Beauty is only skin deep

I just watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (again, but, this time, on the millionth viewing, I actually caught the very opening). The cartoon opens with a voiceover telling how an old woman knocked on the door of a handsome young prince’s castle and asked for a bed for the night. In payment, she offered him a flower. He said no and she turned into a beautiful Enchantress. Then, using her magic, she turned him into a hideous beast for refusing her hospitality.

If you don’t want to know how the film ends then look away now. The Beast meets Belle (‘Beauty’), they fall in love, the spell gets broken and they live happily ever after. And, I, for one, am glad the Beast turns back into a Prince. I hope the first thing he does when he becomes human (besides get Belle alone in his double bed – let’s face it, she is fit) is hire a restless lynch mob, hunt down that old witch and burn her nasty ass at the stake.

I mean, he is a Prince – a Prince who lives in a castle. It’s kind of like me, late one night, knocking on the door of Buckingham Palace and asking Liz if I can crash at hers tonight? Oh, yeah, and how am I going to pay? Well, I picked a daffodil out of the royal flowerbeds, will this be okay for my bed and board?

What do you mean no? Oh, that’s it, you’re being so unreasonable about me disturbing you in the small hours and demanding you put me up even though I’m a complete stranger who may well murder you while you sleep. I’m going to curse you and turn you into a monster. Yeah, have some of that – everyone will hate you and feel sorry for me because you were so ‘rude’ to me.

That Enchantress is severely on my hit list (right behind Jar Jar Binks and every blue tree-hugging, hippie-liberal in Avatar).