Matt's Top 5 Un-Romantic Characters # 5, The Beast

Hello dear readers, and welcome back for the first list I've done since... let's see... August? Is that right? No, that can't be. Wait, no, yes, it is. Wow. Sorry about that. Time and book releases and holidays and various other excuses I can list here kind of got out of hand, didn't they?

Sad Smiley does not approve of such excuses.

Well, for the few of you who stuck around in the hopes of seeing another of my semi-comedic lists praising and/or disassembling various pieces of pop-culture, you're in luck! Because I'm back, and while I cannot claim to be better than ever (since I'm probably about the same as where I was last time), I intend to keep this ball rolling.

So, without further ado, let's get this February list going!

Being that I am a big fan of low-hanging fruit, I thought about dedicating this month's list to some of my favorite romantic pieces of pop-culture, what with that holiday whose name escapes me popping up at some point during this month. I think it's that one that involves shooting people in the heart with arrows.

Like this.

However, figuring this was a little too easy, I decided to give myself a bit of a challenge, and so I have decided to dedicate this month's celebration to my favorite anti-romantic characters in fiction. What makes a character anti-romantic? Well, to get on this list, it would help if you were utterly incompetent in the arts of love, are often mistaken for romantic when you are anything but, have extreme misfortune when love is concerned, or are an irredeemable cad.

As well, it'll help if I enjoy their particular fiction, so while I know a lot of great ones will be missing, these are the five that leaped to mind when this list came around. So, without further ado, let us get to entry # 5...

It's no secret I'm a huge fan of Disney films, at least those made in the past 25 years (some exceptions included, yes, that means you Atlantis: The Lost Empire), and though I tend to favor a lot of their more recent stuff strictly for their more modern and well-rounded writing styles, it's hard not to enjoy the charms of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin or The Lion King. It's also hard not to laugh at how terribly dated and still a little behind the times their messages are.

Enter Beauty & The Beast

You may be our guest, but please do not be too loud a guest, lest our master murder us all!

Beauty & The Beast is the classic love story of a monster who kidnaps a young girl, holds her prisoner until she loves him, then proves that he was hot all along which is apparently A-OK with his former prisoner. Disney does a little better with it than you might expect (as a Best Picture nomination and the ability to still make me tear up at the end can attest), but the backbone of it still remains. While he proves that he can be a decent guy (not the can be part of that phrase) when he really tries, for much of the movie The Beast is a monster. He holds Belle prisoner, threatens to starve her if she won't spend time with him, and if his room full of tattered furniture is any indication, he's probably murdered a lot of his transformed servants.

But really, he's a sweet guy underneath.

You don't have to look far online for many articles about how messed up this movie is, from Beast's abusive nature to how Belle Stockholm Syndrome's herself into loving Beast, but not quite (note that she never goes far enough to actually learn his real name), so I'm going to take a different angle and go on my favorite messed-up trait of this otherwise fairy tale romance:

Unlike most love-in-spite-of-circumstances kinds of movies where two combative characters gradually fall in love, Beauty & The Beast throws in a fun little asterisk to this mystical curse that makes the Beast who he is: a time limit. See, he's destined to remain the Beast if he can't fall in love, and have someone reciprocate, by his 21st birthday. While ostensibly added to the story to give a sense of drama, since what's more dramatic than a ticking clock, this time limit really adds an asterisk to the Beast's love for Belle. He has mentally prepared himself for the last ten years (if "Be Our Guest" is any indication, and I choose not to disbelieve a word of that catchy, catchy song) to find a girl to fall in love with, and, well, it makes one wonder if his quick love for Belle comes entirely from genuine affection or if he's got some unconscious awareness that he needs to make this happen if he wants to be a human again.

So, in his way he's kind of trying to find a magical marriage green card, except this green card violently transforms his body instead of preventing him from getting kicked out of the country.

And yet, despite its twisted love story of kidnapping, torture and multi-directional Stockholm Syndrome that will likely involve the characters breaking up shortly after the end credits after they realize how messed up all this was (unless Belle's shallow enough to stick around now that he's hot and she's rich for having married him, which does kind of defeat the purpose of the movie), this movie still manages to be rather sweet and fun and a personal favorite.


Damn you Disney for making this work somehow.

And it has Gaston, easily the funniest, and possibly one of the scariest, of Disney villains.

So dear readers, who else loves Beauty & The Beast in spite of (or perhaps because of) it's many flaws? Who are some of your favorite unromantic characters? Sound off in the comments below!

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-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)