Beauty and the Beast Cultural Anthropology Comparison

Cultural Anthropology
Fairy Tale: The Beauty and the Beast

The Beauty &; the Beast

Fairy tales are short stories which are read to children with the mission of giving them an important message that they will use at some point in their lives. Different values and beliefs are experienced through the stories of different princess’, monsters and heroes which give the children the idea that they may encounter a similar experience during their childhood. Later in live, adults go through different phases of life where they get the chance to solve problems and live life in the same way that the hero from the kids fairy tale did. Many of the fairy tales these days have been produced by Walt Disney studios to give the people the experience of visual messages through children stories.
One of my favorite fairy tales of all times is “The Beauty and the Beast” by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740, produced by Walt Disney studios in 1991. The story gives a new outlook to different values and beliefs of what people experience throughout everyday life. This fairy tale takes a look at a story about a girl named Belle. Belle is a French girl (French for "beautiful,") who lives in a nearby village with her father, Maurice, who is an inventor. Belle is seen as an odd girl since she is someone who enjoys the achievement of knowledge through different story books. Her father, Maurice, after finishing his new invention, decides to travel to the invention fair to show his wood chopping machine. On the way, he gets lost and ends up at the beast’s castle where he becomes the beast’s prisoner. Belle goes to look for her father and after she finds him, she offers to become the prisoner instead of her dad since he is in a very bad state of health. The beast is a French prince with a spell upon him. The beast must find true love in order for the spell to be broken. He must not only love someone, but be loved in return as well and then the beast will become human again. The beast persistently tries to get to know Belle and he finally has the chance to have a delightful dinner with her leaving the screaming and troubles aside for a night. They start to have several dinners like that one after the other, and they start to get to know each other a little bit more every day. The relationship between Belle and the beast is beginning to grow and create sparks of love in the atmosphere. Towards the end of the story, Gaston, another cocky guy trying to marry Belle, brings a crowd to kill the beast at the castle. As Gaston and the beast begin to battle, the beast soon gets knocked down but through the love he shares with Belle, he is saved. As the beast is dying, Belle lets him know that she loves him. These words from Belle cause the spell to be broken. The beast is now a handsome Prince and Belle and her Prince live happily ever after.
Tolerance would be one of the values that are highly experienced in this story since Belle must learn to deal with the Beast’s personality which is really moody. The beast gets angry when stuff does not get done in the way he wants it to. Belle being the heroine of this story has a lot of virtues which attracts different male characters but she is not interested in any of them. A woman’s beauty can be roughly identified as pure, sacred, courageous and so on but also on her physical appearance and her inner nature. I will say that the real value of Belle would be her freedom and creativity to deal with all her problems such as her dad’s illness and the beast personality in such a patient way without losing her kindness and elegance.
The Beauty and the Beast is a story that symbolizes a lot of power, but at the same time weakness. The Beast’s desires and rules that he demands of Belle as his prisoner starts to go in a different direction from what his intentions where at the beginning. He starts to become a more patient and understanding character because of Belle’s beauty and kindness to treat him as equal. The Beast starts to become a weaker character next to her rather than the scary one which he was portrayed as at the beginning of the story. At the beast’s palace, special characters and their multiple personalities act as other symbols in this tale. Cogsworth, (clock), who is the wise man at the palace, is also the oldest one who represents the older generation. He is filled with knowledge and experience from their time, back in the day. Lumiere (candelabra) is a character who symbolizes a matchmaker who is trying to get Belle interested in a romantic way with the beast by treating her in the nicest way possible to make her feel comfortable at the castle. For those that the candle knows and cares about, he is a true friend and is there when you need him. The other side of the candle is his outgoing personality, which is represented in his comical character and his mischievous actions. The flower is perhaps one of the most important symbols within this fairy tale. The rose is essentially a constant reminder that if the beast does not find true love, the spell he is under will last forever. Each petal that falls off represents one step closer to the beast staying in his monstrous form for the rest of his life.
The story definitely has more than one meaning aside from being a love story. This fairy tale shows you the importance of having respect and tolerance for others that you do not know; it shows you not to judge people by their looks or from first impressions. As a kid, I remember seeing this movie and getting scared of the Beast because I had the idea that he was the bad guy in the story. I thought he only wanted Belle as his prisoner for selfish reasons. Now that I went over it again, I saw things in a very different way. As an adult, I could see so many values being portrayed such as respect and trust. Watching this movie as a child, these are concepts I never analyzed because as a kid, I watched this movie for no other reason than to be entertained.
I think that when you are a kid no matter from what part of the world you were raised in, you will see a fairy tale in the same way as everybody does. To children around the world, this story is just about a princess getting saved from a big monster or princess falling in love with a monster. The experience of friendship and love between two different characters is mostly seen in fairy tales and along with this, fairy tales display the value of family. In many different fairy tales, children can begin to see and understand more about what a family is. These lessons learned will one day be a part of every child’s life in some way or another. It is important to know that a family is a unit that sticks together no matter what and many fairy tales make this point clear.