Subversive Reading

Let’s do a subversive reading on a popular children’s film. The movie Beauty and the Beast seems harmless to us – charming, vintage Disney, a story about the transforming power of love. But under postmodern analysis, the underlying oppositions create an entirely different picture. The heroine in defined by her physical appearance, “Belle.” Therefore, women are important primarily in terms of their looks, and, consequently, how they can please men. The film explains that Belle is responsible for her fumbling father. In other words, like all patriarchy, the father has the authority, but his wards are responsible to make things come out right. In love, the movie pictures a woman as giving herself wholly for the reform of the “Beast,” or man whom she loves. Indeed, his good is accomplished only through her love and sacrifice. Deep inside a man, as beastly as he might appear on the outside, is a gentle, loving prince. The responsibility to manifest this good side falls, not to the man, but to his servile lover. The story is made to appear to be a law of nature; as the theme song proclaims, “tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme . . .” In reality, according to the subversive reading of the script, a postmodern critic might see this film as a prescription for neurosis, abuse, and patriarchy.

Dennis McCallum, The Death of Truth (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1996), 92.