Just Some Stuff

perhaps there might be still some hope yet...

@hisscrisprcas9 shoutout! Love your work! :)

Another one is the verb "perceive" i.e. "don't perceive me" "I am perceiving" "I am being percieved." That's something that feels very specific to tumblr parlance.

There's the thing where people on tumblr have an emotional reaction to something and instead of, or in addition to telling you how they feel about it using emotion words, they will narrate a fictional action in the present progressive tense. "I am gnawing at the bars of my enclosure "I am kissing you on the mouth" "you are going into the soup" "you are getting all of the awards"

I once saw someone use that response format in ... I think it was a restaurant review, or a doordash review, or something like that. It was very unexpected seeing it outside of a tumblr post.

sadly my project is lost due to the website being wiped from the university database after graduation and my then laptop having a major hardware failure. backup your backups people! but the crux of the entire module was that the internet is full of communities using language not only as jargon for specific purpose but also to signal membership in said community. I even wrote a bit about non capitalisation and punctuation useage as a visual cue on tumblr and how including information in the reblog body or the tags indicated different levels of importance or intimacy of thought

Happy new year!

Near the beginning of the movie when he says to Belle “how can you read this? There’s no pictures” and throws her book in the mud that’s probably not him actually being stupid.

It’s a performative idiocy. No less performative than a woman pretending to be a ditz to flirt. It’s flirting, but it’s drastically ineffective flirting if the person you’re talking to just isn’t that into you.

Gaston does everything correctly. He’s a natural leader, he knows how to inspire both admiration and fear.

This caricature of masculinity he puts forward is a very useful tool against most people in general. He’s strong, he’s a provider, he reacts to upsetting situations with anger. It’s always gotten him his way before but it doesn’t get him his way now.

There’s this view of gender performance by some people as your ticket to getting what you want. It’s often seen as the realm of women, but Gaston is an example of the cisgender male version of this. His gun pointing and using antlers in all of his decorating isn’t any less of a coordinated dance than the trio of girls pretending to faint to get his attention.

He plays his dance perfectly, but Belle isn’t interested in participating in the way that he wants her to. Ideally from his point of view she’d also play dumb but in a womanly way and they’d both go on to play this game for the rest of their lives.

The difference between Gaston and Belle is that Belle just does what she wants. She’s not interested in playing the game of gendered stupidity. She just is the kind of woman that she is and isn’t interested in exaggerating any of that.

In the end he always finds more happiness when he meets people where they are. While Gaston spends the movie trying to hold onto control, the beast spends the movie slowly learning to let go of control, to trust people that he loves and be trusted himself. He’s willing in the end to give up his last hope at regaining his humanity to make Belle happy.

His goals over time shift to wanting her to be happy and just to enjoy her and the life he has. He’s happy when he gifts her a library, he’s happy when she teaches him how to dance, sharing responsibility and expressing joy. He may not fully have the life he wants, but he’s learning to enjoy the life he has with the person he wants.

Instead of playing the gender dance and owning Belle he slowly comes to be a part of an equal partnership, or realizes that he wants to be a part of an equal partnership and that can’t be possible if he keeps her imprisoned, so he lets her go.

One of the actors who played Gaston on Broadway said that when he thanks Belle for calling him "positively primeval" it is not because he's dumb and doesn't know what it means, it's because he knows exactly what it means but thinks it's a compliment, and I've adopted this interpretation of this exchange. It goes along perfectly with your analysis. He's trying to appear like Big Strong Primal Man and then Belle (to his mind) titters and essentially says "ooh yes you're such a Primal Man," so he's happy that it worked, thanks her, and immediately suggests they got look at his trophies (dead animals) for more evidence of how primal he is.

He also thinks Belle is playing along during his proposal, because she does. When he cages her in—which is a total bodice-ripper romance trope that you still will see in fanfic constantly because lots of women really do love that performance on masculine aggression (as is their right—I find it hot in the right context too, no kink shaming) and Gaston totally knows this—she flutters her eyelashes at him and gives him the stock Demure Lady response.

I will take issue with the idea that Beast tries to perform masculinity with his anger and intimidation. I don't think this is a performance; these are his genuine reactions and sincerely chosen behaviors. That's the real him. And the point is that the real him simply changes to not want to do these things anymore. (Though I headcanon he will still have a bit of a temper for his whole life because that's just part of his personality and no one is perfect.)

But otherwise, I agree with everything you said about Beast's arc! Yes, he does reject masculine displays as the movie goes on. Beast is given the chance to play Typical Man by Cogsworth when he suggests Beast give her "the usual things: flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep." It's not malicious, of course, but it is stereotypical. Beast rejects this idea and decides to be unconventional and give her the library.

He doesn't do the typical Tough Guy and fight back against Gaston at first—which, granted, is just because he wants to die, not because he thinks it's morally wrong. But then when he does fight back and has the chance to deliver the killing blow, he shows mercy and gentleness and lets Gaston go, again eschewing Tough Guy behavior specifically because he knows it's wrong.

Gaston, of course, does the opposite, and dies for it.

No-one’s droll like Gaston

No-one adheres to old gender roles like Gaston

“I’m especially fond of the patriarchy!”