle to shed its semi-grotesque nature. If one wanted the Beast to remain a Beast, they would have to be watching a far different film than the one that actually exists.

It Cannot Be Sweetened

The Nostalgia Chick reviews The Lion King

Now, normally I love The Nostalgia Chick, and the rest of this website. But c'mon…it's not that she inadvertently disagrees with part of my critique of The Lion King, namely the hyena-based bits of that whole "the natural order cannot be changed" thing, but that she does it in that particular way. It's the theory that the legitimacy of complaints about a film's unsettling subtext is measured by whether or not said subtext actually drives people to commit similar actions.

Naturally, that would make The Lion King SOL, since of course nobody was driven to support racial segregation because of its positively-portrayed analogue in The Lion King, or to dislike hyenas even more than they already would. But discussing the progressive values of films, or their lack thereof, isn't about literal goals or literal expressions…it's a discussion for its own sake. If it serves any political purpose, it's about calling attention to tropes which reflect rather than create the attitudes of society, and these tropes often don't reflect things literally.

Hence why I agree that pointing to the hyena's VAs as evidence of the "racial segregation" subtext is pretty flawed, because Simba's parents are portrayed by black actors, too, and Jim Cummings was white. Instead, the hyena plot is part of the film's larger theme that there is a natural order that should not be changed, and the hyenas living where they did, and apparently being unable to better themselves, is part of that natural order--it's the unspoken dark side of the "Circle of Life". These kinds of themes aren't expressed maliciously, or intended to refer to anything in the real world: this is all about subconscious, nigh-universal themes that are, sadly, expressed in stories all over the world. Nobody at Disney wanted to use this as racial propaganda.

However, I was in a different way uncomfortable for what's basically an argument from popularity. Hyenas aren't as liked by the public, so nobody would go to see a movie called "The Hyena King" (or wouldn't it really be a "Queen"?). …and? So? It serves as a justification if you're asking why a film that wanted to make tons of money went with "majestic" animal protagonists, but this argument seems to be more about storytelling--that if an animal stereotype exists, there's no complaint to be made against using it.

Even if this logic is restricted only to animal stereotypes, it's still trying to justify a formula solely by its longevity, and often these issues are just a matter of presentation. After all, look at Ratatouille. It took mammals that were as much maligned as hyenas and made something that was a mainstream success out of it. This fits with the video's notion that Pixar is more risky, but the issue isn't discussed in terms of the stuido's willingness to take risks, but just that no one would be interested in a film about hyenas. Come on, what if the hyenas looked like this? Or if you want to just go to Disney, think about Gaston from Beauty and the Beast--he was an intended subversion, and it didn't hurt the film at all.

Also, also, also, my interpretation was that Scar's reign was meant to have caused the drought somehow. Over-hunting by the hyenas (it would fit the rest of the movie so well if their desire for food was from greed rather than starvation) or whatever you want to say, it's meant to be symbolic. This isn't just the dry season, this is Fisher King territory.

Timon and Pumbaa are still annoying.

The Kimba thing isn't just about rhyming protagonist names and lions on cliffs. It's the fact that many of the TLK characters have Kimba counterparts in terms of species/role/appearance, and that Disney is keeping its lips zipped about the idea. Still quite a shame.

Dammit, Scar, you used to be so cool, slithering around and snarking on the pomp and circumstance of the kingdom, but you turned out to be a moron.

I've gone over and over on it in my head, and I still can't accept that the later plot hinges on the entire cast doing absolutely nothing until Simba grows up.

Finally, I did see the film in 3-D, too, out of nostalgic value. But I had watched it just prior to making my blog post, and of course nothing changed between that viewing and the theatrical one. My heart soared at the beginning, but my rational mind soon set in. Things have changed with me.

What is Beautiful, and what is Bestial

Like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast was another of my childhood Disney obsessions. However, when rewatching Beauty and the Beast as an adult, I found it to be much more appealing than I did The Lion King when I also rewatched that recently. Both have a nostalgic cachet that prevents me from rejecting them entirely, but I was sour towards The Lion King because it was a film that said everyone should know their place or they're stupid, evil, or misguided. Beauty and the Beast, though it also has elements that make me uncomfortable, was much more appealing.

