On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Donald Larsson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Jerry comments:
>"Right now I'm doing a study of how children engage the film texts offered
>to them.  I'm receiving some very interesting feedback.  For instance, many
>adults believe most Disney animated features to be very reactionary in that
>the conflicts are always resolved with the re-establishment of the
>patriarchal, heterosexual order.  But I recently asked two 8-year-old girls
>what they thought of "Beauty and the Beast," and they both said they were
>very dissapointed that the beast changed into a man at the end because he
>was "boring" now. . . . "
>
>
>When Greta Grabo saw Cocteau's version of the same story, she was supposed to
>have cried out, "Give me back my Beast!"
 
I am always intrigued by the heavily ideological reading people give Disney.
Not that I disagree that Disney's themes are as described--it's just a question
of whether one chooses to characterize the themes as "reactionary" or perhaps
just "traditional".
 
I for one do not see a huge difference between the 'man' and the 'beast',
either.  I think it is pretty common mythologically to posit that the male has
beastlike qualities and that the beast is tamed and made domestically safe by
the female.  In this context, it is hardly unusual for different people (or the
same person in different moods or at different times) to express a preference
for the domesticated man or the beast.  As a man, I recognize it is part of my
nature that I am both and so be it.
 
So both Cocteau and Disney play this same myth out, and a viewer can hardly be
blamed for feeling a sense of loss when the beast changes into a man.  But the
story of that change is a pretty old story in mythological/archetypal terms, and
the problem I have with the "reactionary, patriarcahal" tag is that it's just a
tad too facile.  I mean, if you are out to destroy patriarchy, fine.  But I
think if you are, you do need to deal with the sticky question of why people
across the ages have tended to tell similar stories. .  .Maybe it's genetic, in
which case good luck tearing down "patriarchy".  Or maybe it's just the myths
developed by "the West", in which case you still have your work cut out for you
and have, addtionally, the risk of throwibng babies out with bathwater.
 
Jeff Apfel
 
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