Beauty and the Beast - the redemption of Beast and the evils of Gaston

It's no secret that one of my favoritest Disney movies of all time is Beauty and the Beast. One of Disney Renaissance's top four, the first animated movie to be ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and one of the gems in the Disney Animation crown. But... what makes this timeless classic overrated?

What makes Beauty and the Beast overrated is the chemistry between the good guy who is the Beast and the bad guy who is Gaston, as well as the redemption message that the movie would send, only to be seen too superficially in the movie.

The Beast isn't heroic enough to convince me that he's better than Gaston and that the distinction between good and evil is understandable. It wasn't the only time Disney tried to make a duality between someone who seems a man but is a monster and someone who seems a monster but is a man (The Hunchback of Notre Dame revived that concept masterfully five years after Beauty and the Beast). It was a baby step, the parallel between both characters.

But, let's start the show...

The movie starts telling the story of how a handsome prince charming became the Beast. Sometime later, Disney learned that the prince wasn't still named and called him Adam. Anyway, the movie starts with Adam's backstory. He was a young prince who lived in a castle and had absolutely everything he wanted. He was just spoiled, selfish and a douchebag to his own servants. In a winter night, an elderly woman came to the castle and offered Adam a beautiful red rose in exchange for the sake out of a shelter. Despite this, the prince gloated at the old woman's face and kicks her ass out. The oldie babe told Adam to not blind himself with the looks because beauty was on the inside. However, the prince ignores her and orders her to eff off, only to find out that the old woman was a young and beautiful enchantress. Adam realized his effing mistake and tried to apologize, but it was too late as the enchantress convinced herself that there was no love in Adam and, as a punishment, she turned him into the Beast and f(bleep)ed the castle and everyone inside up. Ashamed of his monstruous skin, the prince secluded himself, using only his magic mirror to see the outside world. And the rose which the enchantress offered him was enchanted one that would lose all of his petals on Adam's 21st birthday. If he learned to love someone and be loved by someone back before the last petal fell, the curse would be undone. Otherwise, he would remain the Beast forever. As the years passed, he lost all of his hope, cuz who the hell could ever love a monster?

All right, there are so many plot holes in this backstory that I dunno where to start.

Yes, I know. I'll start with the enchantress. That character was too wasted. Whether she needed to or not, she would always turn herself into an old hag to test the other people's character and whoever failed in the test got penalized by her. She wasn't really going to freeze to death outside the castle in the coldest winter, she was just there to f(bleep) the prince up his butt. Proving it is that the rose she offered him was already enchanted from start. She was just there for the sake of being a prick by f(bleep)ing Adam's life up. No different from Anti-Trump protesters who were using meaningless and senseless violence against innocent bystanders just to spite Donald Trump and his supporters for the sake of it.

Notice the prepotent look in the face of that slut who thinks herself as too superior by what she's doing.

Not only that, she cursed everyone inside the castle who didn't make dicks out of themselves and were simply laborers who got low salaries, serving their abusive boss. Whatta dickhead, what did the nanny do to deserve it if her master is a motherf(bleep)er? That's medieval times. Does it look like she chose to be a babysitter for a vile, cock-sucking and s(bleep)-eating prince? Why punish these decent people, you witch? Just because you can? F(bleep) off!!!

In this scene, I counted at least 100 brooms. Actually, 100 servants turned into brooms, along those who were turned into other household goods. The toll of this little moral lesson's innocent victims is too high.

In my opinion, rather than an epic final showdown with Gaston, we could have an awesome badass battle with that witch as it was all her fault. She decided to be a 90s antiheroine and fixed what wasn't broken, cuz she knew she would get away with it.

Now she's on the loose, f(bleep)ing more innocent people up, never to get mentioned in the movie again. Adam was supposed to have nightmares with her in the darkest of the nights.

In the 2011 modern-day version Beastly, the witch has a name and her role is significantly expanded, so it isn't as though it was very unthinkable to deepen a so-important story aspect. By the way, that movie is bullpoop. I don't recommend it.

But let's go back to the movie that didn't start that well...

Now that we were introduced to Adam, we meet Belle, our heroine. Belle is a curious girl who gets attention from everyone in the small and conservative town where she lives, where everyone is interested at her. First, because she's the most beautiful girl of the town for the masses. Second, she loves reading and a woman that reads is something that makes everyone around intrigated.

