Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 144

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Popular Culture Review
knives doing the stabbing. And with Lefou’s defeat, the staff has achieved
victory, the village men are in retreat, and the attack is over.
But while the attacking mob has been getting its comeuppance, Gaston
has been alone, hunting the Beast. It is a hunt layered with multiple meanings.
Though Gaston has been shown throughout the film using only a gun, he has
failed to bring it along for this pursuit. He carries, instead, a bow and arrow. The
switch, we know, is important. The arrow’s shaft is more phallic, more
indicative of Gaston’s desire to penetrate the Beast’s body even as he destroys
him. The bow and arrow are, after all, the symbol of cupid and the possibility of
love. Throughout the battle, Gaston will refuse to reach for a gun, choosing
instead his arrows, a dagger, a large phallic club he fashions from stone tom
from the castle. In each case, Gaston seeks to pierce the Beast’s body or to
pummel it with a stone-hard shaft. The feelings he has for the Beast are
muddled, but they are passionate and require close physical contact.
The Beast sees the arrow coming, but does nothing to prevent Gaston
from taking the shot. The two wrestle around on the roof of the castle, and the
Beast is ready to let Gaston have his way with him until he sees Belle down
below. She has returned to be by her prince-in-hiding’s side, and with the
renewal of the possibility of the curse being broken the Beast comes alive and
begins to fight back.
Now in Gaston’s taunting and mockery there is the hint of true self-
loathing, the self-hatred and despair that resides at the core of this conflict.
“Were you in love with her Beast?” he shouts into the shadows. Of course the
answer is no. Neither was Gaston while he was pursuing Belle. Voicing the
question, Gaston condemns the Beast for his ruse, and thus condemns himself.
“Did you honestly think she’d want you when she had someone like me?” he
continues. The “you” here is the Beast, but in reality it is the mirror-version of
Gaston, the Gaston who is out and openly gay. The “me” here is the Gaston we
have come to know on screen, the man living in a hetero-shell, a camouflage of
flesh and macho mannerisms that at once both mock and decry straight
stereotypes. (Note that Gaston does not say: did you think she’d want you “when
she had me,” but rather “when she had someone like me”—had, that is, what
Gaston can pretend to be.) The question is not really a question at all, then, but a
declaration: surely Belle could never love an openly gay man; more generally:
surely love cannot come to an openly gay man; more to the point: surely Gaston
cannot be loved but can at best only hope to live a fake life with a fake wife and
an empty heart. Gaston’s mockery of the Beast is thus his final statement of
sorrow and self-abhorrence. He must kill this Beast-self, and in so doing kill the
possibility of his own exposure and, inevitably, his own possible fulfillment.
Gaston is winning, but the battle soon turns. Fighting back, the Beast
grips Gaston by the neck—that same neck that burst the belt in the tavern and so
secretly impressed the local men—and by this neck he dangles the defeated