Monsters & Mullets: Beauty and the Beast (2017)

There are a lot of air-quotes in this one.

Look, things are really tough right now. If I were a different person, I’d use this newsletter to talk about how we need to be kind to each other, more now than ever before… Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, I actually did write that essay. It’s painfully sincere. And then, weeks later, I reread it and was like, LOL, let’s just be mean to a dumb movie.

Happily, I had also already written an essay in which I was mean to a dumb movie! It is this very essay! I wrote it in January! It even had a Covid-19 joke in it! It no longer contains a Covid-19 joke. But it is mean to a dumb movie.

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You will notice that I do not hew to my usual plot-recap-with-jokes format in today’s newsletter. That is because I have made myself sit though this wart on the face of an icon of pop culture I genuinely treasure twice, and I can’t do it again. Not even for the sake of making some dick jokes on the internet.

Let’s not beat about the bush. 2017’s ‘reimagined’ Beauty and the Beast is a terrible, terrible film. It is, I’m pretty sure, is the result of some asshole higher-up at Disney going to a pitch meeting with a print-out of a Buzzfeed listicle entitled ’17 Reasons Disney’s Beauty & the Beast is THE ACTUAL WORST!’ having just made the discovery that The Kids These Days like to compile lists of plotholes in ninety-minutes-long, decades-old children’s movies. This list is composed of short sentences, gifs from Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and ends with ‘but you love it anyway.’ Fuck you, Buzzfeed.

‘Did you know,’ this horrified executive says, still reeling from that awful fifteen minutes when his eleven-year-old niece explained to him that Disney princesses aren’t exactly feminist icons, ‘Did you know that people think Beauty & the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome?’

Everyone in the room quietly googles ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ on their phones while tutting in appalled dismay. Yes, I am likely giving the Disney higher-ups too much credit; the actual conversation probably went something like this:

Exec 1: Wow, that Alice in Wonderland fiasco made us a shit-ton of money! Quick, what else might make us a lot of money?

Exec 2: My dudes, no one even liked the original Alice in Wonderland movie and we made bank on it. What if we remake… one of our most beloved films ever?

Execs 3-34: Yes, oh very good, yes. Bank, yes. Indeed.

And so 2017’s miserable excuse of a live-action remake of Beauty & the Beast was willed into existence. It’s written as though Disney wanted to address every criticism of the original ever made without anyone actually thinking through any of what they were doing or how the changes they were introducing would change the plot, the characters, the story and, you know, the residual affection people like me carry for the film. It’s crass, it’s gross, it’s patronizing, it’s deeeeeeeeeply cynical, it’s not even filmed particularly well (please stop hiring Bill Condon to direct big-budget musicals!) and it’s all-around really badly considered. For example: in the run-up to the film’s release Disney made a big deal about the ‘fact’ that ‘Lefeu is gay in this one!’ because Disney is now hip to representation. Remember that? Well, ‘representation’ in this film is Josh Gad dancing with another man at the end of the movie. That’s… it.

Actually, that’s not it; the elderly white bookseller in the 1991 version is now a handsome young Black man who is the town chaplain. He is also the only townsperson who is nice to Belle and doesn’t fall for Gaston’s gaslighting. And the wardrobe and the feather duster are now played by Black actors Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Audra McDonald. Which is better than nothing, but isn’t what I’d call ‘good’ for 2017. (Or 1991 for that matter, Disney.)

I went into this film with pretty low expectations, but the opening scene – where we see Dan Stevens’ pre-transformation Beast applying makeup – gave me hope: were we actually about to see something truly subversive, a film that was willing to pay homage to the original but also willing to move it firmly into the 21st century in terms of character and representation?

LOL no. Belle, who is played by National Treasure Emma Watson, a woman who has done a lot of good in the world but who cannot sing or act, spends half the film with her skirt tucked into her underwear. This is a legit costume decision they made in this film, to convey the ‘idea’ - as simplistically as possible - that Belle is Fed Up With Things Like Having to Wear a Dress. Watson herself had a hand in designing the iconic yellow ballgown, and the end result looks like neither an actual 18th century ballgown nor 1991 Belle’s ballgown.

