LogFAQs > #956058572

Krazy_Kirby posted...

bad guy =/= villain. the villain in beauty and the beast would be the witch

The witch is pretty much the only reason the prince stops being such an asshole, and the entirety of Beauty and the Beast is about that redemption story. Had he not been cursed, he'd have spent his life surrounded by sycophants that tolerated him being a douche because of the status it brought them. He'd have married some princess or other, knocked her up a few times with kids he largely ignored except as needed to groom them into inheriting his legacy of dickdom, then eventually died having improved nothing about the world around him.

Because he was cursed, though, everyone he might ever have valued stopped caring about him completely. He lived a miserable existence and would have died sad and alone if not for the fact that he met somebody who saw some potential in him to be a half-decent person and managed to beat him into shape. He would never have given Belle a second glance if he weren't cursed (she was just some peasant girl, after all), but because he was, he had that opportunity to redeem himself, to the benefit of everyone.

Arguably, the Beast is the villain. The primary conflict that drives the story is everyone around him clashing with the less pleasant aspects of his personality, and ultimately triumphing. Gaston is a turbodink who stirs up trouble that exacerbates that conflict, but I would agree that he's not really the actual antagonist in the story, because he's not the one providing that central conflict (though he does act to represent what the Beast would be like if not for the curse, acting as a character foil). The witch definitely is not, though. She's the only reason the central conflict ever finds any sort of resolution.

Zeus posted...

But again, there's no reason he can't be with her in Disney's Hunchback. In the novel, he'd be breaking a vow of chastity. Judges don't have vows of chastity (and it's not like he's married). The line is a complete throwaway as a result, because it doesn't work.

Frollo sleeping with Esmeralda would be roughly akin to a Grand Dragon sleeping with a black woman. He's based so much of his fundamental identity and place in society on the premise that gypsies are subhuman, ungodly filth that his obsession with her is absolutely a violation of his fundamental beliefs, both in terms of what he's convinced himself about what God's will is and in terms of his public credibility. The problem is not that he's attracted to a woman, it's that he's attracted to a gypsy woman, especially one that has made a name for herself by being openly defiant of the order he's attempting to impose.

It's also worth noting that, while a judge may not actually be a member of the church and not have any vows of chastity or anything to worry about, the Catholic church was such a major part of the power structure in 15th century France that straying too far from what the church commanded would basically be social and career suicide for any judge. Vows or no vows, a "sinful" judge (by whatever metric was being used) would not be accepted by much of anyone. To that end, a judge worrying about being "sinful" is absolutely believable.

---

This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.