An Open Letter to Beauty and the Beast: Square Up

Nobody asked for this article, just like nobody asked for this movie. Walt Disney Studios decided a few years ago that what we needed, more than anything in the world, was live-action remakes of their animated classics. No one asked for this (if you did, I’mma fight you when you finish this article). Maleficent gave a new, rape-centered view of Disney’s greatest villain (a neutering origin story we arguably didn’t need) and Cinderella gave her prince a name and an actual personality. The Jungle Book, released in 1967 was due for an update. And you know, I was ready to let Beauty and the Beast slide, but then the promotional materials started dropping and I knew. This movie deserves to have its WHOLE ass beat. Let me count the ways y’all had me fucked up. [title type=”h4″]1. Casting Super White Feminist Emma Watson[/title]Y’all lost me from jump with this one. Bearing the standard of all things appropriately Feminist and properly Anglo-centric like a modern day Susan B. Anthony, this reedy-voiced actress does her best to lose whatever goodwill she earned from the Harry Potter franchise (shit’s been gone for me since we got a superior Hermione in Noma Dumezweni). Her myopic view of Feminism exists at the exclusion of too many women but they keep holding her up as the paragon of the future of womanhood with one hand and holding the rest of us down with the other. That’s why her doll has that big ass forehead, that’s where she stuffs all the intersectionality. [title type=”h4″]2….