Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

Deep Thoughts about Disney's Beauty & the Beast

• Tracie Guy-Decker & Emily Guy Birken • Episode 6

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Tale as old as time? It’s old, alright. True as it can be? Hmm, about that...

Beauty and the Beast is an old and not-so-necessary model for romantic love. 

Hiding in the remarkable Howard Ashman score is a not-like-other-girls feminism and a reified classism that isolates poor Belle and gives her no choice but to fall for her captor. Emily and Tracie grapple with the conditioning from this movie (and so many other sources) that invites us to find meaning and satisfaction in providing kindness and accommodation to beasts in order to transform them into husbands. 

We dig into the ways in which the Disney version of the story, with it’s animated inanimate objects, provides a deeper and more intransigent rendering of the class differences assumed by the story, and find some comfort when imagining the beast as an allegory for self-hatred. 

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon. 


Emily Guy Birken:

Hi, I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today I'll be sharing my Deep Thoughts about the 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast with my sister, tracy Guy Decker, and with you. Let's dive in.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture but others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we Come over, think with us as we delve into our Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit.

Emily Guy Birken:

So, tracy, tell me what you know or what you remember about Beauty and the Beast.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, beauty and the Beast man yeah, I loved it. I remember loving it. Some of the pieces of it have become like memes in my brain.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

You know, like the Mrs Potts and the teapot and her kids and like where do they sleep and what is that chip out of Chip's head? Like some of those weird sort of questions. So when you overthink it, the thing that immediately comes to mind when I think about the Disney Beauty and the Beast 2 is like I saw me within the past three or four years. That was like I thought that I was going to be like Belle, but it turns out I'm like this lady and it was the woman from the small provincial town song going. I made six eggs.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

And she's juggling a baby for the next two babies, exactly, yeah, so that comes to mind first, and then, like I loved Beauty and the Beast so much and I'm sure we are going to get into this but when I look back on it I think that sort of sense that like he transforms, that the beloved transforms into a civilized human being because of her love, kind of messed me up. It comes to my romantic partnerships throughout my life, or that sort of idea. That certainly isn't the only place we got.

Emily Guy Birken:

Oh yeah, I mean from John Bender to Mr Rochester, it is a theme throughout.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

But it's literal. It's literal in this one, so I'm sure we're going to get into that. But those are, like my initial, like Beauty and the Beast, stream of consciousness, things that come up for me, so why are we talking about it? What's to say here?

Emily Guy Birken:

I recently made the joke and it's not exactly a joke that Yvette from Clue is 40% of the reason why I majored in French in college. Beauty and the Beast is probably at least 50% of the reason Wow.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I did not know that. I did not know that.

Emily Guy Birken:

So now some of it is. I have always been a bit of a Francophile, like it's. In the same way that I can remember being really interested in cats before we ever had a cat, I can remember being really interested in the French language and kind of French art and things like that, long before I ever took a single French lesson. So some of it is just that I think something in me is like yes, that feels like right, but some of it is also. There is something very French about La Belle et La Bête. This is one of the fairy tales that does not come from the Grimm Brothers. That is disdified, so like it's. Grimm's fairy tales gave us Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and all of those like kind of the original fairy tales.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Like we're all Disney, we're still alive.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yes, the video is like the only one that's not from the Grimm Brothers. This fairy tale was written in the 17th century. It was a female writer whose name I have. I looked up and have forgotten that quickly because it's like four names Not that I should complain, I have three but there was a duh and a la in there in the middle and that's part of the reason why there's the.

Emily Guy Birken:

Heroin is so much more active and proactive than the princesses in previous Disney films. I did a little bit of reading and apparently the Grimm Brothers really did not like active heroines and so they called in their stories until they got to the ones who just sat and looked pretty and waited to be kissed or literally slept through it or looked like they were dead. So that I find pretty interesting. So that was part of what drew me to it is that it does feel very French, even though it is a very American Disney-fied version of it.

