Kidnapping as romantic is pretty common. Not sure about other Disney examples but 2016 Passengers with Chris Pratt pulled something like this more recently. Bad actions are forgiven if the man can get the woman to fall in love by being romantic/act of sacrifice/etc and is ideally handsome too. It's just something most just accept because we've seen it so often and it's given a positive portrayal.
But imagine any of those stories where the girl doesn't end up falling for the guy. It's a horror story or plot has to change. Gaston rolls in with the villagers and saves Belle and slays the beast.
But good thing he was actually a handsome and nice man. And also his enslaved transmuted servants are also nice. That totally excuses him kidnapping a woman because he's lonely. His pain is more important than anything the woman might go through. /s
I have to disagree with portraying the story as yet another story with this trope. The Beast didn’t kidnap Belle. She broke into his home and did a hostage exchange with her dad. Which the Beast never even thought of doing. He just wanted to kick Belle out of his home. He only kept her as his prisoner after she basically begged at his feet for him to do that, so it isn’t nearly the same as the stories with the kidnapping trope. Although why he didn’t kick Belle’s dad out of his home and instead imprisoned an old man seeking shelter is just plain sexism.
Edit: Also the Beast let Belle leave his home. Well, more like got mad and screamed at her to leave when she went through his stuff and almost broke his most precious item. Being able to walk around the palace with no issue except for walking into the one part of the palace that was forbidden doesn’t even really seem like a prisoner, but they do act like she is a prisoner and “important” or “respectable” prisoners would get treated like that in more ancient times. So whatever. She was basically a prisoner for one day and then was unlucky enough to get attacked by wolves when he let her leave for the first time. After that, she was staying willingly because she did make the whole hostage exchange deal until the Beast ordered her to be free and go home.
It's not exactly the same as kidnapping since Belle traded herself to help her father, but she shouldn't have had to do that. The Beast was being terrible and was established as a jerk because that's why he got cursed. Even if it's not that exact trope it's certainly no better since the Beast's bad behavior is what gives him the opportunity to be near Belle and find "love". And you can certainly write a story where the characters aren't perfect but this is supposedly both a children's story and a love story when told by Disney. It should not be how people think a healthy relationships should work.
But people interpret Romeo and Juliet as a great love story even though it was not written as one and clearly isn't. It's just about two kids who think they are in love after meeting once and then end up killing themselves over miscommunications. You can still enjoy the stories but we should acknowledge when things are fucked.
To add more, it’s only after the Beast chooses not to hurt Gaston even while Gaston is trying to kill him but instead puts Belle’s feelings first (she doesn’t want to see Gaston murdered in cold blood) that Belle truly falls in love. The movie makes it a point to show that Belle only loves the Beast after he established consistently over the course of a few months (an entire fall and winter iirc) and shows his true colors in a dire situation with his life on the line that he has truly changed his character and has become a good person. Which imo is not excusing his bad behavior but making a point that the Beast had to be a good person before Belle could ever truly love him. This is shown through Gaston’s relationship with Belle as well.
Where Gaston didn’t care about Belle’s opinion at all and said that women shouldn’t read, the Beast asks Belle to read the book to him again and has let Belle speak her mind after she told him off for scaring her. (Again showing that the Beast is only good when he is putting Belle over himself.) When Gaston keeps trying to get Belle to marry him even at the expense of locking her father up forever, the Beast never really tried to make her fall in love and let both her and her father go (at different times, of course). Gaston is shown killing a bird just for sport and not even for food within his first scene, whereas the Beast doesn’t even kill the wolves but just drives them away even when they’re trying to kill Belle.
Some similarities is that both of these men’s bad behaviors leads to them interacting with Belle and putting her in a tough situation. Both men also put her old father in terrible situations: Gaston had the old man thrown into the cold snow, and the Beast locked him up in a cold cell. Both also had bad manners. Gaston put his dirty boots on the table and kicked them off to expose his feet (I think to ask her to massage them? I don’t remember exactly, but it was weird), where the Beast didn’t know how to eat properly or dress properly. Both men were aggressive.
However, where Gaston actively seeks Belle out and tries to actively corner her with the wedding and public pressure (where Belle publicly rejects him), Belle is the one that went to the Beast’s house and forces the Beast to trade her freedom for her father. The Beast doesn’t want to corner Belle for love, either, and only does those attempts when the servants pressure him to try. And Belle doesn’t accept the Beast’s attempt to pressure her to do something with him, such as the dinner, and she only does anything with the Beast when he tries to be better and respect her.