The characters of Beauty and the Beast are well-crafted and defined, even if they are big ol' Disney clichés. The viewer wants to follow them through their adventures and to believe the film is a good one. For one thing, I like Belle. A three-dimensional female lead with an iron will doesn't erase any uncomfortable elements in the film, but I was enamoured with her bibliophilia, determination, and desire for adventure and still am now. In short, Belle is still pretty damn cool.

Even without my thinking the Beast is attractive (see below), his character design is still great. It's a little top-heavy, and his muzzle seems to get about twice as long when he roars, but the way it combines so many different mammals into a single refined whole is a great look. The silhouette he cuts is appropriately minotaur-ish, and the human eyes just add more uniqueness to it. Robby Benson also has an amazing voice, deep and terrible.

Gaston is a great villain. He portrays a very human evil through his unappealing traits and simple desires, yet it makes him no less threatening. Also, unlike Scar, Gaston never loses that villainy when being exposed as a weak coward and a fool, therefore taking the easy way out and giving the audience no threat. Gaston is a jackass, and the early parts of the film try too hard to show what a boor he is, but Gaston is still a dangerous one when he's crossed or defied.

The castle servants aren't as annoying as they could have been. The three main objects have motivations and intelligence, so it's less easy to brush them off as things designed for merchandising and/or ensuring the film doesn't get too dark. Me, I was always the fondest of Cogsworth, due to my weakness for fussbudgets.

On a minor note, it was a treat hearing the late, great Tony Jay as Monsieur D'Arque, the corrupt asylum keeper that Gaston bribes. I had completely forgotten about that role of his, but it was wonderful to hear one of my favourite voice actors from childhood in one scene. Tony Jay only had one voice, but damn it wasn't a good one.

However, D'Arque reinforces another disturbing element that doesn't have anything to do with gender politics: that Belle's village and the surrounding country seem to be full of assholes. Some people are nice, such as the elderly librarian, but most of them seem willing to support or follow Gaston in everything he does, jump to mob violence, and find Belle and Maurice suspicious simply for being eccentric. No wonder Belle dreamed of something else.

However, yes, despite that I like the film a great deal, there are elements to Beauty and the Beast which make me uncomfortable. There’s been a backlash towards criticisms of Beauty and the Beast's themes over the years, with it being just as likely to find someone who says the film was totally not about Stockholm Syndrome, abusive relationships as fixable things, or anything even remotely like that. But these things can't be confirmed or denied outright, especially in a way that would put an end to the debates.

Here's what I think: Beauty and the Beast tries really hard, unintentionally or not, to try to defuse the more disturbing elements in its premise. That doesn't make it immune from criticism, but it makes it more palatable than The Lion King, which embraces its subtext without question.

To start with, it's Belle who makes the choice to stay in the Beast's castle, so she is not, in a direct fashion, falling in love with her captor, since she chose to be there rather than being abducted. The bargain also ensures Belle will stick around without coercion or violence, since she's the sort of character who honours her word. Because of this, it makes the Beast appear less monstrous.

However, the sweetness of their falling is love is tainted by the fact that not until after the ballroom scene does Beast give Belle explicit freedom, meaning that all their sweet moments took place when Belle was still a prisoner. On the other hand, it's still easy to be moved by his willingness to let Belle go free, because of the depths of sacrifice it means for him. It makes the audience more inclined to believe the best about the central romance.

Secondly, the more obvious point: Gaston is a worse beast than the actual Beast could ever dream of being, which ensures that the audience sympathy is routed to the even hairier male lead. Not only is Gaston violent, conniving, vain, callous, anti-intellectual and sexist...it slowly becomes clear that the Beast is more bark than bite.

While he appears terrifying at first, and throws Maurice around like a chew toy, in many  later scenes Beast come off as all bluster,  a spoiled brat with claws that he'll never use. It's only because Belle softened him, by both standing up to him and then loving him, but the impression nonetheless colours any later viewings, solidifying the viewers' sympathy towards Beast.