Emily Guy Birken:

There is a little bit of the as a bit of a Francophile, and when I was 12 when it came out I had just started taking French class in middle school, so I liked knowing the Zutaloar and there's a sign that says Darjean, because it's the Silver Smith and you know things like that, blancherie. I liked that, but then I think I also really identified with Belle in a way that I am now a little embarrassed by. But that identification with Belle kind of further cemented my interest in French, because Belle was French and so and I'd really like to dig into what it is you and I both loved about this film and why it makes me embarrassed now, because it is something that I feel like is indicative of very much middle class top or middle class white feminism, and it's a little worrisome to look at now, in 2023, with the hindsight, and that's before you even get into the being the Disney version of Stockholm Syndrome.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I actually have not allowed my daughter to watch, as much as I loved it when I was a little older than she is now, for exactly that reason, because of the straight up Stockholm Syndrome. That is Belle's love for the beast Interesting, okay, all right. So where do you want to start with this?

Emily Guy Birken:

Well, I'd like to start with what it is that drew me to it and why that is repels me a little bit now. So we meet Belle, and it's you know, there's David Ogden Steers does that like gorgeous narration, and which ends with who could ever learn to love a beast? And immediately we start with Belle singing. Little town, such a quiet village every day, like the one before little town, full of little people waking up to say bonjour, there goes the baker, this tray, like always, so on, so forth. I'm not going to do the whole thing, though I could, and what we have is the immediate not like other girls. And so we have Belle is not like other girls, and we get that like I'm better than other women feminism. That, I feel like, is very indicative of the era in which you and I grew up.

Emily Guy Birken:

We got a lot of the not like other girls kind of feminism where like, oh well, you know, I like to read I'm not, I'm not bubble headed, oh, I am not interested, I'm interested in the handsome guy because I'm not, you know, I'm not a bimbo. So that is really uncomfortable and it reminds me of when I was in college. It felt like every third young woman at my college was named Emily. I actually once told someone like they're like oh, I met someone from your college and like, well, if they're named Emily, meredith, sarah or Erica I'm not going to know who they are and they're like oh, it was a Sarah.

Emily Guy Birken:

And so I was in college and I was like I don't like the feeling, like I'm one of a mass of people, and so I ended up going and getting a belly button piercing, a naval piercing, which a few years later I was just like so I got the most common type of hot girl piercing to say I'm not like other girls. And that's kind of what this feels like. It is pandering to the sense of oh, you have this straw woman, straw cheerleader of who you think girls are and you set yourself as better than those other girls. You're not like those other girls, and the way that you do it is in the most vanilla way possible. You like reading. So now that's a lot to put on a 90 minute Disney movie.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, it's interesting too, because the movie does give us that. I mean, we do see other women in that song, even like Monsieur Gaston. Oh, he's so dreamy and they're like swooning over him. And then we immediately see him just like dripping with toxic masculinity. Why are you bothering with that learning stuff? The straw cheerleaders, for you to coin a phrase. They're there in animated splendor, they're there for us to disdain. So I mean so, yes, that is a lot to put on it, but I don't think you're making something up. That's not there.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, so the other part of it that I noticed this time I rewatched it the other night in preparation for this was the fact that it's not just that she's not like other girls because she's smart and bookish and doesn't quite fit in as a little awkward she's adorable, it's also she sets herself up in a different way in terms of class consciousness because it's this poor provincial town and then when she gets to the castle, the all of the in the be our guest song.

Emily Guy Birken:

Life is so nerving for servants who's not serving, we're not whole without a soul to wait upon. And so there is a similar class distinction, which is part of the reason why I see this as like very indicative of middle to upper middle class white feminism from the 80s and 90s, and I mean to this day. It still continues, but I think people are a little more conscious of it than now than they were then, and, in fact, I have not seen the 2017 live action remake with I'm going to call her Hermione Granger, emma Watson Watson. I have not seen it, but I have heard that there have been a couple of. They made a couple of changes to the story, including a couple of changes that are indicative of their understanding of class consciousness somewhat. I haven't seen it so I don't know for sure.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

You know what occurs to me as we're talking. I have seen this movie many times but just in case some of our listeners maybe haven't seen it or haven't seen it in a while, perhaps you can do like a quick nutshell of because the from that beginning, that first song that we both now have referenced to, the, be our guest song where we're in the castle. Can you give us like the? Sort of rough outline of the plot that gets us from the poor provincial town to the castle.

