Review of Beauty and the Beast (1991) by Mark S — 12 Jul 2017

No further evidence is needed for proving Disney the greatest whitewasher of all evil storytelling. Whether you consider Beauty and the Beast a metaphor for lost male and female communication, or some kind of deranged "positive spin" on Stockholm Syndrome, the magic of the movie is in its depiction of desperation. Each character is a ticking time bomb of obsessive need - to see the inevitable clash of alpha egos Gaston and the Beast, still pales in comparison to witnessing Belle's spiraling addiction to *feel something* out of this world. The music by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman is what makes the story epic and ultimately satisfying to a mainstream audience (who definitely doesn't "get" the subtext). This is a true opera of passion imploding from three lost souls who can barely communicate in English, but who elicit the ugliest and the most beautiful chords of human desire.

I know most movie fans see Gaston as the antagonist, but in my mind, he is actually the secondary villain, dwarfed by The Beast himself-an admittedly selfish man, with a short and borderline abusive temper. Disney tackles some relentlessly mature subjects and getting a self-effacing library nerd together with a narcissistic, anthromorphic bully, to the happy tune of a singing, dancing teapot, is no easy creative feat. Beauty and the Beast also struck me as a very dark tale, regardless of its tacked on happy ending. Belle falls for The Beast only after his demise, brought on by his one act of unselfishness, but inevitably loses him along the way. Oh sure, she got the human prince in a magical resurrection but the Beast that she loved, the man who truly made her suppressed passions burn, was forever lost. And the funniest thing is, you can literally see disappointment all over her face as she stares at the viewer in subdued, kid-friendly, buyer's remorse.