126 Popular Culture Review
A Beast is a Beast of Curse of Curse
On the surface , as the opening narration tells us , the prince has been turned into a beast , cursed for his shallow aesthetic , for having shunned an ugly woman who wished to exchange a rose for a night ’ s shelter in the castle . In thinking through the curse , too much attention can easily be paid to the woman ’ s haggard appearance , too little to the symbol of the rose . Which , exactly , was the prince turned off by ?
Literally , the prince rejected the idea of being with a woman , rejected taking her flower . Metaphorically , this plays out in terms of the prince rejecting a norm of society . The question , then , is how best to interpret this norm . Allegorically , for purposes of the story , the norm is turned into “ Don ’ t judge a book by its cover ” rather than “ Men should love only women ,” but the particular choice of metaphor is telling here , for there is — in both norms — an unspoken but widely accepted truth that this is what one is supposed to say even if one knows it is not completely true on some level . That is , it is interesting that what stands in for the prince ’ s breaking of heterosexual norms is his breaking of a parallel norm concerning beauty and not , for instance , a norm concerning murder . When townsfolk say “ Do not commit murder ,” they say it with sincerity and with a more or less earnest commitment to its prescriptive truth . When they say “ Don ’ t judge a book by its cover ,” they utter the words with somewhat less sincerity . They say such things knowing that they represent a norm we are expected to uphold in word more than deed , for the truth of the matter is that sometimes judging a book by its cover makes a good deal of sense . Everyone knows this , even if few speak it out loud .
The movie , of course , is complicit in the ruse — fully aware that the standard the prince has violated is arbitrary and his punishment unjust . This , in fact , is the point of the narrative , and it suggests that the true point of view of the film ’ s creators is one that finds the curse immoral , not the Beast ’ s behavior . This is hinted at , for instance , in the postmodern play on the meaning of Belle ’ s name . As the townspeople point out in song , it ’ s no wonder that her name means “ beauty ,” for Belle ’ s looks have no parallel . How strange , then , that the prince is originally turned into a beast for caring too much about beauty — for loving only beauty — yet the Beast is turned back into a prince once he literally falls in love with Beauty . To follow the narrative naively — i . e ., to think that this is Beauty and the Beast ’ s story and that the Beast needs merely to learn not to judge a book by its cover — this would make no sense . Why , then , is the curse finally broken ? In the end , is the prince / Beast still not supposedly favoring Beauty ?
Indeed , to make it clear that the movie knows very well that the curse is unjust and arbitrary , that there is more going on here than meets the eye , the enchantress — in all of her judgmental meddling — tells the prince a lie . “ Beauty is found within ,” she tells him before turning him into a beast . It is a claim that will turn out to be false on multiple levels . Beauty ( literally , Belle ) comes from