Emily Guy Birken:

So we have the introduction where we meet the beast and his curse. We then immediately meet Belle with the introductory song. Her father goes off to the fair to share his, his invention. While he is gone, gaston surprises her with an immediate marriage proposal, like he's brought everyone there for the wedding and then goes to propose to her. She turns him down flat. Meanwhile her father gets lost. The horse runs away and he ends up in the beast's castle. The beast imprisons him. The horse comes back and Belle rides it to find the castle, finds her father and negotiates with the beast to switch places with her father.

Emily Guy Birken:

Her father ends up back at the village. He's taken there by one of the enchanted objects in the castle. It's an enchanted carriage that takes him there, so he doesn't need Philippe the horse and he tries to get help to go rescue Belle, which gives Gaston the idea to threaten to put him in an insane asylum unless Belle agrees to marry him. Meanwhile Belle is discovering how Castle is enchanted. All the servants are objects. There's Lumiere, the candlestick. There's Cogsworth, the clock. There's Mrs Potts, the teapot, with her son Chip that has a chip in it which is always the one she uses to serve to guests, which you'd think you wouldn't give the chipped cup to the guests anyway.

Emily Guy Birken:

Belle and the beast end up. He saves her from the wolves when she tries to run away. They end up kind of falling for each other. She wishes she could see her father again, and so he uses a magic mirror to let her see her father, who is sick and dying. Gaston is there with the villagers to try to convince her to marry him or else her father will go to the insane asylum. She uses the magic mirror to prove that she's telling the truth, and that causes Gaston to whip up the townsfolk into a frenzy of paranoia and fear that the beast is going to hurt them. So they go laced to the castle. The objects all fight back, but Gaston and the beast end up fighting on top of the roof. Gaston proves himself to be a monster, even though the beast has let him go, after besting him and stabs him and then falls to his own death. The beast dies in Belle's arms just as she tells him that she loves him, and then he transforms back into the prince and happy, happy ending with dancing and stuff.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Thanks for that catching us up. I think you know the class consciousness is a really interesting point here, because when we meet these servants who don't have a soul when they're not serving, or feel as though they don't have a purpose when they're not serving, they are animated, inanimate objects, and there's something really powerful and dangerous about that. Right, if you are a human who has a certain job, you could get a different job. If you are a candlestick, you're a candlestick Like. You can't then become an architect because you're a friggin' candlestick. Right, there's something really essentialist about the classism when you make the inanimate object into the servant so that you would have to change species, but it's not even species because they're not animals, which is really that's a really interesting sort of Marxist kind of lens on that particular piece of the classism and class consciousness that comes up I just had never examined before the moment when Maurice Bell's father wanders into the castle and discovers Lumiere and Cogsworth, and he's fascinated.

Emily Guy Birken:

He's a scientist, he's an inventor, and so he picks Cogsworth up and is examining his feet, which tickles him, and it's played for laughs and it is very funny. But what got me thinking this time was the lack of consent Because we have talked about consent quite a bit in this show and the fact that he felt perfectly comfortable picking up an object and touching it and opening up the cabinet that had the cloudwork, so the pendulum, and it's when Cogsworth shuts the cabinet on Maurice's finger that he finally stops. And if you're looking at it again through this kind of Marxist lens of Maurice though they don't have a whole lot of money does consider himself to be above. Now it's a clock. So, yes, but it's like the actual embodiment of these class differences, like what you're talking about. Like Cogsworth cannot be anything other than a clock, even though we're Cogsworth still human. He could be a butler at someone else's house or he could go do something else or become a sailor.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

You could get a different job. You could get a different job. It's a job, it's not an identity.

Emily Guy Birken:

So that made me a little uncomfortable watching it this time, where instead of being like oh, this is funny and it tickles and it is funny, but it's also, if you spend any kind of time thinking about the deeper meaning of it, it gets kind of ugly and it feels like the thing that is interesting in looking at it from that lens and the idea of not like other girls, kind of feminism.

Emily Guy Birken:

Belle doesn't have any friends in the provincial town. Gaston is interested in her, but only because of her looks. He doesn't actually care about her Not in the least and so the only person she has to talk to is her father. When she ends up at the castle, she befriends the servants, but they are definitely not her equals, and so the beast is the only person who is in any way her equal that we meet. And the reason why the author who originally wrote this fairy tale was in part for well-born girls and young women who were going to be in arranged marriages was to help them understand that if they were kind and accommodating, these strangers who felt like beasts could turn into lovable men who would be their husbands.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I just thought a chill yeah In a good way.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, and so I mean that's a comprehensible story and moral for 300 years ago and it was intended to give comfort to these young women and instruction.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

And instruction.

