Beauty and the Beast

First of all, if you think I’m writing about anything besides the movie Beauty and the Beast, stop reading now. You get what you get.

In 1976, George C. Scott – General Patton himself – starred in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Beauty and the Beast, which aired on my very own television in my very own house. I was five, and my mom let all us kids stay up late and watch it, probably because she and her siblings had acted out the opera when they were younger or something like that. Have I ever mentioned that my mom grew up in a house where they acted out operas for big fun? She did.

Anyway, at the end of the movie ***spoiler alert on the way!!!***** when the Beast becomes a handsome prince, I cried my fucking eyes out. Like, as despondent as a five-year-old child could get. Right now, decades later, I remember this being one of the saddest moments of my life. Why? Because I liked the Beast way better, and I missed him.

In early 1993, when my niece and nephew were visiting my parents, and I was pregnant, I saw the animated Disney version. Cried my goddamn eyes out again. Same reason. I wanted the Beast back. Years later, my son was in a production of the musical in high school, and I….okay, I didn’t cry for that one, but mostly because the Beast was OBVIOUSLY Caleb Baker in a badly-fitting hair suit, which I never really understood, because that production had some METICULOUS freaking silverware costumes and a life-sized walking globe, but they couldn’t keep the Beast costume from ripping in the ass halfway through the Beast’s big moment? Makes no sense.

But I WOULD have cried if the bad fur suit hadn’t happened, for the same reason. What is an eminence front? It’s a put on!*  And to me, the handsome prince is just a shackled Beast with better clothes and the murder of the best part of himself on his conscience.

Now, in full disclosure, this is the part where my shrink might step in and remind me of the time that I sat in her waiting room, reading Sports Illustrated, and bawling my eyes out over athletes from East Timor, who didn’t win any Olympic medals. (“They just competed for the love of sport!” I sobbed, while she looked on, trying not to laugh.) She would gently remind me that I get a little bit sensitive about the left-out, left-behind, also-ran, jersey-over-the-face-at-the-end-of-the-game-to-hide-the-pain types. But I disagree. I don’t think this has anything to do with my sadness over the Beast being left behind. While I’m not an expert on Beasts morphing into human form, I totally got that this was supposed to represent the transformation that the Beast underwent, from a spoiled, selfish young man to loving, caring man. So I get that.

What I don’t get is that, to my mind, the Beast represented love, and how, as humans, as we love other people, we grow more and more into our true selves – and not the dressed up, smoothed out, perfumed, and perfectly coiffed selves, either. I’m talking about our insecure, troubled, wearing-the-same-sweatpants-around-for-an-entire-weekend, vulnerable, beastly selves. The ones who get irrationally angry, and bitterly disappointed, and intensely emotional about things for some reason that has to be explained, but maybe can’t. The beasts who have to be spoken gently to sometimes, and kicked in the ass sometimes, and left alone sometimes, for the good of everyone around. The complex, mysterious, fascinating people whose faces we stopped seeing long ago, anyway, because what do faces mean when you can see someone’s soul?

So to me, the appropriate transformation in this movie would have been for Belle and the Prince to peel off the unnecessary outer layers of title, and polish, and sparkle, possessions, and all of those exterior trappings, and for both of them to expose, gradually, their true selves – beastly parts and all.

OK, now that I think of it, maybe that’s Shrek.

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* If you don’t get this reference, you were born too late and/or you need more Pete Townshend in your life.