Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 138

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Popular Culture Review
because the whole point of Gaston’s character, his self-made false identity, is the
tragic need to hide his true nature in the name of self-preservation in an
intolerant society. Consequently, it is interesting to think of the test drawings as
if they were the embodiment of a real person at some early stage in his life. In
his early years Gaston discovers that such a dandy demeanor is dangerous, and
so he works out, encasing himself in a costume of male muscles, remaking
himself in the image of idealized macho manhood, trading in his sway for a
swagger. This, then, is the Gaston we meet in the film. It is a ruse that fools all
of the townspeople, but one need only look past the fair fa 9 ade, and the real
Gaston—trapped and lonely and desperately frightened of being exposed—
comes into fiill relief. Indeed, a close investigation shows the not-so-hidden
truth just there beneath the chiseled surface.
Consider: Every girl in town wants to be with Gaston—the three
blonde Bimbettes throw themselves at him at every turn. Why, then, does he
insist on pursuing Belle who turns him down repeatedly and publicly? Because
she can be counted on to turn him down repeatedly and publicly. Belle is the
only female around who has made it clear that she wants nothing to do with
Gaston (ostensibly—we know, though no one else seems to know for sure—
because she is a lesbian); consequently, she is safe to pursue. Gaston knows that
by making plans to woo and marry Belle he will never actually have to go
through with anything. Furthermore, by making the pursuit public he can ensure
that his heterosexual cover is maintained. Everyone will think that Belle is the
strange one for rejecting the manly and desirable Gaston. In order to secure the
success of the ruse, Gaston even prepares a public wedding and, when he has
Belle alone for the impromptu proposal, he lays on the macho act to the extreme
thus guaranteeing that she will say no. Stressing how she will have to cook and
clean and care for their many children, Gaston privately says everything he
knows that Belle hates to hear, thus setting the stage for his own rebuffing.
When the rejection comes it is public and brutal. It gives the townspeople
something funny and shocking on which they can focus their collective
attention. This, too, is part of Gaston’s plan. He later (publicly) complains about
being “rejected, publicly humiliated,” but the truth of the matter is that Gaston’s
overly-inflated ego is itself a mechanism to throw the public off the track of a
deeper truth. Gaston carefully cultivates his enlarged ego and then orchestrates
its public puncturing at every turn as a sort of circus for the masses: Give them
something to talk about so they will not need to look more closely and find
something “worse” to talk about on their own. As a result, Gaston marches
around town and pursues the one girl he knows he needn’t worry about catching.
The Beast and Gaston thus have much in common—large, muscular,
hairy bodies; hangers-on willing to attend to their every need; desires to marry
Belle to prove (falsely) their heterosexuality.10 The parallels are clear in nearly
every scene: Just as the Beast is surrounded in his castle lair by Lumiere (the