Wait a mo, our heroine is a reader? Somebody cultured? A thinking and informed woman amid the townsfolk's conservative world? But what does she read? Let's see her reading her favorite book.

"Well, it's my favorite! Far off places, daring sword fights and princes in disguise..."

So, a fairy tale book is her favorite book? Fuck NO! This is just a cover. Look, she's going to read her favorite part in her favorite book, it must be something that proves the real content of the book.

"Oh, isn't this amazing? It's my favorite part because you'll see: here where she meets prince charming, but she won't discover that it's him until chapter 3."

Oh, you gotta be kidding me. Belle only reads fairytales. Whoever thought that she was reading great intellectuals of her time, they thought f(bleep)ing wrong! She won't read nothing too complex, just stories that have princesses, princes, magic and a happy ending. Nothing too intellectual.

I don't blame her, the village is so conservative that she feels uncomplete living among those masses that make a Jack and the Beanstalk fan sound like the most cultured person in the town, in contrast.

That's why everyone thinks she's too weird, curious and intriguing. Nobody treats her really bad, all of them are gentlemen and act politely to the girl, but the headscratchers are enough for her to feel herself too out of place and want more of the life than living with that townsfolk.

Yet, only one person in the town sees something on her that someone else in the town doesn't. This person is called Gaston, the town's hunter and the main antagonist of the film. Like the rest of the townspeople, Gaston believes that there's no more beautiful girl in the town than Belle and knows that he's the most handsome man in the town, as a result, while knowing that many other girls deserve the sex out of him (including a bunch of triplets who, by how they act, don't seem to be bound to have a relation to four with Gaston), nevertheless he decides that it's Belle he wants to marry, cuz beauty is everything for him.

"Here in town it's only she who's as beautiful as me, so I'm making plans to woo and marry Belle."

All I'm sayin' is that, even if Belle wasn't the most progressive than the conservative mentality of her village, nonetheless I find amazing how Gaston couldn't take NO for an answer from every single other girl he wooed. He stares at Belle, tosses her book into shit, bemoans the book's lack of illustrations (even though the book clearly has one, see it in one of those pictures above), claims that if Belle doesn't stop reading she'll start thinking, which should be averted (he definitely has no idea of what she's reading as you notice), and ices the ice cream chocolate cake by making Belle's dad his laughing stock and calling poor old Maurice mad. Mock the girl, disrespect her, f(bleep) up the things she loves and lambast her dad. This is how you seduce girls.

Yes, Belle is Maurice's daughter. This is the mad scientist that no one in the city respects. Differently from Belle, Maurice isn't the prettiest person of the town, so he's mistreated to extreme and suffers bullying. Belle is the only person who truly understand him and vice-versa. But now, perhaps Maurice's life get a change as he had finished a log slicer and will try selling his pet project in the convention.

Maurice, Belle's father, an inventor with a constantly (and unfairly) debatable sanity

Unfortunately, Maurice gets lost, assaulted by wolves, stripped from his pet horse Philippe and his invention and persecuted by wolves until he lands into Prince Adam's castle. He knows well that he won't survive if he stays with the wolves, so he ventures into the castle, invited or not, and gets a weird greeting from the castle servant Lumiére and his friends.

The only people I treat respectfully in this life are those who offer hospitality. Congrats to Lumiére.

Everybody barring Cogsworth, a whiny bitch who keeps talking about what rules forbid of doing and abusing everyone. Do you know this guy? Cogsworth is definitely the guy, but every single other castle servant understands Maurice's predicament and do what they can to make him feel home after nearly getting brutalized by wolves.

It should be noticed that all of those people are objects. Yes, cuz remember that they're also victims of the enchantress. Believe it, everyone became the castle's household objects, trapped into a non-human form to pay for the big boss' dickery. Lumiére is the candlestick. Cogsworth is a clock. The list goes on...

The enchantress didn't even spare the poor little dog. I'll report this act of cruelty to the American Humane Association!

Speaking on the big boss' douchery...

Adam is in da house, taunts Maurice and decides that because Maurice invaded his domain he deserved to be treated as an invader and tossed into a dungeon.

- I just needed a place to stay.

