51社区黑料

By: Inoka Jayaweera and Kaarianne Smith, BA Students

No one symbolizes homophobia and hypermasculinity during the AIDS crisis like Gaston 鈥� a line that unfortunately could not make the final cut. It is obvious in the 1991 version of 鈥淏eauty and the Beast鈥� that the character, Gaston, is an epitome of hypermasculinity. Gaston embodies every male that has given unwarranted attention to women who they don鈥檛 know on the SkyTrain station. As Griswold (2004) puts it, Gaston represents 鈥渆verything that can go wrong in theheterosexual male.鈥� However, this is something that everyone who has seen the film is aware of, making it one of the first Disney films to have a villain who was aesthetically attractive, yet rotten on the inside.

What the average viewer may not know about the film is the underlying narrative of fear mongering and persecution that was intentionally put in by lyricist, Howard Ashman. During the production of 鈥淏eauty and the Beast,鈥� Ashman was fighting his own battle with AIDS. He illustrates the prejudice at the time in the song, 鈥淜ill The Beast,鈥� where Gaston rouses the villagers into an angry mob. Gaston convinces the villagers to go after the Beast with the following words: 鈥淭he Beast will make off with your children! He鈥檒l come after them in the night.鈥� As many know, this is a common rhetoric of homophobia, where claims are made that gay people are predators that will come after your children. Given this context and the fact that the film was made at the peak of the AIDS crisis, the song takes on a much darker tone.

One lyric that stood out to us in particular is the line, 鈥淸T]il he鈥檚 dead, good and dead.鈥� From this line alone, one can see the pain and emotion that Ashman was expressing, as it parallels with his own personal grief. With regards to the AIDS crisis, not many people are aware of the sheer amount of death and sorrow that these men and women had to cope with during this time. In fact, many who survived the AIDS crisis have survivor's guilt. Many lost all or the majority of their friends, and for most of them, friends were family. This was truly an epidemic because at the time, the government would not speak about the loss of life or simply did not care. Many thought the loss of life was justifiable, seeing it as 鈥渉omosexuals paying for their sins.鈥�

Ashman was responsible for changing the narrative of 鈥淏eauty and the Beast鈥� by shifting the focus from Belle and giving the Beast a more prominent role. With this, he was able to parallel what he felt was his own narrative of seeking love and hoping for a miracle. With Ashman鈥檚 involvement, the character of the Beast was given a heart. This permitted viewers to sympathize with the Beast, as they saw his struggle with having to come to terms with an impending death sentence.

It is our hope that being involved in the film was cathartic for Ashman, as it gave him the opportunity to artistically express the amount of grief, anger, and sorrow that he was undergoing before his death. Without Howard Ashman, 鈥淏eauty and the Beast鈥� would not be the film it is today.

Reference

Griswold, J. (2004). The meanings of "Beauty and the Beast": A handbook / Jerry Griswold.