This super-smart ‘Beauty and Beast’ fan theory made our jaws drop
The first footage of the live-action Beauty and the Beast dropped at the D23 Expo this past weekend. Even though Disney hasn’t released the footage online, we can only imagine that it’s magical, enchanting, wonderful, spell-binding, and all sorts of other superlatives for AWESOME. This has obviously pushed us into real heavy B&B nostalgia, and we’re not the only ones. One Imgur user just dropped a surprising theory behind Beauty and the Beast, and now we can’t get it out of our heads.
Posting on the image site, user DibThing explains their theory, which boils down to how we perceive Belle, the Beast, and Gaston. And you know how the story goes: Gaston wants to marry Belle. She is like, “PASS.” Belle then finds herself then in the company of the Beast. The two slowly fall in love, and Gaston literally cannot even when he hears that Belle and the Beast are almost a thing — so he decides to kill the beast.
While we’ve grown up hating Gaston (but also loving how much we hate him), the townspeople of Belle’s quite little village simply LOVE him — and that’s actually the scariest part of the movie. Meanwhile, on the the other hand, the town thinks Belle is a “funny girl” because she likes to read and has her own views and opinions. As DibThing explains:
DibThing wraps up the theory by suggesting that Beauty and the Beast is so much more than a “be yourself” movie because, “if someone doesn’t fit in, then they have to be put in their place, or destroyed. And this movie demonstrates that this line of thinking is wrong.” Belle and the Beast are being true to themselves — as one always should be — and look where it has them end up. However in the end, they’re the ones who “win” while Gaston is defeated; this reverses the idea that Gaston is the “hero” for the townspeople. Here’s the full breakdown, via DibThing.
Well, when you think of it like that, this changes the whole message of Beauty and the Beast. Be yourself, love yourself, BUT ALSO, don’t let society ever tell you that you’re a most peculiar mademoiselle. They’re wrong.
(Image via Disney)
