Pippa just went through a big Beauty and the Beast phase. Confession: I bought our new copy of Amazon for $154. It's in the Disney "vault" so that that's the only way to get it. Yes, I'm an idiot, but after watching the ending of Frozen for the fortieth time in two weeks, I really wanted to see Beauty and the Beast. The ending of Frozen reminds me so much of Beast: main character presumably dead; long pause for us to get emotional; then the music swells; ah, love saves the day; and of course, the Disney magic, thanks to love, the spell is broken, our hero/heroine lives happily ever after.
Confession: I still get teary at the end of Beast ever damn time. Even if it's the fourth time I'm seeing the movie in two days.
But Nathan is doing his best to ruin the movie for me.
He will not call it Beauty and the Beast. He calls it "that movie that celebrates bestiality."
I guess he has a point. The Beast is a big hairy animal and Belle falls in love with him and wants to kiss his big bear face and fondle his goat horns. But it's symbolic, damnit! It's romantic!
At least Belle is a brunette with brown eyes who loves to read. Oh sure, she is a bit conceited, looking down on the members of her poor provincial town, but everyone thinks it's strange that she reads, instead of cooking and spending all day admiring Gaston's trophies. I can accept a little snobbery on Belle's part since it's in the name of women's liberation and literacy.
Beast is cranky and a little scary, but Pippa and I spend a lot of time talking about his feelings and how he could better handle them.
Then Gaston dies and I just say "Oh no, he fell" and hope Pippa is not traumatized. Why is there so much death in the Disney movies? Why do I have to tell Pippa that Anna's parents got a boo boo and then promise I'm not going to get a boo boo? I feel like these movies are so emotionally rich - but maybe they could be a little less rich in the "parents dying and orphaning their babies" department?
I know I'm the 874,283rd person to observe this, but why do the parents always have to die in the Disney movies? For fuck's sake, we are the ones paying for the movie tickets, stuffed animals, stickers, lunch boxes, backpacks, costumes, Disneyland mortgages, bankruptcy bullshit, can we at least be celebrated? Or at least allowed to live??? What is the message we are sending our kids? Hey, kids, you can have loving parents and a boring life; or, you can have DEAD PARENTS and lots of fun awesome adventures!
So according to Disney, only orphans have amazing lives? But if we were all orphans, then who the fuck would refinance the house to pay for a trip to Disneyland????
