Tuesday, July 30, 2013

I am about to crush your childhood. Sorry about that.

Jeff and I introduced Eiley to Beauty and the Beast on Sunday evening, and we noticed a few major issues that we'd apparently repressed in the past. Won't you join our disbelief and wide-eyed confusion? We have five main complaints here:

1. The narrative at the beginning tells us that the Beast has until his 21st birthday to love and be loved in return. On his 21st birthday the final petal will fall. In Be Our Guest, Lumiere says "ten years [they've] been rusting, needing so much more than dusting." Therefore, using the analytic powers of math, we can deduce that the Beast was 11 years old when he answered the door and turned away the ugly old woman. ELEVEN. The boy should have been rewarded for not letting a stranger into the castle, not cursed. Good grief.

2. Mrs. Potts is - what - 60 at youngest? And Chip is her kid? What kind of uterus is she packing?! MIRACLE.

3. Chip is probably 5 or 6 years old, yet the curse is almost ten years old. Did Mrs. Potts have him while she was a teapot? If so, with whom? What is the biology on that business? You know, maybe don't think about that one too hard. Things could get weird.

4. Wasn't the Beast a prince? Didn't anyone care that the Prince kind of disappeared for ten years? Also, the village mob found the castle pretty easily, but it's clear that they hadn't been there before. Oh, hey. Never noticed this giant, creepy castle here a mile away from our tiny village. Huh. Imagine that. Let's murder its inhabitant!


Photo borrowed from here.
5. Pretty sure that Belle had Stockholm Syndrome. 

We brought this up at a party last night, and the best argument we heard was regarding complaint one, and that Lumiere was exaggerating the ten years, getting over-dramatic because "you know...he's French." Another thought was that he was nearly 21 to begin with, and the old lady froze their ages in time. I thought those were fairly solid theories, but I'd love to know your theory too. 

2 comments:

  1. Kate having been about Eiley's age when B&B first came out, we noted many of these inconsistencies at the time. Alas, in the worlds of romance and melodrama, these problems are best ignored... Oh, look there's a ducky in that cloud! Isn't it beautiful...?

    Papa Mike

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  2. He, that is okay. I don't mind if you'll find another way to crash some other strange and meaningless parts of my childhood.

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