Emily Guy Birken:

Not the comfort but instruction. But even so, in the original, like Disney, didn't make up the idea that the servants were objects. Now in the original they're not objects, they're just never seen. They're basically invisible servants. So all the different elements of the story are in the original, it's just they became Disney-fied. But it mirrors what it would be like for these poor young women.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, I think your point about the beast is the only real peer, even possible peer is really interesting and it's clearly like a foundational assumption, both through the original and to the Disney version. That in and of itself is an assumption that I think we can and should question. Right, like Belle has no peers because they've all like Belle and the other people have decided that this hierarchy must be maintained. There's no actual reason for her to not have peers, whether the girls in the provincial town who were mooning over Gaston I mean, he is handsome- if he doesn't talk.

Emily Guy Birken:

I got to tell you when he's dressed up for the wedding like I always really liked that part. Even though he's awful, I'm just like he does cut a nice figure.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I mean, he's a handsome dude, right, he's handsome.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, and every last inch of him is covered with hair.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I don't remember where. I was going with that. The hierarchy people take it as given. Oh, so those girls, those girls back like that's the reason that we are given to not care for those girls as the audience is because they moon over Gaston and he's a jerk, but he is handsome and like that's what teenage girls do. Yeah, yeah, there's actually. There actually is no real reason why Belle and those girls couldn't be friends.

Emily Guy Birken:

Well, and there's the scene where she she goes to the bookshop, which, first of all, just as a small business owner, how does he maintain a bookshop in this tiny town when he lends?

Emily Guy Birken:

out to the only reader when he lends out to the only reader and then gives the books. But you know, like why is she not staying and talking his ear off about like, his favorite books? You know why are they not friends? Which? And obviously it's because he's an old man and she's a young woman, and that's not how it's supposed to be. It's like you're kindly and that's it, but that comes from a similar assumption. The assumption is that you are friends with people who are similar to you in age in certain things, rather than, like you are friends with people who have similarities to you.

Emily Guy Birken:

You know that you have something in common with. So, like you know, theoretically she would have spent 45 minutes or an hour there just talking to him like you know anything new. But what's your favorite book that you read recently? What's your favorite book in the store? Like now, granted, that would have brought the entire movie to a halt.

Emily Guy Birken:

But it's a part of these similar kinds of assumptions that, like she is different from the rest of us and so she is alone. Similarly, the I want so much more than they've got planned, because she has that song after she runs Gaston off, after he tries to propose to her, and she's like she wants adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can say and it would be grand if someone could understand that I want something more than they've got planned. And I loved that when I was a kid because I felt there was a similar sort of like this is what girls do. Like you get married, you have kids, you do this, you do this, you do this. And she's like I don't want what's planned, I want my own thing, I want adventure. And like the plot of the movie makes it clear she's right, they do have something planned for her. That is not what she wants.

Emily Guy Birken:

But looking at it now with hindsight, it's like she doesn't have a specific want, there's not a specific thing that she's yearning for. She's an adventure in the great wide somewhere, but she doesn't get that. And yet she's supposed to be happy at the end, married to the beast now prince. That would have been so much more moving if, like, there was a specific thing that she wanted, rather than just this generalized. I want adventure and I like to read. Now, some of that is like by doing that, that means, like so many little girls are like oh, that's me, you know, by being non specific, you can, you, anyone can self insert, but it really does lower the stakes, because what is she fighting for now? Her devotion to her dad is completely comprehensible and it's like you know, her willingness to go after him and switch with him is very brave and all of that. And there's a reason why they call this the first feminist Disney princess. But that's a low bar, yeah.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Okay, so the first feminist Disney princess, but but a low bar and, and I think it's fairly, it's really interesting that you name it as sort of middle class white feminism of the late 20th century. I think that's a, really it's very specific but, I do think, accurate. And we haven't talked about this Stockholm syndrome yet, are we?

