By: Cobe Alvarez
Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy tale, “The Beauty and the Beast” tells the story of a young woman who is forced to live with a Beast, and eventually learns to love him as he is. The story ends with the Beast returning to his human form, as a handsome prince, and the two live happily ever after as a married human couple. The physical transformation of the Beast is a reward to Beauty’s character for her ability to love him even in his terrifying form. That being said, his Beast form is still an obstacle for her, and the two can only truly be happy when they exist as a couple that can be accepted in the society they live in. The story establishes a structure where the ostracized character of the Beast must undergo a physical transformation in order to successfully experience a return to normalcy. The return to normalcy is the prime goal, and one that is celebrated by the tale, but is also a goal that reinforces societal expectations of what a relationship can look like. The Beauty and the Prince, who formerly was a beast, are now able to be accepted because they are performing as an attractive, heterosexual cis-gendered couple. By establishing this type of performance as a successful, happy ending, the tale suggests that the former relationship between the accepted Beauty and the ostracized Beast is one that cannot operate successfully in society. This creates a dynamic of a right and wrong way to have a relationship. Several films have adapted de Beaumont’s story in a variety of ways, some of which challenge the message of the ending of the original tale, while others uphold it. This paper will examine four adaptations of “The Beauty and the Beast”, all of which have different endings based around the physical transformation of characters. How these films choose to adapt the ending of the story alters the message that is presented about relationships, sexuality, and gender.
Jean Coctau released his film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in 1946, which utilizes unique set design, costume, and visual effects largely inspired by Surrealist film making techniques. Through its aesthetics, Coctau seeks to tonally stay true to the fairy tale source material. Coctau also remains true to the source material through his film’s narrative and ending. The film ultimately fulfills the return to normal for the Beast who transforms back into a handsome Prince at the end of the film. Belle and the now human Prince float into the air together, to presumably live happily ever after as a heterosexual, human couple.
While the film ends in a return to normal, the Coctau takes time to embrace the strange nature of the relationship. Throughout much of the film, the Beast is incredibly submissive to Belle, despite the perceived power dynamic of Belle living at the castle against her will. Belle is able to harness her beauty as a tool to negotiate with this power dynamic and gain her own agency. Ultimately, the return to normal is a reward to Belle for eventually trusting in the Beast and loving him even in his monstrous form. This ending celebrates the tasteful, conventionally attractive heterosexual couple as reward for trust between a couple. By celebrating the Beast returning to being a human, the film upholds the ostracization of his former form as something too monstrous to deserve a happily ever after. Coctau holds true to the original message of the tale and upholds the dynamic of a right and wrong relationship.
One direction of adapting the ending of “Beauty and the Beast” in other films has been to have the Beast character remain as a beast, avoiding the physical transformation. The 2007 animated film, The Bee Movie directed by Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner, takes this approach to adapting the fairy tale. The Bee Movie follows the romance between a human woman, Vanessa, and a talking bee named Barry. After leaving his beehive and becoming a part of the human world, Barry becomes ostracized because his physical body is too beastly to be accepted into human society. Vanessa sees through Barry’s beastliness and appreciates him for his mind and personality. Ultimately, the two have a happy ending, and are successful in creating a lasting romantic connection without Barry transforming into a more suitable physical form to fit society’s standards for Vanessa.
This film maintains the oddness of the beauty and the beast couple by keeping the beast as a beast. In this, The Bee Movie rejects the return to normalcy, however, the human does allow for us to ground the relationship and have a character to see the world through. Vanessa acts as a surrogate for the human audience to understand their unconventional relationship, and even gain an appreciation for it. While the two characters of Barry and Vanessa are clearly gendered in the film as male and female, respectively, the celebration of an otherwise ostracized relationship suggests that relationships should not have to fit a mold created by the cultural landscape they reside in.
In some cases, there is a complete rejection of normalcy, and instead a transformation to otherness. The Shape of Water (2017) from director Guillermo Del Toro is a film that embraces otherness and monstrosity in its entirety. The film follows a deaf woman named Elisa who enters into a secret romance with a humanoid amphibian, while working at a secret government facility. Elisa must keep the Amphibian Man a secret, not only for the safety of their relationship, but for the safety of their lives. At the end of the film, Elisa is shot and on the brink of death, when the Amphibian Man carries her into a river, bringing her back to life and causing her to grow gills and transform into an amphibian herself. The two swim away into the ocean, finally safe, as another character narrates off screen, suggesting that the two were free to love each other and lived happily ever after.
