Friday, September 23, 2011

Beauty & The Beast plot holes or what happens when I don't get enough sleep

In Everything's Eventual Stephen King* says that he does some of his best thinking in the shower. His thinking involves writing bestselling novels. Mine involves giving way too much thought to Disney movies. In this case Beauty and the Beast. I don't really know what sparked this. I didn't see anything about it and I can't remember the last time I watched the movie, but apparently my subconscious has been stewing over this for awhile now and wanted to talk through it. And for whatever reason lately my body has decided at 3pm it needs to sleep and when I don't give in to its nap time requests it punishes me by not sleeping at night. So what I'm saying is I'm over-tired, and there's a good chance nothing that follows makes any sense. 
She's reading. That makes this relevant.
For those unfamiliar, here's a quick recap of the prologue to the movie. Or you can just watch this clip
A young Prince is a selfish jerk. One day an ugly old lady shows up at the castle and asks for someplace to stay for the night, but says the only payment she can offer is a rose. The Prince is all like "ew gross" and says no way. The old lady tells him not to be deceived by appearances and please let her stay. Prince-y still says no. So then the old lady turns out to be a beautiful enchantress (because she couldn't really be powerful and ugly. Come on now) and puts a spell on the Prince to make him a beast and turn all of the staff into teapots and whatnot, because fuck the poor servants. That rose that she gave him was magic and was going to stay alive until the Prince's 21st year. If he can find love and be loved in return before the rose dies, he'll turn back into a person. If not he's a Beast forever. Sad for him. Years pass and Beast gets really depressed and loses hope and figures he'll just be a Beast forever and then the movie begins!

So here are my problems with this:
1. The intro identifies the Beast as a Prince. So that means there's a King and Queen somewhere, right? If there wasn't, Prince would actually be King. Where the hell are his parents? Did they get turned into pots and beds too? And if so, why doesn't anyone mention them?

2. If he is a Prince, what does his family rule over? No one seems too concerned that their royal family is suddenly gone one day and there's this power vacuum.

3. So maybe we can assume that the guy's name is Prince and he's not actually a prince. Just a really rich guy that makes some pretentious but ultimately catchy tunes. Again, why didn't people in the town notice when he disappeared and suddenly there's this beast thing roaming around? I mean, the town is overly concerned with the fact that Belle reads books**. This seems like the type of place where everyone is all up in everyone else's business. You'd think "crazy rich guy suddenly disappears" would be big news.

4. So the deal is Prince/Beast has to find love by his 21st year. In the song "Be Our Guest" Lumiere says "10 years we've been rusting..." 10 years. So Prince was roughly 11 when he acted like a douche to the old lady/enchantress. This seems like a really harsh punishment for an 11 year old.

Some people spend their time thinking important thoughts and fixing actual problems. I poke holes in the logic of a twenty year old family animated movie.

*This post is going to be light on actual book connections. Here's your first one.
** This is your second book reference and how I'm justifying posting this up here. Also it's my blog so I'll post whatever random thoughts I might have. Especially when I share these thoughts with Boyfriend who reacts by shaking his head and walking out of the room.

Comments (18)

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This post just made my morning--thank you!

Perhaps he was a minor prince of an outlying fiefdom.

Then again, if he was only 11 (and yeah, totally harsh punishment), maybe he was being educated away from home, but with a full reticule of servants. And when they were all transformed (ugh--way to take it out on the innocent), the royal family had to pretend that the young prince died of small pox or something to discourage questions.

I dunno. Are the versions of this fairy tale that are around today any better at explaining any of this? Because I'd say that Disney isn't really known for being true to its source material.

And now I've spent more time than i'd have thought responding to your post.
1 reply · active 704 weeks ago
Glad my ridiculous brain wanderings amused you :)

OK so building off of the Beast guy is sent away for learning, his parents must be awful to not only pretend he's died to keep up appearances but to abandon him in this decaying castle. I mean, couldn't they have brought him back home and just hid him, a la Rochester did in Jane Eyre?

Also! the enchantress says Beast has to find love and be loved in return to break the spell. So either Disney is referring just to romantic love, in which case it's an extra weird level to the already harsh punishment for an 11 year old OR she did mean any love and the kid's parents didn't actually love him so the spell didn't get broken earlier. Now I feel just awful for Beast.

OR what if Beast doesn't age while in his beast form? A friend pointed out that could explain how Chip exists because it would be really weird to think of someone giving birth to a cup.

I tried finding an actual (not Disney) version of the story but I didn't have it in any of my books and didn't look it up online. I'm sure I got distracted by something sparkly.
These are all very important questions that I think need to be addressed. Possibly you should write to Disney and ask them these things and when they don't tell you what the people need to know then BRING THEM DOWN!

Sorry, I just got all angry and crazy there. I probably need more sleep too. Anyway- I think the fact that the townspeople have never ever seen this creepy gothic castle before indicates how much they know/care about the disappearance of a Prince- and why does the castle seem so far away when Belle's dad goes there, and yet the townspeople march there in the time it takes to sing a really sinister song? I do like the 'they don't age while they're enchanted theory' because how could a teapot even give birth to a cup?! But then why would there be a time limit on the beast's punishment? And why is there almost a whole rose when Belle gets there, but it's dead by the end of the film? It's all too illogical!

I'm going to stop this now before I start imagining some kind of conspiracy or something, but I have 2 more questions: Why doesn't someone tell Gaston to stop being such a twat, and why is the beast so much more attractive than his human form?

I think you should do this as a weekly feature until you've gone through all the Disney films and until we all know that children will accept anything they're told if it's in the form of moving drawings.
3 replies · active 704 weeks ago
I was thinking maybe the castle was far away but I thought about the singing mob and the fact that Belle's dad got there within a day, so it can't be that far away. Not right next door but close enough you'd think people knew about it.

So if they don't age while enchanted, does this mean they're all immortal if the spell isn't broken? Or maybe not immortal. I guess if Mrs. Potts got dropped or something that would be that, but just they won't die of old age?

I was thinking of making this a regular feature, although I hope not weekly only because I seem to have these thoughts when I'm not getting enough sleep and I hope to get enough sleep on a regular basis. But I promise if I do start thinking about some other children's movie and decide I need to poke holes in it and thus ruin my childhood a little bit more, I'll post it here.
OH MY GOD, I never even considered Mrs Potts or, even worse Chip, getting dropped and then being all broken and dead! How awful. Now I'm a little sad but also kind of laughing my head off because I have all sorts of ridiculous and hilarious images in my head of a poor dead teapot! NO!

I'm pretty sure the singing mob gets there in about 3 minutes, if that. So why does it change distances away from the village? Why is everything about this movie wrong?!

I love that you have sleep deprivation as an excuse for this (well, I don't love that you're sleep deprived, but you know) when I really have none... But I need answers dammit!
Haha I think the distance of the castle from the village keeps changing cos the animators/directors/writers figured "eh, kids won't care". And I mean, they were totally right since I never considered any of this when I was little, or even until recently.
I actually saw Beauty and the Beast again recently, and it seemed to imply that they were all frozen at the age they started while transformed. Also, while the Disney version sometimes overlooks this, most versions of the story say that the castle is far away from where Beauty lives, and her father only ends up there because he's a traveling merchant (usually). In the Disney movie, though, you do seem to have to get through an awful lot of enchanted wood to get to the castle. I guess I always assumed that Beast was like a local duke, who basically ruled the woods where nobody lived (because of wolves). Most fairy-tale kingdoms seem like little pocket duchies that you could ride across in a day or two. Plus if people stopped coming down from the castle to the crossroads town to collect taxes, would they really argue?
1 reply · active 704 weeks ago
I accept the no aging while enchanted thing because then we're not punishing an 11 year old or asking him to find romantic love before puberty hits. So again, the question is, does that make them immortal or at least don't have to worry about dying of old age, while in these other forms?

I feel like the Disney movie puts the castle close-ish to the town. As Laura pointed out, close enough for a singing mob to make it out there pretty quickly. It's night and they decide to go to castle and it's still night when they get there. Plus Belle's dad makes it there within a day, which included getting lost, so it can't be that far off. And I accept that people don't go visit the castle cos of evil wolf forest, but I wonder why there isn't more curiosity about it.
I hate plot/timeline holes like this! I always ALWAYS wondered how no one noticed the disappearances of this princely fellow and the sudden appearance of this beasty guy. The time thing always bother me too, and, even if enchanted, so, he has until what, his 11th 21st birthday? Why couldn't they have made it 25th or 30th birthday - how hard would that have been? I used to be a sucker for disney movies, and still kinda like this one, but the messages they all send about beauty and brains and women's roles is kind of atrocious. Maybe they've been working on that; I don't know.
1 reply · active 704 weeks ago
Haha it makes me happy to know I'm not the only one who has wondered about these things. I didn't even notice the age thing until a friend of mine pointed out that Beast was only 21. I guess when the movie came out I figured anyone over the age of 18 was old.

I do still really like this Disney movie but it does send some pretty bad messages. Have you ever seen the YouTube videos from Second City, Advice for Young Girls from Cartoon Princesses? They're hilarious. Here's the Belle one: http://www.secondcitynetwork.com/comedy-videos/ad...

The Mulan Disney movie is a better message for girls, since it's not about a girl finding a man as so many of the other movies seem to focus on.
NO I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED ALL THE DISCUSSION ON THIS

Ok, points:

1. He could be a prince like in Germany when they had little principalities, so not really a king over them, but various princes.

2. Good point. Not sure how to answer that. Maybe they were an anarcho-syndicalist commune (Holy Grail reference YEAH).

3. See above? Although not sure about the other point. Hmmmm.

4. The prince WAS 11. That's not what the stained glass led me to believe. I feel cheated.
3 replies · active 704 weeks ago
Beauty and the Beast is in France! But I think they have a similar kind of royalty thing, and if it's set after the Revolution then nobody's going to give a crap what the Princes are doing I guess- and I think that answers 2 as well? Yes, I am still thinking about this... Damn.
I know it's in France! The song 'Bonjour' tipped me off! But they could..maybe...it's like...fairytale-kind-of-like-Germany France. Maybe the Brothers Grimm were all like "OUR GOVERNMENT MUST HAFF PRECEDENCE AS ZEE RULING FORM." Or something. My point is they were German. I think.
Hmm good point. Who knows how closely Grimm guys paid attention to details like what government is like in other countries. Or their own country cos really, I'm still iffy on the logistics of this whole Prince guy. I'd like to think that's just his name. As human he's Prince. As beast he's Beast.
I love that I'm not the only one who has random thoughts that go off into crazy tangents. I'm with Laura on this one. He's a prince of like an area but not a King's son. I mean they still have them now. Ever heard of that Undercover Princess reality show? I think it played last year. One of them was a princess from Germany so the titles are still around.
The cup thing gave me a giggle too :)
1 reply · active 704 weeks ago
OK I am not nearly up enough on how royal families work or reality tv shows that don't involve hoarders, so I was under the impression in order for there to be a Prince there needed to be a King and/or Queen. No such dice? Interesting? Does he still rule stuff? How do you get to be a Prince without a King?
the original beauty and the beast wasn't written by the grimm brothers but my a french woman

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