Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Gaston issues

I have often had issues with Gaston out of Beauty and the Beast, in that many things about his character don't make sense, examples:
Gaston has a long self titled song all about him. During this song he brags "When I was a lad I ate 4 dozen eggs every morning to help me get large, and now that I'm grown I eat 5 dozen eggs so I'm roughly the size of a barge" To make a dozen eggs a day it takes 18 hens, so that's 72 hens as a kid, 90 as an adult. Who tends all those chickens? Are there any eggs left for anyone else? Is that why his sidekick is so small? Also he claims that every last inch of him is covered with hair, but I see no beard on his face....

Oh and he's not the size of a barge... and he's not at all sea worthy.... without a beard especially. They don't feed barges eggs.... so who knows where he got this strange idea that eating eggs would make him as big as one. Perhaps he needs more employment and there is a shortage of barges. This is just one of the many mysteries that he has. Another that has often been debated in my house is why he completely ignores the three blonds that pine over him the whole movie. Another is if he has the sort of absolute power to get the whole town to march out in the middle of the night to a dark castle and do battle with magic furniture, couldn't he think of something better to do with that sort of influence? Where are Gaston's parents? If Gaston is a hunter then doesn't wearing red sort of throw off the idea of camouflage? Also strutting around bragging with a yappy side kick doesn't exactly help lure the various woodland creatures in. Does Gaston even live anywhere aside from at the bar? Also how does he survive on this diet he has primarily consisting of beer and eggs? The fact that he has avoided high blood pressure or other coronary problems is a medical miracle. Why just eggs? Does Gaston have a problem with bacon and pancakes? What kind of example is that to set for the little ones? What happens to the village when Gaston is dead and all these people who had spent their whole lives sucking up to him have to find something else to do with their lives?

And that's not all that is wrong with the movie, if you look around you'll notice no one has parents except Bell who just has her crazy father (who resembles the sultan in Alladin a bit too closely for comfort) and chip who has Mrs Potts. And there's another problem, was chip born after she turned into a pot or did she just have a really weird sense of humor about naming her kid? Do all the enchanted people have to eat? Do they age? If not then why would they want to go back if they could have been immortal?

And there's more subtle issues. A good example is that I think Bell's attraction to the beast is rooted in both her enjoyment of his kind heart and her arousal at his primal nature. When he turns back into a human wouldn't that cause some of the attraction to die? I expect someday she's going to wake up and realize that quite literally, he isn't the beast she fell in love with. And who is going to handle that divorce? Fairy tale court? Would he turn back into a beast if she left him? So many questions are unanswered.

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