Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 142

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Popular Culture Review
Belle in anger. “He’s not the monster, Gaston. You are,” replies Belle. And this
is the first moment of choice, the crossroads for Gaston. Belle, his one hope for
continuing the farce of his public sexual identity, has called Gaston’s orientation
into question in front of the whole village. Belle has figured it out. And now she
has brought the issue to a head, publicly announcing the truth that Gaston had
worked so hard to obscure. At this moment he is free to deny the accusation or
embrace it, to take the lies even further or to correct Belle and suggest that he is
indeed gay but there is nothing monstrous at all about it. Overcome with
emotion, Gaston cannot sort out his attraction to the Beast, his hatred of self, and
his overall fear and sadness. And so he chooses. And he chooses poorly.
Gaston grabs the mirror from Belle and, in response to her accusation,
shouts that she is crazy. He waves the mirror around at the villagers. Their own
possible-selves are reflected back at them in the form of the monster they
created as such and have themselves become. They turn from the mirror, and
themselves, in fear. To divert attention from Belle’s indictment, Gaston
unleashes his fury at the Beast—really, we must remember, at himself—pulling
out the most disgusting and immoral cliches about homosexuals he can muster.
“The Beast will make off with your children,” yells Gaston. A woman concurs,
adding that gays (monsters) have enormous sexual urges, that they are
insatiable, that complacent villagers will eventually sacrifice their children to
these “monstrous appetites.” All gays are over-sexed child molesters. And
Gaston nods in silent affirmation. “Praise the Lord!” sing the townspeople. “We
don’t like what we don’t understand, in fact it scares us, and this monster is
mysterious at least.” The villagers take up arms and torches, no longer content to
marginalize the Beast. They want him dead. And in a tragic bit of irony, they are
“counting on Gaston to lead the way.”
As Gaston prepares for the battle and incites his neighbors to murder,
his language becomes strangely sexually charged. It is a side effect of his own
rampant emotions, his combination lust and disgust for the Beast. The crowd
sings for Gaston to “mount [his] horse.” And Gaston counters with a line about
“screwing] courage to the sticking place”—a literate reference for this
supposedly dumb he-man, and an interesting choice of words for the current
circumstances. “It’s one exciting ride,” shouts Gaston, moments after
proclaiming his desire to mount the Beast as well—or at least to mount his head
on a wall. Whipped into a combination sexual- and fear-frenzy, the villagers
follow Gaston to the castle and prepare to do battle, to fight for the purity of the
heterosexual straight and narrow life. In a pun or perhaps a hip Freudian slip,
Gaston invites the men fighting at his side to “take whatever booty [they] can
find” once inside the castle. “But the Beast,” he says with a mad mixture of sex
and violence on his mind, “is mine.”
The village men approach the castle with a humongous pole, a giant
erect log they plan to use to ram down the doors of the Beast’s secret place. It