Emily Guy Birken:

going to talk about that. Oh, yeah, yeah. So here's the thing that's really interesting on this rewatch is it? Guest on and the beast are not that different. It's just that the beast is successful because guest on is similarly trying to trap her, whereas the beast literally does. She is his prisoner and the reason she starts to feel something for him is because he saves her life. Ew, and she's always a mine.

Emily Guy Birken:

It's really hard for me to examine this rationally because this is my catnip Like I still, to this day, love like enemies to lovers as a romance trope. I love like the bickering, but underneath they're really. They really like each other. I love the like love of a good woman will transform a beastly man. I'm not proud of that, but it really really hits me somewhere deep whenever I see it or read it. I don't know what of that is programming, because I've gotten so much of it and what of it is. You know actual inclinations on my part, but I don't think that it's a coincidence that you know my early crushes in terms of media, like John Bender, mr Rochester the Beast John Bender from the Breakfast Club, mr Rochester from Jane Eyre Beast and from Beauty and the Beast were like my idea of what romance is and I dated a lot of people who were mean to me and that really dovetails like the sense that the love of a good woman will turn around a beastly man is something we are very much spoon fed.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, we've definitely been conditioned by that one. One of the ways that this movie conditioned us in that, in the distinctions that it tries to make for us between Gaston and the Beast, is that we see the Beast vulnerable in ways that we do not see Gaston ever vulnerable.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

We are shown that his meanness is actually because of his insecurity or because he's been hurt or because of his trauma. We're spoon fed the breadcrumbs to the fact that it's a trauma response or that like there was something I don't remember, I haven't seen it as recently as you have, but I remember like she had to tend a wound or something after the wolves, yes, and so we see, and he like pulls away because it hurts. So there's like a direct kind of like the meanness is because he's been hurt. That we're given about the Beast the way we're not given about Gaston. He's just a jerk. We're not given any reason for his jerkiness. Yeah, but I think that still like helps contribute to the conditioning.

Emily Guy Birken:

Well, and then the sense that there's something special about her because she can see past his beastliness and so like oh, I'm special because I can see the wounded little boy inside this violent man.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, yeah, you don't see him. How I see him. That's like every bad teenage romance that we have been conditioned to swoon over.

Emily Guy Birken:

And when you just logistically within the story, when you have this child because I mean, she's what it's supposed to be 17, 18? Maybe, maybe as old as 20? Maybe, but a child who has no peers, no relationships with anyone other than her father, who is then isolated in a castle with no other humans, and then she sees the vulnerability from her captor, yeah, she's going to start to feel for him, particularly since we've already established that she is a compassionate person. So it's wow, I mean it's. I sometimes think about the media that we consume and how it will look in 500 years, presuming that humanity has progressed, which survived humans. That's a. Those are a couple of big assumptions on my part, but that because that's going to be like wow, I can't believe they let little girls watch this, I can't believe they let little children watch this and they thought, thought this was, you know, good family entertainment and you know, their highest awards is this is the only Disney film that was nominated for like the best film of the year, disney Award or Oscar award.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Not not just animated, Not just animated. The regular category.

Emily Guy Birken:

And the thing is it's it's an amazing. Film Like this is hand drawn, with the exception of the ballroom scene, which I remember. Yeah, I remember being my friend Jen's basement watching TV when an ad came on for it and they showed the sweeping ballroom scene. I was like I got to see that Because the CGI and now now, looking back, it's the hand drawn animation that I'm actually like holy cow, it's amazing. Yeah, so it is incredible entertainment, but, yowza, I can remember you saying long, long time ago, it's also uncomfortable if you think about it, about this story that Belle let's say that this is genuine she genuinely fell in love with the beast and then she's got this milk toast white guy with blonde hair.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I remember that Right, like if she genuinely fell in love with the beast. Who is this?

Emily Guy Birken:

human being that you're not going to marry. Yeah, and there is like, honestly, there is something to that, because I have been thinking about, like the whole point of this is that she can see past appearances, right, but it's not just seeing past it. She fell in love with this hulking creature that didn't even know how to use a spoon anymore, right, you know, like, that's part of what it is.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I actually think that Hollywood kind of got that memo because in Shrek, right when true love's kiss is supposed to give her like her final form and Fiona like is like excited to be a human again, and then like the magic happens and she's the ogres forever. Like that actually was kind of great Because Shrek was in. You know, like I don't know, it still is not perfect. Maybe we'll do Shrek in another episode.

