Talk:Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)/@comment-26146485-20150225211206/@comment-1672596-20150228202454

I used to like the movie as a kid, but now... well, let's just say it didn't survive the test of time unlike The Little Mermaid for a variety of reasons:

First of all, the moral of the tale ended up extremely broken on Belle's end, considering she did a lot of things in the film that point more towards inner ugliness than to internal beauty. Like her basically arrogantly dismissing the villagers as if they were inferior to her in the opening song (and quite frankly, the villagers' treatment of her wasn't even that bad. I've experienced far worse on the World Wide Web. Heck, Cinderella and Snow White experienced far worse, and even Ariel experienced worse). She basically acted like a huge jerk throughout most of the first act, and even by the second act where she softened up a bit, she idiotically exposed the Beast to a freaking lynch mob and then acted all surprised when the mob and Gaston basically decided to kill the Beast. I could have forgiven all of that if they could at LEAST give her foils to actually make her internally beautiful by comparison for the sake of the moral at least, like keeping in Belle's sisters, Aunt Marguerite, heck, even actually depicting those blonde triplets as being even worse jerks than her. They never did, and in fact, those aforementioned blonde triplets actually came far closer to actually matching the traditional definition of inner beauty than Belle did, arguably being the most pure characters in the film barring Chip, and this was despite their crushing on Gaston who actually was ugly on the inside as planned. Not to mention, it's because of the poor way they tried to do "true beauty comes from within" that it if anything only succeeded in having me believe for quite some time that internal ugliness automatically means external beauty, and external ugliness automatically equals inner beauty, which I only managed to drop by my Junior Year of High School after someone pointed out the fallacy in my beliefs.

Another problem with it was the poor characterization and plot problems throughout the film. Aside from the issue regarding Belle and the triplets, Gaston's reasons for wanting Belle made absolutely no sense whatsoever, even when taking into account the moral of true beauty coming from within. For starters, despite what the film claimed, Belle wasn't even close to being the most beautiful woman in the village or having looks that are unparalleled. Actually, those blonde triplets with their bodyframes managed to outrank her significantly (as they had the kind of body types you would expect to see from Team Ninja/Tecmo Koei's Dead or Alive franchise and, heck, Barbie as well). Then we get into the Gaston reprise, which had him basically gloating enough details of his blackmail plan without any sugarcoating to not only have everyone deduce what he was planning, but also realize how much of a scumbag Gaston really was, yet they cheered him on, something absolutely no one, not even Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler, could ever afford to do (honestly, the only ones who actually might not have even known, much less supported Gaston's blackmail plan were ironically enough his groupie triplets, and that's only because they weren't even present until the last verses and based on their body language plus their absence in the actual culmination of the plan they probably didn't even support the little of the plan they did find out even compared to the other villagers). They really should have used the Enchantress as the main villain, considering she actually did do something disreputable by cursing children (ie, Chip) who weren't even to blame in any way for Adam's bad behavior, not to mention was implied in viral marketing to be responsible for Gaston's later actions. We also have the indication that Belle's smart because she "loves to read," yet we don't see her discerning good literature from bad literature, which actually creates a lot of horrifying implications regarding her future and how "strong" (or lacking thereof) her relationship to Beast truly is, considering Glen Keane confirmed the setting as being just before the French Revolution. Oh, and the servants? Other than Mrs. Potts and Chip, none of the servants have very many redeemable qualities, and in fact, Lumiere's vices of womanizing (which he even openly admits to being an unrepentant womanizer in the Human Again segment) are actually treated as almost a virtue, with Belle not calling him out on it.

They also shoehorned in a completely unnecessary feminist twist (and not of the Susan B. Anthony kind either. Actually, it was closer to the kind of feminism that Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir promoted) to the story, largely thanks to complaints about Ariel that wouldn't even have merit upon close examination. And thanks to that, Ariel's being demonized as somehow being a weak and insipid girl who only has love and marriage as goals and just waited for her prince, even when that is quite far from the truth, and in fact, the only DP to actually match that description exactly is Aurora, as Snow White and Cinderella at least actually had goals beyond marriage and love. Not to mention, we don't even see Adam and Belle wed in the film, nor do we get any hint at all regarding whether Belle is even religious or not, and if anything it's implied that she isn't.

Lastly, the film isn't even close to the original source material. Say what you will about The Little Mermaid's changing of the ending, at least it kept most of the other stuff from the original tale intact, if not exactly, then at least in spirit. What's even worse is that they actually DID plan to do an actual adaptation of the book in one of the earlier drafts by Richard Purdum, but Jeffrey Katzenberg axed it because of it supposedly being "too dark and dramatic" and basically wanting to shoehorn in a needless feminist message. It actually ended up hurting the film in a way, because in Purdum's draft, we actually have a reason why Belle and her family was suffering and a reason to be sympathetic to them, we actually were shown how Belle was a pure angel, and actually gave her a foil in the form of Aunt Marguerite, and also gave Gaston a far more understandable motive for wanting to marry Belle (basically, Marguerite promised him Belle so the vile aunt could collect his paycheck). Plus, it also makes Belle's refusal of Gaston a lot more sympathetic and understandable considering the marriage was actually being forced on her by her aunt who clearly was in it for herself and not for her family at all, unlike in the final version of the film where Belle acted like a jerk to Gaston even when she actually had the luxury to actually say no freely without getting violent and basically throwing him into mud as a sick joke.

Speaking as someone who had an absolutely horrid College experience since Spring 2011 where professors tried to push agendas on us, with intellectuals stabbing us Christians in the backs throughout history since the Enlightenment, I distrust Belle right now precisely because of my past experiences, my looking into history, and coming to the inescapable conclusion that she would become a Jacobin, something I don't even want.