- I'll give you a place to stay

Now let's analyze this scene. Adam was punished years ago for his actions when he refused to give shelter for an impoverished old lady. In these years he was cursed, did he stay them reconsidering his folly? NO! He's as dickish as he used to be before the spell, and on the first chance of refusing to give shelter to an impoverished old man he acts violently and shoves the poor nice guy in the dungeon.

All of this was to show that Adam is an @$$hole just like he used to be in the past. I dunno how many years have passed, but he obviously didn't change in anything.

Now, meanwhile, Gaston tries to marry Belle again, this time he slightly changes the approach. He enters her house without getting himself invited, shoves his boots with dog shit on the book she was reading and enforces a physical approach that gives an impression that if this scene was longer, it would have become rape. But Belle, being obviously more smart than she is, gives Gaston just desserts by merely tossing him out of her house and into the load of pig crap.

"I'll have Belle for my wife! Make NO mistake about THAT!"

Gaston has now been abused. It's no longer a mere matter of wanting to have sex with the most beautiful girl of the town. Now it's an abused pride for whoever heard a "no" for the first time in life, which makes me think about the values from the time period this film is set on because I genuinely can't imagine a douchebag getting a "yes". But the movie gives an impression that any other girl excluding Belle loves a man who steps with his crapped boots on something she loves. The triplets are here to prove this.

The triplets, personifications of overall female approval that Gaston received in his village.

Belle goes to the hills to whine on how annoyed she would be at being married with Gaston and whatever she wants is very different from this.

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell and for once it might be grand to have someone understand I want so much more than they've got planned."

But she's interrupted as Philippe returns home. She finds out that if Maurice and Philippe are not together, it means that there could have been something abominable and sets out to find her father. And the horse guides he precisely to the castle where Maurice is held prisoner. Let's ignore that Philippe separated himself from Maurice right before he found the castle as Belle finds her father's hat in the gates and concludes that this is where her Maurice is.

And she finds him in the dungeon, all f(bleeped) up, coughing and sick. Belle pleads Adam to release him, but Beast refuses and claims that her father deserved this for invading the castle. Now that Maurice is his prisoner, there's nothing that Belle can do, but the girl propses a bargain for Adam: make her a prisoner instead of her dad, then Maurice would be free.

Maurice protests, claiming that, having lived the entire life, he doesn't want Belle sacrificng her freedom for his own sake. But Adam accepts its, after all, a female prisoner is more useful for him than a male one. In the end, if Belle was the girl who would fall in love with him, the curse would be broken. As a result, the change was made as Belle sacrifices all of her freedom to be a prisoner to a violent monster, cuz she couldn't stand the sight of her father suffering too much torture porn.

"She's no longer your concern."

Well, change has been made. Adam shoves Maurice in the chariot on road to the village without even letting Belle say her father goodbye. Lumiére, who isn't an idiot on the slightest thing, has already noticed that if Belle keeps getting treated the same way than Maurice, then it would be useless to have a woman in the castle and that she would never fall in love with Adam. So, Lumiére starts giving tips on how Adam can make the basic things such as, for example, making her sleep in a bedroom instead of a dungeon.

"Say something to her."

Ya know? The slightest thing?

Adam tells Belle that she lives in his castle and thus can explore every single domain within barring the west room. Also, in case of need, his servants will attend her (cuz calling them employees would be too respectful in part from this noble s#%t). Lumiére says that it will be good to invite her to dinner, so Adam remind Belle that she's forced to dinner and that refusing it is out of question.

Too much cunning, Adam. She has already separated herself from her dad and her life.

Back to Gaston, he's pissed. Pissed off. Gaston is proud of having everything he wants and this time it sucked. Gaston is spoiled, extremely bonded with physical beauty and a prick to those around him... he even looks like a character from another movie...

He's in the tavern, getting support from the beer buddies and enjoying a male brocastinating moment where he gloats on his hairy chest and his ability to spit while beating the silliness out of his pals. All of this cammaderie delights him. But his fun is cut short by Maurice's news that Belle has been taken hostage by the monstruous and cruel Beast. The masses' reaction is publicly humiliating Maurice, this is what they do. As a result, Maurice resorts to saving Belle on his own.