Emily Guy Birken:

Oh, absolutely yeah.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Because I think there's, but I think there's there will be some when we do. I think there will be some interesting conversations between Shrek and Beauty and the Beast in terms of this question in particular about, like, what is the reward? Right? What is the reward for Belle falling in love with a beast is to get a handsome prince, but she's in love with that beast, yeah.

Emily Guy Birken:

And they try to do it where she's weird around him, right.

Emily Guy Birken:

Right when he's she's taking it back immediately and she's taking it back and she sees his eyes like, oh, it is you, but who is he? This gets to something that I think might be too much for a Disney film to have to carry. But we are our bodies and so who are we? If we transform like that and that's not to say that like a physical transformation changes who you are, you know. If you know I were to become a paraplegic, that wouldn't change who I am, but that is different for me.

Emily Guy Birken:

Turning into a candlestick or a giant hulking beast, you know, yeah, it gets into some really interesting stuff. We get that. The end Chip asks Mrs Potts, like are they gonna live happily ever after? Of course they are Like why? How? What do they have in common? What do we do on Saturday nights? You know, yeah, it also is weird. I have head canon that is different from what the movie is. So we know that it's been 10 years since he was cursed and the rose is supposed to bloom until he turns 21. And then it will wilt and once the last petal falls, if he hasn't found someone to love who loves him, return. He'll be a beast forever. Disney has made it clear he's 21. So he was 11 when he was cursed. When he was cursed, In my head I have always I was like okay, so he was 16 when he was cursed, and so, like you know, they don't say that it was gonna wilt quickly. It took five years, that's in my head.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, because, as the mother of an 11 year old like Do not judge an 11 year old and curse them no. Well, there is not the pinnacle of our speech. He's developed in that age, oh shit.

Emily Guy Birken:

And like it's also like why, if he's 11, then he has never when he's cursed. He's never been a man.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah. It's also like I think about, at least in the story that's in my head, so I'm assuming it's from the Disney movie Like he's cursed because he is less than kind to a ugly old lady Like in my head she was specifically ugly. Yep, yeah, that made it that clear.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Who comes to the door and asks for hospitality or something, or that's right and he's unkind to her and like that's not okay I'm not condoning that behavior and also like Stranger danger. How does this punishment fit the crime? Yeah, how does this teach that? I mean like there is no teachable moment in this curse is what I'm getting at Like. If this consequence for unkindness, how is that actually leading to kindness? Clearly, kindness is not in fact. Even hospitality is not, in fact, the goal.

Emily Guy Birken:

Well it's. I mean, they try to make it that, not to judge people by appearances, but then Belle was the most beautiful girl in the town. You know what Like if it were a plain girl who'd wandered in. The other aspect of this is what the hell did his servants do to deserve being transformed. Yeah they just had a job. Yeah, they just worked for this bratty king.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Or Prince. I think back to when we talked about Ghostbusters and Winston. It's like come on, man, I wasn't even there, I just work here.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, like, yes, so and then the fact that the other thing that I it really hit me, and again looking at it from like the Marxist perspective, when Belle is like I have to go to my father and he says, okay, I'll let you go, You're no longer my prisoner and is, you know, just heartbroken because he loves her, what is his concern for his servants? Now, like, it's one of those where, like, you can't force love and his letting her go is proof of his love for her, and all of that. I get that, but at the same time it's also like, why is there no moment where he's like, oh gosh, I wanna let you go because I care about you, but I need you to be here because there's only, you know, a few petals left and my poor servants, they've been stuck like this for 10 years and it's. There's no sense of that. Is it entirely about him?

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but that comes back to the class consciousness that we talked about that you brought in in the very beginning. This these folks are I mean so not peers, they're literally objects. I mean, of course, like I don't think about how my actions are gonna affect my clock. I don't. Yeah, it's a clock. These people, these people who have, who are employed by him, have been so reduced to their humanity, their literally objects. Of course he doesn't think about how it affects them. Yeah, they are possessions. Mm-hmm, they are literally possessions.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

That's really messed up.

