Watson gives old tale a tweak
Feminist spin on Beauty and the Beast
SHE has already worked as a UN ambassador for women, set up a feminist book club and used her celebrity platform to speak out for equal rights.
Now, Emma Watson has turned her sights on Disney – and specifically its heroines.
The actress, 26, who is playing Belle in a new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, says she has made her character into an independent woman.
Watson insisted that Belle have a job after wondering: “What is she doing with her time?” She said the lack of information about Belle’s back story left a hole in the plot, with the original 1991 Disney animation merely portraying her as a peasant girl who was shunned because she liked reading.
The actress will star in the film, to be released next March, alongside Dan Stevens, known for his role as Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey, as the Beast. A supporting cast includes Emma Thompson, Sir Ian McKellen and Ewan McGregor.
In the 1991 film, based on a 1740 French fairytale by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, Belle’s father Maurice was a madcap inventor, hounded by intolerant villagers and eventually imprisoned by the Beast. In Disney’s new version, his daughter is an inventor too, in a bid to balance the sexes. “We co-opted that for Belle,” Watson told the American magazine Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn’t fit in, other than she liked books.
“What is she doing with her time?’ So, we created a back story for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.”
Bill Condon, the film’s director, said the changes had partly been inspired by Watson’s work for feminism, with Belle now becoming concerned with encouraging other girls to read.
Although the 1991 Belle – an ambitious girl who wanted to escape her life of drudgery – was a “breakthrough” compared with previous Disney heroines for Condon, he said that “obviously a lot has happened in 25 years”.
“We wanted to make sure that she remained a feminist figure and someone who looks to the future.”
Watson said of Belle: “She was this feisty young woman who spoke her mind and had all these ambitions, and was incredibly independent.”
Some scholars think Beauty and the Beast has its origins in the work of Apuleius in the second century AD. This story has stood the test of time, but it is still not quite good enough for Emma Watson, the star of the latest cinematic rendition.
The idea of a young woman trapped in a life of boring drudgery was too, well, boring for Ms Watson, whose character apparently invented “a kind of washing machine” to free her from chores and give her time to read improving books.
That sounds nice for young Belle, but where will this licence take us next? Perhaps Cinderella will be too busy working as a human rights lawyer to go to the silly prince’s ball. Or maybe Snow White will turn down the poisoned apple because it’s not organic and fair-trade. The possibilities are endless for the Sisters Grimm.