Meanwhile, Belle is comforted by the castle's female servants: the wardrobe and Mrs. Potts, the teapot. Mrs. Potts is almost always seen with her son Chip, the teacup. Yes, cuz the enchantress didn't even spare the employee's kids with her spell. She assaulted a child for his mother's boss' crimes. Ultimately, both of them are trying to help Belle feel better after being made prisoner by a violent and cruel monster. When dinner time has come, being an option or not, Belle decides to refuse anyway.

- Why isn't she here yet?

- Try to be patient, sire. The girl has lost her father and her freedom, all in one day.

This enrages Adam to the extreme. Despite Lumiére and Mrs. Potts' advice on not being a bastard to the girl who he's supposed to seduce, this is exactly what Adam does and he decides that if Belle doesn't dig in with him she won't do that in any extent, and he forbids his personnel of feeding her.

"If she doesn't eat with me, then she won't eat at all!"

But the servants are so overjoyed in having a visitor after so many years of seclusion from society that they won't only feed Belle regardless of the prohibition as they also throw a wild partay in doing so.

This iconic show-stopping musical sequence is the reason why the servants are the most fleshed-out characters from this film.

As you know, among so many themes this movie approaches in a wasted way, the importance of hospitality is one of the themes that it presents masterfully. Think greatly, everything has started because Adam couldn't make a good host. Gaston went even worse as Belle tossed him into a pool of pig crap. As for the servants, the film's breakout characters, they always rock on making a visitor feel at home. These are the values that neither Adam nor Gaston, a couple of dickheads, possess. I'm lovin it.

After having a fan-f(bleep)ing-tastic dinner, Belle decides to trespass the west wing on her own, the only room in the castle she had no permission to enter. Inside, she finds the enchantress' magical rose and tries to touch her, but Adam pops out from nothing and kicks her @$$ out. She runs away in fear of getting hurt by the Beast.

As she had no business there, she leaves the castle, finishing her first day in the castle making all three single things Adam forbid her of doing. While running away, she stumbles with the same wolves that brutalized Maurice. She tries to run away, only to get nearly mauled by the wolves hadn't Adam been there to claim his prisoner back. He kicks the wolves' @$$es and scares the living hell out of them off, though he gets seriously injured in the process.

Now, Belle has two choices: she can go back to the village and her father while leaving the man who imprisoned her and her father, nearly left her starved to death and assaulted her half hour before to die in the middle of the snow. Or she can save the man who imprisoned her and her father, made her starve to death and assaulted her, as thanks. Belle should be smart enough to notice this. We know that Adam only wants to seduce Belle as she's the only girl who interacted with him since the spell and he seriously needs a girlfriend to avoid being permanently cursed. None of this is pessoal, but Belle finds it personal and saves Adam.

They return to the castle where Beasts says that the wolf attack was Belle's fault for running away. As though it was too crazy and pleasant for her to be prisoner for the rest of her life, see how much of an @$$hole Adam is. Yet Belle replies with no fear and blames Adam for his vile temper. Adam shuts up and allows Belle to tender his injuries. Seems like that they're now managing to handle each other.

I think this is just the beginning of a great friendship.

This was Belle's first day in the castle. The Stockholm Syndrome is aggravating. It doesn't even seem that the Beast had locked Maurice in the dungeon ten hours before this scene.

Instead, it's Gaston's turn to lock Belle's father. This time, he's bribing the asylum master to imprison Belle's father to blackmail her, claiming that Maurice would be free if she married him. Despite this, Maurice isn't home anymore as he stormed off to venture alone to save her daughter.

This is how the film ends Belle's first day in Adam's castle. She met Adam when he was keeping her father prisoner even while sick, threatening her with violence, making her starve, being rude and self-centered with no sense of hospitality and torturing the elderly. This is Adam doing whatever he always did the whole life.

At this point onward, exactly 52 minutes of film, none of those flaws from Adam absolutely repeat themselves. He'll be a prick no more to anyone, be it Belle or his servants. He'll no longer throw tantrums, use violence, hurt his temper, not anymore. This time, he and Belle will be friends, and get very well with each other.

How much time has passed is not exactly obvious as we have a montage of several moments of Belle and Adam being BFFs, culminating with Adam giving Belle his library and Adam dismayed at being unable to feed his birdies because he accidentaly frightened them.