Emily Guy Birken:

It's grim, it's pretty grim. I kind of wish I could put all that back in a box, because I do. I did love this movie so much and it was still very enjoyable watching it the other night and I have been singing. So when I think I was that December, I got the soundtrack.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Oh, I remember. I can see the CD in my head.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, With the rose and the bass, yeah, yeah, and I listened to it and listened to it over and over and over again. So, like I like Howard Ashman and Ellen Menken were amazing, like they were amazing lyricists. And the fact that Howard Ashman was a gay man has helped me to in some ways rearrange the furniture in my head in how I look at some of the movies that he helped score. Particularly, when I found out that the Little Mermaid is beloved by members of the trans community because it is a metaphor for being trans, helped me forgive the movie somewhat because it feels so anti-feminist because she literally gives up her voice for a man.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Oh, I'm with you.

Emily Guy Birken:

But when I could see it as a trans allegory, I can like okay, okay, I can be a little more okay with it and similarly the sense of feeling like a monster and the ways that like there's a line and I can't remember his name, robbie White, I think, who did the voice for Beast where he says and when we touch, she didn't shut her up my paw and like he goes tenor all of a sudden and it's lovely and I always loved that moment because it was like-.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, that line is like in my head right now. Actually, like even before you said it, I had that line in my head.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, and so this sense of like feeling like a beast and but being accepted for who you are and looking at it through an LGBTQ lens, is something that makes it easier for me to accept the movie and its flaws and its words, even though they're there, yeah no, I actually think that that is actually very powerful Sort of the self-hatred and navigating through self-hatred where, if we were to view this as like, maybe she doesn't see the beast at all that's the way he thinks of himself, you know.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

And then the transformation because he is loved, actually feels it, does it feels less like conditioning, if I can go into that allegorical space of mental health and just self-acceptance and self-control and love for the opposite, self-loathing.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, but there's I mean honestly the other podcasts that you and I have, lightbringers, where we're discussing the TV show Lucifer. I believe that a big part of our love for that show is the same thing, where it is a monster who is loved by a human woman and who does not see his monstrousness but sees his humanity.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

She sees his humanity, yeah, yeah. And in that same show there's also a great deal of self-loathing.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yes, on the part of the monster, the man, yeah, and why? I mean, we've talked about this before. My favorite version of Lucifer in that show is a devastated Lucifer.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah.

Emily Guy Birken:

Just as in Beauty and the Beast, my favorite moments with the beast are when he is vulnerable and when Belle is standing up to him. There's something very powerful in that. That, again, I don't know how much is conditioning and how much is just human.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Whew, this one's got a lot. I feel like we could keep talking about it for a while, but we've been talking, so I'm gonna maybe try and see if we can do a little, if I can repeat back and do a little synthesis of what we've talked about. So you started with naming this as Disney's first feminist princess. But she's a very specific middle class, middle to upper class white feminist from the late 20th century.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yoga pants feminist I should trademark that and I think that played out specifically in the ways that other women, minimal as they are, are not peers of Belle. She is a better than we talked about the Stockholm syndrome, that Gaston tries to trap Belle and she hates him for it. Beast literally traps her, does trap her and she falls in love with him which is pretty yucky.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I think your class analysis was really, really interesting. When we sort of back and forth with the fact that the people who are employed by the, by the beast, have been transformed into the beast's possessions and are treated as such, and what am I missing? I feel like I'm missing something.

Emily Guy Birken:

So the the self loathing component of it and how that could be an allegory for both mental health issues and also what it would feel like to have to be in the closet as a member of an LGBTQ community.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I think actually, the research that you brought to me today about the original story actually is among the most telling. That really kind of is going to underscore for me a lot of my understanding of this film moving forward, that it was written for girls of a certain social and class status, to give them comfort and instruction for the arranged marriages in which they were likely to find themselves with men who they thought up as beasts.

