Like most people, as a child I loved Disney movies; I still do today. But as an adult, I am fully cognizant of all the negative stereotypes that are perpetuated by them (e.g. gender and race stereotypes, massive favoritism for people of European descent). I loved the music and oftentimes sang along with the songs. My favorite Disney movies were Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Aladdin. Beauty and the Beast was a particular favorite for me because Belle, the main female character, was a bit of an eccentric, a total bookworm who obsessed over endless books and libraries and wanted more out of life than her “poor provincial town.” I loved reading when I was young (as I still do), so I immediately identified with her.
After the latest remastering and release of Beauty and the Beast on Blu-Ray, several articles have come out on it, particularly regarding the history of the main lyricist who worked on the songs for the movie, Howard Ashman. I had read a lot about Alan Menken, the composer who worked on Disney movies, but nothing about Ashman until today. This is when I found out that Ashman was a gay man who was dying from AIDS as he worked on Beauty and the Beast, and he died eight months before the movie was completed. He contributed a lot of very rich ideas to the movie; it was his idea to staff the Beast’s enchanted castle with sentient appliances that had once been human. These objects all felt alien in their object/appliance bodies, completely dehumanized. I’d imagine that’s what Ashman felt as he was writing the lyrics for these songs while dying. Ashman also loved to cook, and so he expressed his love for cooking and culinary rhyme with the song “Be Our Guest.” He worked until his death from his gay-friendly hospital via a phone patch to communicate changes to recordings and emphases on certain words or enunciations in songs, all of which were honored.
These beautiful songs and movies I enjoyed as a child have such a rich back story that I’d only be able to fully appreciate learning as an adult. Beauty and the Beast is more tragically beautiful than I ever thought before.