One key shift in del Toro’s adaptation of the story is the conditions which lead to the romance between the Beauty and Beast characters. Rather than be forced to reside in the Beast’s home against her will, Elisa comes across the Amphibian Man as a result of her own curiosity. The two begin to develop feelings for each other as a result of their ability to communicate non-verbally with each other, and by bonding over their positions as outcasts in society. Because of her deafness, Elisa is mistreated by the society she lives in, which helps her to sympathize with the Beast in the story. The next key shift in the story is how the Beast character is positioned as an object of desire in, and despite, his beastly form. Similar to Vanessa’s character in The Bee Movie, Elisa is positioned as a human surrogate through which the audience can see the Amphibian Man as a viable romantic interest. Elisa has no hesitate towards becoming sexually intimate with the Amphibian Man, while he is in his beastly form. The theme of embracing taboo sexuality is even further reinforced in the film through the character of Elisa’s neighbor, Giles, a closeted gay man, who is also ostracized because of his sexuality.
By having Elisa change into a beast herself, the film not only challenges expectations of relationships and romance, but challenges the ideas of what bodies should look like. Because Elisa was already living as a person mistreated and misunderstood by society, her physical embrace of beastliness becomes an empowering decision for her to make, and allows for her to live happily ever after underwater with the Amphibian Man. Rejecting her human body is also a rejection of the expectations of a gender identity that is clear and easy to read, in favor of a monstrous body to make gender legible. Through this ending, Shape of Water rejects expectations of romance and bodies, and creates space for non-traditional love to be celebrated and embraced.
One film which complicates the idea of transformation in Beauty and the Beast type tales is Shrek 2 (2004) directed by Andrew Adamson, Conrad Vernon, and Kelly Asbury. Shrek 2 follows two newlywed ogre lovers named Shrek and Fiona, who find difficulty navigating their lives as ogres in a world ruled by humans. Shrek struggles with insecurities of being an ogre and fears that he may lose his wife Fiona to a human Prince Charming. Shrek decides to drink a potion which causes himself and Fiona to turn into humans, which Shrek believes will help their relationship. When the two reconvene at the end of the film, Fiona refuses to remain human, ensuring that she enjoys their lives as ogres and the two transform back into their true ogre selves. In this adaptation, both characters in the romance experience the roles of the Beauty and the Beast. For Fiona and Shrek, taking on the role of Beauty, by turning into humans, is a low point for the characters. Although they can finally be accepted in the human world because of their new appearance, neither is truly happy in their performance of being human.
This film utilizes the ending of characters having a return to normalcy through a physical transformation as a way to completely reject the message of the original tale. In its ending, the film suggests that there is a pleasure to be found in existing as a disgusting, ostracized beast if one is able to accept and love the body they have. Shrek 2 also positions assimilating into a society that does not accept one’s differences as an unworthy goal for the characters. To attempt to reject one’s true self in order to be accepted is a harmful practice. By having a return to, and embrace of, rejection as a happily ever after for these two characters, the film reimagines what living well can look like, and provides hope for those who exist as ostracized that there is a way to be happy and content without changing oneself to fit in to a harmful world.
Each of the previous adaptations discussed conclude with happy endings. The happy ending is used as a way for the films to suggest that their message on romance and relationship is worthy of celebration. The Bee Movie, Shape of Water, and Shrek 2 all embrace physical beasthood as a viable and pleasurable part of a relationship. Jean Coctau’s Beauty and the Beast creates expectations that the way to achieve happily ever after is to exist as heteronormative and perform one’s gender in a way that is pleasing to the society that they live in. The other three adaptations challenge what bodies are supposed to look like and how they are expected to perform. Even though the couples in The Bee Movie, Shape of Water, and Shrek 2 are gendered as male and female through language and other signifiers, there is a Queer sensibility to their relationships. They show how the Beauty and the Beast story is one which can be told in a way that radically challenges harmful and exclusive expectations of romance, sexuality, and gender.
