Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Beauty and the Beast
Many of the fairy tales, especially the ones that were converted into disney movies, portrayed women as either a mother figure or as the romance figure of the story. Often these stories had a theme of a beautiful woman who ended up getting married. The story of Beauty and the Beast shows this very well... the original tale had Belle with a single mother, not a father. Also, I believe she had siblings. However, the disney version of Belle is the epitome of the "perfect female" in the eyes of a 18th or 19th century male. She is modestly dressed, does not seem to even know of her own physical beauty. She is intelligent and loves to read (though this would lead her to be opinionated, which many men would have not liked in a wife), but this gives her an air of acting very innocent, but having a lot of knowledge about the subjects she likes to read about. The fact that she longs for more than just being a usual housewife to a man like Gaston shows that she has an independent nature and in turn has a strong mind, which appeals to women as a role model. The story is very focused upon her physical beauty however, and the Beast, when she meets him, falls in love with her after an amount of time. She falls in love with him as well, despite his ugliness. This can give off an impression that women should be able to love a man no matter who he looks like, but there is rarely a story that has the reverse... a handsome man falling in love with a less than attractive woman. On the other hand, when she kisses the beast, he turns back into the handsome prince, which leads the story back into its emphasis on physical beauty. She doesn't REALLY have to put up with this ugly beast all her life, even though she loves him for who he is and not what she looks like. There are mixed messages that this story preaches... Though it tries to preach that love and beauty is on the inside and not the out, it still manages to portray its characters as extremely attractive and therefore still perpetuate the image that especially women, though often men as well, are judged very readily on their appearance as opposed to their personalities.
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Tina-
Good example! This fits along the lines of what I said in my blog. You also made an interesting point about how the Disney Company took the traditional fairy tales and completely changed them around (altering characters and some of the story points). It’s interesting to see how they really changed the point of some of the stories by altering the endings to leave a different impression on the reader.
In my blog, I talked about the Prince Charming character that is so prevalent throughout most of the fairy tales and how much emphasis is put on the physical appearance of the prince (good looking and strong). It leads people to believe that in order to win the affections of the princess, one must look exactly like the prince, which causes some people to strive for the impossible. It’s unfortunate that the authors placed such heavy emphasis on outside appearance, although Beauty and the Beast touches of the subject of beauty being on the inside and not the out.
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