An Apologia for Beauty and the Beast, Part One: Introduction

This year, I have the pleasure of being in a splendid production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. For the rare person who has not heard of it, it's the stage adaption of the 1994(?) cartoon movie by the same name, and a musical of fair renown. It is also more than that - as a Disney movie of that company's Renaissance, it tends to skate on the edge between the commendable and the not-so-commendable Disney movies as far as virtue goes. In fact, there is rather a good bit of controversy around it. Why? Well, for lots of reasons, which I plan to expound upon.

                           

Because of the play, perhaps, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Beauty and the Beast, and, of course, the thin ice that goes with it. As I was going to have to spend a lot of time with it, I supposed I would have to reason out my own thoughts on it. But, you know, there's really much more to the story than meets the eye, as I found out. And I believe it deserves a second chance. Agree? Disagree? Well, either way, I hope to provide my apologia here for the story, coming to my conclusion above through examination of the singular story, particularly from a Catholic and generally Christian perspective.
If you're a Beauty and the Beast fan (or perhaps an enemy thereof), the discussion may interest you; I hope it does. If you're not, I offer my apologies for the blog space and time taken up over the next few months on the topic. But in however many installments it takes, I'm determined to clear the name of this defamed fable, so hold tight...

Some things I hope to cover will be the character of Belle and the villagers, the traditionality/progressiveness of the story, the views on marriage and sexuality contained within, the story's morals and message, the original fairy-tale, movie and play, the artistic aspect, writing, accuracy and bias, and virtue (or lack thereof) of many of the other characters. If you hold (or have heard of) any other bones to pick with the story, just shoot 'em at me - I'll do my best to cover them. If they wreck my conclusion, all I can do, once more, is apologize for the wasted time, I suppose, but I do want to communicate this one point by my efforts: I think the story deserves a second look, and has good in it. If you disagree or, even, when all is through, disbelieve my arguments or conclusion, then that's fine, but I would like to spend some thought on a topic that's very often dismissed. Hopefully you can be patient with me while I do!