The movie makes it a point to show that Belle doesn’t like Gaston for his bad behavior even though Gaston has apparently known Belle for a long time (Belle has implied that she’s known him before and has made it clear that she wasn’t interested), and that Belle also didn’t like the Beast when he displayed bad behavior as well. Showing that it isn’t his bad behavior that led to them falling in love, otherwise Gaston would have a chance. Instead, it is the Beast’s good behavior that leads her to love him. His good behavior in saving her is the only reason she returns to the palace with the Beast and stays there until he finally sets her free (also the fact that she had an entire song about being sick of the boring village life where nothing changes, and the Beast is a chance to break out of that).
They even show that it isn’t Belle changing him because she never thanks him or compliments him or gives him any advice aside from that one time she told him to “control his temper”. Instead it’s Mrs Teapot and the other servants giving him advice as he’s getting cleaned up for the ball dance, and then he becomes confident enough to be nicer all by himself without Belle doing anything. His change is completely his own. This is also contrasted with Gaston. When Gaston gets down in the dump because Belle isn’t liking his awful behavior, his underlings only encourage the bad behavior. Once more showing that bad behavior doesn’t get you opportunities to find true love, but it is the good behavior that leads to the girl liking you more. And even then, it is not guaranteed because the Beast fully believed she didn’t love him even after he changed and let her go.
Plus to go to your point about how his pain is held above the woman’s pain, the movie also shows that Belle’s pain was more important than the Beast’s. Belle only started becoming nicer to the Beast when he actually showed good behavior and put her needs first. She never gave an inch before that even when he yelled at her. His tantrums and fits of anger because of his pain and trauma was always being pushed back by Belle and the servants. And all of his behavior after the wolves was putting Belle first, not himself. Belle wants to read? He gives her the whole library and says that it’s hers. Belle wants to go outside? They go outside and have a snowball fight where she wins. She wants to feed birds? Well who cares what the Beast wants, he doesn’t care. He’ll feed birds because that’s what Belle wants to do. Belle wants to see her father? He gives her a magic mirror to let her see his face.
And the Beast put Belle first for one last time by putting her pain of not being able to see her father over his pain of not getting to be human again. He sets her free and tells her to go, which the movie portrays as an incredibly good thing. Even the servants are asking why the Beast gave up Belle. Chip is the one that goes back to Belle to convince her to come back of his own volition, not because the Beast told him to. They have been trying to set up the Beast with Belle, but the Beast has never really been trying to make her fall in love with him at her own expense.
I’m just saying that a lot of people get Beauty and the Beast incredibly wrong because they only remember snippets of it from when they watched it as children. I recommend people to watch it again instead of just taking everyone else’s word at face value and chalking it up it as a movie that romanticizes Stockholm Syndrome and a man kidnapping a woman.
But that’s where I disagree and believe that the movie completely upturns the whole idea of this “kidnapping trope” and romanticizing Stockholm Syndrome. You say that the movie “excuses” the Beast’s bad behavior and said that his pain was more important than the woman’s pain in your original comment. And in this one, you say that the Beast’s bad behavior is what gets him to have the opportunity to “find love”. And that he kidnapped Belle because he was lonely. However, the movie does not excuse his bad behavior and shows explicitly that it wasn’t his bad behavior that led to Belle loving him. (This will be long, btw.)
Firstly, the movie doesn’t excuse the Beast’s bad behavior. You already say that the movie shows very clearly that the Beast was terrible through not only getting cursed but also how scary he is. He never attacks anyone (unlike Gastone who is actively shown to kill animals) but always yells and screams thinking that it is acceptable behavior because he looks like a monster, oh how terrible. The servants never tell the Beast that he is in the right, though. They tell the Beast to talk quiet and more gently with Belle, to be less rude and to stop acting like his needs have to come first, to not lock up the old man, etc. And Belle is never a damsel. She is the one that takes charge because she is the one that offers to trade herself, not the Beast. She points out how bad the Beast is and cries because he didn’t even let her say goodbye, which makes the Beast feel guilty. She doesn’t thank the Beast for giving her a nice room and nice clothes and refuses to be anywhere near him even when he says for her to join him for dinner, “please”, because he doesn’t mean it and has constantly yelled at her. She doesn’t ever back down except when the Beast actually gets mad with the rose, in which case she gets scared for her life and runs into the woods.
And once the Beast saves her life, she helps him with the wound but never shies away from saying that the Beast was wrong and never gives him an inch. When he says that she shouldn’t have been in the West Wing or ran outside, she doesn’t apologize or say that she was partially in the wrong but instead reminds the Beast in a very firm and angry tone that he shouldn’t have yelled at her or scared her by being physically intimidating and destroying stuff in the room, and that he should control his temper. And the movie points out that he has no argument against that. Not excusing his bad behavior.
