Cover art of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," 1991.
In “What Do Animals Do All Day?” John Levi Martin studies the role of totemic logic in socializing children. Noting the symbolic way in which certain animals connote certain values in human society, Martin explains that “totemic logic […] maps differences between people onto differences between animals, thereby exaggerating and naturalizing them” (196). By embedding societal values and rules of engagement onto animals with particular qualities (foxes are considered sly, for example), adults teach children to associate various types of jobs with specific behaviours found in nature, which eventually leads children to treat the existence of the human hierarchy as an entity as natural as the characteristics of the animals themselves.
Durkheim and Mauss (D&M) foreground Martin’s study of totemic logic with their findings in Primitive Classification. Suggesting that the human tendency to classify objects like animals and occupations is not natural, D&M examine “less evolved” societies who exhibit strong ties to animals possessing traits valued in their tribes. Mabuiag Islanders, for example, believed they had similar temperaments to crocodiles (D&M, 6). Early comparisons by human beings to animals with symbolic characteristics demonstrate that “[grouping] things together which resemble each other” (8) is a learned and deliberate activity, with social and moral influences. Using animals as metaphors for human qualities creates a “natural” justification for the existence of man-made hierarchies.
Martin’s analysis shows that while the practice is old, it is not out of date. The children’s author Richard Scarry wrote numerous books about Busytown, a city in which roles commonly found in society are performed by a community of animals. Just as Mabuiag Islanders perceive a seemingly natural connection between themselves and the crocodile, so too is there a “natural” connection between animal and occupation in Busytown. Pairing animals with human characteristics to human jobs serves the same naturalizing purpose it did for the Mabuiag: it lends the sense that the hierarchy underlying roles in society are as instinctive as animal behaviour. Martin notes that in Scarry’s books, a “naturalizing relation” exists between “star characters” and their jobs (205), which may largely contribute to a child’s opinion of the job or job-holder later in life. Pigs, for example, hold blue collar jobs like postman (Martin, N. 16, 205) and cause many of the troubles in Busytown. Dogs may possess service jobs coinciding with loyalty, such as a police sergeant or detective (Martin, 212).
In The German Ideology, Marx states that “the rule of a certain class is […] the rule of certain ideas” (174). Horkheimer and Adorno elaborate on this point, noting that the ruling class disseminates its ideas by “infecting everything with sameness” (94, Dialectic of Enlightenment), referring primarily to popular culture offerings. Martin’s analysis of Scarry’s book supports this point. Infecting the most elementary and beloved forms of pop culture, children’s literature, with sameness – the same values and class relationships they will come across throughout their lives – serves to naturalize and reinforce hierarchies that already exist between people. “We are taught,” he explains, “about the social world; we do not, as full fledged adults, learn it ourselves” (Martin, 197). Taking advantage of children’s capacity to recognize “natural divisions between animals,” totemic logic is used to subtly and painstakingly pass down “the naturalizing of the division of labor” (227), proving D&M’s assertion that classification is intentional, not natural. This resilient form of classification – the passing-down of ruling class values in a playful, elementary format – assures the survival of this hierarchy in the next generation, as Marx suggests.
Instilling man-made objects with vibrant life can serve the same purpose as illustrating human qualities in animals. In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (released in 1991), social hierarchies and American values are placed in a musical and comedic package. A powerful enchantress casts a spell on a superficial prince, binding the fates of everyone in his castle to his capacity to find love before his twenty-first birthday. The prince becomes a monstrous beast, and his servants become household objects.
The main servants are Lumière, a romantic candelabrum who is constantly fooling around with a feather duster; Mrs. Potts (a teapot); her son Chip (a chipped teacup) and a stuffy walking clock named Coggsworth. Even someone’s pet dog has been converted into an ottoman, which slides affectionately under the feet of guests and straightens its contoured back dutifully. Service positions are thus brought down to their lowest common denominator: they’re not people any longer but actual objects denoting their physical value in the house. And if there remains any question about their house value, Lumière clears up any confusion in a cheery dinner song called Be Our Guest: “Life is so unnerving/For a servant who’s not serving/He’s not whole without a soul/To wait upon!”