That said, I still can't transcend my distaste for the fantasy convention that female humans can fall in love with male beings that are physically monstrous/alien. All progressive ideals have been leeched from the trope due to it nearly always being a female human and a male watchathing, so that it seems more like male wish fulfilment than anything else. The trope can still be enjoyable in the hands of a good writer, but it is not subversive or inspiring.

Beauty and the Beast plays that aspect entirely straight: Belle is beautiful and human and learns to love Beast despite his monstrous exterior and initial harshness, and in doing so, civilizes him. The villagers describing Belle as "funny" might be an attempt to make her seem at least a little more level with Beast when it comes to overall strangeness (or maybe just to show that the village sucks). However, it's not unheard of for stories like this to add some quirk to the female human to make it more plausible that she'd fall for a male whatchathing-- it doesn't really change the trope.

It's also because of this that Gaston can be both a subversion and a conventional character. On one hand, he's "handsome" while the Beast is "ugly", and so it's a subversion of older stories and epics in which the heroes and heroines were equally beautiful, something which Disney does with gusto even today.

And yet, in the modern era, male beauty is treated with suspicion and scorn, with the female lead often ending up with the grubby guy instead. Male vanity, too, is treated with more derision than female vanity, without the related contradiction that we expect women to care about looks anyway. Though Beauty and the Beast was made twenty years ago, this sort of backlash was already in full swing then, so in some ways it's entirely unsurprising that the more conventionally handsome male lead is the villain, and is exaggeratedly concerned about his looks.

On top of that, Gaston isn't really interchangeable with a Disney Prince in terms of his looks. There's a comical quality to his design, and he seems to veer slightly more towards men's image of their ideal body, rather than what is attractive to female viewers, although as with all things, viewers vary in their response, and some female fans do find Gaston as handsome as the other characters do. In short, the role-reversal that Disney is trying still manages to hold up, but it's not as cut-and-dried as it first appears.

(Incidentally, whenever I hear talk about "manliness", I think of someone like Gaston, whether or not that was the person's intention.)

Perhaps in relation to this, I've seen many nerds decrying the ending where the Beast transforms into a human. Human Beast is apparently "ugly" and it undermines the message of the film to have him transform—if the writers were really liberal-minded, they would have kept him a Beast, and have Belle go all the way with him! However, when genre fiction is already full of romances like this where the male being never changes his form, I'd rather have them both end up as humans at least intended to be attractive, rather than continuing this overdone theme. Also, I don't think the prince is that bad-looking myself. Nicer than Gaston, certainly.

Besides, it's abundantly clear that being the Beast sucks. Despite the shaggy badassery, he lives in the middle of nowhere in a decaying castle and can't really go anywhere or do anything. The writers have also suggested that he was becoming more and more bestial as time went on, degenerating mentally.  That's even without factoring in the poor furniture-servants whose lives must suck doubly.

About the only return to form that I did mourn was that of the castle—all those wonderful lions and gargoyles were replaced by cherubs and pastels; yuck. I've felt that way since I first saw the movie in 1991, and haven't changed my feeling. I recognize the symbolism involved, but it's not so hard to believe that the castle could have had that shape before the transformation, and just gotten dirtier and more decayed. After all, the interior was always luxurious enough.

My issues with some of the themes prevent me from considering Beauty and the Beast my favourite animated film, and besides that, the pacing is a little too fast. I'm glad the extra "Human Again" number was left out of the theatrical cut, because it corrupts that same pacing, but my impression of the film was still that it was so fast. At least it doesn't have that huge gaping timeskip in the middle that The Lion King does.

There are also a few possible logistical errors which have been brought up before: was the prince really only eleven years old when cursed, as anyone who does the math can figure out? Then where are his parents, and who’s in that torn picture? Were there really enough servants to be every object in the castle, including every dish, and what happened to the actual objects? Also, a French cast with largely American accents...again.

Still, Beauty and the Beast is a great movie to have, and I was glad to watch it again. If the promised theatrical re-release happens, I'll be there with bells on.