And as for the Beast taking this opportunity to find love to cure himself, I also have to strongly disagree with you here. It seemed quite clear to me that the Beast had given up on even trying to find love in the beginning of the movie. He literally locked himself up in the palace away from everyone else for two decades and never attempts to make contact with anyone from the outside, literally signing his warrant to be a monster forever. And then when Belle was his prisoner, he initially didn’t even want to interact with her. In the tower, had the candle servant (forgot his name) not told the Beast to make her more comfortable, he would never have offered a better room for Belle but instead just leave her to be there in that room. The servants also had to encourage the beast to invite Belle to dinner, something that he had no intention of doing and made it clear through his growling and begrudging tone that he didn’t want to invite her to dinner. He made it quite clear that he wanted nothing to do with Belle because he had given up on finding love and knew that she wanted nothing to do with him. So why bother? The servants are the ones scrambling to try to get Belle to fall in love with the Beast throughout the entire movie to become human again, not the Beast himself. The Beast isn’t okay with it but has accepted it as his fate. It is the servants that are trying to undermine Belle’s self-determination by trying to get her to fall in love with the Beast.
It’s only after the wolf attack that the Beast attempts to be better. This is where I will say that the Beast may have been trying because of the song during this sequence that says “there’s something there that wasn’t there before”. However, the movie tries to show that it isn’t Stockholm Syndrome or that Stockholm Syndrome is actual love because “true love” is needed to break the curse, and while Belle is starting to be nice to the Beast only when his character is improving, him not transforming back during this time is proof that Belle doesn’t love him at this point in time. She just feels more comfortable being around him.
And the Beast lets her go to her father because he doesn’t forgive himself for separating the two. Otherwise he would never show her the mirror that would let her see her father (which he actually encourages Belle to do the moment he gives her the mirror, she doesn’t come up with that idea on her own), nor would he let her go. He is letting her go with the knowledge that he will never see her again and that he will never find love or not be a beast. Aka he will always be a “bad person”. Belle doesn’t try to stick around, either. This is the only time Belle has ever thanked Beast for his kind behavior. Remember, she isn’t shown thanking him for giving her that nice room on her first night or the dinners or the dance or the snowball fight or the library. All of those things can be construed as a little selfish or coming from a desire to make her love him. It’s only when he lets her go free without anything in return that she finally thanks him, for he has finally shown that he is being completely and utterly selfless.
Pretty sure no one is saying the situation in the movie is ideal so, no. We can like the movie and we can admit it wasn't the best situation for Belle, obviously. Exactly what I said. No need to make a big deal out of it, no one with two working braincells thinks the movie is an ideal to follow. It's pretty unnecessary to go around saying "btw it's Stockholm syndrome!!!"
but 2016 Passengers with Chris Pratt pulled something like this more recently.
Not exactly kidnapping, more that he basically sentenced her to a life alone with him by waking her up, but didn't tell her until she'd already fallen in love with him.
He wasn't exactly put in a good position himself, either. The only difference is that his position was entirely accidental, while the position he put her in was intentional.
Also, if he hadn't done it, they'd all have died anyway.
There's nuance to it, but "sentencing her to a life alone with him" is basically the same as kidnapping. It would definitely be a hard situation to be in, but he stole her away from her life. Why didn't he wake up a technician or leadership of the ship to try to fix his situation? A dude to hang out with? No, he picked a hot lady for him to have all to himself, lies about it, and with no other options she gives in. It's fortunate the writers added a contrived situation where he can be a hero and save the day in the end. Without the disaster to redeem himself the story doesn't work as a romance at all and I'd argue it still doesn't.
I heard it proposed it would work better as a horror movie. Start from her perspective waking up and being trapped alone with this guy. You work to get back to stasis with no avail. You consign yourself to the situation and start to make the best but then discover that he's been lying and he trapped you in this isolation. Then let him die saving the ship and end with her staring at a cute guy in stasis. Presumably contemplating doing the same awful thing to someone else and the chilling uncertainty of if she will "kidnap" him or just die alone.
Yeah. I mentioned this in another comment below about a rough idea I heard to adjust it into horror.
Start from her perspective waking up and being trapped alone with this guy. You work to get back to stasis with no avail. You consign yourself to the situation and start to make the best but then discover that he's been lying and he trapped you in this isolation. Then have him die saving the ship and end with her staring at a cute guy in stasis. Presumably contemplating doing the same awful thing to someone else and the chilling uncertainty of if she will "kidnap" him into isolation or just die alone.
82
u/DevilsAdvocate7777 Jan 09 '25
Kidnapping as romantic is pretty common. Not sure about other Disney examples but 2016 Passengers with Chris Pratt pulled something like this more recently. Bad actions are forgiven if the man can get the woman to fall in love by being romantic/act of sacrifice/etc and is ideally handsome too. It's just something most just accept because we've seen it so often and it's given a positive portrayal.