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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think the Beast is actually an abusive prick?

130 replies

twattymctwatterson · 19/03/2017 16:18

Somehow managed to never see the cartoon version of Beauty and the Best. Watching it with my daughter now. So the Beast kidnapped Bele's dad, coerced her into staying with him, shouts, smashes furniture and is basically a prick. If Belle was posting in Relationships I'd be telling her to LTB

OP posts:
BoobleMcB · 19/03/2017 17:07

Oh yes, because all of the other Disney Princess stories have a lovely plot line. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty etc Hmm

Maybe get over it, it's a story. A fairytale. That's how they work

GirlInterruptedOftenByKids · 19/03/2017 17:07

Matilda!!

flapjackfairy · 19/03/2017 17:07

Serial it is matilda x

EvilTwins · 19/03/2017 17:10

Took my DTDs to see the film this morning. We enjoyed it. It occurred to me, though, given when it's set, that the re-humanised Beast would be heading for the guillotine later that century anyway with the rest of the French aristocracy.

khajiit13 · 19/03/2017 17:10

There's loads of movies with questionable characters. You can't avoid them all and it doesn't make it a bad movie.

ChrisYoungFuckingRocks · 19/03/2017 17:11

It's a bloody kids film, talk about over-analysing!

Couldn't agree with you more Mama. Most of us watched all the kids films growing up, and it hasn't corrupted us or anything.

Glossolalia · 19/03/2017 17:11

Hmm at the posters who think that seeing B&B for what it is is 'over analysing' rather than just seeing the movie for what it is. The storyline is painfully obvious.

1horatio · 19/03/2017 17:11

Precisely a kids movie! Where little girls are told for the first time that being abused "turns out ok" i think a pp said if you just love him enough. Coupled with social expectations, "he teases/hits/pulls your hair because he likes you" etc in school and this stuff adds up

YES!

And anyhow, how can anybody say it's "just" a movie? Especially because it's not "just" one. It's movies, religion, current social norms, advertising, how many are raised and so much more..

Children are impressionable. They're basically sponges. Absorbing social rules and norms, morals, conventions etc...

IAmAPaleontologist · 19/03/2017 17:12

I can kind of forgive most of them though because they are from traditional tales, Grimm, hans Christian Anderson and company wrote down some pretty dark stories. Of course the proper little mermaid she learns that you don't just get the man and she dies. Beauty and the beast was written around 1770 I think and the merchant picked a rose to give to beauty because it was all she had asked for where her sisters asked for expensive gifts. The beast allows him to leave so long as either he or one of his daughters goes to take her place. If I recall correctly the beast is never abusive, he tells beauty that she is the mistress of the castle and he serves her and they become close friends. She goes home to visit her sisters and they trick her into staying longer than planned and when she goes back the beast is dying and her tears break the spell. Similar, but a little less Stockholm syndrome. Most of them originally served as warnings against sins etc but Disney have given them all happy endings so the brat who needs to be punished ends up with the happy ever after. Though beauty wasn't a brat.

1horatio · 19/03/2017 17:13

Btw, I'm not saying one movie will influence a child negatively.

But didn't you have childhood heroes? Admired them, pretended to be them when playing and wanted to be like them?

Sickofthinkingofnewnames · 19/03/2017 17:13

Watch the new one is much better.saw it today with about two hundred brownies and guides

RebelRogue · 19/03/2017 17:13

It is what is is. Doesn't mean you can't watch it or that kids shouldn't watch it. But it's daft to deny the plot. Change it for a trailer trash scarred man and you have an episode of criminal minds.

1horatio · 19/03/2017 17:14

Change it for a trailer trash scarred man and you have an episode of criminal minds.

I'm currently watching Hannibal. So, it's not like I have any room to talk. ;)

1horatio · 19/03/2017 17:15

Or judge others for their choices in entertainement.

ProudBadMum · 19/03/2017 17:16

Hunchback and Matilda it is Grin

RebelRogue · 19/03/2017 17:16

1horatio my friends always tell me off for ruining Disney for them GrinGrinGrin

JoffreyBaratheon · 19/03/2017 17:19

Oh I thought you meant The Beast in The Chase. I think he's lovely.

Dunno about the other. Disney bores me. All Disney 'princes' are essentially abusive/manipulative/a waste of space, no?

1horatio · 19/03/2017 17:20

1horatio my friends always tell me off for ruining Disney for them

Well, I grew up witzh the original ones and a book called "Women's tales", basically a collection of what could be seen feminist fairytales (or at least tales where there's at least one strong women). They were very very gruesome ;)

But we always talked about what I thought it stands for etc... It was pretty cool, tbh.

BabychamSocialist · 19/03/2017 17:20

Christ, if you think Beauty and the Beast is dark I suggest you stick away from the proper German fairy tales like the ones by the Brothers Grimm. E.g. in their version of Cinderella the Ugly sisters actually cut off their toes and heels in an effort to make the shoe fit. Oh and they later get their eyes pecked out by doves.

In Frau Trude (a personal favourite) a disobedient girl is turned into a block of wood and then thrown into a fire.

Honestly, they're 300+ years old and were written with the morals of the time.

I analysed them as part of my university degree but I can still sit down and enjoy Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella, because they're just stories that you aren't meant to take seriously nowadays.

RebelRogue · 19/03/2017 17:20

Upper class Single mother with three children finds herself evicted from her home and relies on a "free spirit",poor,homeless sworn bachelor to get back to safety while he realises he's actually a family man and live happily ever after...in complete luxury.

ProudBadMum · 19/03/2017 17:21

Egotistical man ends up lost when his driver falls asleep behind the wheel and causes him to fall out. He causes havoc on a small downtrodden village who he thinks is beneath him.

That's as good as I can get for Cars Grin

ImFuckingSpartacus · 19/03/2017 17:21

Are we suggesting that ancient stories and fairy tales can't be told because they don't reflect modern social standards? Kind of rules out almost all of our cultural heritage, doesn't it?
No more Shakespeare, no more fairy tales, no more greek tragedies, no more classics of literature, no more Brontes or Austen......

Pretty offensive to call Emma Watson stupid or fake feminist and assuming she doesn't understand the story, when its fairly likely she knows it well and is fine with it!

1horatio · 19/03/2017 17:23

Pretty offensive to call Emma Watson stupid or fake feminist and assuming she doesn't understand the story, when its fairly likely she knows it well and is fine with it!

Isn't there a youtube video where she explains why Belle doesn't have stockholm syndrome?

ProudBadMum · 19/03/2017 17:23

I was going to do this one but it's been done Grin

To think the Beast is actually an abusive prick?
ShoutOutToMyEx · 19/03/2017 17:24

Rebel is that aristocats?!

Loved that film.

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