Belle on the Brain

“I want adventure in the great wide somewhere / I want it more than I can tell…”

My favorite Disney princess sings this line in one of the most personally moving scenes of the animated classic “Beauty and the Beast,” and this line has been running through my head all evening. Honestly, the brunette brown-eyed bookworm known as “Belle” has been on my mind a lot lately – not just today.

Maybe it’s the hype that is surrounding the impending release of the new live-action movie in March. Maybe it’s my school-loaded mind trying to escape responsibility by dwelling on happy memories and familiar storylines. More likely than not, it’s probably the fact that I’m working on a Halloween costume that is inspired by one of her dresses from the movie.

In any case, my ponderings on “Beauty and the Beast” and have led me to the conclusion that this is one of Disney’s best princess movies, and it’s not just because I share some of the heroine’s physical features – although my 4-year-old self decided that was a great reason to love the movie.

Brown hair. Brown eyes. Loves books. Has eyebrows. Met a horse once. Yup – me and Belle are definitely twinning.

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No, my love for this movie goes much further than surface-level similarities. I believe Belle experiences real situations that even the most average person faces at some point in his or her life, and it is this resonance with reality that lifts this film above a veritable sea of Disney movies.

Reality vs. Imagination

During the first part of the movie, Belle yearns for the chance to live an adventure like the ones she reads about in books. She walks through town preoccupied by a story that takes her far away from “this provincial life.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve definitely connected with her situation. I’ve gotten lost in another world when reading books and living vicariously through the characters. I’ve also experienced the “book hangover,” where real life is so hard to jump back into because the book provided such an intense experience. I’ve wanted adventure and ached for that which I did not have.

And then Belle gets what she wants. “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.” She goes on a quest to recover her father and ends up trading her freedom for his, resulting in her imprisonment in an enchanted castle that is ruled by a terrifying beast. The animated movie does not delve deeply into Belle’s reflections on her predicament, but the musical developed for stage productions explores her emotions here in the song “Home.”

"Home" 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIEfW7bpEXg

“What I’d give to return to the life that I knew lately / And to think I complained of that dull provincial town,” she sings. I can’t claim any connection with her situation (imprisonment, loss of freedom and family), but I can certainly relate to her experience of accomplishing a dream only to realize it bears no similarities to the imagined conception of it. Disillusionment with a once-cherished idea is a universal experience, and one that Belle embodies poignantly.

Crossing Lines

As far as heroines went, I always thought of Belle as pretty flawless. She loves her father, gives the Beast a big second chance, and throws a mean snowball.

But then I remembered the West Wing.

Belle infiltrates the West Wing, the inner sanctum which the Beast expressly forbid her to enter. She nearly touches an enchanted rose before the Beast discovers her and flies into a rage, and then Belle runs away for fear of her safety.

All ends well enough, for Beast saves her from wolves in the snowstorm outside and Belle returns with him to treat his wounds and keep her promise. They argue about where the fault lies for Beast’s injuries:

Beast: “If you hadn’t run away, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Belle: “Well, if you hadn’t frightened me I wouldn’t have run away!”

Beast: “Well, you shouldn’t have been in the West Wing!”

Belle: “Well, you should learn to control your temper.”

Silence.

Belle wins. If Beast had better control of his emotions and hadn’t been so flustered by Belle’s appearance, they could have avoided this situation altogether. What’s the big deal with the West Wing, then?

The problem here is that Beast establishes a very clear boundary and Belle ignores it. He gives her as much freedom within the castle as he can without letting her leave and asks only that she not enter the West Wing. She violates this stipulation – not out of malice or revenge (although one does wonder, considering her plight), but out of curiosity.

Look at that face. Curiosity in its purest form.

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The mystery is just too enticing – she must know the secrets of the West Wing. Although Belle is scared half to death by Beast’s reaction, she brings it upon herself by prying into a very personal place. She experiences the terrifying consequences of her decision, but she also puts the Beast through agony – the one place his secrets are safely hidden has been found out, his insecurities and vulnerability exposed.

I can recall times when I have asked one question too many, when I have been Belle in the West Wing of someone’s private struggles. This sort of trespassing does damage to our own souls and character, and it is easy to reflect on how this action or that decision has been detrimental to our own person – but what has our idle curiosity cost the other person? I think I’m not the only person who has encountered this situation before.

Beast might have serious flaws, but such flaws should never have been used as a justification for crossing a boundary he desperately needed to be respected.

Eucatastrophe

In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien defines eucatastrophe as “the consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn”…it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.”

Every fairy tale ends with a happy ending, but Beauty and the Beast finishes with an ending that is worthy of Tolkien’s definition of eucatastrophe. Belle and the Beast don’t just experience a happy ending; they experience a happy ending that should not have happened.

Beast dies. (For the sake of this point, please ignore the fact that pretty much every Disney character who dies comes back to life). In many the other Disney fairy tales, the main characters don’t die (Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin, etc.). Belle held Beast as he died. Strike one.