Yep, the man who believed that Maurice deserved to be devoured by wolves and that the old woman in the winter should take a hike actually wanted to be a bird lover.

The film doesn't focus on how Belle's presence has gradually changed him into a better person as he changes from day to night and changes to an opposite personality than what he used to have as though they were practically two different characters. This makes sense as the other character was basically a monstruous version of Gaston (and therefore didn't have Gaston's arrogance as he was afraid of his own look), and this is where Belle must start falling in love with him.

They eat together, play snowballs, she teaches Adam to read and they dance a romantic ballad complete with Lumiére, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip and the dog forcing themselves in the middle to see if something rocks. At the end, Adam asks Belle if she's happy to live with him in the castle. She says yes. She's very happy being made prisoner unwillingly by the man who assaulted her dad (she doesn't say none of this bullturd as she suffers from Stockholm Syndrome). Though she mentions missing her father.

Adam, now allowing her to go to the west wing, shows Belle the magic mirror the enchantress gave him so she could see her dad through the mirror. She sees Maurice fallen on the ground, still struggling to get up and go to castle to save her daughter, sick, tired and f(bleep)ed up. Belle is afraid that her dad will succumb to his illness before he reaches the castle. Adam sees Belle's despair at the sight of her elderly father sentenced to death and sets her free. He claims that she's his prisoner no more and can leave the castle to save her dad.

"You must go to him. I release you. You're no longer my prisoner."

He gives her the mirror so she can see how things will go to him.

Belle goes. She thanks Adam for the kindness on his part of not making her prisoner and goes away, leaving Adam into a load of despair. All of his servants are freaking out.

Belle saves her father and both return to the village where they're met with the masses with torches asking for Maurice's hospitalization, according to Gaston's plan. Belle gets scared as she finds out that while she was away Maurice did nothing but whine on her being made prisoner by a scary and cruel monster. Gaston tells Belle that he can save Maurice if she marries him.

Pay attention now. Belle was met with a serious dilemma. In one hand, she can save her ill father from getting mistreated and left to die in the asylum. But in doing so, she agreed to spend her eternity living happily with a psycho who's just the same person who does those horrible things to her dad... does Gaston's bargain sound familiar?

Everybody wants to fuck Belle up the ass. The first thing they do is make her dad their prisoner. Poor old man.

It's practically Belle's same dilemma at the beginning when she accepts being Adam's prisoner to save her father. The only difference is that being Adam's prisoner was her own idea unlike Gaston's idea to marry Belle, though the situation is anything but different.

Despite this, apparently for Belle this symmetry is an outrage as she's upset with the bargain and decides to use the third option. Saving her dad by proving that whatever he whined on was true, thus proving to every single villager that there's indeed the Beast who made her and Maurice prisoners in a castle nearby the village. After the revealing, she tries to explain that Beast is actually a kind-hearted person and doesn't deserve to be treated for its look, but it's too late as the village masses get scared of the creature.

But Gaston finds out very soon that Belle is right and that she's too infatuated with Beast, so he uses the masses' terror to convince everyone to kill the Beast and imprisons Belle and Maurice to prevent them from helping the monster.

So Gaston goes to kill his rival while the remaining masses fight the anthropomorphic objects and lose. Gaston is ready to kill the f(bleep)ing @$$ out of Beast who is too depressed to retaliate. Adam has lost the girl he fell in love with. He wanted to die, so he's just there with a mopey face getting a load of Gaston's wrath. Until he sees someone...

Belle has returned to save her loved one.

Now Adam has something to fight for and beats the dick out of Gaston until he pleads mercy. Adam, now a decent person, is merciful to Gaston.

Do you remember how merciful he used to be to Maurice and the enchantress? Well, now he's a new man.

He lets go off Gaston and tells him to go away and never return. Then, he proceeds to Belle, his beloved. But Gaston, being a dickish loser, stabs Adam in his back, loses his grip and falls to his death.

*insert Goofy holler here*

Yup, In the end, he decides to do a coward act that would kill him. After all, Adam would never kill anyone and Gaston couldn't end the movie alive, could he?

Adam is dying from this injury and, before he dies, he declares his love for Belle who declares her love back to Beast, undoing the spell. And I mean that Adam goes back to human and his injury healed in the process. That didn't make much sense, shouldn't he revert to human and still be dying?

