You don't have to be an inventor to be smart. Reading books is a stereotypical marker of being cultured and smart. That's why they made Belle a lover of books.
I didn't say you had to be. I think Gaston is smart because he is a skilled hunter. You can't be an idiot an a competent hunter.
Literacy is an admirable skill, but as we see in present day, it does not make you particularly smart or cultured, and it never did. Traditionally it just meant you were privileged, ie your dad is an inventor who made sure you were taught to read.
And obviously Beauty and the Beast predates Twilight, when they say "books" they don't mean trash.
Sure they do. She gave a summary of the contents to the book seller "Far-off places... daring sword fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise."
Then later what she re-iterates "Here's where she meets Prince Charming But she won't discover that it's him Till chapter three"
I'm trying to think of what sort of story that might refer to. The "won't discover" disguise is consistent. Not sure if it's just meant to be foreshadowing to her not knowing that Beast is actually Prince Adam until much later.
That she uses the phrase "Prince Charming" shows that despite being in her late teens she's basically reading pre-teen fairy tale basics.
I do owe Belle an apology though, I overlooked that the book seller said "if you like it so much, it's yours
". He basically gave her the book so I guess if she wants to feed her gift to goats, that's her right.
My guess is that the book was such trash that nobody was buying it anyway (note that it always seems to be there prior to her 2nd and 3rd checkouts) so he would be freeing up some space in his store by tossing it.
In fact they differentiate Belle's books from the non-cerebral picture books that Gaston likes by establishing that her books don't (or shouldn't, barring animation errors) have pictures.
Who are you to say this is an animation error?
You could just as easily say this was a script error.
Probably depends on which portion of the scene was done first.
The illustration has a caption "le prince charmant" which matches Belle's dialogue with the sheep. It's entirely intended.
A more likely explanation is that they ad-libbed Gaston's lines, and you can No-Prize explain it as pics being rare and Gaston flipping the page so rapidly he didn't notice it.
And for a book to rely on pictures instead of flowery prose that smart people can take to, makes it a dumb book.
Having few/no pictures doesn't mean a book actually has flowery prose. She was most likely reading Sleeping Beauty or similar, based on her summary.
Keep in mind the book she just finished, as mentioned to the baker "I just finished the most wonderful story... - about a beanstalk and an ogre"
Maybe that's advanced reading in an age of mass illiteracy, but JATB is not a particularly long tale:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_Fairy_Tales/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk
Most of the mass of the book she was returning would've had to have been pictures, unless it was in a crazy large font.
Again, they're whores because they're shallow, they're focusing on what the movie establishes to be shallow things. If they were not whores, they would be singing songs about what a good person with a good heart and personality Gaston had. How loving he was.
They were singing about that. In so many words. Complimenting him as a "brute" is talking about his personality. They are admiring how straight-forward he is.
Talking about his thick neck is talking about his lifestyle : his is a personality who chooses to engage in athletic endeavours which work his neck muscles and thus thicken them attractively. Gaston knew how to gym-max.
And if Gaston wasn't a villain, he would have a good heart and personality and be a good loving person. He wouldn't have dismissed Maurice's concerns about Belle.
You don't need to constantly indulge the fantasies of dangerous deluded people to be a good person.
We see in that clip that Gaston echoes the "Crazy Old Maurice" jab after he has Maurice thrown out and Belle not seen to.
A broken clock is right twice a day, Maurice being correct about the Beast existing doesn't mean he deserved to be believed. We have no idea what crazy shit he's done prior to this.
Again, the message of the movie is to recognize the potential on the inside, not the superficial. Yes, life is not that simple, but again I say this is a Disney movie from the 90s and the message is that we're supposed to look at Maurice and go "He's not crazy! He's a genius! You guys just don't see the mind that's inside! You just see his mistakes!"
If Maurice were particularly smart in any applied sense then he wouldn't eat to the point of chronic obesity like me or Le Fou, he would be fit like Gaston.
Their motives were based in fear of what's different. The song says as much.
We don't like what we don't
Understand and in fact it scares us
And this monster is mysterious at least
Being scared of what you don't understand is a sensible precaution.
Disliking that lack of understanding: also sensible.
