Frollo and Mother Gothel convince Quasimodo and Rapunzel that their lives are dependent on them. The two villains claim the outside world is a terrible place even though they know this is not true. They also constantly emotionally abuse their victims by implying their worthlessness and destroying their self-esteems. Quasimodo and Rapunzel sympathize with their captors and even believe their captors are protecting them and treating them with kindness. However, both captors are merely using and manipulating their victims for their own selfish purposes.
Belle does not sympathize with the Beast when she is treated poorly. She becomes angry and leaves the castle, only returning by her own wish so that the Beast (who saves her) does not freeze to death. She does not respond nicely towards the Beast until he treats her with respect. In this situation, Belle has control and is not manipulated into feeling for the Beast, nor does the Beast treat her disrespectfully after the first night. While the Beast does have an underlying motive as to keeping Belle in his castle, he abandons this idea and sets her free to make her happy. If anything, this story is a case of Lima Syndrome where the captor starts to sympathize with the victim.
Check out this post which refocuses the purpose of Beauty and the Beast from merely (and wrongly) being about Stockholm Syndrome to it’s original purpose.
FUCKING FINALLY
I don’t usually reblog stuff like this, but Beauty and the Beast is my favorite movie and I’d like to have this on my page!
this is actually a very good analysis. I take back all the times I’ve called Beauty and the Beast a ‘stockholm syndrome’ romance.
someone: repeating things that reinforce a negative self view and world outlook such as the oh so popular tumblr niche of nihilistic ‘i want to die and everything is awful’ “jokes” me, in recovery, trying not to get dragged into that with them:
Adulting tip: before you move in with someone, sit down and have a discussion about what a clean living space looks like. Doing this would have saved me so much aggravation in my life.
“But Jaqui,” I hear you asking, “why should we have to talk about it? Clean’s clean, right?” No, it’s not. And thinking cleanliness is a self-evident concept is a great way for screaming fights to happen down the line.
Here’s an example: to my mom, clean means that all the things in the space are not actively dirty, and are free of crumbs and food stains and the like. It doesn’t matter to her where you put your shit, so long as no one has to worry about bugs or stains or diseases. To my once-stepfather, clean meant that everything had a place where it belonged, and things were neat and organized, and there was no visible clutter. He gave less of a shit about crumbs under the microwave than he did about random papers on the coffee table. So she could spend all day working to make sure you could eat off every surface in the kitchen, and he would come home and be upset because she’d spent all that time and as far as he could tell, nothing was clean. Meanwhile, his obsessive organization drove my mom batshit because he would blithely organize away things that weren’t clean by her standards. Needless to say, that relationship did not end well.
So yeah. Have the talk, and figure out what your “augh, this is unlivable, we need to clean!” points are. You may not always be able to get a shared living space exactly as clean as you want it, but if you figure out what everyone needs to feel like they have a reasonably clean space, you’re much more likely to correctly conclude that, when someone makes an offhand comment about the mess getting to them, you’ll know they mean the dishes in the sink are bothering them, and that they don’t give a shit about the dust on the bookshelves, and can act accordingly.
intellectually its fine for cishet people to refer to their cishet s/o as their ‘partner’ bc it helps normalize the phrase and allows gay/bi people leeway in terms of not outing themselves while also not lying but like. emotionally the toll of someone saying ‘partner’ and meaning her cishet bearded microbrew hipster boyfriend whos into pegging is like. severe
pervasive doubt 