Everybody goes back to normal. The servants are humans again. And the castle loses his gothic style to go back to the classic style cuz the enchantress clearly poured so much value effort regarding artistic styles. Because the architectural style is a cursed form? The castle was so much beautiful with gargoyles than cherubs.

Cuz I find it more beautiful with that gargoyle. Never mind this angel.

Now that Adam is a human, he marries Belle and she becomes a princess. They both live happily ever after.

And Belle's dreams of being free and goofing around the unknown, unrestrained by conservatism, were crushed by that, as she now lives as part of the French nobility.

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell and for once it might be grand to have someone understand I want so much more than they've got planned."

I would really DIE to see if this tale as old as time was set more nearby the French Revolution... it would be interesting.

Look, don't get the @$$ out of me wrong. I really love this movie. I've always loved it since childhood. It's one of Disney's gems in the animation crown. The first animated movie to be ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. I just find it overrated. Specially, because in the first impressions, Adam and Gaston both have exactly the same flaws. The same spirit defect. Adam only loses for his narcissism, as he assumes his grotesque look. However, from both those guys who started the same, one deserved redemption and the other one faced death, whatever sealed those fates wasn't their own personal choices, but the other person's personal choice, which was Belle's.

Belle decided to stay and fight Adam in her captivity and her companionship made Adam a better human. So, Adam transformed himself completely in some days and they both managed to form a friendship once non-existant. If Belle married with Gaston, could she have done the same for him? Because Gaston was irredeemable? Surely, his interests with Belle weren't romantic, neither were Adam's, these were extremely selfish: imprisoning a girl and forcing a romance until she fell in love as he needed to break the spell so he wouldn't be afraid of the outside anymore.

- Master, have you thought that perhaps this girl could be the one to break the spell?

- Of course I have. I'm not a fool.

Had Gaston trusted Maurice, gone to the castle, killed Adam on the same day Belle was imprisoned and taken her off the captivity... would she have given a chance to Gaston? Just like she did to Adam when he scared the silly $#% out of the wolves who were assaulting her?

WHY did Gaston have to DIE??? Because he's a villain, albeit a more relatable one whose ambitions don't involve large-scale evil deeds. It's not as though he was Maleficent, Queen Grimhilde, Scar, Frollo, King Candy, Professor Callaghan, Dawn Bellwether or Te Kã. He was a repulsive, disgusting, despicable and hateable dick-head, but an everyman bastard that can be found in every day in the real life. Probably there was a guy who was an asshole like Gaston in your classroom in the high school or the college. So what? Does this guy deserve death? Disney has a more merciful side to his villains. Cinderella's stepmom didn't die. Both Professor Gallaghan and Dawn Bellwether were arrested for their vengeful crimes. Te Kã is actually the kind-hearted Te Feti without her stolen heart. Not that he's not a prick, it's just that he was met with a differentiated treatment compared to other douchebags.

What about the village people who used to think about everything the same way than Gaston did? Their asses were kicked off by the enchanted servants. As for Adam, he had a chance of rethinking his way of acting and managed to live happily ever after. But what about the enchantress? I would like to think that she was possessed all along by none other than... Bill Cipher. I don't think that Gaston was treated respectfully. When Belle says "He's not a monster, Gaston. You are.", it sounds for me just as though they were trying to make clear that both are different characters, while sharing something in common.

"He's not a monster, Gaston. You are." Notice the looks of hatred for Gaston that Belle gives.

Well, I'm in no mood for staying on Gaston's side as he was a mysoginist, self-centered and arrogant son of a bitch, who wouldn't mind on probably raping his wife constantly, had been either Belle or any other, and had to f(bleep) himself. I just think that his treatment was very differentiated in regards to other similar characters. Generally, I find it JUST one of those Disney movies with poorly-executed character development. The bad guy receives a dickish treatment, the female protagonist sacrifices her dreams for nothing, the good guy changes personality in the middle of the film with a development that happened offscreen and the real bad guy never has his actions questioned nor is mentioned beyond the epilogue.

Yes. Bill Cipher was this film's villain all along.

Translated from dentrodachamine.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/beauty-and-the-beast-sobre-a-fera-gaston-redencao-e-vilania/