Culture Love

Part of what makes a culture unique is the set of shared assumptions, assumptions that each member of the culture holds to be true and valuable, which is why they're comfortable basing their life around them. Things like the existence of God, the importance of the individual, and baseball make up a good deal of America's culture. And then within American culture there are other, smaller cultures based around gender, hobbies, and religious beliefs.

I think beyond that if you want to go even smaller you can find cultures within families and small groups of friends. Every family has that handful of kid-friendly movies that everyone grew up watching, the rare kind of kid movie that's actually good and works for adults too. In my family some of those movies that have withstood the test of time are Back to the Future, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the 1970's version, because I don't have brain damage), Aladdin and any other classic Disney animated movie, and the Sandlot.

The problem with culture is that whenever people find out about something that runs against a cultural assumption they have a tendency to freak out. During my freshmen year of college one of my roommates emailed the dean of religion because he was shocked to find out that Brigham Young was racist. It can create a crisis because the person starts to question everything else about the culture that they've always lived in.

The point of all of this is that one of my cultural assumptions was recently challenged. A few days ago I found out that Beauty and the Beast makes absolutely no sense.

Not that there's anything I can do about it really. It's already regarded as a classic, it was nominated for Best Picture back in 1991 (I think) and everyone in the world knows all of the songs from the movie. The damage has been done. But I'm going to break down why the plot makes no sense, if only so I can obtain my own sense of closure.

The movie opens with the enchantress showing up as an ugly lady at the Beast's castle. She probably could have just TP'd his castle if she wanted to mess with him, but since she has magic I suppose she wanted to get a little creative. The Beast tells her that he won't let her stay in the castle because she's ugly which leads the enchantress to reveal her beauty and curse the Beast. The narrator says that the rose petals will fall until his 21st birthday, at which point the flower will die and the Beast will be stuck as a beast forever. The scene ends with the Beast ripping a portrait of himself as an adult because of the shame he now feels.

So it makes sense so far, right? I was a little surprised to find out that the Beast is only 20 in the movie (until the end of the movie, when the rose dies shortly after Gaston stabs him on the castle rampart. Happy Birthday) but then again it was easy for me to assume that maybe the Beast had only been cursed for maybe 4 years tops. The enchantress got him when he was 16 or something. But then, when Lumiere is singing "Be Our Guest," he says "Ten years we've been rusting, needing so much more than dusting."

Whoa. So the Beast has been a beast for 10 years? And he's younger than 21? So wait, did the enchantress curse him just before he turned 11? What kind of benevolent enchantress holds an 10 year old to such a high level of accountability for being a bit of a brat? Where are the Beast's parents? Why was this random 10 year old kid lording over this giant castle just a few miles from town? How was Chip even born? He's definitely younger than 10. Did Mrs. Potts fire him up in the kiln somehow? Is Mrs. Potts some sort of Dr. Frankenstein that somehow turned a tea cup into a human kid? How was there a picture of Beast as an adult, if the last time he was a human was as a 10 year old?

Now, this isn't the first time that the plot of a Disney movie has been thrown out of whack by a random throwaway line in a song. In Aladdin, the genie tells Aladdin that the way Aladdin dresses is "so 3rd century" just a few minutes after the he busts out of the lamp and says "Ten thousand years can give you such a crick in the neck," which would mean that if the Genie was familiar with 3rd century styles then that would have been the last time he was out of the lamp, and if he's been in there for 10,00 years then the movie takes place in at least 10,300 AD. Crazy right?

For the record, I'm not super obsessed with Disney movies (though I definitely knew all of the quotes I used off the top of my head). I just think it's funny how when you know and love something, you're willing to forgive it. Like The Empire Strikes Back. Luke gets trained as a Jedi in the same amount of time it takes for Leia and Han to get to Cloud City, which means that Leia and Han were on the run for several months (which doesn't make sense in a universe with light speed travel) or Luke was trained as a Jedi for a day maybe. But it doesn't matter, because Empire Strikes Back is one of the best movies ever. I guess I could expand even go so far as to apply this idea to friendships, family, lovers, religion, or fast food, but that would be dumb.

Besides my Beauty and the Beast faith crisis, I was in the school paper a few days ago. Marissa's roommate interviewed me about my job for the grounds crew, and then some photographer came and took pictures of us while we mowed. I totally fumbled on the interview because the questions I was asked led me to give really boring answers that don't really capture the fun I have while I work. Questions like "What do you do?" lead to answers like "I mow the lawn", which leaves out the part of my job where I spend hours talking about a way to get rich off of threatening to kill a pig on the internet unless I get a certain amount in donations by a particular deadline, or when I spend a few hours pruning bushes and talking about my favorite Super Nintendo games. I kept the copy of the paper I'm in, if only for posterity even though I' definitely the most boring part of the issue.