Watson also apparently insisted that Belle never wear a corset because of… feminism. I mean, come ON. Corsets, like much of the underwear ladies have had to wear throughout history, suck and, when tightly laced to decrease the size of one’s waist, can be really painful and even dangerous… but corsets were also how ladies in the past kept their boobs from blobbling around, and as a boob-having lady who hates bras, let me assure you that as annoying and uncomfortable as boob-holding underwear is, keeping your boobs from blobbling around too much is a genuinely important thing to do if you’re engaged in things like, I dunno, physical labour -- whether that be ‘inventing’ because Belle rather than her father is the inventor in this travesty, because of ‘feminism’ -- or like, I dunno, horse-back riding. Or maybe dancing. But, whatever; ‘feminism’ in this film means that Belle doesn’t wear a corset.

I’m sure ‘feminism’ is also the reason that we have the Cogsmere’s Wife Subplot. Did you know Cogsmere is not gay for Lumiere but married? To a LADY? And that she’s a particularly horrible nasty character? Yep, that’s a thing they put into this film because that way they could make sure that every grad student who ever wrote a thesis about sexual repression in Disney animated films between 1991 and now IS OFFICIALLY WRONG, or something. In this film, the spell cast on the castle and the Beast and his servants means that no one in the nearby town remembers them, including any of their families who weren’t in the castle when the spell was cast. Got it? Yes, that was definitely a plot hole worth filling. Anyway, there’s a female townsperson who is established as being absolutely horrible early on in the film… and it’s she who’s revealed to be Cogsmere’s wife when they get their memories back. Cogsmere ‘hilariously’ laments this awful outcome. I can’t decide whether ‘feminism’ or ‘plot holes what must be filled’ is the more hollow reason for such a gross, unfunny, needless, sexist subplot. Also we no longer have to worry about the fact that, in the 1991 film, Mrs Potts has about 37 teacup children and her youngest, Chip, is definitely younger than ten, even though they’ve all been enchanted for ten years. Mrs Potts has a Mr Potts and they all get their memories back in this version, hooray! Mrs Potts was not having teapot sex with the music box, guys.  Phew, thank god someone took the time to think that one through.

What are some other things this open sore of a film does? Well, Gaston now has PTSD but is still a psychopath, which means that someone made the decision to give his character ‘depth’ by making him have suffered horrible trauma in some war. But don’t worry; the war is never otherwise mentioned, and Gaston’s PTSD doesn’t explain anything except maaaaybe why he likes to hunt, which is definitely something everyone watching the 1991 film wondered about. My dudes, hunting for sport is not only the province of serial killers. Gaston’s PTSD does not, however, have anything to do with his driving character motivation: his selfishness and his vanity, which remain unchanged(ish) in this film. So… instead of creating a deeper and more profound mythology for the story, this is yet another change that contributes nothing to the film and, in fact, actively works against the story itself. Hooray!

Were you also worried about the Beast and his characterisation? Don’t be! This film has got that covered! How does a vain, selfish kid become a vain, selfish grown-up? The answer, I guess, is either PTSD from the war, or it’s daddy-issues. And since Gaston’s got PTSD, the Beast gets the daddy-issues. King Daddy was mean and Queen Mommy died young so now the pre-spell Beast is vain and spoiled and angry because he’s secretly just super sad. Thank goodness the love of a good woman and a growing sense of his responsibilities are going to fix one of these dudes. The other one still gets to fall to his gruesome death.

While we’re talking about the Beast: his CG is terrible and also the film thinks it’s funny for him to be mean to Belle, like, constantly? Remember the scene in the animated version where Belle and the Beast get into a snowball fight in the background while the enchanted objects stand around talking about the plot? In the 1991 version, this scene shows Belle hitting the Beast with a snowball; he gathers up an armload of snow to throw at her and then she nails him with another snowball, making him drop his giant pile of snow onto himself. It’s a cute little throwaway gag that also reveals a bit of character in the background of a plot-advancing conversation, and this, my friends, is what we in the business like to call ‘narrative economy.’

In the 2017 version… the Beast hits Belle, in the face, really hard, with a snowball. Hard enough to knock her over. This is front and center during the ‘reimagined’ version of the snowball fight, and filmed as though it’s an utterly hilarious gag. Feminism!

