Beauty, Beasts, and Beyond: A Deeper Dive into Disney's Classic Tale

“Beauty and the Beast” has been adapted multiple times, all with great visuals and imagery, but the storyline is the same in every movie. This movie is made for youth, but the question arises is that is this really a youth-appropriate movie? Does this movie provide proper moral lesson to take from it?

I’m not saying that this movie is all flawed. But Beauty and the Beast movie does contain some hidden culturally based gender norms which are reflected throughout. Let’s look deeply into those. This movie addresses the theme of inner beauty and how not judging others on the basis of their physical appearance can lead to the path of redemption. The central theme lies around the fact that true beauty comes from within, and it encourages the youth to look beyond just physical appearance of someone to value them. This movie also highlighted the journey of redemption and forgiveness of the beast, where belle’s ability to see beyond the exterior helps the beast to become selfless from selfish. It highlights the importance of personal growth.

While these are some of the significant message’s portrait by the movie, there are some critiques on the movie. Some critics are involved in an argument that while film promotes the message of inner beauty, there still exists an element of physical beauty of great importance. Near the end of the movie, after the path of redemption, the beast is converted into a handsome white prince, which potentially undermine the message of true beauty. The handsome white prince reflects once again the western epistemologies. The question here arises is that why the prince can’t be black prince or someone even less attractive. Hence it shows the Binary portrayal of the beauty concept.

Moving on, Belle’s character is shown as strong and independent women who took the place of her father ton save him. She values kindness and intelligence over any superficial attributes. Many movie viewers say she challenges traditional gender roles in society, however when you look deeply into the character of Belle, you can se that she reinforces some gender stereotypes. According to the Mayes-Elma, “Women and girls are allowed to cross some borders, but only with the permission of men and boys” (Mayes-Elma, 2004, p. 203). The empowerment of belle character still revolves around the redemption journey of the beast. Bell’s love and nature help the beast transform back into the handsome prince. This reinforces the idea that a how a women’s love can change a man totally. Moreover, there were many other characteristics of Belle too, such as she was very intelligent, she could fight for herself, her love and passion for reading books etc. But all these attributes are given a side role, and the story focuses on Belle’s responsibility to care for the beast and help in transforming him in the path of redemption a later falling in love with the handsome prince. This shows how the portrait of Belle in this movie still reinforces the gender stereotypes regarding female characters.

“Beauty and the Beast” remains an influential film as it was also the first ever film for being nominated for the best pictures in the Academy Award category. While this movie does simply take some of its moral lessons and characters to one dimensional, I still say it shows great visual artistry and groundbreaking animation for the youth to enjoy.