Ling Rui: Li Xiaoshui Xiangrikui:

Weibo user It’s funny how some people are okay with a love affair between a human and a beast yet find homosexuality intolerable.

The earlier Disney princesses were too weak and hardly had any skills. Snow White’s job was to lie in bed and wait for a prince’s kiss. Cinderella’s job was to find one of her missing shoes. But Belle is an intellectual.

Belle invents the “washing machine,” which frees her from tedious chores and allows her more time to read. Emma Watson suggested changing Belle’s blue dress into a pair of trousers. She also refused to wear corsets. To avoid viewers criticizing “Stockholm syndrome” [where the captive begins to empathize with the captor], the film emphasizes the equal status of Beauty and the Beast. All these have strengthened the feminist color of the film.

Even before the film was shot, Watson said in a high-profile way that it would be a “feminist” movie, which struck a chord with a large number of female moviegoers. Today, women dominate consumption. It was a wonderful idea at this time to use feminism to lead female consumption.

The prince in the beginning belonged to the same kind of people as Gaston, narcissistic, selfish and needing salvation. Yet while the enchantress found the ugly heart beneath the prince’s handsome appearance and changed him into a beast, she turned a blind eye to the cold and selfish Gaston even though she lived in the same village.

Why would she salvage the prince instead of Gaston? Is it because the prince had love deeply buried in his heart that needed to be roused, while Gaston had no love at all and had to be given up?