Why Beauty and the Beast Can Change Your Life
A Potent Story of Self-Transformation
Piano.
A waterfall.
Two birds dancing in the fresh, wild air.
Once upon a time, in a faraway land,
A young Prince lived in a shining castle.
Although he had everything his heart desired,
The Prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.
In 2017, Disney will release a live action version of their classic animated film, Beauty and the Beast. It being only 2016 right now, I can’t talk about their live action version. Watching the trailer naturally got me thinking about the original movie, which is by far my favourite Disney animated film (followed closely by Aladdin and Mary Poppins. Well, Mary Poppins isn’t fully animated, but Bert and those penguins!).
The making of this movie fascinated me. They had blended the use of computer graphics and traditional animation seamlessly and the effect created something magnificent. The ballroom scene is, for me, one of the greatest moments in the history of computer generated imagery. We see its influence in other great moments throughout the Disney Renaissance in scenes such as the opening of The Lion King and inside the Agrabah palace in Aladdin. I followed its development eagerly.
When I was a teenager, going to the cinema was a luxury. Australia was busy having the recession we had to have, my father was obliged to take an early retirement package and I had to choose wisely the movies I’d see at the cinema. In spite of how much I desperately wished to see this movie when it came out, I never got that chance. This is the one movie I wished to see in the cinema in 1991 and 1991 came and went. Instead, I first saw Beauty and the Beast during the Christmas holiday of my first year at university on a television screen.
I was looking after a friend’s property while they holidayed up north and discovered they’d bought the VHS version of the movie.
So one hot, Australian summer day, while the hills of the Riverina burned with bushfires, I sat in our friends’ living room, slid the cassette into the player and settled down on their couch. Little did I know that I would return to that movie again and again in the weeks before uni went back.
Never had I been so captivated by storytelling like this.
Warning: Here there be spoilers!
Unexpected Transformation
There is a magic in music, sometimes. If a piano that sings the yearning song of the heart mingles with the soul-pulsing strings of emotional depth, without haste, something happens. It’s transport. It’s wonder. It’s magic.
And you never know when it might happen.
Beauty and the Beast drew me in from the very first instant. The magic, though, was that it did it again and again and again. The music, undeniably, created something inside me. It made this world somehow real.
More than that, though, the characters, the artwork, the story, all combined to put me right there in their story with them. And I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I never expected to be transformed so much when I put that cassette into the player. I just wanted to watch the movie I’d wanted to watch for so long.
While I had expected a good story and some great music, I had not expected this. It was all new and a bit alarming.
Isn’t that what this movie experience is all about? Something new? Something we don’t expect?
You never know when change might happen — perhaps it’s today
And this unexpected transformation is a — if not the — central theme in this movie. There is love. There is treachery. There is mystery and surprise. And there is a series of moments and decisions that result in completely life-changing events.
Crazy Old Maurice
Do you think, when the Beast threw Maurice into the prison, that he knew he was laying the groundwork for a series of events that would render his self-hatred and fear impotent?
Here we touch on what makes this story so wondrous and powerful. Perhaps we feel the Beast is that someone that so many of us see when we look in the mirror. None of us want to be a beast. We none of us wish to be selfish, unkind and without love in our hearts.
So often we hope that no one sees what’s inside us. I don’t want an enchantress to knock on my door and make my fragile self-serving ways known. I don’t want everyone in my life to be so desperately cursed as a result of my own failings.
Do we resonate with him, this Beast, who reveals inner workings that we love and hate all at once? Are we, perhaps, like this Beast, who sits by the fireplace and licks his wounds while others try to show us how loved — and loveable — we are? Maybe not.
Maurice stumbled into the Beast’s world and was swept up in his fear and hatred. The Beast, powerful, hurting, and apparently without hope of change, knew only how to keep people away … because if someone came too close … well, who could ever learn to love a beast?
It’s Forbidden!
Once upon a time, I shared with someone a sacred and fragile story of my own. The man I spoke with took that story, listened and then he said to me:
“When you shared that story with me just now, it’s as if you handed me a shallow, fragile crystal bowl”.