Dan Stevens is a delight as an actor, but WTF is he doing as the Beast. At the end of the day he’s still Cousin Matthew from Downton Abbey, FFS, and neither sexy (which, let’s be honest, the Beast in the ‘91 film has his sexy moments) nor… well, swoonworthy. Neither is he a particularly powerful singer, so his casting is just… kind of gently mysterious. There had to be someone out there with a little tiny bit more sex appeal than Dan Stevens. But, of course, ‘sex appeal’ isn’t really in line with the Disney ethos, is it. Unless you’re a female character, in which case, your every curve and jiggle are going to be shot or animated in cringe-inducing detail while the camera pans up your body. I’d link to those scenes in Pocahontas or The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Atlantis or basically any of them, but you know what I’m talking about.

Gosh, what else. How about the scene where Belle teaches a little girl to read, only to have a Close-Minded Townsperson snort derisively about how girls don’t need to know how to read. Quelle horreur! What a close-minded, unfeminist monster! Okay, but… Belle is such an enormous weirdo that she wanders around town with her skirt tucked into her underwear, while the little girl in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere is wearing an expensive gown and has her hair up in the style of a powdered periwig. Which: what?

Does that bother me more or less than the, oh, magical time-travelling book that allows the Beast to take Belle back to Paris to see her dying mother? This scene answers the question no one asked (why don’t Belle and her father live in Paris?) in a way that deepens no characterizations, advances no plots, and does nothing besides make the film longer and stupider. Yes, we get more backstory that literally no one, not even Buzzfeed, was clamouring for by learning that… Belle’s mother died. Which we already knew.  That is a real subplot that was inserted into this film. I assume because of feminism.

Look, I know this is a lot of vitriol to pour over a mediocre and utterly forgettable film but, as I said above, the 1991 film is a genuinely meaningful and important artifact of pop culture for a lot of people. Personally, it was one of the first times I ever saw a film where I walked out feeling like I’d just seen a movie that was made for me, an awkward kid who liked books and got teased a lot for being a total weirdo. The 1991 Beauty & the Beast meant an enormous amount to me during some very difficult years, and rewatching it as an adult, nearly 30 years later, still affects me. But here’s the thing. It’s not a perfect movie. There are plot-holes, and there are issues. Because, spoiler alert, no piece of art is without its flaws. But the 2017 film seems to position itself as some sort of corrective, without taking into account what contemporary audiences – and future audiences – loved about the original. It’s an ugly and nakedly cynical money-grab that pokes its audience repeatedly in the ribs, as if to say, ‘look, we’re in on it. We know. Stockholm Syndrome! Do you see what we’re doing? Do you? Do you?’

And it made a billion dollars.

And that’s why Disney+ has an entire ‘channel’ of ‘reimagined classics’ – live-action remakes of their classic animated films – and why we’ll be seeing live-action remakes of films that we loved when we were kids for years to come.

Pop-culture commentator Lindsey Ellis put together an entire video essay that covers all of this, but better, and you could do worse than spend 40 minutes watching her talk about what a shitshow this film is. She also has an essay about whether or not Beauty and the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome (it is not), which is also worth a watch. As is everything else she produces.

Also Stockholm Syndrome isn’t a real thing.

Monsters: One big hairy dude (the Beast), one big hairy dude (Gaston); a few cranky townsfolk; Cogsmere’s wife.

Mullets: Belle’s hair is never remotely era-appropriate (‘feminism’) but I do love a periwig. Why weren’t there more?

Hookers, Victims & Doormats: I guess 2017’s Belle is meant to be super-progressive with her reading and her inventing and underwear-tucking and lack of corsetry, but the film also prominently features her getting whacked in the face with a snowball and lets the Beast neg her for liking Romeo & Juliet, so I’m going to give the advantage to 1991 on this one.

Elsewhere:

•  Elif Batuman’s The Possessed is the truest and funniest account of life as a grad student I’ve ever read. If you like your narrative non-fiction to contain at least one chapter about becoming obsessed by the idea that Tolstoy was murdered (Tolstoy was not murdered), then this is absolutely the book for you.

• Square Haunting, by Francesca Wade. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It made me cry on the Tube, for one thing; for another, it’s a brilliant exploration of the lives of five women between 1918 and 1939, all trying to figure out what being a woman and an intellectual in the new world order might look like. It did not, as far as I remember, involve anyone tucking their skirts into their underwear.

• Tweet Cute, by Emma Lord, is a sweet YA romcom with only light lashings of angst. Also the plot centers around grilled cheese sandwiches.

• Subscribe to the newsletter Pome and get a poem delivered fresh to your inbox every day! The moment or two I spend reading the day’s poem has become a lockdown highlight, I kid you not.

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