Of all the Disney villains, Beauty & The Beast’s Gaston has always felt like one of the ones you’re most likely to encounter in real life.
You might not meet that many part-squid sea witches in drag makeup or evil royal viziers with hypnosis powers – but a leering, anti-intellectual boor who doesn’t respect books and won’t take no for an answer? We were warned off early on that one.
But writer Dana Schwartz, an Entertainment Weekly journalist and author, did some deep thinking of the kind Belle would likely appreciate, and came up with a PowerPoint presentation that makes a disturbingly strong case for Gaston as a better option than the Beast/Prince Adam.
It starts off a little superficial: Gaston is big and strong and a good hunter, which admittedly is important in 18th-century rural France, particularly considering her father is a not particularly successful inventor and she is an only child with no discernible skills beyond reading and walking at the same time. (Learning this as a child has served me well as an iPhone-addicted adult, but it will not help you in those lean Loire Valley winters.)
Plus he has lots of friends, a good singing voice, and uses antlers in all of his decorating.
Meanwhile, the Beast has no friends (only servants, who he presumably hasn’t even paid in some years given the whole curse thing), has no clear talent for singing (except in his head during that one song in the snow), and “will yell at you for looking at a flower”.
Okay, okay, here's the full powerpoint I made about why Belle should have chosen Gaston: pic.twitter.com/7co8yYKYFc
— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) December 23, 2018
Plus the whole Stockholm Syndrome vibe of Belle’s prisoner-turned-paramour arc is a pretty big red flag.
But wait – there’s more.
Schwartz did a little maths and worked out that the war Gaston mentions in the live-action remake is probably the Seven Years War that ended in 1763 – so Belle and the Prince probably have about 25 years of married bliss before the French Revolution comes, and they are guillotined as the lazy, selfish, magical-feast-gobbling bourgeois pigs they are.
Meanwhile, Schwartz explains, Gaston is likely a well-dressed reactionary, strolling the streets with his canonically gay best friend, head very much still attached to attractively hairy chest, stimulating the regional economy with his prodigious egg consumption.
Yes, Gaston tries to have Belle’s father committed, has an historically accurate but still offputting attitude to consent and tries to solve problems by whipping the townspeople into a torch-wielding mob. And the Beast has books!
But hey, Belle’s no peach either. Maybe she and Gaston deserved each other all along.
BELLE: There goes the baker with his tray like always
BAKER: well there goes Belle, singing her DAILY MEAN SONG about us— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) June 16, 2017
Click through to read the whole thread here.