Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 131

Yep, Gaston’s Gay
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without, from outside the castle and outside the Beast’s circle of friends. Not
only does she come from the outside, but she is the most outwardly beautiful
woman in town—something we are told repeatedly. What lesson could the
prince be presumed to have learned, then, falling for her in the end? It’s not as if
he has learned to love a hag. And yet, the curse is broken. Consequently, we are
forced to reconsider the true nature of the rule the Beast had violated all those
years ago: Clearly, it was not about caring too much for beauty because he is
still doing just this in the end. Rather, he has relented, given in to the
heterosexual norms of society, finally seeking love with a woman. And for this,
he is rewarded and no longer seen as a beast.
Against such a reading, it has been suggested that Disney’s story
actually reinforces and champions heterosexual norms—and is thus not gay-
friendly—precisely because the Beast is cursed until he loves a woman. The
pronouns in the enchantress’ spell supposedly make it clear: “If [the Beast]
could learn to love another and earn her love in return.. .”2 The enchantress does
not leave open the possibility that love with a him could break the spell for the
Beast. What such analysis misses, however, is that while it is true that
heterosexual love is being forced on the Beast, heterosexual love is being forced
on the Beast. The denouement is, after all, a coupling that is mandated—one that
results from a curse. Read appropriately, the narrative thus does not indict the
Beast; it indicts society, calling on the audience to identify in part with the
Beast.
Indeed, this is an extremely complex narrative and identification
because the audience must come to realize that if the Beast succeeds in his quest
to rejoin society—to be human again—he will be forced to do so at the expense
of his true nature. Success for the Beast means a tragic end—for himself, for
Gaston, and for us all. It means that the Beast has given in to society’s demands
to hide what he is. Once, as a young prince, he was brave enough to come out
and state his true feelings. The price was years of isolation and rejection. In the
end, he will have his curse lifted, but the Beast we are given is not a hero. We
pity him, but we cannot admire him. He will not stand up and demand to be
taken for what he is; he longs only to find a way to regain society’s trust and
acceptance by bending to its demands. He will not fight for the right to walk
proudly through the village, his rainbow fur-flag freely flying; he wishes only to
obscure what he is, hide his desires, and thus be accepted. And so, if he is
successful, it will be a shallow peace, one gained at the cost of truth and love
and any hope for a meaningful happily-ever-after.
We see the young prince—pre-curse—in artistic representation only (in
stained glass and in a painting hanging in the west wing of the castle which is
tom in the first few moments of the film). He exists as a child and a non-beast
only as aesthetic imagination and representation. Static, he is without agency or
true body. We know nothing of his past, of his parents, of his boyhood. His
being is thus reduced to the choice he made to reject women: And even this