As I'm sure all of you are aware, Disney just released a live-action movie of the once animated story of Beauty and the Beast, and, if you know me at all, you know I love Disney movies more than anything. I blast Phil Collin’s Tarzan soundtrack in my car at alarming volumes, and I watched Lilo and Stitch at least twenty times. I named my pet turtle “Squirt” and my first cat “Nuala” as a tribute to Disney characters.
I once believed when you reach a certain age, it was no longer acceptable to enjoy Disney movies as much, if not more so, than a nine-year-old girl. I am now eighteen-years-old, and I'm still just as much in love with Disney movies as my six-year-old cousin going through her Little Mermaid phase. I unashamedly own a Stitch Pillowpet, and I have copies of Oliver and Company, Narnia, and Beauty and the Beast sitting above my desk this very moment in my college dorm room. I don’t believe one is ever “too old” to fall in love with fairy tales and fantasy or “too educated” to learn something from Disney films.
Several weeks ago, I was procrastinating in the way most millennials do: by taking Buzzfeed quizzes. I was in the middle of one when my dad walked up behind me, saw the screen of my phone, and asked what I was doing. I told him I was taking a quiz to see what Disney princess I was... He let out a short laugh and proceeded to tell me he could come up with a more accurate result than this quiz I was taking. After nearly a minute of contemplation, he told me he had always compared me to Belle of Beauty and the Beast.
Naturally, I asked for an explanation of the answer, to which he replied that I reminded him of Belle because I always sought out the “beast” in life and tried to see the beauty within it, and that I look past the superficial appearance of others. I know the comparison isn’t complete or entirely accurate, but I grew up watching Beauty and the Beast and admiring Belle’s character, so to have my father compare me to a truly genuine and caring character like Belle caused me to see the story in a different light than I did as a child.
Beauty and the Beast is a love story, without a doubt, but it also tells a tale much deeper than the one so obvious. Disney has a knack for embedding life lessons and ideals within their films - concepts like diversity conveyed in Zootopia, of the strength of love and family in Frozen, and of chasing one’s dreams despite the adversity and uncertainty in Hercules and Moana. Beauty and the Beast tells more than just a tale of love and romance; it conveys the genuine nature of love, and how it surpasses superficial barriers and constructs around others.
Belle falls in love with the Beast, evidently not due to his good looks, but because of his character. She is thrown into the most difficult of situations, separated from her father (her only family), and she's forced to live in a castle occupied only by an ill-tempered beast and animated houseware, bound by a curse. Despite her circumstances, though, Belle perseveres and learns to see the good in her situation; she begins to look beyond what appears as a hopeless confinement to see a future of possibilities.
Initially, the Beast wants nothing to do with Belle; he is horrendously ill-mannered, selfish, and unwilling to change in any form. She is the one to actively seek him out in hopes of reforming him from an unfriendly and antisocial beast to a loving, and gentle friend and companion. The story is not a beautiful woman’s revelation of romantic love for a physically and internally ugly individual, but rather one person’s ability to love another soul shrouded by anger and characteristics that are often found to be ugly.
The love story told in Beauty and the Beast translates into our own lives on various levels. Yes, it compels us to find others beautiful despite the societal constructs of beauty, but also it reveals to us that we ought to pursue relationships with those who turn from us. Disney portrays the beauty that is found when we break through tough and ugly exteriors and learn to see people as they truly are and not how the world sees them. That is not a lesson that we should stop learning past the age of nine, and not one that I ever want my children to forget.
Beauty and the Beast is much more than a romantic tale of love; it is an epic lesson of raw and untainted love for one another- a reminder to love people and not their appearance. I love Disney because it reminds me that fairy tales can happen in everyday life; you can be Belle without having to live in a castle full of talking plates or loving a giant man-goat thing. Seek out the beast in life; tackle the thing that scares you, and see the beauty in it or better yet, make something beautiful come out of it. Be the beauty or find the beauty in the beast, and never let the opinions of others stop you from doing so. Love people, find beauty in chaos, and be the Disney princess that you imagined you were as a child.