“What’s in the west wing?” asks Belle of the Beast.
In anger, or rage, or fear, or frustration, or emotional pain — we don’t really know — the Beast turns on her and booms, “It’s forbidden!”
We might remember from the story that the Beast’s enchanted rose sat in the west wing, in its own crystal-like case, counting down the days until the Beast was permanently locked in this state. It was his shallow, fragile crystal bowl.
I imagine he’d want to keep that rose safe. It was fragile. It’s not something he’d want people carelessly toying with because to him, it was the symbol and the very embodiment of his present and his future. It acted as a reminder of his mistakes and the past he’d lived. It also served to remind him of his future. Or at least the only future he thought he had — one without love, one without hope and one without change.
When all we can see is the despair of an untold possibility, when we see only what we’ve always seen, then perhaps we would want no one else to see it and no one to change it, because this one thing is the one thing we know. When the future is unknown and filled with uncertainty, sometimes that’s enough to keep us from seeking change. It’s common for this uncertainty to breed anxiety, anger and resentment.
It’s common to resign ourselves to an unknown future rather than wonder at the possibilities it might bring.
The Beast realised that Belle could be the answer. She could represent and actually be the change they all needed.
But it wasn’t Belle who was the change. No, it was more.
The change was the Beast himself, in response to Belle. She loved him, cared for him, made him laugh and taught him how to live in wonder and curiosity at the world around them.
She spoke truth to him even when it hurt but only in the context of demonstrating supreme care for him. In her life the Beast saw something else, something uncontainable. There was something in each other that they simply couldn’t see, not at first.
I Love You
The signature song of this movie, the one that marks the great transformation, was sung by the great Dame Angela Lansbury, playing Mrs. Potts. To the song she brought a loving warmth mingled with something remarkably human. The song is titled, “Beauty and the Beast”.
It’s a song about change, the small changes that make up the great ones. First a decision, then another and each moment pours itself out on the others until what is has a completely different hue to what was.
While Beast and Belle dance, she in her signature yellow dress and he in his royal blues, Mrs. Potts and her friends watch from the side. The stars dance, not entirely realising what was happening. Oh, sure, Beast sees that they’re getting along well — he even gestures to his friends with a smile — but he doesn’t realise what the transformation will cost.
Isn’t that the truth for all of us? We don’t know the full cost of change until we experience it. For Beast and for Belle, there was immense pain and loss, mingled with the joy and bliss of newfound love. For Beast, the loss was something he may never have thought possible — he freed himself to let Belle go, when all he wanted was for her to stay.
If she stayed, he might be freed from the curse. If she left, she could see her father again. Beast chose to release her and in that one simple, painful act, he showed love.
Belle and Beast both began seeing each other as something more. Belle saw Beast as something more than a horrible captor. Beast saw Belle as something more than an opportunity to be free of his curse. Both of them began to see each other for something more than what they were on the surface of things.
That is why Beast could no longer allow her to stay when he saw her father in need and her pain at that. She was now not just a solution to a problem but a person he knew. The process of getting to know one another brought into relief the picture of them as people to be known, to be cared for.
This, I think, is what holds this gorgeous musical together. By itself, the music of this film is wondrous. It transports me. Combined with the story of change through relationship, it takes on a deeper dimension.
It’s a story of love, yes. It’s a story of magic, definitely. At its heart, though, I think it is a story of personal change through relationship. It’s the story that any one of us can change every time we choose to relate to someone else. It’s the story that any one of us can learn to love someone we fail to understand — if only we try to understand them by spending time with them, building a relationship.
And it’s the story that any one of us can be loved, no matter who we are.
Here are some other articles by Stuart you may like to read:
Stuart McDonald, an Accredited Exercise Physiologist and martial arts instructor, specialises in stress management, self-regulation, change fitness and restoring the joy of movement to people. Clinically, he works with mood and anxiety disorders, chronic hip and back complaints and was an Holistic Care Consultant for people with multiple myeloma cancer. As a sport scientist, he specialises in martial arts performance enhancement and as Head of Research and Educational Development with Global Performance Testing.
Check out his website here: stuartmcdonald.com.au