Nothing at all wrong with the villagers expressing their feelings like this.
Beast being mysterious is the minimum reason they need to kill him.
The movie is about looking at the mind and soul inside, not the outer beauty/ugliness.
Not looking with your eyes, but with your heart and mind.
There is only the mind, "heart" is BS just describing an aspect of the mind.
The mind is fed information by senses like vision, which is then processed.
The villagers did not merely see that the beast looked bestial, but also that he ACTED bestial.
Remember: they saw through the magic mirror that beast was howling like a madman. Roaring.
"Hear him roar, see him foam" is a reference to that.
The very first reaction upon Belle showing the mirror is a woman asking "is it dangerous?" which is a VERY LOGICAL THING TO ASK considering it's baring it's fangs, aiming it's snout at the air and roaring like a lion.
Belle even acknowledges "I know he looks vicious".
This "he's really kind and gentle" she expects everyone to believe is standard foid behavior they would be well aware of. We see it today where GFs try to excuse their violent criminal BFs.
Also take a close look at the villagers who came to Maurice's house. They were already wielding pitchforks and knives, even though nobody knew about the beast. All they knew is the asylum-keeper had come to collect the old man.
Why would that all be necessary for a simple good non-dangerous old man? Obvious reason: he was dangerous. The guy dealt with explosives, he built an automatic axe-chopping wagon, etc. He was a weapons dealer, so they had to bring weapons to make sure he came in peacefully.
Despite Le Fou's lyric referring to Maurice as a "harmless crackpot", that's obviously not true: he's very dangerous, not harmless at all.
"Probably?" You're basing this on a continuity error.
What we know are the words he said: "How can you read this? There's no pictures!"
Implying that the book, as far as he knew, COULD NOT be read without pictures.
He doesn't see it possible to read a book without pictures
That's not a logical interpretation. If I said "How can you read this? There's no dragons!" it doesn't mean I'm incapable of reading a book lacking dragons, it's just that I prefer books that have dragons. Gaston is just expressing how he thinks pictures make books better: meaning he DOES see value in books.
If he really did want her to be smart and have agency and listen with her heart and all that stuff, the movie would've established that. You wouldn't be relying on "probably." There'd be at least one song about it.
No, this is the problem in your approach. You are only looking at the story as the writers desire you to see it, the subjective experience.
I look at this objectively, and realize that the truth of matters is not always what is sung.
Belle is Gaston's childhood peer. The comics show them sledding together as children. He said he's loved her since they first met, and all that time he's been ducking the affections of the Bimbettes (also peers since childhood) because of his dedication to her.
Belle is clearly not any aesthetically better than the Bimbettes. So the reason Gaston likes her is her personality.
The bimbettes basically throw themselves at him. They bare their bosom to attract his gaze, they constantly hang out around him to try and get his interest.
Gaston, however much he might talk about the dangers of women getting ideas, is clearly attracted to Belle because of hers. That's why he rejects the bimbettes. You see this in the comics: one of them actually disguises as Belle to try and fuck him and as soon as he discovers it's not Belle, he rejects her.
They even try to make him jealous by flirting with Le Fou and he DGAF because Belle is the priority. This proves he's not just after Belle because she's "hard to get" because even when the bimbettes play hard to get, he's not interested.
Gaston is basically trying "negging" PUA tactic, trying to charm Belle by fucking with her hobby to try and get her to pay attention to him. It's childish and shit (ie it's standard Gilbert Blythe pigtail-tugging BS) to chuck her book in the muck or claim it's shit because it doesn't have enough pics, but it doesn't mean it's literally what he thinks.
Belle is horribly hypergamous which you can see as soon as she rejects Gaston's marriage proposal. She doesn't merely call him "boorish" but also "brainless", even though he's clearly a skilled hunter which takes intelligence. Remember the song "no one shoots like Gaston". This guy spends a lot of time developing a difficult skill, which has everything to do with mental focus and naught to do with genetics.
Then she whines about wanting more than "provincial life", supposedly "adventure in the great wide somewhere" except we finally find out that all she wants is to live in a massive castle with a free library and a prince and his servants to wait upon her. If she actually wanted adventure, she could've pursued that at any point by going hunting instead of just reading books in the town square.
www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk
