Thirty years ago, Disney signed an essential children’s film: “Beauty and the Beast”. The free adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s tale was a hit, thanks to a romantic duo that made us dream. For the best or for the worst ?
This year, The beauty and the Beast, released in 1991, celebrates its 30th anniversary. If this information gives us a hell of a blow of old, it also questions the way we can look, today, on this blankie film that rocked us. At first glance, we can see in The beauty and the Beast a film about tolerance and acceptance of difference. At first, Belle indeed falls in love with the Beast for her “inner beauty”, since here, the suitor is far from having a dream plastic. However, further analysis reveals a trivialization of toxic and abusive relationships. So, Belle, as a Disney heroine, did she get old at the same time as us? We looked into the issue.
“Beauty and the Beast”: a trivialization of relations of domination
In October 2019, Victoria Cann, a professor at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, spoke out about The beauty and the Beast in The Sun. According to her, Belle literally falls in love with her attacker: “Beauty and the Beast is a classic case of Stockholm syndrome. Throughout the film, the Beast seems to be about to resort to violence. And the story makes it seem like a woman can change. an abusive companion if she perseveres long enough.At the end of the movie, the beast transforms into a white and blond man and it is as if they are now going to live happily ever after, as there is no way for him to become threatening or angry”, she explained.
The movie says that if a woman is pretty and kind she can turn an abusive man into a nice gentleman. In other words, it is the woman’s fault if her man is abusing her.
If the notion of Stockholm syndrome is heavily debated and very controversial, it is clear that in The beauty and the Beast, the relations of domination and manipulation are indeed present. Moreover, it is important to remember that the role of women is not to repair men, to save them, as Beauty does with the toxic behavior of the Beast. In 2016, a UK online course mentioned this issue: “The Beast does not attack Belle but the threat of physical violence is present. The film says that if a woman is pretty and kind she can turn an abusive man into a nice gentleman. In other words, it’s the fault. of the woman if her man abuses her. And of course, the beast turns into a handsome prince because the ugly ones cannot be happy. “
Basically, what is regrettable is that the cartoon remains focused on the redemption of the Beast. Result: the almost total absence of Belle’s point of view, which would have brought a feminine gaze, the famous female gauze. Instead, the castle objects are observed attempting to sell the Beast’s merits to Belle, for their own benefit. Not very cool to throw her in the arms of a dangerous man …
Belle, the “nerd” we all have been a bit like “feminist babies”
Fortunately, if we take a closer look at Belle’s character, she remains in the lineage of those Disney heroines of the 90s who managed to dust off her predecessors. For this, we can thank the people behind the development of The beauty and the Beast : women. In 2016, Lina Woolverton, the film’s screenwriter, was interviewed by Buzzfeed. She defended Belle body and soul, specifying the difficulties encountered with their colleagues: “Every line of Belle’s dialogue came across as a battle. Unlike Cinderella, who happily accepts her fate as a servant to a relentless mother-in-law, Belle screams in her jailer’s face.” Indeed, it should be noted that Belle often stands up to her attacker and is not afraid to put him in his place, to the point that she ends up fleeing, worn out from having to suffer the psychological violence of a person under the pretext. that the latter is “tortured” and badly in his skin.
Unlike Cinderella who happily accepts her fate as a servant to a relentless stepmother, Belle screams in her jailer’s face.
“You have to understand that the idea of the heroine-victim was something natural at the time”, Woolverton also recalls, before adding: “I had lived through the feminist movements of the 60s and 70s and I could not admit that this beautiful and intelligent young girl, Belle, would sit there awaiting the arrival of her prince. That she be a person who suffers in silence. and only wants a pure rose? That she accept all this abuse with a good heart? I couldn’t believe it. “
Indeed, we contemplate here the story of an outsider with an overflowing imagination, passionate about literature and intelligent, who has a hard time finding her place in her village. Not to mention that she rolls her eyes as soon as she crosses paths with Gaston, the embodied toxic masculinity. She does not fall for the physique of the latter, which responds to the canons of beauty. And if Belle brings a refreshing dimension to the female characters in our cartoons, her sisters on the screen too. In fact, Sue Nichols, who worked on the visual development of The beauty and the Beast, recounted the importance of Mrs Samovar’s presence in bringing a bit of sorority to the screen: “Belle needed the support of another woman to end up feeling safe enough to fall in love with the Beast.”
If, with the benefit of hindsight, the relations of domination and the psychological violence staged in this Disney essential do not make you dream, the character of Belle, by his intelligence and his determination, brings modernity in the face of Snow White and Cinderella somewhat passive… Moreover, the live action version of The beauty and the Beast, released in 2017, gave a little facelift to this cartoon of the 90s. The experiences of the two characters are more in-depth and serve a much more nuanced story on the relationship between Beauty and the Beast.
Melanie Bonvard
Mélanie deciphers pop culture from a societal angle and questions the female gaze in films or even series, because everything is a question of gaze, she …