Not only does Beast die, but whether or not the spell under which he was cast should have been undone is debatable. The spell stated that if before the last petal of his enchanted rose fell “he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return, the spell would be broken.” But Belle says “I love you” as the last petal falls. Should that really count as “before” the last petal falls? Her timing seems questionable to me. Strike two.

The spell also said only that the spell would be broken – i.e., that Beast would get to have his human form back. He was never promised to be given his life back if he should die even in the event that the spell was broken. Belle still would have ended up alone. Strike three.

In short, Belle should never have had a happy ending, but she still gets it. In fact, she gets a happy ending at the point at which it could not – no – should not be expected. So many things went wrong, but in the end, all inexplicably came out right. Eucatastrophe.

Tolkien says eucatastrophe is a proclamation of the Gospel in that it shows death does not have the final say and that there is joy beyond the realm of this life, but I think Belle’s unbounded joy at the realization of her happy ending is a universal experience. It might happen in a big way, but I think eucatastrophes happen all the time in the little ways: a random text from a friend, being asked out to a dance, coming home to fresh-baked cookies, the forming of a friendship. We don’t necessarily expect these hardly-hoped-for goods to come our way, and we can never assume that they’ll happen again, but these are the small miracles God gives us all the time without us deserving them.

This is the face every college student makes upon hearing that class is cancelled: eucatastrophe.

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There are so many reasons to love Beauty and the Beast, but I hope this reflection displays the real merit of this universally relatable film.

"Too Personal"

“‘He is my enemy,’ said Evan, simply; ‘he is the enemy of God.’

Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.

‘You mustn’t talk like that here,’ he said, roughly, and in a kind of hurry, ‘that has nothing to do with us.’

Evan opened his great, blue eyes; ‘God,’ he began.

‘Be quiet,’ said the magistrate, angrily, ‘it is most undesirable that things of that sort should be spoken about – a – in public, and in an ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is – a – too personal a matter to be mentioned in such a place….to talk in a public place about one’s most sacred and private sentiments – well, I call it bad taste…I call it irreverent.’”

What do you think you just read? A scene from a recent crime novel? A snippet of dialogue from a magazine serial I just read?

Guess again. The words I’ve quoted here originate in a book published over a century ago, “The Ball and the Cross” by G. K. Chesterton.

I hope you can see how relevant this passage is to our modern culture. When I picked up this book, I could not predict that I’d be floored by how applicable these words are to my own time. I felt as if rather than commenting on the society of his time, Chesterton had been granted a glimpse into the future and wrote for generations a hundred years away.

Maybe that is exactly what happened – I don’t know.

           
In any case, this passage resonated with me and I knew I needed to discuss what I found in these words.

I’ve grown up in a society where talking about God and faith has been discouraged. I’ve seen the above situation played out – not verbatim, but certainly in spirit – in situations from discussions about separation of Church and state to the awkwardness of bringing up my Catholic faith in non-religious settings.

           
“That has nothing to do with us,” society seems to say. Even within families this seems to be an issue. What’s the rule for Thanksgiving dinner? “Talk about anything except religion and politics.”

           
For a long time, I’ve subscribed to the view that religion underpins an individual’s worldview. It doesn’t matter if a person worships at the altar of God or at the altar of something lesser – fame, money, an ideal, science, oneself – everyone has a religion.

Religion provides the framework for life: if a person takes his or her faith seriously, that faith will help determine how this person lives. My Catholic faith affects how I work, who I go to for help, and (hopefully) how I interact with others at the most basic level. As even the magistrate recognizes, these are very personal matters and “one’s most sacred and private sentiments.”

Some might argue that religion is TMI, or too much information. It’s a topic that’s too personal, too taboo to mention in public. It makes people uncomfortable.

That’s my impression of how my modern culture feels. But, I would like to argue that when we lock out religion and discussions of faith, when we ban the topic from the public sphere, as a society we are saying that we don’t care about the one of the most fundamental elements of a person’s existence, and because of that, we don’t really care about the person.

It’s like saying that we want a person to create a public mural but their paints and tools and experience from art classes have to remain at home. Have you ever tried baking a cake without referring to the instructions or any of the lessons your mom taught you about kitchen safety? You just can't - at least, you can't do that and expect to have unburned fingers and a finished product anything like what you wanted it to be.
“Bring your skills and lesser qualities to work, but leave your immortal soul and your entire understanding of life at home.” That’s pretty utilitarian, but that’s how life seems sometimes. Forbid the thought that we should ever interact with integrated individuals who are the same person at home as they are at work or in the grocery store or at the park.

So what are we to do? We have two options: we can stay quiet about our faith and go with the flow like our culture tells us. Or, we could push ourselves to open up about our faith and how important it is in our lives. Religion is such a fundamental aspect of each individual that it shouldn’t be – it can’t be – swept under covers and kept out of sight.

So speak out. Tell the world what Jesus has done for you. Tell your coworkers and classmates and friends the real reasons why you act the way you do.

I know I’m going to keep quiet and mess up at times, but I am going to try to bring my Catholic faith to the world. It may not want such a personal element of me, but that is what I have to share with it.