Besides suggesting an objectifying perspective of servants, Beauty and the Beast also teaches lessons about values, especially among girls. Belle, an attractive girl from a small French village, makes the acquaintance of the enchanted castle when her father vanishes in a forest and finds himself imprisoned there. Exchanging her life for the freedom of her sick father’s, she later captures the heart of the Beast and falls in love with him, breaking the spell and converting the Beast and all objects into human beings again.
Belle is first introduced as she walks through town, on the way to a bookstore. While she sings about her disappointment with “this provincial life,” others lament about how different she is from everyone else. At some point they all cry in unison, “She’s nothing like the rest of us!” In fact there are a few notable differences about Belle. Unlike other village girls, she does not sigh over the handsome Gaston. Her life revolves around taking care of her father, an aging inventor, and a love of books: the Beast first begins to win her over when he introduces her to his expansive library, in which the books stack the walls from floor to ceiling. Belle is also playful and curious, two childlike qualities that come out endearingly when she walks past a set of small girls and skips rope with them on her way back from the bookstore.
What does Belle teach children about being a woman? I can only suggest what it taught me as a child: to be studious but appropriately youthful, to be loyal to one’s parents, and to see past the machinations of handsome men like Gaston; indeed, Belle goes the opposite route, confessing her love to a horned, hairy beast at the end of the film. Her rewards for these efforts are significant. The fearsome Beast turns into the handsome prince he truly is, and Belle becomes a princess with a castle, a fancy dress and enough books to last her a lifetime.
Interestingly, Belle is not entirely respectful with the Beast’s servants. Her relationships with the servants exist in a single dynamic: they are cheerfully serving her (singing Be Our Guest! at dinnertime while unraveling a feast), consoling her (the wardrobe tells her the Beast “is not so bad when you get to know him” after he first shouts at her) or helping her (as when Chip helps her escape a basement, where the villagers lock her in). At one point she even deceives Coggsworth and Lumière by feigning interest in a castle tour and pretending to follow them to the library as they dart ahead, encouraged by her enthusiasm. Instead of following, she sneaks into the West Wing of the castle, a place she is forbidden to enter, and experiences the rage of the Beast for the second time.
But Belle can be forgiven her inability to take a candlestick and a clock seriously. (Who can?) She is otherwise long-suffering: spending life in her village as an outcast, taking care of her dubiously sane but loving father, and managing the violent moods of the Beast, whose frightful temper is brought to attention on several occasions. She also proves lacking in superficiality by her choice of lover, and it certainly does not hurt that she is attractive, well-kept and well-mannered, which she demonstrates when teaching the Beast how to eat soup in a civilized fashion.
I was seven years old when Beauty and the Beast appeared in theatres, and the effect of the film – of Belle in particular – remains resounding and vivid. On Halloween, girls in elementary school sported the gold dress Belle wears when her virtues are rewarded at the end. Having already developed a genuine interest in books, I naturally felt irritated when other girls began carrying tattered picture books around, feigning Belle-like love of literature.
Beauty and the Beast teaches a powerful lesson about which aspects of a girl’s character are rewarded, and it also provides a subtle outline for who counts as a powerful member of society and who does not. Singing dinner plates may provide a great deal of value to the house to which they belong, but in the end they aren’t even people. A girl does not aim to be a dinner plate, just as she does not aim to be the singing serving wench under Gaston’s arm; she aims to be the princess with the gold dress and the library, in which she can languish away her romantic, intellectual hours.
Works Cited
Durkheim & Mauss. Primitive Classification. University of Chicago Press. Chicago: 1963.
Adorno & Horkheimer. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Continuum International Publishing Group. New York: 1976.
Martin, John Levi. “What Do Animals Do All Day?” Poetics 27, 2000.
Marx, Karl. The German Ideology. Norton, 1978.
Beauty and the Beast. Released by Walt Disney, 1991.
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