Emily Guy Birken:

Wow. Well, and they? They would likely be like much older than them.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, I have nothing in common with them, nothing common I'm going to be carrying that around with me for a while that there's something really do you ever think about, like I saw this I guess it was a meme on social, but it was talking about the fact that, like our train tracks, our roads are all the size that they are because that's roughly the size of like a horse's ass.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

So, like Roman, like carts and chariots that made the ruts, that made the roads that then we kept using, and now, like cars and trains are the size they are because thousands of years ago our ancestors or predecessors made vehicles that fit, you know, with the horse, the size of a single horse, and I, this, this feels like that where there's like a thing that we are doing as a species, psychologically, sociologically, that was sort of of necessity. Maybe we could argue about that. Well, it was was a reaction to a reality, yes, three or 400 years ago. And like I mean, it's relatively neutral how wide a road is or the with the railroad tracks, it's not neutral. And we're still doing it and we're still like conditioning ourselves to not just find meaning but actual find satisfaction and like seek out these, these, these circumstances and these relationships that cause harm, and not just to the women in them.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

I mean this, this vision of masculinity that like be a beast until a woman like manages to see past it and civilize you, like that's not healthy for dudes either, and I mean forget about, like, the fact that there's just those two choices. Yeah, so, and that's, that's going to be with me for for a while, that's going to be sitting with me for a while. So, thank you.

Emily Guy Birken:

It's. I just went to see the Barbie movie yesterday, so I'm not sure when this is going to air, but you know, just after it the Barbie movie came out, my kids were not interested in going there. Boys were, at the time of this taping, nine and 12 years old, and the movie is all about the idea that patriarchy is an idea. And yet we keep perpetuating this idea that is so harmful and this is part of what you're talking about and even the people who are trying to subvert it in a way. So I know I personally am doing what I can within my life to try to subvert this. I would like to believe that Howard Ashman wanted to subvert the things that harmed him, because patriarchy certainly harmed him. But we keep getting back into those, those horse-sized ruts, because that's what we know and that's the. That's where we find meaning and intrigue and and it seems natural, even when we didn't even talk about speaking of LGBTQ stuff.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

We didn't even talk about the. What's the little guy's name? Laphoo Laphoo. That means the fool. Does that mean the fool?

Emily Guy Birken:

It does.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Yeah, we didn't even talk about Laphoo and like what clearly to me even then when I was what 15 is like a homoerotic attraction between Laphoo and Gaston in that direction I don't know that Gaston reciprocates.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

We didn't even talk about that. We don't have time for that now, just throwing that out there. Yeah, it's like a little cookie, little cookie at the end.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah yeah, there's so much within this I mean it's not even a 90 minute movie to unpack that nobody saw. I mean, if they did, they were like, oh, come on, it's just a movie, or you?

Tracie Guy-Decker:

know? Well, right, exactly. That's why we're doing this show.

Emily Guy Birken:

But even I went back. I have a great deal of respect and affection for Roger Ebert and I went back to see what he said about it. I remembered that he loved it. He gave it four stars, which that's maximum, and he did not give those out lightly and he said he felt like a kid again watching it. And there are things that he had some blinders on. I'm not going to say Ebert was any kind of perfect reviewer or critic or anything like that, but he was someone who saw the deeper meanings, even when they are not clear to the majority of audiences. And this is gliding along on something that is so common and so expected in our culture that someone I respect as one of the deepest thinkers about film didn't see it.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Or didn't see it as worthy of note.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yes, yeah, and that to me is that's telling. That's telling. Now, I mean some of it's. You know he was a commercial film critic, so he's writing for the general audience, and if he started talking about class consciousness and second and third way feminism and I like what turned off his readers at the Chicago Sun Times, I get that. But it also like he didn't shy away from bringing up stuff that he found uncomfortable in films that no one else saw. So it's just interesting that this is. It's so deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness that we don't even think to. You know, get some shovels and go digging. Still a fantastic soundtrack, though.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Music is good, music is good, so good, yeah. So thank you for bringing this one. So next time, next time we meet, I am going to share my deep thoughts about Wonder Woman, and usually we try to be very specific, like that I would name like which Wonder Woman film. I'm actually going to break the mold here, because between now and when we actually meet, it's going to be more than the week that our listeners will have. I'm going to do some research and bring a little bit more to share with you about sort of where she came from and like the different iterations. I will say now and in that episode that for me, linda Carter is and always will be Wonder Woman, but I'm going to talk about more than the 70s TV show.

Emily Guy Birken:

Yeah, very cool, I cannot wait, all right.

Tracie Guy-Decker:

Well, until then, I'll see you soon. See you soon.